No Title, Title

I am running a little late with my projects, especially the heritage album that I just have to get out in multiple copies before the holidays. This is really something special that would not have been possible without the help of two of my cousins, Georgette who lives outside Toronto, Ontario Canada, and Marie-Jeanne who lives in Belgium. You see other than a few pictures that belonged to my maternal grandparents, very few of my pictures managed to survive as I did, 6 floods and one major and one minor fire.


All that said, once my two albums, one for the black and white pictures and one for the color pictures are finished, I intend on sending my siblings and cousins copies. The first album is the black and white one the first page of which is here above. I am hopeful that I can get back to my craftroom early next week, tidy it up, finalize the remaining pages, scan them and then have the pages bound in a photobook.


On the health side, I do feel somewhat better, though not enough to do anything more than sit around, do a little something, sit around, do a little something, well you get the picture. As for saying more than one or two sentences, it still makes me cough and go hoarse! So I'm a pretty quiet chica these days!

Taking Stock

I guess Avelox makes a person introspective, or maybe it is the fact that the doctor told me that if it weren't for the pill version of Avelox she would have had to hospitalize me. Avelox is a really scary black box warning antibiotic, with side effects that have even scared Hubby! Whatever is causing my current state of mind, I'm siting here wondering what kind of person I want to be, tomorrow, next year and thirty years from now. That's not such an easy question to answer.

My dad died when he was just a couple of years older than I am now. My son's dad died new year's eve 2007, he was only a couple of months older than I am; and a 26 year old man in my little town here in Kentucky, who apparently had no health issues, died of swine flu last week in a matter of days. We often hear, and I have been know to say "live today as if it were your last". OK that kind of works for me, but then what about the fact that I may have another 30 or more years of living ahead of me? Is the way I lived today something that I can look back on in 30 years and be proud of?

Finally how do you live everyday like it were your last and also live it as if it were the first day of the rest of your life? Are the two even compatible? Am I living my life in a way that both fulfills me and is sustainable day to day? What are the things that fulfill me? I think the one thing that makes me the happiest is when I can engage a person, be they a stranger, friend or family member and make them smile and and let them know that I think that they are special. What is interesting about that is that it doesn't matter what I am doing to put that smile on someone's face, just that they are smilling and for a moment, however fleeting, I've made their life better.

I firmly believe that we are born with one real goal; to leave the world a better place than the one that we were born into. Some people do it in a big way, Edison, Einstein, Bethoven, Mother Teresa, most of us only touch the lives of a few, but that doesn't change our goal or should I say life responsibility. For me, for today, puting a smile on your face, would mean that today I justified my creator's decision to give me life.

What is your life philosophy?

The Oven Mitt that became a Star

As I previously mentionned, I recently got to work on the pre-production part of a series of commercials made for the Ohio Lottery Commisssion. Copies of the commercial are now on YouTube and the production company gave me permission to share them on this blog. BTW, if you want to see the commercial and are reading this on Facebook, you'll have to come on over to the blog.

The whole escapade started with my joining the Artisans of Cincinnati Meetup group a few weeks ago. Just days later, as I checked my inbox, I saw an email from that group saying that they had received a request from local production company looking to make a commercial. They needed crafters. There was a number included in the email to call a lady named Claire. If you know a little about my past, you know that my life is filled with things I've gotten to do that were, to say the least, cool, unusual and definitely unexpected. Because I thought this might be one of those weird things that have crossed my path, I decided to pick up the phone and call. Claire was very kind and basically took my information and asked that I send in an email with my info and links to some of my work. I sent her a link to both my blog and my gallery and told her that I was going out of town to St. Louis, but would be back on Sunday. She called me twice while I was out of town and I started on the project of making crafts for the coomercial that following Monday.

As you all know, I mainly do paper crafts, but I also knit, crochet, sew and paint a little. Usually my sewing is reserved for things like making teddy bears. During our first meeting, it turned out that they had only asked one other crafter to join the team, a lovely young lady named Jessica. Jessica is the person that made the wreath in the commercial as well as the pop-up holiday Deer card and the showflake banner that is part of another commercial that I'll post later on. I'm responsible foradding fabric and a matching pocket to a big stocking that is featured briefly in another commercial.

As we were brainstorming that first day, it turned out that they needed a lot of craft items to "dress the set" and I offered them their pick of the items in my craft room. So 99% of the props (shelves, paper, wool, crafts like the decorated tin box, cards strung from the window) you see behind and sometimes on the shelves in front of Maggie's table all came from my craft room. The crafts on the table were made at the Ligt-Borne studios in Cincinnati.

As the only one that sewed, making a gingerbread oven mitt became my main focus. I had to come up with a design, build two prototypes and then create two near identical mitts, one a star and the other an understudy in case there was a mishap or something. I didn't have any patterns or anything, but then making a pattern for an oven mitt isn't particularly difficult. My only direction, "they want an oven mitt that looks like a gingerbread man." I did incorporate Rob's idea of giving Mr Gingerbread mitt a second arm, which on an oven mitt isn't all that easy to do. Frankly, I didn't expect Mr Mitt, to look quite as cute as it does in the actual commercial, and, Mr Mitt even has a speaking role!

The 4 commercials were shot in a private home in Cincinnati. The production company, Light-Borne, took care of packing, transporting and returning everything they borrowed from my craft room to use in the shoot.

Now grab the popcorn, sit back and enjoy Maggie's fun antics! Follow this link to the Ohio Lottery's special pages for the "Fun with Maggie" commercials!

Life Through my Bedroom Window

Have I mentioned that I love my new house, even though with everything that has gone on, I'm still not quite settled in? This past week it's been the flu and before that it was the whole shoulder saga. What hasn't been on hold is the beautiful world outside my window. I've placed a comfy chair right next to it with a big ottoman and then added a height adjustable table that fits over the ottoman that I can slide in and out. All that so that I can enjoy what I believe is the most beautiful view in the house. Anyhow, I thought I'd share it. So please take a moment and watch the world go by, outside my bedroom window!

Ohio Commercials - Part 1

This is a picture of the TV in my room playing one of thenew commercials for the Ohio Lottery. For those of you who have been to my house either in Kentucky or in Riverview, you might recognize a lot of the items on the set. The shelf units behind "Maggie" are mine as are all the items on the shelves, the various boxes, the white frame on the wall to the left is the layout of the scrapbook buddies that I made. The decorated box in the front is the one we reproduced in a class in Riverview just about a year ago and the cards hanging in the window on the right, are Christmas cards I made that will likely make it into the mailboxes of friends and family! The wool, jars filled with buttons, ribbon and even round stamps came straight out of my craft room! What's even funnier is that it even has the feel of my craft room, probably because after their first attempt at putting the set together, they were told to make it more homey and the lady working it was the one that came to my house and picked what she needed to "dress" the set.

Also featured in the commercials are a gingerbread oven mitt that I designed and sewed (it has a speaking part, LOL) and a Christmas stocking to which I added a fabric top and pocket. I'm still trying to get clean copies of the commercials to share, who knows, maybe next week!

Meanwhile, I am still fighting off this terrible bug, on antibiotics and a cough suppressant and have been staying rather quiet to prevent very nasty bouts of coughing! Hopefully next week will turn me into a much better feeling Chica!!

Catching The Blog Up _ Part 1 2009 Thanksgiving Book

There is so much I need to write about and so many pictures to share, its a bit difficult to get it all in, but I'll try, haha! So first, here are the pictures of my mini Thanksgiving book. I made the book for Art Week at the local YMCA and unfortunately, our schools were discimated by the flu that week and I have 6 kits left over. So, I am planning on having one more class, I'm thinking Saturday November 14th, here at my house!The cost:$15.00. The kit alone $10.00. I think it's a cute way to send off pictures taken at Thanksgiving to those loved ones that couldn't attend. It goes together really quickly as everything is already stamped and cut out, all that needs doing is glueing everything together! Heck I had 5 year olds, butting the BOO version of this together! Which I
ll show you all later!

More on Window 7 Upgrade

So far so good! While going from XP to Win7 isn't a piece of cake and the results were a little scary at first, once I let logic kick in it really wasn't bad. My laptop is very old so I was a little weirded out when neither my internal or external wireless devices worked. My sound card didn't work either! However it kept on telling me that I couldn't connect to the internet because I wasn't hard wired to the internet. Fortunately, one of the tings we did in our new house was wire for the internet. So I took the computer over to an access cat 5 cable and went online. I'm not exactly sure what happened, but within minutes, with me not doing anything, my sound was back and my wireless usb device had activated. I'm not too surprised about the internal wireless device as it has worked on and off for the last couple of years.

So now comes re-installing office, photoshop elements, and memory mixer. That done, I'll re-install iTunes and see about moving some of my files back from my outside hard drive to the laptop!

Upgrading to Window7

Well friends, my pc has been a limp along mess for a long time so I'll be taking the plunge and upgrading to Windows7. Unfortunately when you go from XP to Win7 you have to reload all your programs, so I'm sure this will take a little time.

Hope to see all of you tomorrow!!!

Fall From my Window!

Lynne is so right about it being beautiful and Summer is right that I did try for a double entente here! I tried to write this post from an app on my Iphone and for some reason, the app would allow me to post the subject, but when I tried to write the message, it would only allow me to type one letter and then sort of jump out of the app. So I decided to leave it as is, until I could take a minute and fix it all on the computer. As you can see the leaves are finally turning and the view from my family room window is quite beautiful.

I still have to catch you up on a number of things and I will, promise!

Busy Bee!

Here

A Hectic Day

It hasn't been easy posting tonight! For some reason I can't seem to upload my pictures, it keeps on giving me an error message. So, I'll just keep this very simple and hopefully get a picture uploaded later. Between having a repairman come in at 8:45am, a lunch meeting with my friend Charlene, a 1:30 appoinment with one of my neighbors Sandy to help her with a memorial project, and a 5-7 class at the Y amongst other things, today has been mighty busy!

Tonight was a bit of a disappointment, though I did still have fun! Of the 20 people expected at the YMCA for my mini book class, only 6 showed up! 3 ladies and 3 children. Fortunately all were very nice people, so it was a fun time nonetheless! One of the ladies was a neighbor Sandra, a sweet lady, not to be confused with the previously mentioned Sandy who is without a doubt also very sweet. The other two ladies were both scrapbook enthusiasts that I hope I'll see again sometime soon! The three children who made books seemed to have a lot of fun, and between this and the card make-n-take on Monday, I rediscovered how much fun it is to make crafts with kids!

Now if I can only find my handy dandy sony camera, I'll be a very happy critter. Both my camera and my headset seem to have decided to go awol (absent without leave/permission), though one could argue that it is my mind that is missing in action!

Given that I'm not sure if you'll hear from me between now and Sunday, I' ve got a lot on my plate between now and then, I'd like to wish my Canadian family members and friends, a very Happy Thanksgiving weekend and to all, have a great weekend!

And please, don't forget to forgive what you can't forget!

(pictures downloaded from photobucket)

Making the Most of the Weekend!

Yesterday, Saturday, I decided to take a drive and visit a little village in Indiana called Metamora. I had asked around about a cute place to shop with a Main street and someone had come up with this town. Delighted that my son is coming to visit for Thanksgiving, I wanted to see if this might be the type of place we might both love.

As I got close to the place the traffic started to crawl. Being that we are speaking of a two lane country road, I felt for the locals and wondered if the area was always this congested. Next parking in fields were announced and I started to realize that something was really up and that fortunately we were not talking accident! After shelling out $6 to park in a field, I walked around on the north side of the road. There were lots of merchant tents and hundreds of people! The actual town though was on the other side of the road and again there were lots of merchant tents and hundreds of people.

Without a doubt this is the largest street vendor fair I have ever seen. It just so happens that it was Canal Days (weekend) in Metamora, a beautiful old village. I wont bore you with the story of the town, you can check out more here. Let me just say that if you come to visit me there is a big chance that we will go and visit this beautiful town which is only an hours drive through beautiful countryside.

Having done so well going north west, today I decided to have another look at the Indiana side of the Ohio. Again we are speaking only 30 to 45 minutes away. This time it being Sunday the stores were closed in these little towns, yet given the beautiful weather, I was happy to walk out and enjoy the view and the perfect weather. I ended up in a town called Rising Son, which has a Casino set in a paddle wheeler.

I didn't go near the casino, but you can see it in the picture. There is a nice walk along the river and this is the most pristine part of the Ohio River I've yet to see. Closer to home the river is rather industrial looking.

Now I've done a considerable amount of crafting this weekend as well, for the YMCA Make-N-Take and Family craft class. I promise, I'll share either later today or tomorrow. Meanwhile, think about the fun we'll have when you come and visit me!

New Teresa Collins Kit

I just gor 6 of these in stock and they look fabulous! I'm thinking of offering a class with them, but I'm wiling to part with one if that would make our blog winner happy! You can see a video of Teresa Collins playing with the kit here. I'll add the teardrops to make the kit complete!

I went to physio today. I hadn't been in 2 weeks and it was good to see that my at home physio is making a difference! They showed me a new exercise that really made my arm feel better as it helped stretch the bicep muscle which was feeling very tight!

For those who wonder I do manage to relax and take care of the shoulder. For example, I took a 60 minute bath tonight while watching TV! That is one of my indulgences, I have an cable outlet that allows me to watch TV while in the tub. I find it very decadent and therefore very relaxing! So that's it folks! I'll post the winner in a couple of minutes so come and see!!! BTW, the winner needs to email me privately with their address and their list!

Don't forget to forgive what you can't forget!

It Really is Autumn

The last time I really saw and felt Autumn, I lived in North Little Rock, Arkansas. Given that I left there in the spring of 2006, my last real autumn would have been in the fall of 2005. While it was dark and dreary outside in Northern Kentucky this morning, it is also crisp and dry. I think my son would be in 7th heaven if he were here! Just his kind of day!

I must say though that there is little change in the leaves, at least not compared to what I was used to in Ottawa or even Montreal. (See picture of Ottawa in the fall. I worked 5 minutes away from where this picture was taken, at National Defense Headquarters, the Canadian equivalent of the Pentagon). Here in Northern Kentucky, at least where I am, the trees turn a little red and brown, but basically they seem to wither and fall off before they can turn all those magnificent colors that make a person say wow!

I've been doing a lot of stuff recently. I finished my recipe cards for the next round and my Christmas cards for the Hilltop swap. I'm not sure if I should post my card here yet, or wait till everyone gets theirs. They all look the same except that on some I used silver accents and others gold. The recipe is divine, though it calls for a candy thermometer which can be purchased for less than $10 in most places. Hopefully that will not be a turn off for the people that get the recipe. Think of it as an opportunity to go and buy a new gadget! Michaels actually had one here at $14+ but I had a 40% off coupon! The recipe is one that my mother in law makes and believe me it is worth the effort! Of course that doesn't tell you what the recipe is, except that it must be candy, or else why, the candy thermometer. Why indeed?

I have almost finished part of my project for my YMCA classes next week and will post more on that tomorrow. Because a person really should not be idle, I am also working on a couple of sweaters for my nieces, Rachel and Lindsay to give as Christmas gifts. Well that's it from Kentucky for tonight!

Don't forget to forgive what you can't forget!