Happy Father’s Day.

My father passed away in 1994 and it was the worst time of my life.  He was a great dad and I lost a part of myself when I lost him.  In  1991, I had to have surgery on my neck as a complication of my arthritis.  I was put into a halo for six weeks.  If you don’t know what a halo is, it’s not about angels.  It’s a device that 100% stabilizes your neck, because it is literally bolted into your skull.  Bolted.  It isn’t pretty.  I only went out in public once wearing it.  I saw a man I knew and he started crying when he saw me.  Enough said.

I needed a caregiver while I was in the halo because you really can’t do much for yourself.  Your head is tilted up a little bit and straight ahead.  That’s what you see.  You can’t get into your refrigerator because your halo gets in the way.  It’s only one example, but one of the reasons you shouldn’t stay alone when you have one.  My dad was wavering on retiring, but couldn’t say no to staying with me during the day while Rich worked.  During my five days in the hospital, it didn’t matter how early I woke up, my dad would be sitting, facing my bed dressed and ready for the day.  He tried not to look afraid, it was how he and I always handled things.  Act like it’s not there and then it isn’t so bad.

So we spent those six weeks together and it convinced him that he should retire.  It was the best thing that could have happened, because he was only retired for three years before his death.  He was diagnosed with B cell Lymphoma and only had a 30%  chance of survival at diagnosis.  He lived for five months and spent almost all of them in the hospital because he was so weak.  His cancer was primarily in his bone marrow and he was past the age for a transplant.  He never complained, we never talked about it.  It was how we dealt with things.

I had earned a trip from the bank that took place about a week after his first chemotherapy session.  The doctors said that normally if the chemo patient get any kind of problems, it’s about a week to ten days after chemo.  I immediately contacted my manager and told her I wouldn’t be going on the trip.  Everyone encouraged me to go.  So I took that week off and spent it with my dad in the hospital.  It’s what he would have done for me.  It’s what he did for me.  I never regretted that decision and treasured every moment I had with him.

You will never regret the time you give to the people you love, you will only regret the moments that you don’t.  My dad was terrific and I hope yours if too.  I hope you had the chance to spend time with him today and to wish him a Happy Father’s Day.

What’s your storage situation for acrylic stamps?  I really want to know.  I thought I would really like using three ring binders for my stamps, but have found that they are not convenient.  I hate pulling them out and storing them hasn’t been fun.  I put some on shelves and some in drawers. The ones on shelves have become too cumbersome and are difficult to pull out and use.  I have purchased some used stamp sets that have arrived in CD cases and I really like them.  I’m using those sets far more often than the ones in binders and can easily see the titles and know what types of stamps are inside.   I went to a garage sale this afternoon and they were giving away a huge crate of CD cases, and I thought, someone is prodding me to make a change.  At the same sale, they had a nice wooden case that will hold a lot of the cases for $2, I had to have it.  I came home and immediately pulled out one of the binders, my label maker, a pair of scissors and a screwdriver.  In less time than I thought, I have converted one binder to cases and am planning on doing one binder a day until I am done or run out of cases,  whichever comes first.

I decided to take a lot of my rubber stamps off their wood bases and although I like the space savings, I don’t like the binders and may consider changing those into CD cases as well.  Will they be too thick for the CD cases, I’m not sure.  But there has to be a better storage solution for them as well.  I need the best of all worlds.  Space savings yet conveniently located and easy to access.  I think I may be asking too much.

I love Lindsay the Frugal Crafter, and when she made a gift bag to commemorate National Pink Day, June 23rd, I had to make something as well. Pink will always signify breast cancer awareness for me as I’ve had friends with it as well as my mother-in-law. I made the box with Blushing Bride card stock from Stampin’ Up and cut the pieces into 8 1/4″ square for the top and 8 1/8″ square for the bottom. I scored each piece at 2″ on all four sides then cut little v’s on the four sides at the vertical score lines up to the horizontal score lines. I used Art Glitter Glue from Art Institute for my glue and glued the underneath of the outside flaps I created by making the cuts. I folded those inside and held them until the glue set. I cut paper 1/8″ smaller on the top and sides to line the bottom and outside of the box. I added embellishments and ribbon from my stash.

I’m still working on removing the clutter from my house.  I feel like we’re almost buried..hoarders maybe.  So tomorrow I’m having a garage sale.  I haven’t had one in years and it is long overdue.  It’s one of those things that I postpone for as long as possible because I absolutely hate the amount of work involved.  I usually price things so low that I don’t make very much money, but then the best part is anything that I don’t sell, I donate to our local family services center.  The beauty of the event is at the end of it, I literally don’t have one thing left to put away.  That’s the reason I have them.  The clutter will be gone.  I can’t even begin to say how happy I am that the day of preparation is over.  The actual garage sale is nothing compared to the work involved before the event.  One thing is for sure, I’ll sleep great tonight!

I really feel good about making videos that help viewers find the right product for them.  Since I made the video on watercolor pencils, it’s been bothering me that I have not made one on colored pencils.  I had stamped out some background paper with big flowers and it was perfect to practice coloring on.  I didn’t use any blending solutions and only used two colors to blend the pencils.  I covered five different brands of pencils, from Crayola to Prismacolor, and was happy with the results.  I hope it helps others to decide which brand they would like to buy.

I’m always glad when a plan falls together.

I was watching Lindsay (the Frugal Crafter) today, and she made a pink gift bag in honor of National Pink Day, which is June 23rd.  When I think pink, I think breast cancer awareness, so I needed to jump in and make a video as well.  I decided to make a little trinket box and embellish the top with some of my garage sale finds.  The box is small, about 4″ square. I accidentally made the top too big, (it was kind of late at night and I wasn’t really focused) so I had to make the bottom twice.  The box is pink (of course), and has a pink patterned paper on it as well as pink taffeta ribbon on the sides and bottom.  I was going to put the ribbon on top, but I got carried away with the embellishments, and there just wasn’t any room left for ribbon.  Well, not traditional ribbon.  So I pulled out my bow punch and made a cute little bow that took more time I swear, than the entire box to produce.  I had a heck of a time with glue dots and punching paper that looked good together.  The bow punch requires you to punch it twice to get both sides of the bow, so when you punch it the second time on patterned paper, you have to watch where you are punching to make sure the two sides look cohesive.  It only took three tries to get it right.  In the end, the little box looks adorable and I’m glad I took the pink theme and made it about something that really matters.

One of my girlfriends is getting married.  I think it’s so wonderful when women in my age group (over 50), find “the one.”  She met this man when they were kids and he always wanted to be a farmer and she wanted to get out and see the world.  She’s now at a place in her life where she is ready to be a farmer’s wife and is thrilled to be getting married.  She made her wedding theme denim and lace and how fitting for where she is in life.  They have been engaged for almost a year and hadn’t set a date.  She called me last week and said they decided to get married the end of July and gave me her theme.  I had never sent her an engagement card, so it was the perfect opportunity to get out my denim ribbon and some lace and make a card.  It worked well with the scrap and punch theme and came out kind of cute, I thought.  Originally, I planned on doing everything in a diagonal, but my scrap pieces weren’t long enough to make it that way, so I went with horizontal lines.  I’m not sure what I was thinking, because how would I have been able to make the ribbon work on a diagonal?  It’s lucky when a plan comes together in spite of me.

I bought so many fun and crafty things at garage sales that I thought I would share with you. If you have any different ideas for the things I bought, please comment on them. I hope you get some great ideas from them.

I made my garage sale haul video and I have to say, I was kind of surprised at how many things I have accumulated this garage sale season.  It’s always funny when I look at a box of things I’ve bought and have completely forgotten about many of the items within.  The area I live in has a lot of garage sales, but a great many of them are not crafty.  Ok, I’ve actually found stamps at two garage sales this year.  If they ever list “crafts” as an item, it is normally yarn or fabric, patterns or sewing notions.  I haven’t seen one page of scrapbook paper this year.  So when I accumulate as much as I have, it’s with a lot of intensive searching.

My friend and I went into a women’s boutique today and I found the most interesting clutches there.  They had embellished the clutch with all kinds of beads and trinkets.  I started thinking about how easy it would be to recreate one and think I will go back and really look at them again so that I could possibly make one.  It’s definitely on my to do list.

Times passes fast when it’s in the summer.  Have you ever noticed that the month of June goes by in the blink of an eye, but the month of January seemingly lasts forever?  Such is the nature of the way I am viewing life.  I really love spring and summer, and this might sound odd, but I really like a rainy day.  Too much of any one type of weather is  to monotonous for me, so I like a little diversity.  I like a day that allows me to do projects I’ve been postponing because there’s not much else to do when it rains all day.  I also like what I call a “hot chocolate” day, one where it’s cold and drizzling rain or snow and a nice hot drink just makes me feel happy.  The big monotony that I really struggle with, is the very long winters that we have.  Our winters start snowing in November, and this is no lie, it snowed in May this year.  We would really like to spend our winters in the south but with dogs who are terrified of the car, it makes it tough to do long road trips.  I’d like to find a solution that would get us to say Myrtle Beach in a rented Winnebago and then have a rental car for the months that we are there.  I can’t figure out the logistics of this, but I know that riding in a car with big dogs is really not fun.  Riding in a car for six or eight hours with a dog that’s been medicated for anxiety, is less than fun.  It’s a quandary that I need to solve in the next couple of years to save my sanity.  Winters that last seven months are too much for me.  I envy people who love the snow and wish I was one of them.  My parents hated winter as they got older and when I was a kid, I couldn’t understand why.  I definitely understand now.

On a lighter and more exciting note, I made a couple of videos and one should go live tomorrow.  I did the garage sale haul and it’s kind of funny how much craftiness I accumulated in the last month or so.  The other is the 8th in the series of scrap and punch cards.  It’s a cute one.