Froggie Eyes and Turkey Necks

Hi There!

Happy Fresh-Smelling Monday Morning to you! What will your week bring?

I've got a cutie of a card for you today. Several months ago, my good friend Di stamped off some sweet LOTV Annabelle images for me and I used one of them on my card. (Thank you, again, Di!)

 

I colored her with watercolor pencils and fussy-cut her to make her work for the current CAS(E) This Sketch challenge. Here is the fun sketch by the talented Gayatri (which I flipped):

I had an apropopo vellum sediment for this cheery card so I stapled it to a pink panel and it put on the inside:

I'm also entering:

• Di's Pixie's Snippets Playground, where the theme is to use up those snippets; and
• Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challege, where the theme is Anything Goes.

You can click on any of the challenge links for details about the rules, sponsors, and prizes. I hope you can play along!

~~~

Aging is Not for the Vain at Heart

Even if we manage to forget our ages (sometimes to the point of embarrassing our children), there are some aspects of living our lives that can interfere with living our lives. I thought I would share with you that there is one consequence of aging that I'm having fixed this morning. Genetically, I've always had heavy eyelids and I was advised a couple of years ago that they were impacting my vision. But I let it go and walked around with my eyebrows metaphorically pinned to my hairline so that I could see. When I went back to the doctor a couple of months ago, my eye test results were, of course, even worse with the passage of time and the falling of gravity. 

So I'm having a blepharoplasty today. Doesn't that sound like one of my made-up words? It snot. But I think some Greek might have had a cold when he decided the word for "eyelid" would be "blepharon." Guzhunhidt.

I did ask my lovely surgeon if she would suck up my neck while she was at it, but all she did was laugh so hard she nearly fell off her stool. Darn it.

It isn't the first time I've tried to get an easy neck lift. A few years ago, I was seeing a lot of commercials for a laser treatment that lifts saggy necks and jowls without surgery and the results looked amazing.

So when I was at my dermatologist's office for a six-month checkup, I told her I was interested in the procedure. She is Asian with a heavy accent. I'm not making fun of her accent; in this case, it was her delivery that made her brutal honesty so funny!

She came around to stand in front of me, took a look and said, sternly and firmly, "You too late. You need knife."

All righty then. That's using your words!

~~~

ENJOY your day! No, seriously, enjoy.  LITS!* 

As always, thank you for coming by to visit the Playhouse and special thanks to you if you take the time to leave a comment and/or join as a follower! Please let me know you came by, so I can be sure and return the flavor!

  

 

*Life Is Too Short!

To open the pop-up comment box that let's you jump to the end w/o scrolling:

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Mwah!

Stamp/Stencils Are Everywhere. OCC Day Two.

Hello Crafty Friend!

I'm back with my third card from yesterday's Online Card Class on watercoloring. Today ended up being a busy day, so all I have accomplished on Day Two of the class is watch the excellent videos.

Without giving secrets away, I can tell you that the third card from yesterday was about emboss resist, which most of us have done using inks. For this lesson we were to start by using a background stamp that was "open" in design so that a lot of the background could show through. 

Well. I'll be a blue baboon if I could find such a stamp amid and among my {cough}llion stamps! I thought and thought and thought while all the while Hammy was on Skype with Ms. Thing. This love affair will be the death of my creativity! 

Finally I reached over and slapped the device into tomorrow, glaring at him the way mothers glare at their children in church. (I always thought those "if-looks-could-kill-glares in church were ironical.) Hammy wanted badly to go off in a Sulk, but seeing that none were available, he came and sat on my head and looked around the room. Suddenly, right in front of us was the answer.

I'll cut to my card and you see if you can figure it out. I'll bet you can. Here's my card:

Having used foam dots on my last card, an empty dot receptacle became my stamp! Well, it was sort of a stencil stamp, but whatever. I took my rarely used and 13-year-old Versamark pen and swirled it around inside the holes

Now there's a trick for you, for free!

I ended up watercoloring a large area over and around the "image" with my watercolors, not thinking that I would be cutting it way back for a card, so that's why the watercolors themselves are a bit underwhelming. 

~~~

That's a wrap. I'm gonna get some dinner going and then try to make a card(s) from Day Two tonight. Otherwise, I'll just move on to Day Three on Day Three and skip Day Two. Unless Day Four becomes my Day Two. Sorry. I didn't mean to make you ziddy. The cool thing about these courses (link above) is that they are available for LIFE! Thank goodness.

~~~

Blogland Boogers

Oh, wait, talking about the feed bag reminded me that there are still problems with Feedburner transmitting posts in your readers and with following again! I am not getting a lot of your posts, and I am thinking a lot of you are not getting mine. Some of you have told me that there is no follower gadget or follow button showing up on my blog side bar. I can see it and I've been able to follow new blogs, but I guess that's not true for everyone.

Carp.

Does anyone have any suggestions/intelligence/alternatives that they can share to help others with these problems? I would appreciate your advice. I don't even know who runs Feedburner. When I Goggle it, I'm not getting any information regarding a problem.

That's a bit like asking the fox if he's seen any good chicks lately.

Edited to add:

Reader Jean commented:  

As for the whole feedburner thing, as best I understand it, feedburner (which is a google tool) delivers to google email addresses but not to hotmail, msn, aol, yahoo, etc. It's because they are blocking some protocol that the feedburner sends out. There's no current fix. Bloggers that have experienced this problem appear to be switching over to FeedBlitz to send email updates from their blogs. Hope that helps! 

Thanks, Jean! That makes sense because I subscribe to my own blog to know when there are problems and my blog posts are coming in via Gmail (Google) just fine, but NOT via Comcast. So it is our servers who are restricting the delivery then by blocking the protocol from Feedburner, correct? I should be contacting Comcast then and complaining to them and the same goes for the rest of you who are using other delivery services besides Gmail.

I do hope there is a workable solution with Feedburner because the blogs that I subscribe to which come to me via Feedblitz are in "preview" format and they always have a bunch of ads in them and they often don't even show the card. I find that very irritating and off-putting and I often skip those blogs if I'm really busy. Still, I suspect ads are coming whether we like it or not.

I appreciate your comments and observations.

~~~

Enjoy your day! No, seriously, enjoy.  LITS!* 

As always, thank you for coming by to visit the Playhouse and special thanks to you if you take the time to leave a comment and/or join as a follower! Please let me know you came by, so I can be sure and return the flavor! 

  

 

*Life Is Too Short!

To open the pop-up comment box that let's you jump to the end w/o scrolling:

Click CTL + Home.
Click the Home tab under my blog banner which resets the post.
Click Page Down to reach the end of the post.
Click Comments and the pop-up box opens.
Click Jump to Comment Form; no more car pool tunnel!
Mwah!

Inspiration Crew New Year's Card; CFC #124; CTS #58; NBUS #83; SSWC, and My New Baking Blog

Happy Saturday! 

Welcome to a prolix post.  (Great Scrabble word.)

I was asked some time ago to be a guest today of the esteemed group, The Inspiration Crew, for their scheduled New Year's Eve inspiration post!   

Welcome to the New Year’s Celebration Event brought to you by "The Inspiration Crew."  We’re just a group of crafty friends who love being creative. This time we're doing a one-day event to provide you with tons of inspiration to ring in the New Year!

Here is my Happy New Year's card:

I used SU! gold mirror and sparkly silver card.  The NBUS die is from Papertrey Ink.  The stickers are from Mrs. Grossman and the little festive photographic stars are from Kristie Goulet.  To make my scrumdidlyicious drink even more inviting, I traced the sticker onto scratch paper, cut it out, and then traced it with a Versamark pen onto acetate.  I then heat embossed it using SU! Hologram Highlights for lots of frosty blingy goodness.  Cheers!!

 

I am entering my card in the following challenges:

 

CAS(E) This Sketch.  Thank you, N@Ali for a wonderful sketch!

 

CAS-ual Fridays, where the theme is "Happy New Year!"  CFC is teaming up with 10-Minute Craft Dash, so you get a double chance at winning a prize if you can make your creation in less than ten minutes!  My card was quick and easy, but the acetate glass I made took me just over the limit.

 

Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge, where the theme is "Bling It On!"  It is a two-week challenge because of Christmas.

 

 

I hope you get a chance to join in these fun challenges!  The links will provide the details about rules, sponsors, and prizes.

 

~~~

 

I'd like to take a minute to thank ALL the owners and Design Team members of the many, many delightful challenges that provide us with endless jumping-off suggestions for theme, color, and sketch, and then provide us with a multitude of creative inspiration!  I'd also like to thank the website Paper Playful for providing us with an updated and comprehensive list of weekly challenges and winners. 

 

~~~

 

Back to New Year's inspiration, I also made a wine bottle tag using a NBUS Avery Elle "Cheers" Die:

It was QACAS using that die.  The die set includes the label and the words "uncork" (which I love, no ambiguity there), "celebration," and "cheers!"  The papers used are unknown from my obscene collection.  I don't mean I have a collection of obscene papers, I mean I have an obscene quantity of pretty papers. 

~~~

Okay, so that's my New Year's inspiration for you for today.  Please do click over to the other very talented members of the Inspiration Crew who are participating in the hop!  Some of them are offering prizes!  Cheers!!

 

Rachel Kleinman

Ceal Pritchett

Libby Hickson

Jennifer Cuthbertson

Ardyth Percy-Robb

That's the end of card talk if you want to jump to the end to kindly leave a comment.  Thank you for coming by!
 

~~~~~~

 

My New Baking Blog

Not!

 

Okay, so I have to share with you my hysterical baking day on Thursday.  But before I do, I have to show you a photo of the cookies my sister Diana made last week. 

Yikes!  My sisters Donna and Doris also had disasters, but I don't have any photos to share.  This just wasn't our year for Christmas baking!

So.  I finally finished off the last of my cards on Wednesday and with other holiday obligations, I left myself only one day to do any baking for neighbors, the Mister, the office, the Mister, friends, etc.

 

For the first gift idea, I decided to make one of those recipes-in-a-jar. You know where you put all the dry ingredients in a jar and attach a recipe tag?  I got the idea from an old Craft N Things magazine which I cut out in April 2008.  The recipe is for Lemon Coconut Cookies.    I can't find the recipe on the Craft N Things website, but the above link is the exact same recipe.  Well, I didn't want to just put the ingredients in the jar, type up the recipe, and give it away without actually trying the recipe myself to see if it stunk.

 

So I did.  I swear I followed the recipe prezackly.  Well, except for that part about placing the balls two inches apart on the cookie sheet.  Whoever does that?  I don't have all day!  It's never been a problem before, but for this recipe, your balls should be placed THREE inches apart or you get this new and space age ~ scientific even ~ dessert:

 

I called for the Mister to see.  He became quite delirious, knowing that by some magic this lot would become his, all his!  Also, being a science guy, he was very intrigued by the quadra, phrandal, hexa, whatever shape he called it.  I called it something else that I can't print here.  No question, these lemon cookies definitely gave me lemonade!

 

I was raised in Iowa.  In Iowa they wear boots for the snow and for slopping hogs.  They have a saying:  When things go bad, pull yourself up by your bootstraps and move on.

 

I pulled up my bootstraps and moved on to brownies.  No one ever, in the history of brownies, has screwed them up.  Clever me to become famous for doing such a thing, but there you have it.

 

The recipe perpetration was without event.  I had even prepared my cake pan and preheated the oven.  Just as the last stirring was happening, I had a brain storm and remembered that I had these awesome silicon brownie BITE pans!  This would be even better for taking to the office!  Little brownie bites covered in powdered sugar that no one had to cut or bite into!  There would be no trails of chocolate crumbs down shirt fronts or hallways!  Brilliant!

 

I brought out the pans and found that if I used my fancy-smancy cookie scoop, it was just perfect for filling the bite holes without batter plops all over the place.  They cooked up smashingly, like little baby muffins.  Adorable.  I was haaa-pee as I powdered their little muffin tops with sugar.

 

Then I went to pop them out of their little silicon hidey-holes.  Um, no, not happening.  What happened instead was the little adorable muffin-top-like tops popped right off!  Hell-O.  They left their little cakey brownie bottoms firmly stuck to the hoity-toity silicon pans. 

I waited hours in between trying to remove them, hoping with time they might let go; that's why there are three missing.  But, yeah, no.

 

People, seriously, I thought the whole point of the flippin silicon material was that whatever you cooked just popped out without any need for greasing the skids.  Wrong!  So this is a public service announcement.  If you have a silicon bundt pan, or muffin pan, or brownie bite pan, or tart pan sitting in your board of cups that has never been used, ALWAYS grease it before you bake with it.  Always.

 

Did I throw them out?  Oh, slap yourself, no, I did not.  You know how I said I am now famous for screwing up brownies?  Well!  I am also going to become famous for the person who invented Brownie Tops.  They are a treat, lemme tell you! 

 

So the next time you go to the mall and you see a kiosk selling Brownie Tops, you make sure and let me know so I can get the royalties or sue for patent fringes or whatever one does. 

 

Look how cute they are:

They look kinda big in this photo, but they are just perfectly bite-sized. 

 

And the stuck brownie bottoms?  I scraped them out, one by one, into one big cakey blob, added a little chocolate syrup to moisten, and made Brownie Bottom Balls rolled in powdered sugar!  Squee!  They rock! 

(Shall I franchise these ideas?  I wish.  I'm sure Brownie Tops and Bottoms have prolly been invented before only I just never heard of them.)

 

At the end of my, ah, interesting baking day, Mister took me out to dinner.  I mean, it was the least he could do after I made him the world's largest sculptural lemon coconut cookie!

 

~~~

 

Sorry this is so long when you are so busy, but I just had to share!  I sincerely hope your holiday baking went off without a hitch.  Hitches are on wagons and back in Iowa ... oh, never mind!  I'll save that for another post!

 

Enjoy your day!  No, seriously, enjoy.  LITS!* 

 

As always, thank you for coming by to visit the Playhouse and special thanks to you if you take the time to leave a comment and/or join as a follower!  Please let me know you came by, so I can be sure and return the flavor!  Here's a picture of my card, which I'm sure you've forgotten that I made!

  

 

*Life Is Too Short!

A Mini Tree! CTS #39; NBUS #32

Happy Funday!

My card today had the usual curious eVolution.  Sometimes I like to type words that start with the letter e like that.  It looks so hip and just for a second it makes you wonder, "Is it a new software company, or maybe new social media, or maybe a new hardware company, or maybe a new underwear company?  Wait.  What?  It's a whole new eLocution.

 

The squirrels have taken over the asylumnasium.

 

~~~

 

So, here's what happened. 

 

We did a lot of much-needed gardening today.  Now I walk by this particular crepe myrtle tree dozens of times a day going between the Bighouse and the Playhouse.  Today I noticed this:

I think all trees get these little volunteer saplings or suckers every spring and you're spose to dispatch with them because they just take up water and nutrients the tree needs.  I had dispatched previous suckers from this tree.  I swear this little guy popped up over night!  A bonsai crepe myrtle tree!  Isn't it adorable?!

 

You've seen the main tree itself in a recent post, but just for scale, here it is:

Hopefully if you click on the photo, you can see the wee Mini-Me tree at the base.  Naturally, I had to share with you.

 

~~~

 

Hours later I was checking out challenges and I came across this sketch from CAS(E) This Sketch, designed by the superbly talented N@ Ali:

 

 

And I considered my stamps.  I really didn't want to be too literal and use a flower image, but I checked out my flower stamps anyway.  I changed my mind when I came across an old NBUS stamp that reminded me of the crepe myrtle flower!  Doncha love it when you make a full-whoop-circle!

 

This is a picture of the stamp I used:

 

I think it's prolly a cherry blossom or some such.  I colored it with SU! markers, spritzed it, and stamped it onto watercolor paper.  I added some detail with Prismacolor pencils.

 

The sediment is also NBUS.  The reason I stamped it directly onto my card and not onto a banner, as per the sketch, is because I thought I read somewhere that this week's One Layer Wednesday (OLW) challenge was "summer" and my intention was to enter that challenge, too.  After I finished my card and starting writing this, I discovered that's not the case.  Ah, man, working has left me addle-paddled. 

 

BTW, the actual theme of the current OLW challenge is speechless and it's being hosted by Ardyth.  You should check out her genius and fun cards here and play along if you can! 

 

~~~

 

I want to thank you guys for joining me in the NBUS (never-before-used schtuff) movement!  It's so fun to see the acronym popping up around Blogland.  It's forcing me to look through my NBUS items and not reach automatically for those items that my brain is already familiar with.  I know it feels really good, so I love that you are experiencing that feeling, too! 

 

It's also making me feel like the Playhouse needs a good clean.  It'll be three years this October since I moved in and I think it's time to see what the heckarino is in the back of those cabinets that I apparently don't need!

 

~~~

 

I'm wishing you a happy day!  Enjoy it!  No, seriously, enjoy.  LITS*!  

 

As always, thank you for coming by to visit the Playhouse and special thanks to you if you take the time to leave a comment and/or join as a follower!

 

 

*Life Is Too Short!   

Paper:  Biggie Junior Watercolor
Stamps:  "Inkadinkado" 96075 - O by Kathy Davis;
  Stem is I-143 "Stamps by Judith"
Ink:  Versafine onyx black; SU! markers
Enamel Dots:  "My Mind's Eye"