Goodbye, 2021

For a rough year, it's sure ending on a beautiful note. 

See you next year!

Melody's Cat Sack

This Fuzzy Wuzzy

and this Cutie Patootie

are two of the cat designs from these baby pajamas that I bought from a thrift store. I used the fabric to make a Cat Sack.

When Annie saw a fabric sack that was part of Melody's new game, she claimed it for herself because the sack had an owl print all over it. Annie loves owls, so assumed it was hers. Melody, on the other hand, loves cats. I made her a Cat Sack so she can store her game pieces.

Melody will find it under the tree on Christmas.

2021 Family Ornaments

Last week my friend Karen stopped by to play in my Studio with me. We each made a set of wood bead snowman ornaments for our families. We had a great time chatting and crafting. All of the ornaments are adorable. 

My inspiration came from ornaments I saw on Pinterest (see below). But instead of using beads all the same size, I chose beads of graduating size that I bought through Amazon. Instead of stringing the beads on yarn, I used wavy green chenille stems that I had in my stash. 

The ornaments went together very quickly! These first four are for my daughter Julie's family. They each have a charming satin red bow for the embellishment.

The snowmen for Jodie and Kenny are sporting bright red felt scarves.

For Jeanne, I chose a blue felt scarf.

Each snowman has the date and recipient's name on the back.

For now, the ornaments for Dale and me are hanging out together in my Studio, waiting to be hung on the tree.

This handmade ornament tradition is one I hope to continue into retirement. It's fun to go to our daughter's homes and see them on display each year as they grow their own family traditions.

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My ornaments are inspired by Anita at creatingme

Holiday Character Packages

I made these holiday characters from a base of toilet paper tubes and construction paper.

This kid is ready for a snow day

Santa looks surprised

My personal favorite is the reindeer

Inside each is a rolled-up pair of socks for our granddaughters!

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I was inspired by Sam of simpleeverydaymom:

and by thebestideasforkids:

Tonight's Sunset

 I haven't been taking many photos lately ... but couldn't resist this light.

Try It Toosday: Finger Puppets

It's time for another Try It Toosday! The day I attempt to recreate a photograph that caught my eye. This is the final photo recreation needed to complete my 21 Goals in 2021.

It's just a couple fingers with facial features drawn in Sharpie, and hair scribbled in the editing process, right? Super simple.

Not.

Here's my (older, wrinklier fingered) version:

Here's my inspiration photo. I don't know the name of the photographer. The image caught my eye in February of 2012. I've been toting this around for nearly a decade!

In all honesty, I had two more complex photos in mind for my final #tryittoosday attempt. The first photo, saved in 2007, is a garden where all the flowers are balloons. I bought all the supplies and made some test "flowers." I even lined up some help with blowing up balloons! But my yard isn't big enough ... and I'd have to borrow some kids (which is hard to do in a pandemic). This idea is on hold. I still might find a way to use those 100 balloons.

The second is a box covered in woven lines of toilet paper. There are a lot of tricky parts to this photo. In my analysis, I recognized toilet paper that tears far too easily, to very specific and stark lighting, to figuring out that the photo was very likely flipped 180 degrees in the editing process. I got about half way through the construction of this photo before I gave up. It's a wickedly cool photo by Nick Albertson!

As I worked on trying to recreate these wonderful images, the difficulty factor kept increasing exponentially. If I learned anything this year by doing this project, it's the ingenuity of the original photographers. Even simple photos like the one I did today are more difficult and take hours longer to recreate than you'd think! 

Gathering the supplies, crafting and construction, getting the correct angles for the composition, proper backgrounds and lighting, photographing, and editing all take time. The brain energy that goes into trying to figure out the original photographer's process can be enough wattage to light an entire city. I've thought about several of these photographs for months before attempting to make them. 

It's an excellent exercise. I can recommend it to other photographers that want to test their skills and learn a lot along the way.

I admit, though, that I'm glad I challenged myself to only twenty-one photos!

Heron?

This handsome fellow was wandering through the tall grass between the Taco Bell drive-through and the freeway onramp. The photo is less than stellar, but it's the best I could do in the dark and the rain with my phone's camera. It was so cool to see such a big beautiful creature in town.

Tuesday Morning View

 As blue and blue can be

Tonight's Sunset

Clean as a Whistle

 All reamed out. 

Colonoscopy went A-OK. Glad that's done for another five years.

It's as though my brother Paul was standing over me in the recovery room. Let's hope I don't have what he had.

More Decor

I added a couple new bits of decor this year. First, I made a centerpiece wreath for our coffee table.

We bought these beautiful pillow covers for the season, too.

Our living room looks even more festive now!

In Time for Thanksgiving

Thus far, my creativity is sticking around. Last week I pulled out this Happy Thanksgiving chart designed by Bent Creek. 

I chose this two-toned 28 count Country Quaker cloth by Zweigart as the background fabric. I used a mix of DMC solid floss and some Gentle Art Sampler Thread overdyed fibers.

The design is only 50 x 50 stitches, so it went quickly. I didn't make a single counting error ... so it went more quickly than usual. I like the turkey's goofy expression and overall primitive vibe.

I framed it in a simple 10 inch square frame (without glass), using some scrapbook paper for a mat. I'll hang Mr. Turkey in the living room with the other three Fall square stitcheries: Gobble Gobble, Harvest Basket, and Pumpkin Patch.

It's encouraging to be able to go start to finish on a cross-stitch project again! So I pulled out another Christmas ornament pattern to work on next. It's a Santa, stitched on plastic canvas.

Autumn in Oregon

The view from my seat at the kitchen table.

Eugene Park Tour -- Ascot Park

Ascot Park turned out to be very different than I expected. It's in the Harlow neighborhood. The city website boasts that it's, "the largest athletic field complex in the city park system." I figured that must be very impressive because the park by my house has a large kid play area, a full fenced track/football/soccer area, and a baseball stadium with three diamonds.

But Ascot Park looks more like an extension of the middle school playground.

The park sits back behind the school off a small parking lot with these small trees.

Sure, there are big soccer fields. You can see one team in training here behind Dale. (He's such a sport, acting as my model).

We drove through the nearby neighborhood to see if we missed the "real" park entrance. We thought there might be restrooms and a play area for little kids. Nope. Look closely from this angle and you'll see a fence that looks like the back of a baseball diamond over on the right. Curiously, I didn't even see any bleachers for spectators to watch the games.

There is also a bark-covered walking track around the field. Because a cold wind was blowing and my bum knee was aching, we weren't able to walk the track that day.

But honestly, I was unimpressed and probably won't return.

Pumpkins, Pumpkins, Pumpkins

It looks like I got my decorating mojo back when my creative dry spell ended! I didn't decorate for Halloween at all. (Very unusual). But this week I got out all the Fall/Thanksgiving decor and put it on display.

I wanted a cute new way to display my pumpkin patch. I went onto Pinterest to gather ideas, some of which were masterful, but I didn't have a ladder or stairsteps or corn stalks or wooden crates. But when I saw a wheelbarrow, the lightbulb went on over my head. We have a wagon!

So I cleaned it up, brought it in the house, and set it up in the corner of the living room near a window for nice lighting. I covered cardboard boxes with fabric to give height to the pumpkins in the back. I took the red wood fences off one side to give more visibility. This way, I have three levels on which to display the pumpkins. I put some of the small pumpkins on upside-down custard cups to add even more levels. I placed the gratitude star that Jeanne gave me, and a willow wreath behind pumpkins on the upper tier.

And since Halloween is over, I hid the one spooky pumpkin behind the slats, peeking out like a hidden scary beast.

I'll share more of my Fall decor later this week.

Throwback Thursday: She's Got Balls

Baseballs

Yarn balls

Needlework balls

Bouncy balls

Golf balls

Tennis Balls

Googly Eye Balls

Vibrant!

 

As seen from our front yard.