Back to the real world.....

For the past week I've been on vacation. I took a week off to catch up on some things I needed to do around the house. To relax. To do yard work. Mainly, though I wanted to get ready for fall craft shows prior to when I normally get ready for them---which is about two weeks before I need to have things ready :-)

I started the week with some pretty grandiose ideas as to what I was going to accomplish. I envisioned a few dedicated hours in the morning to working on crafts and then having the rest of the day to play. Ha. It quickly became apparent that I was going to need to put in more than a "few" dedicated hours.

In the end I'd say what I got done was a good start. Here are some pics of how my week was spent.





I really wish I had taken a before pic because this area was a mess. I planted a few flowers, and put down the black paper that is supposed to prevent weeds, and then mulched. As much fun as that sounds....it isn't :-). It is fun for about 30 minutes and then it becomes obnoxious. The bags are heavy. The paper doesn't stay down. Bugs fly into your mouth. As you can see there is a very distinct stripe down one section. I learned that red mulch is not universal. What Ace considers to be red is not the same as what Wal-Mart considers to be red.



These are little rabbit shaped ice packs for kids. Unlike real rabbits, these bad boys do not multiply by any other method than my two hands. I made about 50 of these.




These started out as clear ornaments and paint gets squirted in and then swirled around, and then turned over and over and over so the paint doesn't settle in one corner. This project was a low point for the week. I finished about 50 of them and this was all that worked. My paint was too thick to make it work and rather than wait until I got more paint I insisted I was going to salvage the paint. Bad call.






Scrabble tile pendants. The name is self explanatory. Little tiles from abandoned scrabble games with a small image glued on and then a tiny little bail to hang it off a chain. There are a billion little picky steps on these things. The pendant is sanded. The image is glued on. The glued image is trimmed (if needed). The image is then decoupaged with Mod-Podge. Then the decoupaged image has diamond glaze spread over it. Once dry, a bail is glued on the back. I made over 200 of these.




Little, fluffy hair bows. They remind me of a microscopic version of the hair bow atrocities we used to do ourselves in the 80's. I can remember when the bow couldn't be BIG enough. I still have some vintage 80's hair accessories. They make their way out every once in a while for Halloween. Sigh. Those were the good old days....the BIG 80's. I made about 50 of them. (the little girl version, not the big 80's version) (And yes, Jami there are some white ones making their way to Kate....)




These took f-o-r-e-v-e-r. I painted 50 pieces, but couldn't get all 50 in one pic, so I just grabbed a sampling.




Crocheted necklaces. These consist of 8 strands of ladder yarn cut to various lengths--around 2 yards. The center portion of each strand is crocheted and the ends are left uncrocheted. A couple carefully placed knots and voila, you've got yourself a necklace. I made about 100 of them.






When I needed a break from "work" I spent time on Kate's Barbie house that she will supposedly get for Christmas at some point. The goal now is to complete it before she is past the age of Barbie. She's 6 and more into dolls than Barbies at this point. Realistically I think this will be done by the time she is 18 or so. The house is made completely of plastic canvas and yarn. Plastic canvas is very very low on my usual list of medium to work with. When I started this project I didn't have so much as a scrap of the stuff in my house. Most of my obsession with crafts is that I am unbelievably fascinated with the idea of creating something out of nothing. Gets me every time. A ball of yarn and two needles and suddenly you have a sweater? I'm hooked. A plain piece of linen fabric, a chart and some colored thread and you end up with a picture? Sign me up. Some plastic canvas, yarn, 3 million hours and you get a Barbie house? I was a goner when I stumbled across the instruction book. I can't say I enjoy working with plastic canvas, nor do I ever see myself making anything with plastic canvas after this project is over. I'm now working on the entry way and each time something becomes recognizable I get the same stupid grin on my face. "Oh my goodness---it was a flat piece of plastic canvas and now it is a little set of stairs". "Wow. A door! And just before this it was.....plastic canvas." The thing is going to be huge. There is a second floor, and then a roof that goes over this level. My plan is to finish the first floor for Christmas this year, and then hope that Kate will be as fascinated by it as I am. And that she offers to help with the second level. We'll see.

There are other things that happened this week that you can't capture with a picture. A lot of organizing and cleaning. Sleep. Relaxing. A week without an alarm clock. My roommate (who is very quiet and very reserved) bursting in the living room Saturday night loudly announcing there were two bats flying around in my garage. (Great I thought. What the heck do you do with bats.) I asked her if it was a bird. She assured me they weren't bird because birds do not get to where they are going and then crawl into a hole. Nope, they don't. She wanted to march me out to the garage to show them to me. In this instance I didn't need to see to believe. We went to the door and cracked it open. Couldn't see a thing. She was quite content to fully open the door and step into the garage to show me where they crawled into. I was quite content to have her stay in the house and point to the area where they hid. If they got into the room I knew the only course of action would be to run screaming from the room. Slam the door shut, and then never used that room again.

All in all it was a good week. It went way too fast. As today drew to a close I was tempted to wish that I had a second week off, but I didn't. The last time I was on vacation (in Omaha) and I wished for just a few more days in Omaha my wish came true. Unfortunately it was in the form of the flu being visited on 90% of the humans in the house. Not this time. I'll just appreciate the time for what it was and look forward to doing it again next year!