Prezzies and a Custom Order!

It has been a banner two days in my lil' crooked life! I got prezzies!!!!! Lookie what I got last night:


A book. A COOK book. A cook book by ALTON BROWN. A cook book SIGNED by AB himself!!!! Yessiree, I am one happy camper, I am. Thank you sooooooooo much, Suzanne (*waves* in the general direction of 'across the street'), for not only THINKING I'd like one, but also standing in line and getting it SIGNED for me! Oh, and please thank the hubster for carting it across the store along with your own copy. It must weigh a squillion pounds!

Next, this arrived today from one of my Tweeple*:


It is a Muse. My very own MUSE! And now that I have a Craft Room (yes, I know I still owe you some reveal pics, but it has been RAINING on the weekends, which is the only time I am home when it is light out these days. I'm workin' on it!), I hung her from my ceiling fan - right over my table! I need to move her up a bit, because if *I* bump into her, she is way too low. When she stops moving I'll try and take better pics of her. She is amazing.

And to show you I was crafty tonight, I had a special order for some nautical thank you cards, and this is the design upon which we settled:

I made 12 of these and got them all packaged and ready for Saturday. The flags are the nautical flags for the letters "T" and "Y" - Thank You. This all came about when a guy and his wife stopped at my market table a few weeks ago and asked if I had anything nautical, and all I had was one card that was in my "A Little Bit Out There" section. It had nautical flags for the letters WTF. Uh-huh. They bought it and we started talking about Thank You cards, and here we are today with a set of 12. Ba-da-bing, ba-da-boom. It was fun!

I love talking to the people who come through the farmers market, and I miss that part of my craft come this time of year. I only have a few weekends left - this one and the last weekend of October. I have holiday craft shows on the first and third Saturday's of November, so there is only one weekend next month I could make the market. Then we're history until next May. :-( I will probably start bugging our contact with the City in February about why I have not received my permit application yet, at which time she'll tell me to hold my horses and it will arrive in March or April, then I'll race the photographer to see who gets their app turned in first so we can have permit #001. Oh, yeah ... looking forward to it.

That's it for this evening. Thanks for stopping by!

* Her etsy shop is http://bunnyindisguise.etsy.com. She has some muses and some AMAZING jewelry! Check her out!

The Twitter Bacon Blog Hop

It's all about the bacon. Somehow, a Twitter discussion spun out of control (actually, most of them do, but that's another post for another time), and now we have a Bacon Blog Hop... I kid you not.

With apologies to any vegetarians or vegans, is there anything better than the smell of frying bacon in the morning? C'mon, you know you like it!

What *I* like right now is I remembered I had this SU set called A Light Heart, and the love stamp from the set was the perfect image for this card. :-)

There is a Twitter account called allbacon. Then there's jesusbacon, where I found this link: bacon cheeseburger donuts. Go look ... I'll wait ... ... ... ... Then there's Kevin Bacon, and his Six Degrees, but we'll skip that one today and just focus on the food.

Okay, moving right along. I love bacon, but I rarely buy it because, living alone, I always seem to cook the whole package, and then I gnaw on it until it is all gone. Then I am sick.

So I stopped buying and consuming bacon. Then I met this: Marlboro Man's Second Favorite Sandwich. Oh, my goodness. Such goodness. It requires you to cook not just any bacon, but pepper bacon. I've tried it with the plain, and it is just not the same. (Hey that rhymes!) Get the pepper bacon. Trust me on this one.

It also requires you to use some of the bacon 'juice' (Emeril - Mr. Pork Fat Rules - calls it that, as it is much more appetizing than bacon 'fat' or 'grease' or even 'drippings') to cook the chicken. This recipe is a bacon-lover's dream-come-true. As a single person, I cook it all and eat off it for days. It is really good cold, too. I have nothing bad to say about this recipe. BTW, I skip the bread in both this recipe and Marlboro Man's Favorite Sandwich. I just cannot be bothered. And if you skip all the bread and the butter to cook it, then you can eat more of the good stuff. Right? RIGHT?!

But I have to tell you, my absolute favorite bacon is not American bacon - what the Two Fat Ladies used to call 'stripe-y' bacon. Nope. My all-time favorite bacon is back bacon, which is what you get in Ireland or Scotland, which is part of the reason I went there on vacation one year. Our equivalent here would be Canadian Style bacon. I have been told American (USA) butchers do not butcher the hog in the same way, so we are stuck with stripe-y bacon. So sad.

I am supposed to end my post with my favorite bacon recipe, and right now that is Bacon-Wrapped Jalepeno Thingies, without a doubt. Can you tell I like The Pioneer Woman's recipes? I have also accused her of being single-handedly responsible for the fattening of America, but I digress.

So, at long last, here is the very complex (not) recipe, dutifully copied from PW's site. If you need pictures - you can go there LATER.

Bacon-Wrapped Jalepeno Thingies

Fresh Jalepenos, 2-3 inches in size
Cream Cheese, softened
Bacon (the regular thin kind), cut into thirds

Halve each of the peppers and discard the seeds and membrane.
Stuff each pepper half with cream cheese.
Wrap a piece of bacon around the stuffed pepper half and secure it with a tooth pick.

Bake in a pan with a rack @ 375 degrees for 20-25 minutes. If the bacon is not cooked to your liking, turn on the broiler for a few minutes.

Serve hot or at room temperature. I've even eaten them cold the next day!

Alternative uses: pop a few on top of your burger for a little extra kick. :-)

Next up on this bacon adventure is Angelique Cain over at http://sweetsandtarts.blogspot.com/2009/08/welcome-to-first-annual-twitter-bacon.html. BTW, she makes the cutest little paper bats. :-) So hop on over to see what she has to say about bacon!

Thanks for stopping by!

Another Step Back In Time

Hi. Remember me? I have been deeply mired in technobabble all week. It only took me three days to get the help I needed from Verisonwireless to finally get my Blackberry phone, and then it took another day or so to get it working. But it is sweet. Instant Web access - oh, yeah, baby. As one of my 20-something co-workers so eloquently pointed out yesterday, I have been pulled, kicking and screaming, into the 21st century.

So let's take a moment to step back in time. The other day I mentioned something to someone, somewhere (all my days and locales run together any more) about when phone numbers had letters in them (mine was CR4-6809, which later turned into 274- ); when the USPS told us all the state abbreviations on letters (yes, we wrote letters) were going to be only two letters instead of any other shortening method (Pennsylvania used to be Penn, Florida was Fla, Mississippi was Miss, Ohio was ... er, Ohio); and instead of the city code thingie, we were going to have 5-digit ZIP Codes. [Did you now that the ZIP in ZIP Code stands for Zone Improvement Plan? I am not making this up - look here. Yes, I am full of useless trivia.]

What is this city code thing of which I speak!?!?! I lived in Dayton 6, Ohio. With the blind-siding of both the ZIP Code and the State abbreviation changes, this became Dayton, OH 45406. See? It was HARD growing up back then. Kids have it so EASY today...

Here is some photo evidence. I took this in the bathroom at work the other day. Never let it be said I missed a photo op.

The first thing I'd like you to notice is how old this shelf is. It is yellowed with age! My building was built back in what I now understand to be "mid-century", and this is a relic of those times. Still attached to the wall and everything.

But what I really want you to notice is this:

Check out the city: Indianapolis 4, Ind. Yep, this is ooooooold. And I had 'a moment' in the ladies' room to record it all for posterity. Please do not mention that to anyone, okay?

And last, but not least, I STAMPED SOMETHING! I did! It is little, but it serves a purpose. You see, I had my first etsy sale a few weeks ago, and I failed to exercise the proper protocol. Etsy, being a hand-made stuff site, encourages us to enclose a personal note when we ship an order, if only to emphasize the whole 'hand-made' aspect of the site. Well, in my glee over the actual SALE, I neglected to do this. So tonight I went through my Cache Of Things Purchased In A Good Demo Moment But Never Used items and pulled out a package of scalloped notes. They are little notes with one scalloped edge, with envelopes, and they are too small to mail. Soooo, I decided to open the package and make little thank you notes to enclose with what I hope will be future sales.

It is very difficult to see, as this is a totally horrid photograph, but the bottom edge of the top part of the card is scalloped. I actually used a 1/4" punch to make a notch in the side of the card to keep the ribbon from sliding off. Not bad, not bad.

Alright, then, I have managed to waste another 5 minutes or so of your time talking about nothing at all! Back to finish programming my phone with actual phone numbers. Thanks for stopping by!

A Semi-Productive Day Off

I don't know about you, but when I take a day off, it is all planned out to be busier than a work day. I take the Tuesday off after my monthly Sunday & Monday Stamp Camps so I can catch up with everything life-related that did not happen on Saturday through Monday, which would be a normal person's weekend. I never claimed to be a normal person, though. So Tuesday is all planned out in my head with "gonna do this and this and that and this and ...", yet when Tuesday arrives, I barely make it through half of that list. Let's see how I did today!

The Plan: Get up at 7:00 am (this is known as "sleeping in" in my world). Check.
The Plan: Shower right away. Yawn. What's the rush?
The Plan: Get dressed and go to the grocery before the Day People get there. "But I haven't showered yet."
The Plan: Be home from the grocery before 9:30, cuz I had someone coming over with some papers I needed to sign. I showered and got dressed. No grocery. Too late.
The Plan: Put away the rest of the Stamp Camp stuff. "Why? I have a partial kit left, and I might use it, so I'll need all that stuff. Let's leave it out, for now."
The Plan: 9:30, sign the papers, etc. Check.
The Plan: Post the trundle bed on Craig's List. "But look at all those stamps calling to me ...", so instead I made this:

This is the purple version of my Blue Tree card. I thought it would look really nice in Elegant Eggplant, but now I am not so sure. Eh - I'll bag it and tag it and put it in my dwindling Sympathy section.



The Plan: Make new dividers for the market. Need 'Caffeine' and one other one, but I forgot what it was ... so I went to the grocery store. My house now smells like brisket ... m-m-m-m-m!

The Plan: Pay my MD Sales & Use taxes, which are due 7/20 for the first 6 months of 2009. To do this, I needed to find all my sales books and add up all the gross sales. Then I needed to find my Federal number, which I knew was on my paper form that has gone missing. So I dug through my 2008 papers until I found last year's form and finally filed my first-half 2009 MD state tax schtuff so the Govn'r is happy and will not send me hate mail. Check.

The Plan: Go to the pet store and get kitty a new not-plastic food bowl. This would require me to leave the house again, which was not going to happen. Then I thought about an old water bowl I had for her, which is made of crockery. It needed to be heavy because I was tired of her batting the plastic bowl around the kitchen's wood floor and spilling all the water out of it. But where had I stored it? After about 30 minutes I found it and swapped bowls. Might as well run the dishwasher, too, while I'm at it. Check and Check.

The Plan: Run the dryer so I have clothes to wear to work tomorrow. Check.
The Plan: Fold the clothes when the dryer is done. Carp. Need to run the fluff cycle now.

The Plan: Make several doctor's appointments. You know, the kind that you do not want to make on the phone in Cubeville with 12 other people listening in. Yeah, those. Forgot to do them. Carp x 2.

The Plan: Make a few cards. Check!

This was made from my partial kit from the Stamp Camps (we had a few boo-boos, so the kit was scavenged for card parts). I am woefully low on irreverent statement cards, so I made a few. I love it when people come by my booth and pick up a pretty card, read it, then put it back. :-)

This is a card risen from the Scrap Heap. After I'd put on the ribbon, I realized the red/cranberry layer was a full 4 1/4" wide, and since any of my stamping customers will tell you I am incapable of cutting a perfect 4 1/4 x 5 1/2 card front, I knew this would never layer correctly, so I trimmed the top and bottom, so now it just looks stoopid. Hopefully the buyer will be so wowed by the sentiment they will not notice the layering.

This is another Scrap Heap card using the same sentiment. I cut the patterned paper layer a bit shorter than I'd planned, so I needed to save myself, and I chose to punch the bottom with this MS border punch whose name escapes me at the moment.

The layer with the sentiment is from the UFO pile. It has a Canvas image plus a word background stamp image, so I stamped the sentiment in black right over them and cut it out with a Nestie.

Moving on ....

The Plan: Make a UHC card and post it. I checked the list, and there is only one more holiday of note (in my opinion) in July and it is not until the 25th, so I'll hold off on that until next week (she says as she slinks away from the fact that she failed to deliver.)

As I predicted, my day is over and I have barely accomplished anything from the list. Oh, well. There's always tomorrow.

And finally I bring you:

The Plan: Eat the freakin' brisket already! Check! Off to do that right now!

Thanks for stopping by!

Color Inspiration (mostly)

First, I'd like to apologize for that earlier twitty post. I have no idea what came over me, but I am on Twitter. Sheesh! I do not need one more thing to check! Sigh ...

Second, believe it or not, I took more photos yesterday at the market than I posted. When I saw these fabrics in MaryBeth's booth, I felt I needed to commit them to digits so I could not only share them with you, my beloved three (maybe four) readers, but to use them as inspiration for myself.

I loved the bright blue, white (can white be 'bright'?) and orange on this green background. I see Green Galore (or maybe Certainly Celery, or both), Pumpkin Pie (sorry, Kristie), Tempting Turquoise, and maybe a little Creamy Caramel. Yeah, this one could work!

Here we have Green Galore, So Saffron and either Lovely Lilac or Lavender Lace, plus White. There's something about the combination of yellow and purple, in the right shades, of course, that catches my eye. A few years ago, a little girl came through the market wearing a bright yellow sun dress that had vivid purple flowers as the printed pattern in the fabric. It was stunning! At that time I thought I'd try one of the purples in Craft Ink on yellow card stock to see how it came out. Uh-huh, right. Never happened. But THIS time, maybe it will happen.

Here is a closer shot of that last pattern. So many possibilities....

And then, this morning, as I was (of all things) putting clothing into a drawer, which almost never happens in this place, I had to stop, look, then run to get my camera. (People laugh when I tell them I have no life, and I think I might have just proven my point.) ANYway, check out those shirt colors: Pacific Point (sniff, sniff), Brilliant Blue, Certainly Celery and Black. M-m-m-m. Look for it on a card coming soon to a blog near you.

Holy CARP! I have 6 followers already on Twitter! Do you people really care what I have to say that I do not already blather about on this blog!?!?!? Really? Just remember, I have a cell phone that is rarely ON, and it is usually dead for lack of use and has no charge and I did not even know. Last time I found out was when BR#2 called me to tell me she'd left me a voice message on my cell phone last week and I never called her back. Oops! I missed out on DINNER, is what I missed that time. Also, please keep in mind that if I do remember to have a charged cell phone, and it is actually with me, it does not tweet, and it has no camera, so unless I am online and not at work, I will not be talkin'. There is no danger of me losing any beloved followers because I tweet too much. I'm just sayin'....

So back to bizness ... I had two Stamp Camps today, and I have another one tomorrow evening after the Day Job, so I am lounging at the moment and contemplating the UHCs available to me, and nothing jumps off the page enough for me to take out stamps and make a mess that I'll need to clean up before I can go to bed, so the UHC will happen on Tuesday this week. I promise. I think.

Thanks for stopping by!

What Was I Thinking?!

Look what I did. Twitter?!?! Moi?!?!?! I have nothing to say that cannot be said via email or this blog when I feel like sitting still long enough to type. So whazzup with me and Twitter? Well, I like new things, and I really am a geek inside, and well, in order to learn about something, the best way is to try it, right? So today I dipped my big toe into Twitland, and I tweeted ... twatted ... twittered ... I AM A TWIT! LOL! OMG, I cannot believe I did it!

The good news is I am only chatting up a few people who all know each other through Twitter so they are nice to me, and they liked my blue squirrels. I'll see how it goes. With my schedule, I figure I'll Tweet only in the evening, if I get time.

So if you'd like to follow me so I feel all popular and loved, and if you can stand any more blathering than you already read here, I am @crookedstamper (original, I know!)

Later this evening I'll post some color inspiration pics I took at the market yesterday, plus I may even get off the couch and make a UHC card - it's been a while since I've done one of those.

Thanks for stopping by!

A Little Social Commentary

T-Shirt Du Jour: Social Media from despair.com. Check out their image:

"Unlocking the awesome potential of behavioral disorders. "

OMG. Being Ms. Negativity when it comes to all these social toys that keep kids (big people, too) from actually interacting with other human beings, I find this image sheer perfection! I am proud to say I participate in absolutely none of it! And except for this blogging gig, I actually prefer real live people! Really!

Oh, and if you are FROM despair.com and you plan to read me the riot act about stealing your image and blatantly planting it on my blog, would you go away if I were to, I dunno, maybe buy a shirt? Oh, Mr. Marketing Man, if you offerred some of your designs in polo-style shirts, I just might (buy one!) Otherwise I'd need to go for a Men's XXL and I'd have me some new jammies. But only if it is 100% cotton. I am a high-maintenance shopper when it comes to clothing content.

Go on over and read all about it! The verbiage on the page is hysterical! ... ... ... So what do you think? Did they nail this thing or what?

Oh, and if *you* are a Twitter-er, no offense intended. This is just my opinion, of course. ;-)

Please top back tonight - I might even have a CARD to show you. ;-)

Random Thursday

I sit in traffic so much, not moving (um, isn't that what "sitting in traffic" means?), I have plenty of time to think. So today I thunk, and decided I have too many random thoughts in my head, and not one of them would be enough for a post, so I bring you Random Thursday. That is, a whole bunch of nothing worth much of anything, but in combination I'll get a post out of the deal. :-)

I shall number my random parts-is-parts so you know when one ends and another begins. Just a safe-guard in case I ramble on or something. Let us commence.

1. I actually had a good Customer Service experience this week! It was with EZ-Pass of Virginia. Even though I live in MD and only rarely cross the river to VA, when I do, I usually take the Toll Road. What a pain the the patootie to search for the exact change! So one year I broke down and purchased an EZ-Pass for my vehicle, so now when I visit my pal in Sterling (when she gets back from Greece next year) or when I go to Angela's, I get to go through the EZ-Pass lane. Woo-hoo!

The way it works is they have a credit card on file, and they automatically re-charge your account once you get down to under $10. Too easy! BUT, when you need to change your credit card on file, you need to access their Web site. Long story short, I have to call them every stinkin' time I need to update my account. I just cannot manage to remember my login, and since I have to call to get reset, I just do my transaction over the phone. This time I called because my bank did a mass-replace of all their Visa credit cards, so I needed to remember where I had it on file for recurring expenses (like EZ-Pass). Turns out I have my Amex on file there, so no need to change anything.

(FINALLY she gets to the point.) The most-helpful person on the other end of the phone said I'd had my pass long enough to be reaching the end of battery life, so she arranged to have a new one sent to me, and would I please return the old one once I got it. I think I started blubbering something about how nice she was, and we had a virtual nice-nice moment. Sigh ... all is not lost.

2. Old friends and staying in touch. I've talked before about how once I started making cards, I stopped communicating with people. And that's with people I have known for a long time. The people who fall into the category of second-tier, which would be people you know through other people, well they really get the short stick in the communication arena. And then, as you age, all of a sudden they have the nerve to die. This whole thing happened to me over a week ago, and I am still bummed.

A friend of my family has had our whole brood over to her house for dinner since I was a pup. Back when I was married and we still went, she would occasionally invite someone to join us. My friend has been a volunteer for the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra since ... well, since I was a pup! So this one year she invited none other than the music director and conductor of the Phil to join us all for dinner.

We found him to be a very interesting fellow! The thing I remember the most, besides his charm and non-snootiness, was the time my Dad asked him what kind of music he listened to. When you spend your life with opera and the great composers, I guess you wouldn't listen to Top 40's, ya know? His answer was, "If I want to listen to music, I just read a score." See? What an interesting fellow to know!

Well, over the years we kids have scattered to the wind, and we no longer do the massive gatherings we used to do, so we lost touch with Mr. Music Director. Imagine my shock when I got a letter last week from my friend, and inside was a copy of the news article of Mr. Music Director's untimely passing. He was only 71. Her personal note enclosed with the article said something to the effect of how sad we did not work harder to stay in touch with such a marvelous man.

So to all of you out there with second-tier friends, I implore you to be a better communicator. I know I will try to be. You just never know when someone who has touched your life will be gone, and you did not get so say goodbye.

3. On to something MUCH less somber! Traffic! No, you are not on my b1tchin' blog, as this is not a rant. I have found that with enough time, and the right meds, you can laugh at the stupidity of others! And let me tell you, I see enough of it to laugh every day!

Here is a photo that you really need to click on to get the full effect of my tale. This is the intersection one block from my street...the first stop light I hit every day on my way to work.

Yes, it was gray and rainy, but that's not my point, though I am sure the stoopidity level was bumped a few notches because wet stuff was falling from the sky. This photo's purpose is to show you the 'me me me' in this area.

Do you see how I have the green light? Do you see the recycle truck that turned right when his light was green, even though he could not fully get into the intersection? Do you see the 5 vehicles who did the same thing from the left, and have managed to block all the lanes of traffic? I do give kudos to the two cars in front who have not entered the intersection yet, although I am not sure they could have if they'd tried. Note to self: see if we can get the powers that be to work on the timing of these lights. Something is just not right. BTW, it took two more cycles of the light before I crossed that intersection.

Same intersection, and since I was waiting for another cycle of the light, I took this shot in my side mirror so you can see a force-merge first-hand. See that car? The one without it's lights on, in the pouring rain, contrary to our LAW that states you must have your lights on if your wipers are on? Yeah, that car. She is between the lanes, straddling the line. No directional, no nothin', just between the lanes. You see, we were stopped, and she decided to wedge herself between two stopped cars, because, well, she is better than the rest of us, you see. Pthhhhhtp!

4. Do not mess with a good thing. I started selling my cards because I made too many to ever use myself. A good friend advised me to keep doing what I loved, and not to make something because someone asked for it. My answer was supposed to be, "No, sorry." Because if you make something just to sell, or if you make something too specific, and if it doesn't sell, then you are stuck with something you will not even use yourself. So my going-in business model (I do crack myself up sometimes!) was I would only use what I bought for my personal use to make cards to sell. Then I stepped over the line and started making cards I thought would sell. They did okay, but not as well as cards I made because they flowed from my crooked brain, through my fingers and onto card stock. I broke my "good thing". I find if I have to try too hard, I shouldn't be doing it. I do not "need" Sympathy cards; I think I should have Sympathy cards. Who said so?!

So my new business model is to go back to my old business model and only make what I feel like, and I'll tell everyone else, "Sorry, I do not have a card for that." What pushed me over that edge? This card did:

This is my Duck Drives Car card that I tried to make into a Grad card, because I should have more grad cards. See what happened?! Holy CARP, what was I thinking?! And when I hated it, I kept adding more to it! Aaaaugh!

Then I took out even more stamps and made a full A2-sized one. (Uh-oh, I just saw I forgot to stick on his grad cap.)

So I think I'll go back to simpler, more basic cards, and maybe leave the Duck Driving Car parts for something like "always take the scenic route" cards. (But that car is pretty cute, no?)

5. This is what the road looks like most days on my way home from work. The only difference here is I was actually moving. The reason I took this shot was to get a pic of the pick-up truck up ahead of me on the right. I have a closer (although fuzzier) pic below.

See that red arrow? It points to the truck with a BAD ATTITUDE emblazoned on his tail gate. Oh, yeah, perfect for the daily commute! :-)

6. Since I plan to have a tent set-up this Saturday at the market, I needed to stock up on kitty litter to use as my corner weights. I did manage to fit three of the containers onto the floor, and I had one on the passenger seat. I can cram a lot of stuff into this car.

Oh, and in a Miata, this is not called kitty litter. It is called "ballast".

7. More rain. The ballast came in handy as the skies decided to open up on my way home. I took this photo of the water small river next to my car as it rushed into the drain. I swear, I thought it was going to hail.

8. What are these? These are bagels from Cosi. Does Cosi sell bagels? Only for breakfast sandwiches. By the time lunch rolls around, they are usually all gone.

I know all of this because I once asked the manager at lunch if they ever have bagels left over, and he said they do sometimes, but if I wanted any, I'd need to call around 11 and ask for them to hold some for me.

Unfortunately, I do not 'plan' my lunch that far in advance. I usually find my stomach is growling or my cube neighbor asks if I plan to eat today and I check the clock to find I need to leave the building so I can get back in time for a meeting, and when we do leave the building, we are usually half-way to nowhere before we decide where we want to eat. So calling ahead at 11:00 is just not gonna happen.

So how, you might ask, do I have 4 (now 3, *burp*) of these lovelies in my possession? Because we went to Cosi for lunch today, and I bugged the manager again to ask if he had any bagels left over, and they did! How many did I want? OMG, so I got two Everything and two Cranberry-Orange. Yes, I paid for them, but I am set for the weekend, baby! I see egg sammies on perfect little square bagels in my future!

9. Meet the Brown Bag Envelope. Yep. When I placed my most recent order with clearbags, I included a package of these. They are available in an assortment of colors and come in 70lb text weight (nice, not too thin). They are 100% Recycled, at least 20% PCW, and I think they'll be cool to use with 'guy' cards, or anything that falls into the 'rustic' category. I got a package of just plain brown instead of a variety pack - I really like the brown ones..

Holy moley, I have managed to blather on quite a bit, haven't I? If you are still reading this, I thank you for sticking with me! Now I think I'll go stamp something and see what happens. Thanks for stopping by!

Using Photos On Cards

Before I get to the topic at hand, let me pose a question to all of you out in the blogosphere: What is it with cats and boxes? If I have an empty shipping box, she is in it, or lurking behind it and giving me the "bet you can't see me now" look over the top.

I have an empty box near the front door. It used to hold 250 envelopes, but then I used it to take new cards to my car for the market, and well, now it is just empty and there. She usually sticks her front feet into it and claws at it (as cats do), I am sure to let me know how frustrated she is that I closed the front door and would not let her run free. But one night she did this:

Yes, she put her whole body into the thing and sat down.

Then this morning, we're back to this.

So what IS it with cats and boxes? Inquiring minds want to know.


Okay, on to the subject at hand: photos and cards. Every once in a blue moon* I take a decent photo. Most of the time I just get lucky, like with this one:

I was stuck in traffic on the highway coming home from Florida in 2005. Just sitting there on a perfectly GORgeous day, inhaling exhaust fumes, and fuming myself that there had better be a very nasty accident or at least some plausible reason for the delay. I even had my windows open - that's how still I was sitting!

Then I looked to to my right and saw this tall grass. PHOTO OP! So I took the pic. Done.

When I got home, I cropped it so I would lose the car parts, and this is what I got. Pretty, huh?

This is straight out of the camera, and except for the cropping part, unadulterated. No PhotoShopping, as I do not even own that product!

The photo has a sort of peaceful look, don't you think? So I made some cards with it! I made a few with just the photo and no sentiment, but most of the cards were this one:

Sympathy. I love this Eskimo saying, so I stamped it on vellum and put it over the photo. I am actually sold out of these, and when a friend asked me this weekend if I had any (she remembered it!) and I was out, I decided to make some more this weekend. Unfortunately, sympathy cards are selling like hot cakes**, so I need to have more variety in that section.

The last few batches I made did not have ribbon on them, so these are technically new & improved. :-) I needed ribbon today cuz I used red sticky tape to anchor the top of the vellum to the card, and I needed to hide it, dontcha know. One of these days I'll figure out how to stick vellum to something without the adhesive showing. So far, even vellum tape shows when I use it, and I have no plans to get spray adhesive - unless it comes in a teeny tiny can with a teeny, tiny nozzle so I can control the direction and amount of the spray. Until then, being a ribbon lover (duuuh!), I have absolutely NO problem using it to hide the adhesive.

Speaking of ribbon ... just so you know I am not making up stories about the volume of the stuff I have stashed in The Other Room, this is the spool of the yummy, thick and luscious off-white satin ribbon I got from the Ribbon Outlet nigh on two years ago. I put it on top of the card here for perspective. Do you now understand the seriousness of my situation? I will never, ever, ever, ever run out of this stuff!

Okay, folks, I'm off to play with all the stuff I've dragged out to work on the ole mojo. I think it's coming back! Yay!

Thanks for stopping by!

* From: Wikipedia: A blue moon is an extra full moon in a month, which occurs every 2-3 years. This is because there are an extra 11 days or so when you do the 28-day cycle thing, and they add up to an extra full moon, or 28-day cycle. It is so infrequent, the use of the term has come to mean 'rarely'.


** From phrases.org: SELL LIKE HOT CAKES - "Hot cakes cooked in bear grease or pork lard were popular from earliest times in American. First made of cornmeal, the griddle cakes or pancakes were of course best when served piping hot and were often sold at church benefits, fairs, and other functions. So popular were they that by the beginning of the 19th century 'to sell like hot cakes' was a familiar expression for anything that sold very quickly effortlessly, and in quantity." From "Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins" by Robert Hendrickson (Facts on File, New York, 1997)

Sunny Sunday

Today has been glorious! The sun was out, the trees are vibrant from all the rain we've had. The birds were singing! I had all the doors and windows open, and there was a good, stiff breeze all day long. After my morning Stamp Camp, I went outside to enjoy the great outdoors, and that picture above was pretty close to how it actually looked as I glanced over my tree. Like I said - glorious!

Check out this little bird (who was not even remotely quiet). I believe she was chastising me for letting the cat out with me. It was quite a vocal little bird! At one point I could hear a similar response to her calls from another of her flock. Pretty cool.

I am not sure if you recall my post about the Great Moss Massacre of 2008, but I am happy to say some of the moss LIVES! You can kindof see it there between the flagstones and the weeds, but it is there, and it is happy, as am I.

Miss Kitty needed some fresh air, and after checking out some of the weeds and giving them a good chew, she assumed her lounging position. I managed to catch her with her eyes open, but she was mostly in a fog with her eyes closed, breathing in all that Spring smell.

She did shift a few times to get more sun. She loves the sun. It was from this position that I ruined her day by picking her up and bringing her back into the house so I could get ready for the second wave of customers. She was so upset, she went limp, like a rag. Poor thing...life is so unfair.

After she accepted her fate of being an indoor cat once again, she rested. Actually, she looked comatose, but I looked closely and saw she was breathing. Doesn't she look like she should have a body outline around her?

Like this?

Welcome to Kitty CSI! (See what happens when I play with the 'puter?)

Okay, okay, back to real life. Don't you wish you could do this? It is so unfair that cats can do this. *I* could do this about 30 years ago.


By the end of the second Stamp Camp, the sun had mostly moved on and she was still out like a light. Well, except for the time she decided to mingle and managed to get her tail stepped on. THEN she went back to her safe spot and fell into a deep kitty sleep again.

Phrase of the day from one of my customers: Stamping Hangover. When you get so involved in projects that you lose track of time and stay up until the wee hours of the morning, only to realize you need to go to bed so you can wake up to go to work in a few hours. When you do wake up, you are suffering from a Stamping Hangover. People at work think you tied one on last night, but really that was just ribbon. They do not believe you. See? Stamping Hangover. Now tell me none of you has ever had one of these!

Remember, there's just a few more hours left to enter my Blog-iversary G-I-V-E-A-W-A-Y! The winner will be announced Monday morning, and Part 2 will be posted on Tuesday!

Thanks for stopping by!

Coincidence?

Last night I started reading a book where one of the characters has two cats named Oggie and Nash. I assume (!) this is for Ogden Nash, whose stuff I love!

This morning, as I was thinking about blogging about Ogden Nash, I remembered this little ditty of his:

Candy is dandy,

But liquor is quicker.

AND, look at today's Funny Quote Of The Day over there on the right:

"The trouble with a kitten is that when it grows up, it's always a cat." Ogden Nash

Coincidence? Should I play the lottery tonight?

Random Randomness - Enter At Your Own Risk

I am full of randomness today, so I thought I'd subject you to it, too. Hey, it could be fun, you never know! Be careful - I change topics without notice!

Remember the other day when I showed you my yellow car, and told you about how it is tree pollen season here in the DC area? Well, it's been raining, and while rain washes the pollen off the cars, it also makes these seed pod thingies fall out of the trees and they then replace the yellow haze. They look like worms, but they are not. In fact, you can see the yellow haze around some of them on my sidewalk. Ugh.

And yes, those are dead plants. Wanna make something of it?!

The rain 'washed' my car, but look what I have in its place. Double-ugh. I had to run my wipers so I could see out of the windshield. (whine, whine, whine ...)

This is one of the best bumper stickers I have seen this year. It's fuzzy and out of focus, but I was stopped at a red light, trying to get out my camera and turn it on and focus and shoot the picture before she knew what was happening and had time to call the police.

This car was in the parking garage at work. It had obviously been parked under one of the gazillion flowering trees in the area. When the wind blows and it is not raining, it looks like pink rain. So cool!

These are my latest acquisition - kitty stamps! I saw them on Lydia's blog, and I knew I had to possess them. I hope to actually stamp with them this weekend. There are three stamps total for sale, and they benefit homeless animals; I just got two of them. Go on over there and check them out!

Last Fall I bought this dried gourd from Farmer Mike, and this Spring I put it out in my tree. Within a few days, I saw a tiny bird poking its head in there, then flying away, and I am pretty sure there is a little family in residence right now. I took about 84 pics trying to capture some evidence of the occupants, but I failed. But I swear I can see movement in there! I am giddy with glee!!!!

Okay, okay, I stamped something. I actually stamped two things, but one of the cards is being mailed, so it will not post until tomorrow so the recipient might actually get it before it hits the blogosphere.

This card is almost as bizarre as my day has been random. I had a freaky idea of how to color the owl last night, then I gave up and went to bed. This evening, I looked at it again and decided to go with the theme of the day and add some random layers! I had a strip of that brown and green and blue paper left from the card I made and mailed; I had that piece of die-cut green that was the back of some rub-on packaging and was just laying there, taunting me; I cut both the vanilla and the brown shapes from scraps (yay!) ... added the owl and a few brads... stamped the sentiment (crooked) ... done

I bagged and tagged it before I could change my mind. I'll let you know if it ever sells.

Since I've been home this evening, I've run around like a crazy(ier) person ... looking for receipt books ... printing out the updated inventory list for my cards for sale at Chloe's ... looking for the hardware for my card rack ... putting my permit into my bag ... picking out the SU orders for people who will pick them up at the market tomorrow ... and making a note to myself to remember to put the boxes of CARDS in my car before I leave in the morning. It would be just like me to leave the cards at home!!!!

Enough randomness for you? Okay, I'll sign off for now and maybe go stamp something. Thanks for stopping by!