Feline Friday: Yeehaw!

It's Rascal Cat! :-)

Prairie in early July

In my opinion, the very best thing about living in our neighborhood is that we have a real prairie running right through the middle of it. This is really unusual, because many, many houses could be built in the space devoted to prairie. The prairie is planted with native flowers and grasses, and it changes throughout the season as various flowers come into bloom.

Not everyone likes the prairie. Not everyone appreciates the untamed look of the native plants. But I think they're a treasure. I love walking or biking through the prairie at different times of day, watching the light play off the blooms.

And if you go just as the sun is setting, fireflies hover over the prairie, illuminating it like tiny jewels. It's magical.

This evening, I took a quick stroll through the prairie to see what was in bloom and captured a few photos. I want to remember how the prairie looks in early July.

Coloring is fun!

Thanks to fellow blogger and stamper extraordinaire, Toni, I learned something new today! And it involves coloring! Toni posted about a couple of techniques she enjoys using with her stamps, one of which is the Gamsol / colored pencil technique. She provided the link to a tutorial which explained how to use Gamsol (odorless mineral spirits) to blend colored pencils.

I've been looking for a way to color stamped images without investing a huge amount of money. I have tried watercolor pencils with some success, but I also have lots of colored pencils, so I thought this would be a good, low-cost technique for me to try. I didn't want to drive all the way to our local art store, so I called Michaels to see if they carried mineral spirits, and they told me they did. Alas, when I got there, they actually did not. But the guy who helped me told me to try Home Depot, so off I went and promptly found a large container of it.

Of course, when I got home and actually looked in our garage, I discovered that we already had mineral spirits. I told myself that my new container (marked "odorless") was surely better than the one we have (marked "low odor"). Neither one is artist quality, but I'm not sure how important that is.

At first, I failed completely at blending the colored pencil marks. This was not a surprise to me, since I'm somewhat tool-impaired! So I scouted around and found a tutorial on YouTube which demonstrates the technique so that even I can do it! :-)

This is my first completed attempt, so it's not perfect, but I will say that it was fun to try and should enable me to get far more use from my stamps. I love that I can adjust the colors of pencils to match the paper I have on hand. Thanks so much, Toni!

Supplies: Bazzill cardstock, Doodlebug stamps, colored pencils, odorless mineral spirits, blender stumps, Marvy punch, corner rounder, We Are Memory Keepers ribbon, Zig marker, chalk, pop dots

2Peas Blogging Challenge: Journaling

Sunday's challenge (which I'm doing on Tuesday!) was about journaling: Do you do enough of it? Does it always relate to your photos? To answer the challenge questions: Yes, I usually do enough journaling, and yes, it always relates to my photos.

Journaling is near and dear to my heart. I enjoy the writing process, and that was one of the main reasons I started scrapbooking. I look at my scrapbooks as storybooks; the photos are simply the illustrations.

Since I teach scrapbooking classes, I know that people often struggle with journaling. Many people add it as an afterthought, if at all. My opinion is that family and personal stories are a critical part of the scrapbooking process. Without the stories, your photos will not mean as much to future generations. But write the stories, and you'll live on through your scrapbooks.

Because journaling is so important to me, I typically start a layout by thinking about the story that needs to be told, and quite often I write it before even working on the layout. Blogging ties in very nicely to this process: I often write blog posts with the specific intention of using them on future layouts.

Having said this, I sometimes fall short of my own expectations. Journaling can be a very emotional step in the process for me, and there are times when I simply don't have the energy or desire to go as deeply into the story as I probably should. And there are stories that are simply too painful for me to write. But I do try to capture at least the basic facts on every layout that I create.

I don't consider a layout or project complete until the story is told.

Tagged!

I was tagged by Toni! Here we go...

Each player answers the questions themselves. At the end of the post the player then tags 4 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment letting them know that they've been tagged and ask them to read your blog. Then you let the person who tagged you know when you posted your answers.

Ten Years Ago:

OK, I have to consult the old calendar to see what the heck I was doing ten years ago. Lucky for me, I keep all old calendars! I'm sure you'll find this level of detail riveting: On this very day, July 6, I was hosting a playgroup for Daughter (then age 5) and friends. I was still working in my HR/training job, and I was very fortunate to have a person coming to help clean the house on that day. Nowadays, I clean the house myself. Not well, I might add!

Five things on today's to-do list:

1. Dig up 3 diseased perennial plants – DONE!
2. Weed the gardens - DONE!
3. Hopefully get rid of the freezer in our garage - DONE!
4. Clean up the ground floor in case of company later – DONE, kinda
5. Watch Design Star and the Next Food Network Star tonight - DONE!

Snack I Enjoy:

Naughtiness – I just ate the last of the sour cream/onion potato chips. I even dumped the potato chip dust directly into my mouth. This does not work well with my fitness plan. :-)

Things I would do if I was a millionaire:

Travel, live abroad, donate most to charity

Places I have lived:

Des Moines, Iowa and environs

Oak Park, Illinois

Paris, France

*Any guesses as to my favorite place? LOL

4 People I am tagging:

Cheri

Kristina

Fonda

Darcey

Thanks for the tag, Toni!

Hooray for FreeCycle!

Awhile back, I posted about the need I've been feeling to let go of some stuff around here. I'm making a bit of progress on this front, with miles to go, of course.

To help with my efforts, I joined the local FreeCycle message board. If you're not familiar with FreeCycle, it's an international organization dedicated to keeping stuff out of landfills. Local chapters host message boards where members can post items they no longer need or items they would like to acquire. Everything must be free. A couple of weeks ago, I posted a waterbed frame that we had tried for months to sell. Several people wanted it and it was gone within a couple of days.

Today, someone I connected with on FreeCycle is coming to pick up this freezer which we've had in our garage, unused, since we moved here 15 years ago. (Believe it or not, we actually moved it from our old house, and we hadn't used it there, either!) I'm very excited to see it go to a new home where it will be used to store vegetables and fruit from the homeowner's garden.

I'm looking beyond FreeCycle to lighten up, too. Last weekend, a refugee family from church picked up two overstuffed chairs we no longer needed. They were excited to get them, and I was very happy to see them go. (The only glitch in that transaction was the hole I knocked in the kitchen drywall as Daughter and I lugged the chairs up from the basement. Oops.)

A couple of weeks ago, I delivered several boxes of magazines (and a few books) to a local book sale collection site. It felt great to rid myself of the weight (both literal and psychological) of it all. Now I have lots more room on my basement shelves.

Check out the FreeCycle website to see if there is a group in your local community. If you're like me, you have a lot of things that you're not using and cannot (or don't want to) sell. Someone will be thrilled to get what you no longer need.

And it's a great feeling to lighten up.

Feline Friday: Shampoo and Blow Dry

This past weekend, Daughter gave Lily an impromptu shampoo.



Immediately after her bath, I found Lily sitting in the hallway outside the bathroom, obviously distressed about her wet appearance.

A few minutes later I found her in the family room checking out QVC's Hot Pick of the Day: hairdryers. :-)

Fall layout

(click on photo to bigify)

Here's a layout I just finished up for display at the store where I teach. The photos and journaling came directly from a blog post from last October (see the original post here). When I get this layout back, I'll make a facing page with a few additional photos.

Pumpkin picking has become a bit of a sentimental activity for me in recent years. Since we do it every fall, it really makes me stop and think about how quickly time passes from year to year. My journaling reflects both the anticipation and sadness that sometimes comes with change.

Products and tools: cardstock: Bazzill, patterned paper: Basic Grey Mellow, DCWV Nursery-Boy; ribbon: Bo Bunny; chipboard letters: EK Success Art Blanche (covered with DCWV paper); scalloped and circle punches: Marvy; marker: EK Success Zig; ink: Colorbox Fluid Chalk-Chestnut Roan; corner rounder, swivel knife, sandpaper, and emery board

Poor Tinsel Cat: Driven to Prozac

Last week, I came to the end of my very long rope. Tinsel has been having "litterbox issues" for the last year or so, and they've been getting worse in the past few weeks. She's not "missing" the litterbox: She's just choosing to "go elsewhere" once or twice each day. I've tried every possible way to get her to use the litterbox. The vet has ruled out any physical problems.

So what's the cause of Tinsel's problems? It's simple: L-I-L-Y. Aggressive Alpha-Cat Wannabe Lily came into Tinsel's serene world two years ago, and Tinsel's not one bit happy about it.

So Tinsel is now on a short-term course of Prozac. (Yes, this is the same anti-depressant that people take, but a lower dose.) The idea is to reduce Tinsel's anxiety so that she'll stop acting out her anger on the carpet.

Since she's been on Prozac, I've learned a few things:

* Cats have to be set up as patients in the Walgreens pharmacy system. Tinsel now has her own account: Tinsel Cat.
* The package insert indicates that Prozac "may cause drowsiness." Since Tinsel already sleeps 23 hours per day, this side effect might be somewhat difficult to detect.
* Tinsel doesn't like to take her pill. She holds it in her mouth and spits it out when she thinks you're not looking.
* Tinsel has been sleeping through lunch and dinner. We have to wake her up to eat. After a few days, this should improve and she should not be as drowsy.
* So far, the Prozac seems to be working. Tinsel hasn't had a single litterbox issue since she started taking it.

But while the cat may not have issues, I apparently do: This morning Daughter gave Tinsel her medication for the day and then left the house. Later, I also gave Tinsel her medication for the day without realizing she'd already taken it. As soon as I discovered I'd given Tinsel a Prozac overdose, I made a frantic call to the vet's office.

"Will she be OK?" I asked the vet breathlessly.

After a considerably long time checking The Book, he finally returned to the phone: "Don't worry...You're below the LD."

"LD?"

"Lethal Dose."

Tinsel may be all smiles, but after that little episode, I could use some Prozac for myself.

Edited to add: After yesterday's incident, Daughter made a lovely chart to keep track of Tinsel's medication. :-)

My Mind's Eye Cards

Here's a set of cards I put together over the weekend using a class kit from My Mind's Eye. They're not my designs...the instructions and everything needed to make the cards are included in the kit. I'll be teaching this class next month at Memory Bound.

The paper colors remind me of ice cream sherbet!

Sunday Afternoon Walk

Warm sunshine, gentle breeze, soft green grass...
Let's put on your harness and go for a walk, Lily!

Organization: Sterilite basket

On Mother's Day, I was the lucky recipient of this green Sterilite basket from Target. Daughter filled it with a variety of goodies (including a Toblerone candy bar and socks for my trips to the fitness place) and hoped that I'd find a use for it in my scrapbooking area. Her instincts were good: It works perfectly for storing my large punches and Crop-a-Dile, which were previously scattered all about. The basket fits nicely on the shelf of my cutting table, which is actually an old printer stand that Spouse found by the curb.

I like this basket so much that I may have to pick up a few more on my next trip to Target.