greetings and salutations and stuff and nonsense

Dear friends, 

I hope this finds you all well and happy and enjoying life!

I’ve been wanting to write a blog post for quite some time but the words just wouldn't come. So much has happened and at the same time, so very little has happened. I decided to just write what comes ... 

My husband and I both hit the 65 year marker in the last year. What?! How the yoohah did that happen?! Here we are immersed and overwhelmed in the world of Social Security, Medicare and Supplemental Insurance plans. Both now creaky, achey chronic pain sufferers, medication takers and Physical Therapy attendees. So much for the golden years huh, LOL. 

 

Yesterday was the one year anniversary of my husbands mom’s passing. We had lost my husbands dad, about eight months before his mom. Somehow we’ve made it through these hardest of days of grief where one can barely breathe or take a step. Still we limp along, listing from one side to the other, hearts broken, all our parents gone now.

And the hubby retired last June and holy cow! What an adjustment that is. But also very grateful it arrived at the perfect time for my husband to take his time and go slow and grieve.

No lifelong dreams fulfilled or trips to far away exotic places to talk about, just the basics, the very stuff of life.

Books aplenty read, movies watched, chocolate enjoyed, dog cuddling round the clock. Sold our very old cars and now proud owners of two all electric cars. Current obsession = family genealogy.

Heart opening, big joy drops in from time to time. My oldest niece had her second little boy in December and her first will be four in June.

Time moves forward my friends at a gallop. What have you been up to?

Sally

and then there were twelve

yippie! Sampler number twelve has arrived. So very nice when everything works out and promises are fulfilled and things come to completion. 

Thanks again dear ladies of the Sampler Swap, I enjoyed this swap so very much. Wishing you all the best and lots of crafty good times! 

Happy Holidays

Like clockwork, you can always bet on our getting smacked down by the cold and flu bugs of December and this year was no exception. sniffle sniffle achoo. But we still managed to get some holiday fun in ... the Swedish Christmas Fair, my girlfriends ceramics studio Holiday Open House (got lots of pretties!), a Medieval Christmas concert at the wonderful Bradbury Building in DTLA, a holiday improv show "1966 Holiday Variety Extravaganza", and our dear friends annual Christmas party. We were chugging along and then I had to have dental work this week and well, not much celebrating has happened since. pain. ouch. WAH.

Hoping you're all having a wonderful holiday season, avoiding the holiday bugs and trips to the dentist! Wishing you all good things, abundant good health and much happiness in 2017!

Happy Pie Day!

What moistens the lip and brightens the eye?
What calls back the past like the rich pumpkin pie?

~John Greenleaf Whittier
 

I know! Long time no peep from this corner of the blogosphere! Life continues to be quite the roller coaster ride --- MIL had a stroke in mid October and is now living in an assisted living home.

Hoping things have been much less chaotic at your end! 

Wishing you and all those dear to you, a very Happy Thanksgiving, filled with love and lots of pie!

time to say goodbye ... again

Well gosh.  It's been a really rotten time around here. Two more losses. Two more passages on the road of life. First we lost our dearest family friend Betty in July. (pictured in the bottom photo, on the left) and then my Aunt Emily passed away in the first week of August. (in the top picture and also on the right, in the photo with Betty) And of course sandwiched in between them, was the loss of our doggy Missy. 

Three losses over three weeks. WAH! sob sob sniffle. They come quickly (and not singularly anymore) when one reaches a certain age, don't they?!  I feel them as body blows, as if I have had the air knocked out of me and I struggle to breathe.

Betty came into my families life in approximately 1974. She taught crafts classes to children and adults and my mom took a dollhouse furniture making class from her. Either the first or second class, they became friends for life. Kindred spirits. Betty was the epitome of what a friend is supposed to be; kind, caring, smart, funny, loyal and true blue, always there when you need her. She would quickly become all of our friends and later would help my father and I make it through the years that followed my mom's death in 1996.

My Aunt Emily was quite a character and leaves a gigantic imprint. She was always the brightest light in any room. She was smart and funny and she spoke her mind. She was always dear and kind to me, trying to draw this shy introvert out of her shell. After my mother passed away, my father would gather the family together for holidays and Aunt Emily would always entertain us with stories. After my father passed away in 2011, we all lost our way for awhile, his absence was so big and our grief so large. Eventually we would see Aunt Emily and her family again on some holidays. We were able to see her this April, she seemed excited to see us but I don't think she really knew who we were. Such a heartbreak that dementia would take her away from us.

Please remember to cherish all those dear to you and don't let the days slip away from you.

heartbroken

We had to say goodbye to our beloved Missy yesterday. Her health was up and down all this year but each time previously, a new prescription or a new dosage or a diet change had seemingly done its work and she would be perky again.  So we weren't very worried when she seemed not quite right a couple of days ago and took her to the vet on Wednesday.  How quickly our world turned upside down.  Less than 24 hours later, we heard the words "cancerous cyst on her adrenal gland", "spread to her kidney and spleen and her body wall", "no hopeful outcome".

She was the gentlest sweetest quietest dog I've ever had. She never made a sound, she only barked two times in the nearly four years since we adopted her and her companion, Shadow.

She brought us so much joy. 

I hope you will consider adopting senior dogs, possibly the best choice I ever made.

knock knock! who's there?

I'm silly - I enjoy looking at my blog stats. These are today's so far ... although I don't understand why they don't match up???

So far today I have 738 page views (yesterday I had 892) ... WOW ... and 628 of my page views today are from Russia ... WOW again. Wonder why I have almost FIVE times as many viewers looking in from Russia, as I do from America, and what are they looking at on my little blog???  

Waving hello hello ... I can see your footprints and you've also left a trail of crumbs teehee. What long ago post of mine brings you here to my now, very quiet blog? And how did you find me - GOOGLE or Pinterest or?? 

The most fun is seeing what your all time favorite post is, the Rednesday one with the vintage felt Christmas ornaments (from Redbook, I think it was) ... and the rest of your top favorites too. The list is mostly made up of posts I did sharing links to holiday craft tutorials I found around the internet and the rest I believe are of posts I did for linky parties. I'm surprised that another couple aren't included, two that I also receive inquiring emails about them (like I do the vintage xmas ornaments) ... the one with my grandma and her sister under a famous sign and the one where I shared an ancestors botanical drawings. 

LOL. Sorry for this very random post and a very un-artsy craftsy one too! I've kind of run out of steam and things to talk about here and thinking about turning off the light in here some day. Glad there are some oldies you enjoy. Happy browsing!

happy 4th of july

Happy 4th of July to you dear bloggy friends! Hope you're enjoying the long holiday weekend. No big plans over here, eating out at a couple of our favorite spots and lots of R&R.

This is a charming free chart that darling Lori Brechlin, of Notforgotten Farm, shared on her blog in May for Memorial Day. And I haven't gotten any further since then ... ay yi yi. If you're (super duper) speedy, you could sew it up today for 4th of July!

 

Thanks so much for continuing to stop by this quiet corner of blogland, so very very sweet of you!

Wishing you a fun 4th and all good things!

happy 1st birthday to you!

merrily we roll along

do you look at your blog stats? I sometimes do ... and this morning I did. I usually have a couple hundred views each day. But yesterday on this sad neglected blog, on a Saturday, I had 948 page views! WOW! I don't know how many were real flesh and blood people and how many were "bots" but good heavens! Probably four real people and 944 robots bwahahhahaha. Truly, thank you for still looking in here ... 

still no word of reply from my swap partner ... I have begun to wonder if I am invisible ...

c'est la vie. tra la tra la.

in other startling news ... I've started Pilates. I finished my PT for my scoliosis and my spine specialist recommended I follow it with Pilates. It's akin to torture, in case you didn't know LOL. PSA: do not wait until you're in your sixties to exercise and take care of yourself. no sirree!

with all this falling apart and nursing my back, I've returned to working on my family tree again and I'm reading more and watching way too much election coverage. I keep hoping my crafty mojo will return but between a creaky crackly back and the disappointment of the swap, I haven't been able to muster any enthusiasm or inspiration. WAH! 

I can be found (infrequently posting) on Instagram. Love the freedom of it, post a pic, write a line, done. So many bloggers I thought had disappeared are there, posting great stuff. Dive in, the waters fine! 

Happy trails to you until we meet again here, dear Bots and Humans! xoxo

open letter to my Swap Partner who has gone *poof*

Dear swap partner o'mine ... yoohoo ... yodel-lady-who ... have you been waylaid by a band of hooligans, or fallen off the planet?

Perhaps you've had a bout of amnesia and forgotten me?

It's been four months since I've heard from you.

I wrote you again, it's been one month ago now and still no word of reply from you.

This makes me so sad and confused.  I have waited patiently. I don't understand. At all.

Do you know I can see you on Facebook and Etsy? 

From what you told me in January, I was worrying about you - so I'm glad to see that you are doing fine ... so how about sending me an email and letting me know what's up?

missing you

I miss you guys! Hope all is well with you. I'm just hanging out over here, being a couch potato for the most part. Getting very little done these days, my back hurts all day, every day. OUCH. Physical Therapy has not helped - and possibly made it worse (I have curvature issues) ARGH - my PT is having me take two weeks off and then we'll review. My spine doctor has begun to mutter the possibility of surgery to me. No no no! WAH. 

March 10th was five years since my Dad passed away. Grief and loss are such strange and somewhat indescribable things. I feel as though I've been walking through a fog ... slowly, feeling my way, waiting for the mist to clear. The sun breaks through more often now but there will always be an ache and a longing. 

My cousin emailed me this week that she and her sister were going to have a hospice evaluation for their mom this week. I just wept, reading her email. Aunt Emily is the last of our parents, the last who will love us unconditionally and the last keeper of our collective family memories. We are a small family and a family that was never close. I have struggled since my dad passed away, to make connections where there were none.

(my mom, gone nearly 20 years now, is in the middle of the photo and my aunt Emily is the one on the right end)

My brother has been gone more than 20 years now. We feel his presence in his daughters and now his grandson, who bears a bit of a resemblance to him and that warms our hearts and lifts our spirits. We are all connected, part of a continuum.

This week I had an overwhelming sense that I should google a friend of mine who I hadn't heard from the past few years. Linda and I had been friends in the early 80's. We had met at a needlework store we both frequented (a lot!) and became friends, bonding when both of our marriages were falling apart and ending. Our lives would no longer intersect after a few years but we would sometimes speak on the phone and then later send news in Christmas cards. 

Yes, I did google and I found online that her (next) husband (of 25 years) had passed away in late 2014, from an inoperable prostate cancer that spread.

I had worried I had offended her somehow or that she no longer liked me but as is more-often-than -not the case, her silence had nothing to do with me, at all. 

Knowing her, I know she dug in with everything she had, to love and attend to her husband, every moment of every day. They had always been as though they were one, one heart one mind one being. Theirs lives were each other and rarely extended beyond the two of them.

Good gosh, I've probably depressed three quarters of you reading this (if anyone still is!!!) LOL! Sorry! Just a lot of emotional events for me in the space of a few days and I had the need to blabber on ... and on ... and on ...

Now would be a great time to give all those you love a hug and a squeeze! Just sayin'.

And on a much lighter topic ... I'm mulling over a crafty project! Been a long time ... 

Much love to you my bloggy friends, take care, be well!

seasons greetings

(Charles Phoenix and his Redi-Whip filled, volcano-like exploding Christmas Cake)

As this blog prepares to retire for a long winters snooze, I am wishing you a lovely holiday season and much joy in 2016! 

We've hit a new height in holiday procrastination this year - the feather tree has not even made an appearance yet. Indeed, all that has been completed is the most important thing, the wrapping of FIRST CHRISTMAS gifts for my little grand nephew. Oh and the buying of Amaryllis (since I can never manage to remember to buy bulbs in time to grow my own!), they remind me of my mom, who loved them so dearly - a must have for Christmastime.

Knock on wood, thus far we've had a healthy holiday season and been able to go see Charles Phoenix's holiday retro slide show again and go to the Swedish Christmas Fair --- next up is a stage production of A Christmas Carol, can't wait!

I am very much enjoying "blogging without obligation" and radically decreasing my online presence. Having spent many (many!) years in front of a screen, watching my rumpus grow and ankles swell, manically trying to keep up with a gazillion blogs for the latest creative wonderfulness, it is a HUGE relief to let it all go.

No more stressing over posting, or following, or commenting or responding or emailing. Zero obligation + zero guilt = sheer joy! I'm doing it My Way, like Frankie Sinatra.

Happy Hannukuh, Happy winter solstice, Happy Festivus, Happy Yule, Merry Christmas, Happy Kwaanza, etc. everyone!

Take care and be well!

a swap for all seasons no. eleven - what I received from my partner

[sigh] ... so near the end of this fabulous swap now ... This is my eleventh sampler I've received in A Swap For All Seasons.

 

My partner this month was Bev, of Country Frog Creations. Love it so much Bev, so very charming. I adore blue and I love the snow theme and all the little snowflakes and snowmen! 

Thank you so very much Bev, it was a pleasure to meet you and be in your partner.

Happy December and Happy Holidays!

a swap for all seasons no. twelve - what I made for my partner

Number twelve! My last sampler I made for my partner in A Swap For All Seasons. After this post, I'll have my final two that were made for me by my partners for November and December. I'll share them with you when they've arrived. 

(You have no idea how extraordinary this is that I've completed this year long project! I'm the Queen of Unfinished Projects --- certainly when I make something for myself, it never gets finished. I guess making things for someone else and having a deadline is the key --- I am extremely motivated by not wanting to let anyone down or be a flake or be late. Another unheard of milestone for me, I finished my last two ahead of schedule. I am also the Queen of Procrastination and Last Minute Frenzy and I am sooooooo shocked at my on-task speedy self ... I have joked that surely there has been an alien abduction LOL, because I don't recognize this person!)

I made my twelfth sampler for my partner, Pam, of Treasures N Textures. I had thought it would be fun to try to make samplers that fitted the month or season whenever possible. Hence my little snowman guy I made for Pam. One of my favorite holiday songs is "Winter Wonderland" and the lyric "in the meadow we can build a snowman" became my theme for the rest of my project. 

 

It's been a pleasure to meet you Pam and be your final partner in A Swap For All Seasons. I had so much fun making your sampler for you!

 

Dumbstruck over here that another year is coming to a close ...

Happy holiday season everyone!