Now sets in the Winter of Content

It's cold outside and so the term "Three Dog Night" came to mind.  It is cold and snowy here in Italy and we don't have our dog with us, but we are happily content to be together whatever the weather.

This card is entered in the Practical Scrappers Winter Projects,

Peachy Keen Stamps Challenge #19  Click Here for Peachy Keen Website (trying to win my first Peachy Keen Stamps) and

Just Buggin' Challenge 18 Click Here for Just Buggin

Animal Kingdom, George,  Lyrical Letters, Decorative Scissors, Cuttlebug Swirls Folder.

Putting away the Cricut

I'm having company so I have to put away my cricut and craft stuff.  Do you know that the thought of that is putting me into withdrawals!  It's only going to be a few days!

 I should give myself and that wonderful little machine a break but making cards is so darn fun!  These are the two I did today.

This second card is inspired by Carole Beath on the Cricut Message Boards.  Her bouncing frog on her profile made me think of this. 

This card looks a whole lot better in person.  And, I've been thinking a lot about the backs of cards.  I do the front and I always do the inside, why shouldn't the back get a little treatment too.  I mean, not all that, but a little something other than my stamp?

Ready for Spring - New Season

We got 8 inches of snow here yesterday and today.  It coincides with the blizzard the east coast of the U.S. is getting this weekend. So, I'm ready for a new season - Spring and I had flowers on my brain. I created this take off on the flower pot cards.  The leaves slide out and the sentiment is "I'll take the Spot Next to You."

This card was a winner at:

This is the back of the card and the back with the petal pulled out.

This card for Charisma Cardz Challenge #50 and Paper Play Challenge Week 46

paperplaychallenges

Something's Fishy

This is a pretty plain card, but I thought it was cute.  The fish and hearts are cut on the cricut from shrinky dink material, colored, shrunk and placed.  Vellum was used for the water.  I don't like working with vellum much.

It's a valentine's card. :0) I think it's fun to make some that are NOT so mushy.

I can imagine my nephew Zane laughing at this.

New Year's Coming

This card won a challenge at

This card is for Cricut CardZ Challenge #6 and PCC #22, Charisma Cards #50.
Fussy and Fancy New Year Challenge

Today I found out there are 12 people with the name Penny Light in the U.S. and two in Canada.  Hmmmm.
I thought I was so special.

Sleep and Dreams

So, I haven't been sleeping much lately.  Not sure what is keeping me awake for sure, but last night I took some meds and went to sleep and slept HARD and even dreamed about things.  When I woke up this morning I had five cards on my mind to design.  Here is what I have completed so far.

Cancer Ninja - CPS 146

Following a sketch at Card Positioning Systems and the online advice on how to make cards for men........
"Keep it simple, keep it light."  I created this Cancer Warrior Ninja.  I"m sending it to a friend whose husband has lung cancer.  I hope it makes you smile.

Made with George and Lyrical Letters in DS.  Nunchucks are a piece of chain and two rolled piece of paper.
Waaaaaaahhhh!

Christmas Party (Practical Scrappers)

I'm going to my husband's office Christmas party tomorrow.  He's not here.  He's in Brazil, but one of his colleagues and his wife are going to pick me up and take me so I can see where Tom works.  I have been baking cookies for the last two weeks and putting them in the freezer so I would have Christmas gifts for neighbors and stuff.  This is an altered tin that I did today for one of Tom's work mates, Elisa.  She does everything for the engineers, interpreting, hours, whatever they need when they call in.  This is just a little Christmas thank you for her.  I have filled it with cookies and candy and a thank you note.

There are no candy canes here.  Normally I would be doing all kinds of fun things with candy canes.  I wanted to make some of my daughter-in-law, Brooke's candy cane sleighs for the people at school.  Not happening.   But the chocoloate covered cherries here....yum, real liquor inside. :0)  Got tipsy after eating 3.

Onward and Upward,

Sage, Onion and Cream - CPS-145

This card is made from Home Decor, Storybook and Beyond Birthdays. A few brads, a little embossing and some love and hope. :0)  I didn't put any sentiment inside yet, it could be an anniversary, a get well or something I haven't thought of yet.  This is the first time I've ever developed a card from a sketch.

Weird Wednesday-Red Green and a bit of Bling

THIS CARD WON AN AWARD AT CRICUT CARDZ CHALLENGE #5!  WAAAHOOO! 




(Frosted Designs)This card is made from Joys of the Season, Stretch Your Imagination, New Arrival, and George.   It's shaped like a stocking, if you can see that.  It's kind of a funky woodland santa. I had a blast making it in DS.  

In school today I learned a lot about Italian traditions for the holidays.  And boy there were some funny ones.  Mostly Christmas is the same as the U.S. holidays, but this one really made me laugh and fear:


Santa doesn't fill the stockings for the kids in Italy.  Befana the witch fills the stockings. She does this at Epiphany, January 6th. The tradition is that the ugly but kind witch slips down the chimney on the night of January 5th and fills the stockings that are hung by the fireplace or by the bed with sweet things for good kids or coal for the bad kids. Now, it used to be that they used real coal for the kids, but now, Italy has this sweet coal that kids get if they've been bad kids and you can eat it. The kids who eat this coal end up with BLACK faces from chin to cheek. And they are MARKED as bad kids the whole day.

The tradition with Befana too is that she ends the holiday season. No holiday decorations should remain after Befana. She is the signal to put away all of the holiday things and to get rid of all the old things from the past year. To throw out things that are rotten or broken and put away the past year's pain and sins.

My teacher said, watch the news on the day after Befana comes because it is very macabre all the people who die. "Die? Why would people die?" Because, on Befana, people literally throw out their old things. They throw them right out the window and onto the street, irons, dishes, washing machines. You could be on the first floor having a Befana party and boom, a washing machine lands on your head.  Or people have dishes flying down and cutting off hands. Needless to say, I will not be outside on the day of Befana!

On New Year's day, they light wooden puppets on fire. (to symbolize the burning of the old year and crossing into the new - burning of the fields etc.) But apparently, they will build a giant wooden puppet in the piazza and a man with a fiery arrow will shoot it at the puppet and people will rejoice and eat pancakes as they watch it burn. I can think of the little kids running and screaming now as they watch a giant Pinocchio shot with an arrow and burned up.

I'm looking forward to the celebrations that we will learn about while here. I'll be carrying a fire extinguisher and wearing a hard hat from New Year's until Befana comes. 

Racoon Ravings.

I've been doing a lot of animal cards lately because they work for men and kids too.  I love flowers and could make every card a flower card, but then the men and children would be left out.

Snowy Boxman

I made some of these a couple of years ago for a Christmas wedding as favors.  Now, I'm making a couple of them for the little girls upstairs.  They have some Hello Kitty toys, stickers and candy.... something in each box.  Plus the little holder on top can hold a picture or a note.  I used Tags, Bags, Boxes and More for the boxes and the Cuttlebug Swirls folder for the embossing.  Stretch Your Imagination for the Arms, Joys of the Season for the snowflake.  Some material and some punched dots and a cut out nose.  I think they will like them. (Just Buggin)

 

 

Silent Night, Monday Night

This card tied in a challenge at the Cricut Cardz Challenge! 

It's Monday.  What's good about Monday?  Lots!  It's a fresh start of the week, it's a clean slate, it's a new adventure.  I really like Mondays.  I had a lot of homework to do today for Italian class and I worked hard on it.  The thing is, I feel like this time around in school is better.  I am understanding more this time. I want to learn it.

That's the thing about the routine I was talking about yesterday.  Getting into a routine of excellence in whatever you do.  Tom and I have a routine for our goodbyes.  I created this card today because I wanted to try this type of fold on a card.  I worked slow and didn't rush.  I'm happy with it.  I like the design I did of the snow hill and the welded words.  The routine of one card a day, and only one card done well.

So, tomorrow is an Italian holiday.  The day that Gabriel told Mary that she was pregnant with the Messiah.  I'm not Catholic, so I don't get it.  How if Jesus was born, December 25th, and Mary found out she was having Jesus on December 7th,.... besides the miracle of the Virgin birth, it was the miracle of a very fast pregnancy or an extremely long one.  Of course, I know that some of these dates are "subjective" but it makes me giggle.  All the stores and shops will be closed tomorrow and a lot of the people took today off too so they could have the long weekend.  It's so quiet today.  I listened to Christmas music all day, cleaned, played and created.  It's a good Monday.

Onward and Upward,

Saturday Sooner than it should be...........

My life has been a series of Tom saying hello and goodbye.  From the very beginning of our relationship Tom was saying hello and goodbye.  Twenty years in the Navy of Tom saying hello and goodbye and now more than five years of Tetra-Pak and Tom is still saying hello and goodbye.  Today was goodbye.  I always know it is coming and dread the day it arrives.  The time when he will emotionally separate from me and go into the other room to do the ritual packing and mental departure, while I sit in the other room trying not to be any kind of emotional mess that makes it more difficult for either of us.  There are lots of rituals we go through as he prepares to leave, lots of little routines.... years and years of these.

This Saturday came sooner than it should. I didn't want it to come. He's off traveling the world again. I'm alone again. Just me, my little apartment decorated with the paper chain from all my crafting scraps, the blinking solar Christmas lights that twinkle until they have used up the days supply of sun and my cricut.  I dream about my cricut at night and design cards that never really look like what I actually create in real life.  I've discovered this week that I am not very good, I'm okay at my craft but not great.  I want to be great. So, I'm not going to put up another card onto any of the competition sites or the cricut messageboards until I have one that I think is great.

Like all these years of coming and going, hello and goodbye, if you practice at something long enough, you become accustomed to just what it is, a routine in your life, for good or bad, it is a routine. I want excellence to be a routine. 

So, these are the last of the cards that I have made for my Cricut Card Fairy Army today after Tom left and I went through my normal ritual of his leaving:

 

 

 

 

Routines are good things in life even when we don't want them to be.  They let us set up a pattern for whatever it is we need to accomplish. I'm working on my accomplishments.

 

Onward and Upward,