Bird Book pages and Cover

These are my pages for a recent Bird Book collaboration. Each member had to make two 6x6 pages with art on both sides. After all the pages came in we made our own covers.

Jan's Chunky book pages

Kay, Martha and Beth, some internet friends from Project Pedros encouraged me to start this chunky book made with scraps leftover on my art table at the end of the day. I was hesitant to take on another project, but this is one is without a deadline, without pressure and it has become a real source of relaxation for me.

Because I work in decos I'm always pulling out pictures and ephemera for up to 5 different themes in one day. I'm always up for a challenge and my table ALWAYS has bits and pieces of interesting ephemera all over it, so why not? Everything in this book was found at an arms reach...across the table or on the floor!

This February 15th 2011 entry not finished

Remains of the Day little journal

This little Remains of the Day style Journal measures 4.5"x 5.5" and closes with a wrap around tie. I took an online class from Mary Ann Moss called Remains of the Day. She teaches how to make pages with pockets and places to tuck in pictures or collected ephemera and also has plenty of places to journal.

I've made a couple 8x5" size books and then tried this smaller size to use up some great little scraps of fabric I had on hand.

A dose of cortisone

I'm a night person, I work the evening shift so I can sleep in, but this morning I got up early, drove 15 miles to see the orthopedic surgeon to get a cortisone shot in my finger. I made the appointment early knowing I would be taking two days off work, and I wanted to get a head start on healing.

When I arrived I was told the appointment was made for their other location which is seven miles from my house, but was 20 miles from where I was. I had to stop and fill up with gas before I got home.'

I digress. There was a student doctor in the office today. I shot up a quick prayer that he was only there to observe, and I would be cared for by someone with experience. The joint in my finger is pretty small. I actually did quite well for the five minutes he had the needle moving around in the joint squirting in a rather large quantity of cortisone liquid.

Everyone commented on how well I was doing. Right before he removed the needle he hit a nerve and I nearly flew off the table. The nurse said I looked like the Grinch,an interesting color of green. I had worked up a good pass-out type sweat, lost the color in my face and managed to get my blood pressure to rise all at the same time.

When I was coherent again he told me my finger would be stiff for a day or so. What he didn't say was that the entire hand would feel the effects of the medicine. All my fingers resemble the tight skin of a nine month pregnant mother. Does the word cankle ring a bell?

I treated myself to KFC for lunch, hit up a couple thrift shops on the way home and settled on the couch for a long well deserved nap with the remote nearby.

I'm hoping for a less painful morning. My art room is calling my name - there is so much to do at home. I hate to look at it and not feel up to it. Well, I'll give it another 7 or 8 hours to heal up. Perhaps a miracle will happen during the night.

A new word in my vocabulary

I had hurt my right hand ring finger at work about May 11. It swelled up and I iced it and tried to be careful how I used it. It did not occur to me that something was really wrong. While I was in Oklahoma using my hand became more and more painful. It seemed everywhere I turned I was bumping it on something.

The day after I got back I headed over to see Dr. Mike and get my hand x-rayed. Of course this is what I heard: "I'm not surprised this happened to you. It is very rare that it would happen to this finger. You pulled two ligaments in your finger so hard that a bone by your knuckle has been chipped off. It's called an avulsion fracture and you also have another hairline fracture as well".

I'm the one in the family that usually gets the rare or unusual medical thing, like last year I had the MRSA infection under my arm, a spider bite that made my leg look like it needed amputation, and poison ivy around my eye... I knew I was on the list again for something unusual.

Then I was sent to the orthopedic surgeon who said, "we will buddy tape your ring finger to tall man. You can lift up to 10 pounds at work. When it heals up it your knuckle will probably be enlarged and the rest of your finger will still be swollen for up to a year". WooHoo! Now that's super news. When I went in for my 3 week check up nothing was healed up, so I'll be buddy taping for another month. There's good news though! I've added some new skills to my resume...I can now work quite efficiently with just one hand, can write legibly without flexing two stiff fingers and can identify an avulsion fracture on an x-ray.

Meeting myself coming and going

Last month in May I flew to Oklahoma to see Jessie, Dan and Gracie. They bought a big 5 bedroom house before Christmas and we hadn't been able to get away to go ga-ga over it.

Ron's business has been picking up so he suggested I buy a ticket and go alone. I was more than happy to do so as after riding in a car for about one hour I'm pretty miserable, and Oklahoma is a nine hour car drive from here.

We spent the whole 4 days either shopping for scrapbook/stamping items or making things, or making things while we watched movies. We only went out for meals which I refused to have her cook. We ate steak, mexican, wonderful BBQ pork sandwiches, specialty pizza, specialty yogurt, and super big cookies. I can't remember the names of any of these places but they would all be on my list of places to try again next time I'm there.

We found great bargains at the Market Basket - a clearance type store for Hobby Lobby. WooHoo, glad to have brought a nearly empty suitcase with me cause I filled that baby to the gills to get it home.

Gracie, our 5yr old granddaughter gets up at 6am. I crafted with her early every day until she went to afternoon kindergarten - a couple of mornings I think we crafted while my eyes were nearly sealed shut from lack of sleep, or should I say from our over stimulated card making extravaganza that lasted well into the morning hours.

When I got back from Jessie's I went straight to the dr's office to have my ring finger x-rayed. Sure enough it was fractured - of course it wasn't simple. I never do simple.

Putting up the Christmas Tree

Yes, it's that time again. You'd think with 11 months notice I could be farther along. For years we put up our tree on the weekend of my birthday (the 9th), but after all these years I realized that I was cheating myself of time to have a little more fun eating birthday cake and shopping. So this year we started on Thanksgiving weekend.

We STILL have this old tree from my mother in law, and I REALLY don't like it. The tree I want costs nearly $500 so until it is on sale 90% off, I will be using this one. First Ron puts up the bare bones of the tree:


Then we go outside and trim the blue spruce in the back yard and bring in a pile of branches which I tuck in the ugly old tree to give it some Christmas smell and liveliness.







After that the lights and multiple garlands go on. This year's theme is red and white. All the ornaments are, duh, red and white, and the ribbon garland is candy cane striped. Then there's a wire garland that's wild and shiny and it's topped off by my 40 year old red ring garland made from throw away rings I picked up at Ralston Purina when I was working there in the shipping division.

Next comes the ornaments. This year Zach, age 6 and Zoey, alias Bat Girl, age 3, are my helpers. Zach seemed overly concerned about glass ornaments breaking. I assured him that as long as he wasn't throwing them around, that sometimes they do break but it's okay. Guess who broke an ornament? Yea, me!





It's nearly finished. Ron brings in the train and houses and then it's time to plug it in and step back to adjust branches and perhaps a few ornaments! The only thing we forgot to do this year is turn on the music to The Nutcracker. I don't know how I missed that one important tradition we've been doing for years and years.



The last thing that gets done here before putting the extras away is to hang a wreath from the light fixture over the table. All the ornaments on it are ones I managed to save from my childhood. This is my favorite decoration in the whole house.