January 29th Weekly Post

 Greetings and happy last week of January!

This month went by fast.

Our cold front ended up getting here a bit later and staying longer.

Thankfully the rain ended soon enough to not adversely affect us when the cold arrived.

No downed tree branches or power lines in my neighborhood or area.

Folks in the Deep East Texas Piney Woods a few hours north were not so lucky though, many are still without power.

And in a nod to my point last time that we down here do not know how to do ice and snow, multiple teens died while street snow sledding and/or falling through pond ice. And that was just in Texas. One hospital in North Texas reported 52 sledding-related injuries!

Prayers to all involved.

Winter Storm Fern's direct effect on me was to bake some cookies the first night.

I was so nervous about the storm that I did have a slight flare but managed to sleep it off.

These are chocolate chip peanut butter cookies (with walnuts and a few raisins).

Then the next day, Honey got into the action with some chicken noodle soup from scratch.

And I met his challenge with some homemade bread.

My 1990's Hitachi bread maker (HB-101, first model they made) is still going strong.

Funny story: right after I got it, I was so excited and tried to make some bread, but not being at all familiar with bread maker machines I took the baking chamber out of the machine first thing to mix the ingredients in it and then totally forgot I took that out and proceeded to pour a cup of water, not into the lift-out chamber, but right into the motor! Well, to say I freaked out would be putting it mildly. I was a young wife and mother on a budget and here I went and ruined this machine before I even used it! Frantically, I called their 800 hotline and got a very nice lady who calmed me down ("this has happened so many times") and proceeded to walk me through emptying the water out, using a hair dryer for 20 minutes on it, then putting it aside for 2 weeks to let it completely air out.

Two weeks later, it worked like a charm and has ever since!

Anyway, I hope I escape winter weight gain as easily as I got out of that near-miss bread maker calamity!

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The theme this week at Sunday Postcard Art is Playtime, hosted by Sabine.

I've been really busy with the new house process (latest is we are good to close on Feb. 9).

Plus my birthday card schedule is heaviest the first 3 months of each year.

So the first thing I thought of concerning playtime was a HunkyDory stamp set I received in Creative Stamping Issue 92 called Sporting Silhouettes. When I got it, I thought, how am I ever gonna use this? Well, this is how. lol 

I snagged a Michael Jordan quote graphic off the internet and in PSE created the 4x6 framed card with the quote in the center. I printed it out, trimmed it down and then stamped the silhouette images and heat-embossed them, thinking I would then stencil the white area with yellow ink. But, I looked at it and thought, hey, it's a cool graphic look, so I left it that way.

Then, as soon as I finished, I thought of all the craft stamps, yoga stamps and music stamps I could have used for this theme.

Oh well, my time is precious right now, so this will have to do.

And I got to use that stamp set YAY.

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Here's a birthday card I made, still using the Art Impressions stamps made for water coloring.

It's an all-in-one scene stamp which I heat-embossed after stamping with clear powder.

I also used some acrylic paint pens and a little colored pencil, so it's a mixed media piece.

I framed it using an Avery Elle frame die, which I used a gold metallic gel pen to accent the inset in the frame. The designer paper is DCWV and the card base and frame are SU. The Wild Rose Studio sentiment was stamped, heat-embossed and cut with an Avery Elle die.

I did not use a sketch for this one.

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I needed to make a retirement card for a dear friend who is moving to a lake house a couple of hours away to be closer to her daughter, granddaughter and great grands. I again used an Art Impressions stamp for watercolor that is also supposed to be for a sympathy card. But since she has been really anxious about this huge life change, I thought the Bible verse was appropriate here. I colored the focal image with watercolor paints and cut it with a Spellbinders postage die. The KI Memories designer paper behind it was cut with an Amazon die and layered onto an SU card base. I cut some stash scraps with Clear Dollar dies and arranged them behind the bottom sentiment, which was stamped and die cut from a Spellbinders set. 

Adn here's the sketch I used.

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Well, that is all from me this time.

Thanks as always for visiting.

Hope you have better weather for the weekend and some fun, too!

XOX