Softness

Softness: My entry for Photo Friday.

Present!

I got a present! I got a present! Yeah! Boy am I thrilled!

So a while back, my bloggy friend Janice across the pond wrote a post about Pay it Forward. The project involves offering hand made thingies to three people who comment and ask for it. In return, they have to offer 3 hand made things to people. You can read about it more here. The best part is that you have up to an year to complete this and if you don't do it in an year, ah well. No big deal.

Yesterday I got my pay it forward gift from Janice. And man was I floored! A hand made, hand bound note book. It is simply exquisite!

Before I gush too much and embarrass myself , I am going to stop.

Thank you Janice for participating in this project and giving me this idea. I already have my pay it forward projects done and can't wait to send it out.

Thank you for reminding me about the gift of giving. We may never meet or even talk on the phone. But it is wonderful to have bloggy friends!

Red Window

A red window awaits me...


Wordless Wednesday.

De-clutter

So yesterday I took a day off from work. I've got some home projects to do and sometimes a weedend is simply not enough.

This month, I am on a project to de-clutter my house. There is stuff everywhere!

On Saturday, as I lay on my couch drinking coffee, I decided to make a plan and tackle it.

First came analysis of the problem. What caused the most clutter in the house?

Clothes. Clothes. Clothes.

Every laundry basket was filled with them. Towels, men's shirts, single socks, and of course my clothes.

My boys may have moved out of the house but you could not tell looking at the laundry and their closets. Full of clothes.

Don't get me wrong. I am the biggest culprit in my house. I can fill a laundry basket faster than you can say yo yo mama. After a long day from work, I come home and yank out my heels or boots. The jacket and the bra goes next. Into the laundry basket. If I am wearing tight clothes, I shed them off and go for a mumu like dress. 

In my 20s and 30s, I giggled at the mumu dresses. So unflattering! But in 40's I don't care. I want to be comfortable at home. So the dresses "I would never be caught in that" became "comfort! comfort! Who cares if I get caught in them? They should not be coming to my house uninvited anyways."

But I digress. So not only do I have my daily work clothes to wash, I have my daily mumus. Not to mention the nightly pj's. The laundry baskets fill up fast!

Since I have only one washer and dryer at home I have to do laundry in a linear manner. Can't really do all the laundry at the same time. Unless I go to a laundrymart.

So after drinking coffee, I spent many hours on Saturday surfing the web for local laundrymarts. And surfing for other things. Then I go distracted with something else and decided that the 6 hours of analysis was too overwhelming and I needed to de-stress. So I took a nap.

Needless to say, nothing was accomplished that day.

Because I am smart and know that I will never ever be able to win the war against laundry, I decided to tackle the next biggest clutter invoking thingie in my house.

Books. Hundreds and thousands and millions of books. 

Unfortunately my Son 1 inherited the book collecting gene from me. So we have 2 peeps in the house collecting books. But he is smart and keeps all his books in his room. Mine are everywhere. EVERYWHERE! In the bedroom, under the couch, under the bed, in cute little fancy baskets, in the garage, on table tops, blah, blah, blah.

Oye. I felt overwhelmed and since I had the Monday off, decided to put it off for a day and tackle it then. And yes I napped.

I am a very smart person. So on Monday, I got up early, exercised and then tackled the books in the garage. I rearranged the books I need to take at the half price book store, and found an old book that I decided to reread.


Because I am allergic to dust, an allergy attack soon came, I took some strong allergy meds and took a ... what? You tell me what I did.


Sigh.


So tell me. Do you have clutter in your house? How do you handle it? Do you think I can be saved?

Encaustics Piece

Recently I started creating encaustic pieces. I often get some questions about it so here are some answers:

What exactly is encaustics?

An ancient art where artist uses wax instead of paint to create artwork. Artists have recently embraced it and made it more current and relevant.

Does the wax melt?

Nope it does not.The manufacturers mix bees wax with a resin and add pigment to it to create a medium.

What do they look like?

See this for more examples.

What supplies do I need for this?

See this for supply list.

My hubby won't "obey" me. What can I do?

Sorry but you are on your own about this one. Once you figure it out, do let me know since I have yet to figure it out.

I am a rat pack and have too much junk sitting around at my home. What should I do?

For starters, I am glad that you are admitting it. That is the first step. Next step, buy more stuff like wooden panels, wax, electric griddle etc. Slap the junk on a panel and paint wax over it. Then call it art like I did.

What exactly is this piece?

Wood panel, black and yellow medium/wax, and a broken plastic chandelier.

So now I need to ask you a question. Can you please help me come up with a title for this? What do you think I should call it?

 

Hello November!

Hello November!

Today is the first day of Nablopomo this year. Now inquiring minds want to know. What is Nablopomo? It is not a cult or a religion or a crazy ritual.

Well I take that back. Nablopomo is the National Blog Post Month. That's when some of the bloggers commit to blogging daily for a month. So in a way, it is a crazy ritual!

You can find more info here:

NaBloPoMo


So there you have it. I am committing to blog every single day this month. Wish me luck!

Nablo, as I fondly call it, is not about quality writing. It is about quantity and keeping a commitment. November is a busy busy month for a lot of people. But the logic is that if you want to get something done, give it to a busy person and it will get done.



Hundreds of bloggers worldwide will make this commitment today and keep it. This is my second year to do this and I am excited about it.

I get to write everyday, meet new bloggers and make new bloggy friends. 

So good luck to all the bloggers out there who have made this commitment. May all us fishies move in the right direction and accomplish our goals! 

If you are new to this blog, welcome and please leave a comment so I can visit your blog too.

In the bloggy world, comments are like candy. And I want some candy!