I have officially buried Rich in memory cards with videos on them.  I’ve been really inspired to do all types of videos and although it seems like I’ve only been making cards, there are so many other ideas waiting to go online.

I have been using an older laptop that I really love and the screen is starting to go bad.  It’s just a matter of time until it fades to grey.  So we went to Staples today to shop for a new one.  Rich found one he thought I would like (I rely on him to know about the bells and whistles of any computers we own) and we bought it.  While he was discussing computers with the salesman, I found a clearance rack with four different types of rotary paper trimmers.  The prices were still kind of high (one was $45), but I was interested in a smaller unit and decided to purchase it. When I got to the counter, the clerk said, “This is a great deal, it’s only $2.” From the price tag, I thought it was $16, so I started wondering about the rest of the trimmers.  I had the clerk price check all of them and the smallest unit was $1.  There were two “professional” grade trimmers, one that was 12″ and one that was 15″ and both were $4.00 with a price tag clearance at $45.  I bought all of them.  They will be great for me and will be even better as gifts.  I was so excited, I came right home and made a video about them and made sure that Rich put the video up tonight.  That way if anyone else is interested in these trimmers they will know about them soon, and  hopefully will be able to buy one for themselves.  I’m hoping other stores handle theirs the way our store did.  They didn’t change the prices on the units, so they  look like they are kind of expensive to be a clearance item.  With that in mind, other customers will probably just overlook them.  I’m hoping some of our viewers will be able to get a trimmer at a steal of a price and am crossing my fingers that they do.

I started using my new video camera with the dog treat video and am really excited about it.  I’ve never used a camera that I could watch what I’m videotaping, because the tripod has the camera almost directly above my head, but no way to watch it.  I’ve had friends and family ask me how Rich is able to hold the camera so steady while I’m taping.  To clarify, I videotape myself and then watch the video and take notes on what needs edited.  I hand Rich the memory card and my notes and he takes it from there.  You now have the Parker system for YouTube.  I’m also so excited that the audio is working throughout the opening sequence to each video.  It’s been a big week!

My next video is of a wicker rocker that I bought at a garage sale for $20.  It didn’t have a seat in it, but I didn’t care.  I thought it would be adorable as a plant holder and so although I’ve put the planter (filled with plants) into the rocker, I’ve never done the final steps of surrounding the planter with moss to cover the base and make it look more professional.  I bought the moss and am going to take the tripod and the chair, planter and moss outside and film the transformation.  I think it will look really great once I’ve got it finished and it will be my first in the series of taking old things and making them new again.  I wish I had a better name, but so far, haven’t come up with one.  Ah well, there’s always time to change it.

It has been a big day for me, as I finally am out of my napping binge.  I made dog treats and videotaped it so others can make them.  If you have any doubts about how much my dogs like them, you’ll have a hard time hearing the video as one dog barks throughout the video as she knows the treats are on their way and she wants them immediately.  I had to laugh since people sometimes wonder if I’m overstating my recipe is phenomenal–my dogs are my biggest fans.

Maybe that’s why every time I try to make a video, I have to excuse the noise my dogs are making–they aren’t having a tumble with each other.  No, they are like rabid fans, trying to get to their idol and are willing to break down the door to do so.  I have a very vivid imagination, don’t I?

Happily, my dog treat video is in the bag.  I’m really glad because it’s the only recipe I have made that is totally my own, down to the process involved in baking them.  I’ve never had one dog, no matter how picky, turn one down.  And at the vet’s office, given the choice between their version of a Snausage and one of my treats, my dogs will take mine every time.  Now that’s an advertisement.  I have no meat products or any scent involved that will drive a dog wild.  They are just hard as a rock and taste a little bit like whatever juice or broth that I use.

I will say this about my treats.  The process to make them is a lot more enjoyable in the cooler months of the year, as having the oven on for four or so hours, isn’t the greatest when it’s hot outside.  That’s another reason I make three cookie trays at a time, so I only make them once a month when it’s hot outside.  I’m sure if you have smaller dogs, or fewer dogs, the treats will last a very long time, but not so at my house.  Especially when I make a fresh batch, it’s a virtual feeding frenzy. (Or treat frenzy.)

I’m still playing with the papers I bought at a garage sale a couple of days ago and wanted to make a get well card for my friend’s mother who fell and broke her hip.
I used Ranger Archival Ink on the rose stamp that is an old Stampin’ Up wood stamp. I stamped the rose image on the center of a piece of ivory 110 pound cardstock and the size of the card is 5 x 7″ tall and the background cardstock that is 5 x 7 is a light peach color and matched the floral layer of paper that I’m putting on top of it. The floral piece is 1/8″ shorter on the sides and top.. The piece of cardstock that I stamped on was 4 3.4″ x 6 3/4″ (and I trimmed it down after stamping the plaid background). I made a mask of the rose and then stamped a plaid stamp over the rose image with the mask on it using Lucky Limeade ink on the plaid stamp (that’s also a retired Stampin’ Up stamp.)
I removed the mask and then used alcohol inks to color the image. I used fun foam to adhere to the back of the rose image and then stamped the sentiment inside the card with Ranger Archival Ink. The sentiments were from Stampin’ Up from a set called Gifts of Kindness and I stamped a small circle with “Hi There” from a Stampin’ Up set called Hi There and put it on a green ruffled ribbon on the bottom of the card with dimensionals on either side of the ribbon. I used a matching green washi tape for on my envelope.

Today was a day of great intentions.  I was going to make a big batch of dog treats, film  a repurposing video and maybe make a card.  Instead, I took a nap.  Maybe I was putting too much pressure on myself, but I’m pretty sure I just wanted to sleep.  So I accomplished little, but on the big news front, we have some!  Rich bought another editing software program and wonder of wonders, the audio is now loud and clear throughout the entire video.  The transition from one video clip to another is flawless and I am feeling like we’ve won the lottery.  I can’t believe it’s only taken a new computer and two new software programs to finally get the audio portion of our videos to work.  On the downside of things, (you know there’s always the good with the bad), I’ve uploaded two videos with the new software, and neither have gone public on the home page of my channel for almost twenty-four hours.  If you click on “videos,” you’ll see the new video, but if you go to my home page, they won’t be there.  I guess I can live with that, especially since Rich has a backlog of three or four videos, so it’s ok to have the time delay because we’re uploading videos more often.  Once he gets caught up, I’ll start to fret about it, so I just need to stay on top of making videos more often so he never catches up. PSSST, don’t tell him my plan or he might have a nervous breakdown.  He’s so proud of the fact that he’s solved the audio problem and he should be, it’s been a real bummer for all of us.  Especially the viewers, so thanks for hanging in there while we worked out the bugs, it was  big bug!

Close family friends are celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary and I wanted to make a card to send to them.  I started with 110 pound Recollections cream colored card stock that is 10″ wide and 7″ tall scored on the 10″ length at 5″, so the end result is a 5″ x 7″ card.  I bought a bunch of random paper and scrapbooking embellishments at a garage sale and used them for this project.  The word “Happy” in an oval was included, so I used the word “anniversary” from a set by MSE called Hand Written and stamped it with Stampin’ Up ink in Soft Suede over the word Happy.  I used snail adhesive to attach a layer of taupe colored paper that was 6 7/8″ x 4 7/8″ wide to the cream colored paper.  I then attached a piece of paper with diamonds to a piece of fun foam with tear tape to the taupe layer.  The diamond paper was    6 3/4″ x 4 3/4″ wide.  I had chipboard numbers “50” and used Versamark ink and Princess gold embossing powder on it and heat set the powder.  I used a cream colored piece of organza ribbon attached near the bottom of the diamond paper and made a bow with it and stuck the ribbon to the fun foam on the back before adhering the paper to the taupe layer.  I used tear tape to adhere the 50 with, and then put foam tape behind the oval that said “Happy Anniversary” and put them both on the diamond paper, evenly spaced apart.  When the “5: fell apart, I reattached the layers with Scotch Scrapbooking Glue.  I used an old Stampin’ Up sentiment for the inside from 1999 for inside the card with Soft Suede ink from Stampin’ Up.  I used washi tape with gold hearts on it and lined the bottom of my envelope with it.

Today, I found two really ugly short and skinny dressers that I am going to refurbish somehow, to put in my craft room.  It’s time to evict Bella.  It’s not that I don’t love having her cage in there, but unfortunately, I can’t keep the door open as Honey likes to find things in there to destroy and I can’t keep her out.  We’ve accidentally locked Bella in the craft room in trying to keep Honey out, not realizing Bella was in there.  Of course it isn’t for a long period of time, but it does happen and I don’t like it when it does.

I hope Bella can adjust to the change, as we’ll be putting her cage in the same room as Honey’s.  Honey only uses hers when we leave her as she’s not trustworthy on her own.  Bella on the other hand, uses hers for comfort and alone time.  I’m really not sure what else we can do to make this situation work, so now that I’ve purchased these really “pretty” dressers, the wheels of change are in motion.

On the flip side of this, I might actually finally get my room organized to my satisfaction.  I hope so.  It’s so frustrating now because every new craft I take on, needs its own space so I know where things are.  Currently I’m not really sure where a lot of things are and it’s very frustrating.

The other great thing is that I’ll get to figure out how to make these dressers less ugly and I love a good challenge.  It’s also going to be fun to videotape the process for my series of taking old things and making them new again.  I’m not really sure that’s what I’m doing.  A lot of these things are being repurposed, so although the item will be new, it won’t be acting in the same capacity.  I’m still thinking about the title to the series as the first video isn’t done yet.  Well it’s done, just not edited.  That will be for another day.

I waited a day to write this because I wanted to have some time to process.  We went to the funeral home tonight to say goodbye to my friend Tammy.  It was harder than I thought because I thought I had let her down.  A couple of months ago, I had sent her a card saying we should have lunch.  She called and said she had a cold and that we could have a lunch in  a couple of weeks.  I waited too long to call her, and by then it was too late and I never saw her again.
I have been sending her cards for months, ok maybe years, because she’s had brain cancer for so long.  As I waited to speak with her son, I couldn’t help but wish I had made that telephone call sooner.  When I reached him he grabbed me and wouldn’t let me go.  I told him I felt so badly that I missed the chance to have lunch with her and he said it didn’t matter.  He said my cards meant the world to her and that as they got each one, someone in the family would show them to her and read them to her.  I always wrote more than a few lines because I wanted her to know that I was thinking about her and remind her of things we had done or something that reminded me of her.

When I got to her sister (who also worked with me at the bank), we asked how she was holding up and she said “Good until I saw you.”  Then she told me about the cards I had sent and how beautiful they were and how much Tammy loved them.

I guess my message is that we need to remind our friends and family how much they mean to us because life is short.  I’ll be making more cards for them, and this time, they will be sympathy cards.  Take the time to tell them before you need to write sympathy notes.  You’ll be glad you did.

I’m on a crafting roll lately.  Rich has at least four videos ready to be uploaded and every time I hand him another one, you can see he’s about ready to break.  He has the video of the wedding album I made and there are at least twelve small segments to be linked together and that could take him forever to edit (or at least a very long time.)

I wanted to compile a large array of crafty projects that I can photograph for the people at A C Moore.  They want a good representation of my channel and since I give away most of the things I make, I’m scrambling to find a nice mix of projects.

I wanted to add some dog projects to the list, so I’m going to work on a couple of cute dog collars so I have something that will line the bottom of my project photo and make the dogs happy at the same time.  I’m not sure what it is about collars, but our dogs have always loved them and push each other out of the way to try to wear multiple collars.  They are girls who like their accessories I guess..

We are out of homemade dog treats and I’m going to videotape making a batch and need to do that today as it’s finally under 90 degrees here.  The only problem I have is that when I make them, I have three very enthusiastic assistants at my feet.  I’m not sure how they know, but as soon as I start making treats, I have no trouble finding a clean up crew.  By clean up, I mean anything that might drop out of my hands.  Otherwise, their cleaning skills are pretty limited.

So my crafty list is full, which means I’ll be handing Rich another memory card.  It’s a bummer being the chief editor and videographer, and there’s no money in it either, literally.  He gets paid in love and affection and that’s much better than cash.

I wanted to make a special wedding card for our niece, who is also Rich’s goddaughter.  When I saw the dress stamp with the words to “I’m so Pretty” on it, I knew it would be a perfect background for the card.  I started with Neenah Solar White 110 pound  cardstock and a craft colored cardstock as well.  The card is 5 1/2″ square. The dress is #W362 from My Sentiments Exactly.  I starred by using an embossing buddy, or my version of it.  (I took an old pair of panty hose and doubled it over and filled it with cornstarch then knotted it.)   I used Versamark on the dress stamp and then stamped the craft colored paper.  I used Ranger white embossing powder on the dress and heat set it. I did a second dress (off camera)  with Princess Gold embossing powder from Ranger and cut that dress out and cut it in half and layered it under the dress with the white powder.  I used a Stampin’ Up ink called and stamped “Congratulations” from MSE and the set is called “Hand Written”  on the front .  I layered the dress with fun foam and adhered it to the card with Tombow Mono Aqua glue.  I had some gold cord in my stash that I trimmed the edges of the card It had issues with fraying and I tried using a candle under it, but it was too thick so I used Fray Stoppa on it.  I adhered it to the card with Art Glitter Glue.  The sentiment was from Repeat Impressions. and I used the Misti to stamp it inside the card using the same ink as on the outside of the card.  I apologize for the choppiness of this card, as I had a lot of weird issues with it.