Billy with Catnip Toy

I've never had a cat that was so into catnip! Watch as Billy discovers his new toy! It sure made me smile!

Making Happy with Billy the Cat

Well we've had Billy about 18 hours and so far he is everything we might have hoped for. One of the things we had worried about was having everything clawed and having to deal with that, but I fell in love at the shelter and I frankly didn't care! Imagine my surprise when I got to the vet and this precious kitty turned out to have been declawed by its previous owner! Just another thing I don't have to worry about! I've only had one cat declawed in my whole life, and it is not something I like to have done!

Billy seems to have been trained as a bed cat. In all my days as a cat owner, I've never been able to sleep with a cat except once, when I was at my friend Daria's in Montreal in 1998. One of her cats decided to spend the night sleeping with me, and I loved it. But no other cat managed to be quiet enough to allow me to sleep with them. That is until Billy last night! First, Billy never jumped on my lap during the afternoon yesterday, but as soon as I layed down in bed, he came up, snuggled my hand and flopped down, using my hand as a pillow. During the night, he managed not to wake me, and once when I did wake up he jumped back up onto the bed, almost as if he'd been waiting for my breathing to change. Again he snuggled against me and making sure he was touching my hand went back to sleep. For some reason, I found sleeping next to this cat, very, very relaxing! I'm a very puzzled and happy cat owner this morning, especially since Billy finally did go and get himself scratched by Rick too.

Meet Billy - Our New Kitty

We missed having a kitty so much that we decided to adopt. At first we thought baby or very young, but then today I went to the local shelter. The minute I started petting Billy, I knew I had to take him home and save him. You see Billy is at least 3 years old and he had been in the shelter for more than a month. Not a good position for a cat to be in when the shelter is the county one and not a no kill. So now, after going to get checked out at the vet, Billy has a new forever home. Have a look at the video of Billy at the vets! Basically Billy and I had been aquainted for 30 minutes when I took that!

Are You Ready?

Just a few days left until Christmas. Are you ready? I am almost and yet, I am never quite! I truly agonize over how to find that special gift for those I give gifts to. I always have majestic, magnificent, overwhelming plans, that start fermenting in my mind for the following Christmas even before the current Christmas comes to pass. Yet every year and more so this year, I don't even get 1/99th done. Something always interferes! I have 5 sweaters started that no one will get this year. One is absolutely gorgeous and was started as a gift for Christmas 2008. With the move and the shoulder injury this year, I haven't even been able to put my hands on it to finish it. Maybe next year.

I suppose that if I finished one before starting the other I might achieve more, but there is always a good reason for putting one down and starting the next, honest! Three of the five will have to be remade, bigger or abandonned, or finished and gifted to some deserving family in need. There is one that is done and I think I've bought 4 sets of buttons for it and I always manage to lose them. It's the weirdest thing! I bought new wonderful buttons just this week at JoAnn's, and they seem to have flown away! They were butterflies, you see! If they fly your way, will you catch them and send them back!

So much work and stress for such a very few minutes of gifting. But I just love seeing if I've hit the bulls eye. I'll spend days and weeks on a gift for the few moments of watching someone get it. With luck, their reaction gives me a hint that it is a hit and will be used or looked at and treasured at least for a while!

But, it's time to get off the computer. There is more work to do! So I'll leave you with a Christmas wish. May all your efforts to make Christmas special, be cherished by those around you. And may their efforts to warm your heart, succeed!

Getting Crafty - Scrapbook Buddies rise again

Many of you reading this are/were part of my Scrapbook Buddies in Florida and some I hope are new members of the group here in the tri-state area (Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio). As people say, life goes on and it is time for me to get my life rolling again. I have been scrapbooking over the last few months, but I haven't gotten my Buddies together!

I intend to do just that starting with a meetup at my house on January 6th. I hope that I can get quite a few new friends to come out here and enjoy!

Meanwhile, I did make a couple of LO's about Christmas 2007 and 2008, but I can't show them to you as they are part of my Christmas presents. I must admit that I am a year late giving the 2007 layout, but I'm sure they will be glad to add it to the Christmas albums I gave them a few years back!

As for my heritage book, I unfortunately did not manage to get it completed in time to send to be printed in time for them to get to people for Christmas, so I've given myself a break on that until the new year! I did get more pictures from my other cousin Irene who lives just outside Quebec City, thanks Irene, which will allow me to make sure that both she and her sister, who I grew up with are included. I discovered, as I was putting everything in final form, that I was still missing information without which it made no sense to go to press. For example, the picture above is of my great-grandparents 25th wedding anniversary. I got this picture from my cousin in Belgium, Marie-Jeanne. I've identified just about everyone, my grandmother is the one playing the violin in the middle of the picture, but the two mandolin players on either end of the picture. I know that one is M-J's grandmother Rosalie, but which one (I'm guessing the one in the lighter dress on the right) but who is the other lady? I also seem to be missing the name of one of my grandmother's nine siblings. So is that the mystery lady? I have learned other interesting things woking on this book and even things that were right in front of me for years, but that only clicked after the 20th time looking at them! That is one of the things that makes working on heritage books totally facinating! There are layers and layers of things you get to learn about your family. Suddenly stories that you were told click with something else that you uncover. It is amazing some of the things I've learned about that are different from what I'd always believed! There may even be some discoveries that you wonder if you should share or not!

So if, like me and my blog winner for November, Sharon you are working on a heritage album, be prepared to learn new and wonderful things about your family!

Good Bye Nuku, I miss you

For those of you who are pet lovers you will understand my grief at having to say goodbye to my cat Nuku yesterday. Nuku was with me for fourteen and a half years. She was born in Ottawa, Canada and along with her companion Radar who we had for 16 years and lost earlier this year, she moved with me to the US in 1998. We took her with us from Houston, where her plane from Canada landed, to Gulfport, MS where my in-laws lived to St Petersburg, FL where Rick got his first teaching job. We then moved her from the an apartment to a home and two years later to what we thought was our forever home in Parrish. Just when she thought she could unpack her kitty bags, we moved her to North Little Rock, AR and two years later to Riverview, FL. Through all those years she put up with her shifty vagabond owners, no doubt wondering when we would finally get a clue and just enjoy life as she did!

She seemed to still be doing OK when we moved her again this past June up here to Kentucky. This time she made the move alone, without her lifelong companion, Radar. But about three months ago, things started going from bad to worse and over the last few weeks she could no longer spend all those great hours cleaning and primping herself. We kept her with us until my son could come for Thanksgiving and say goodbye and yesterday, it was our turn to say a final goodbye and let her go. She is now reunited with Radar and I know it was the right thing to do, for her. But it is weird being without her. The house is missing a heartbeat tonight... I have no pet for the 1st time in more than 30 years!

Christmas Wreath

I'm not sure why I decided that making Christmas wreaths was something that I needed to do this year, except that I think my house looks like a wreath kind of house while my former homes didn't quite have that "traditional" look. I haven't really put up other decorations, yet, but i did put up one of the wreaths I made on my front door. This wreath is not electrified while the other 3 have white lights and this one reminds me of years gone by, with its pretty Noel in the center. I thought I would share it with you as I wish you well during the pre-holiday craziness!

God's Icing Sugar

I looked out the window this morning and it really looked like God's pastry chef had sprinkled icing sugar. So pretty! It didn't last long, as I write this there are only a few small patches left. Then again this isn't the Quebec City of my youth where the snow fell and stayed as early as the beginning of October and didn't disappear again until late March if then!

This is what March 29th looked like in Quebec City last year! (Global warming???) Click on the image to see a larger sized picture and more of the same, from my beautiful birth place.

Putting it all Together

I spent about 6 hours working on a project for my MIL over the last couple of days. It involved putting together a picture of her grandkids. In an effort to avoid crying children, dribble spots and all, I ended up using 3 different pictures to get to the final version and then also created a card.

Here are the pictures I used:

I hope my MIL is pleased with the results!

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!!