Big Ideas ? ? ?

I am an idea person!  I think I get that from my Daddy - he was always coming up with some big new idea and many times they never came to fruition.  (Like Father Like Daughter!)  But I also got a huge dose of resourcefulness from my Mama, so that's cool, too.  Put the two together - Ideas+ Resourcefulness = ???

My artistic side is always coming up with some great idea, which is super cool - right?  But do you know how many of those great ideas are either trashed by now, or are stuck in a drawer somewhere waiting for the inspiration to come and tell me how to finish it???  Yeah - lots - tons maybe!  But that's okay!  I try to learn from these situations and move on.  But still . . .

So when SarahKaye, the team leader over at Unscripted Sketches (I did tell you I made the Design Team, right?  Yeah, I thought so!), encouraged us to make projects based on the sketches OTHER THAN cards, well my mind went to racing!  I mean, cards are my comfort zone, but I also like doing other things, and I came up with the idea of making a fabric wall hanging based on one of the sketches.  Cool, right?  Hmmm, we'll see!

Anyway, we get the sketches a few weeks in advance, in fact we have all the sketches through October, so we can work on them and have them submitted in plenty of time.  In case you haven't seen one, you can see the sketch and all the DT's cards HERE.

So anyway, SarahKaye was encouraging us to do something OTHER THAN cards based on the sketches and I said "Oh yeah, I can make a wall hanging!" and SarahKaye said "Fantastic".  Duh!  So here I am trying to make a wall hanging based on one of the upcoming sketches, searching for ideas. 

Months ago I bought some of the Avery Printable Fabric for ink jet printers, and ever since it came I have TRIED to get something to print on them, to no avail.  Yesterday, just on a whim, I decided to try again, and do you believe it?  It worked!  So I printed out a pretty bird, a lovely butterfly, a pretty background fabric, and a verse of my very own.  And it worked!  Why, after all these months?  Whatever - it worked and I'm so happy!

So now I've got a theme, and a verse and a sketch (I picked the one for 10/16 when we are celebrating Breast Cancer Awareness Month) and no excuses for not making it work!  We shall see how it all comes out!

I'm thinking I will lightly stuff the bird and butterfly, with a stitch here and there for dimension, and then embellish it with buttons and beads and ribbons and such.  Tell me what you think, please!

And then there was the OTHER big idea!  And I didn't have this one alone - oh no!  Hubby and I share the goodness of this idea!  You see, we have had a canoe for about 5 years.  It - we thought - was "our" mid life crisis little red convertible that we bought in our 53'd year.  And we love it - truly we do!  But the logistics of getting it from point A to point B and back to point A again is just such a chore, that we haven't used it as much as we would have liked.

For a couple of years now we have been talking round and round about getting kayaks.  One for each of us so we would be independent, and have equal opportunities for views and taking the lead.  We have looked at hard shell kayaks, and all this time Hubby has been talking about inflatable kayaks, but the only ones I had seen were thin plastic - kind of like a kid's raft, and that didn't work for me.  

Last week while we were on vacation, we made a run up to Murphy, NC so that I could visit a quilting store and a stamping/scrapping store, and while I was in the quilting store, hubby was next door in an outfitters store, talking to the guy who worked there about inflatable kayaks.  They had some on display that I had a chance to look at, and they ARE cool!  And the guy said he preferred the inflatables to the hard shell kayaks.

So, I got online and we found what appeared to be a pretty good deal, and we ordered one of these . . . 

   

 . . . for each of us!  They deflate to fit in the bag you see in the picture, they come with seats, a pump and paddles, and they weigh only 26 pounds!  Very do-able for me to carry mine on my own with no help.  We already have the PFD's (personal flotation device - or life vest) so we are ready to roll, or float!

They are due to arrive TODAY, and if they get here by 2:00 pm, Hubby will leave work early and we are taking them over to Lake Lanier (10 miles from here) and give them a christening ride!    And we are planning on taking them out to two different lakes this weekend - on Saturday after Hubby works for a few hours, and on Sunday after we make our first visit to a church in the area.

If, and that's a big IF, these things turn out to be all we think they are and that we want them to be, there will be no more excuses for not getting out on the water more often!  And I am super excited!  As I told some of my friends on Facebook (who strongly encouraged me to be careful) I may be old, but I'm not dead YET!  When I was younger, I would never have thought of doing this, but now - it's a no brainer!  It's fun, great upper body exercise, and healthy for body and soul!

So, tell me what you think!  About both of my big ideas!  And I will definitely keep you posted on both of them!  Blessings folks, Becky

~

A Tale of Two People . . .

There was once a young woman of 32 years who was lonely and needed a special someone in her life. She went to a special place, filled out lots of forms, handed over more money than she could afford to a place that promised to introduce her to suitable young men.

Over the next few months the young woman met several very nice young fellows, but no one was 'the one'. There was one young man who didn't call for a long time, but one day he decided to give it a shot and called the young woman. They made a date for the following Sunday. Due to circumstances beyond the young woman's control, she had to postpone the date to the following Thursday. April 11, 1984. That was the day when she would meet the young man who turned out to be 'the one'.

Within weeks the young man had professed his love for the young woman, and not long after she professed her love for the young man. They had a wonderful time together, and on December 30th, 1984 the young man asked the young woman to be his wife. On July 20th, 1985 the young couple was married at the church the young woman had attended since childhood, surrounded by family and friends.

(Photo taken around 1988)

Being married in July, differences in cold sensitivity didn't matter, but come winter's cold weather things began to get a little sticky. The young man was very hot natured and the young woman was cold natured. The man didn't care for a lot of covers, but the woman liked a LOT of nice snuggly blankets. A struggle ensued. Eventually the young woman bought a heating pad for her cold natured feet, and things got better. Marriage, after all, IS about give and take.

Years later, the woman heard of a new product on the market called a 'bed buddy', and she rushed out to find - and buy - one at her earliest convenience. Now here was something useful! A sock-like tube filled with rice that you could heat in the microwave and use in the bed for stiff muscles or . . . cold feet! This was heaven! And no more forgetting to turn off the heating pad!

Eventually the purchased bed buddy wore out, so the woman decided she could make her own, and took a cotton tube sock, filled it with rice and tied a knot in the end. It worked great! And each fall the woman would make a new one for the coming winter. No more cold feet - ever!

Years later, the young woman decided she could make a 'pretty' bed buddy, and worked on perfecting her own version, which she called a 'Foot Warmer'. Here is a picture of the one she has made for this winter . . .




It is about 5 1/2 inches by 11 inches and is made of vintage (1960's - 70's) cotton flannel, lined with vintage cotton sheeting. One end is sewn on the outside so that when necessary the stitches can be taken out, the old rice thrown away, the bag washed and dried, new rice put inside, sewn back together and used many more times.

And since the now, not so young woman liked hers so much, she has decided to put one almost just like it in her Etsy shop so that someone else can discover the joy of no longer having cold feet!

Blessings folks! Becky

What I've Been Doing . . .

The last week has been really nice for me. I've told you all about the last year or so, taking care of my dad and then how hard his last weeks were, and then after his services I got sick and was sick for a week, and then sick or not I had to get things ready for our camping trip. But now we are home, and this last week has been so very nice!

I got to cook real meals again (which hubby TRULY appreciates) and catch up with the laundry, but I also started working on my office/craft room, trying to get it re-organized so I can actually accomplish something - MAKE something - in here! I've been doing what I call S-O-S-T: Sorting, Organizing, Storing and Tossing. And it feels good to be changing things up a bit, and making things easier to find. But, before I start, I have a confession to make.

YES, I am one of those people!

I am one of those people who, before she throws something away thinks "can I do something with this?". And I am proud to be one of those people. Mainly because, folks, there isn't a lot of extra money laying around here for me to go buy cute boxes and bins and pretty matchy-matchy stuff to make everything pretty enough to go in a magazine! When I say I'm reorganizing, that's exactly what I'm doing - RE-ORGANIZING! Moving things from place to place and then labeling so I'll know where everything is.

Times are hard. I'm not working now, and hubby has taken a cut in pay because of our tanked economy, so I can't go out and spend money on something we can't afford. And if I was working now, most likely I still wouldn't be buying cutesy things for my supplies. I would be buying groceries and paper products, laundry and cleaning supplies, and maybe a bunch of flowers for the table from time to time, or even a nice New York Strip for the grill.

So, with that said, I've been re-purposing a few items for storing supplies. Now, most of these will be hidden in the closet, but they will be stored nicely and safely away. Here's the first of my recent re-purposing projects:



It is the caps from the large wholesale club sized detergent bottles. I save them up above the washer/dryer and when I got enough, I made a nice little sorter. There is one of the older, larger ones in center, and then 7 of the newer 'ultra' sized caps around it. They are glued and then held together to dry with clothespins. This will go on my work table and hold small things like beads, buttons, pins, etc. I'll show you pics of it in use later, as work progresses in the room.

The second and third re-purposing projects were easy, especally the oatmeal box! I just cleaned it out, labeled it and filled it with re-purposed juice and soft drink lids to use in making pin-cushions. It is now in top of the closet, ready for me to grab in an instant when I need them.

The bucket is just what I needed to keep a bit of poly-fill close at hand! It's a 7.8 pound bucket that held the 'oxy' cleaning powders that I use in laundry. I washed it well, dried it, and cut a hold in top large enough for my hand to fit inside. The lid is tight, so it won't come off easily if I grab a large handfull of filler. And it will set on my work table at the ready. I will probably eventually cover it or spray paint it, but for now, it works great!

I've also been moving things around. I have a fair amount of fabric - a large part of it vintage (1950's) chicken feed sack and other vintage (1960's and 70's) fabric. There is also a good bit of small amounts of fabrics I've gotten at the fabric store's remnant bins - oh, how I love those remnants! Anyway, I had the fabric in plastic drawers, and never could find what I wanted, so I cleaned out one of the shelves on my bookcase and stacked the fabric there. Now I can find everything quickly, and I love the way it looks!

And I had a big box of teeny bits of fabrc I couldn't bear to throw away, so the other day when I took Mama to run her errands, I took the bits and a basket and went through them all piece by piece. If it was big enough to make a yo-yo, I kept it, but if not, it went into the garbage. Now here is my basket of small bits, nicely folded and ready for projects.

Ribbon. I LOVE ribbon - am probably addicted to it, but storing it is a booger bear of a problem! Most of the smaller widths of ribbon came on small rolls, but the larger widths came in bundles from a store at a local antique market. So a while back I bought a bunch of clothes pins at the dollar store and started winding the ribbon onto them. But even then finding a place to store them so I can SEE them was a problem. But yesterday I found a solution! I cut cardboard to fit the bottoms of these wire baskets. Covered them with fabric bits, and stacked the pins of ribbon inside. I love the look of it, and I also LOVE that I can see them easily. What do you think???

Here's a better close-up view of the bottom basket >>>

You can see everything, and it's so pretty! This will also go on my work table if (when) I get it cleaned off and re-organized. I still have about 20-30 pieces to wind onto the pins, so guess what I'll be doing at night when watching TV???

So, that's what I've been doing! I've promised hubby a special dinner tonight, so I'm off to the kitchen to get things straightened up and make some crepes for our dessert. I only make this dinner on RARE occasions, but tonight it's Chicken in a Tarragon Cream Sauce, Steamed Rice, Roasted Carrots and Caramel Apple Crepes with real Whipped Cream. Hubby deserves this special meal, though, because he's been so sweet and patient with me this last couple of months.

Okay, now it's your turn. What are you up to these days???