For our prompts today we have Favorite Hobby and Family. I have a lot of hobbies that I enjoy. Reading is one. The new Pop Sugar Reading Challenge just came out and I am excited to do that. I failed this year, reading only 17 books out of the 40 that I had set for my goal. You’d think I’d have been able to read more with the pandemic but no. I did cross off some of my poster pieces though. Pride and Prejudice, The Scarlet Letter, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Lord of the Flies and Great Expectations. I have the intention of reading Anna Karenina, Gone With the Wind and The Great Gatsby next year.
I’d have to say coloring is another hobby. I did do a lot of that because I can watch TV with the hubs while I’m doing it. Can’t really read and watch a movie. Here are some of my latest for the Escapist Coloring Club.
I think blogging might be a hobby. I might have wanted to be a writer and this is a way to do that on my own terms. I also like the interaction with the friendly people I meet (yes, that’s you if you’re reading this).
Participating in challenges might be a hobby too, to be honest. I’ve been doing the One Second Everyday video thing this year and am looking forward to the end result when I can see the whole year flash before my eyes. I have to start thinking about what to do for the A to Z this year too! Do you have your theme yet?
And for the other prompt, Family, well, I have to say that I am grateful that my family puts up with all my hobbies!
How about you? Favorite hobbies? Special family? Share!
Admittedly I blog more when I have a challenge or two to follow. Fortunately in December I have them!
First up is December Reflections with Susannah Conway. I’ve done hers several times in the past and they are always fun. Some of the prompts are a little different and I’m looking forward to them.
Here is my take on Star. It is painted on a wall in San Francisco that we pass by every day.
And by way of Barbara at Teleportingweena I found this fun countdown to Christmas sponsored by a new to me blogger, Tourmaline. I think I’ll try playing this one too.
These are some decorations from my very first Christmas tree when I moved out on my own. My older sister and I had a craft day and she helped me make them. They are over 40 years old and they still get put up every year. The poor reindeer and Santa are missing eyes. Maybe I’ll give them a touch up.
Not sure I’ll be able to post every day for each of these challenges but I’m going to give it my best shot. Play along!
Well, this month is almost gone. Hope everyone had a safe and happy Thanksgiving yesterday. Ours looked like this:
I have been busy working fortunately but found some time to make some new gift card holders for the holidays. Aren’t they cute?
Mittens
SnowmenChristmas TreesThe top swivels on a brad and opens so you can put the gift card in the slot.
They each have a matching envelope and are up on the Etsy shop now.Ā Ā I need to figure out how to do a virtual holiday boutique!Ā Maybe I’ll figure out how to use this WP again too.Ā The pictures are giving me fits, but you get the idea. Ā
Next up in Nifty November is a cool new tool on Etsy. I can now add 15 second or less videos to the description of the items I have for sale. I made these cards a couple months ago and added a video to the listing.
Pop up cards
The video shows up in the second picture on each listing.
Since I probably won’t be able to do any holiday boutiques this year, I’m hoping that by adding some videos to the Etsy listings they will attract some extra attention. The good thing is they are short and there is no sound so I don’t have to worry about saying anything!
Of course, feel free to share this if you think someone might be interested. I’ll be putting up some more videos on Etsy soon. Have a wonderful rest of your day.
Lovely Linda gives us “jour” for our Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt. I was going to talk about my planner for next year so that works perfectly since my planner is actually part JOURnal as well.
I don’t know about you but planners are very personal for me. It took me a long time to find one I really liked and thanks to a post a few years ago by LA at Waking up on the wrong side of 50, I was introduced to Plum Paper. This company lets you design your own planner!
To start, Plum Paper offers many choices for covers. This is mine for 2020.
My daughter gave me the owl sticker and it matched perfectly
I like to put a picture or a quote on the monthly divider. Each month starts with a goals page
There is a blank page next to the goals section and I added a “Currently” sheet with some washi tape and underneath I recap what happened in the month.
The monthly spread has lots of room to write, even though this year there hasn’t been much going on.
You can pick your own title headings for the daily pages. This year I used Top Three, And Then, Quick Quotes, Today, Doodle-E-Do and Snapshot.
At the end of the month there are either one or two pages depending on how long the month is. On one I put a picture of the full moon for the month and a selfie šOn the other I use a reflections page.
This is my cover for 2021. I am in love with it. It was a special one for October and a portion of the proceeds for using it went to breast cancer.
For the daily sections next year I changed a couple. Instead of Quick Quote I used Around the House because I am going to eliminate the household planner I usually use, for the doodle section I chose Inspiration Station and for the snapshot at the bottom I went with Oh My Word to help me incorporate my word for the year.
If you don’t need a daily planner, they do make a weekly one and also an academic planner style. You can choose which month you want to start with. I’m a January to December girl. I am hopeful now that we have a new President, the virus will be better controlled and there will be lots of things to do to fill up my planner du jour next year!
I should have started my Nifty November series with this one yesterday so that it would actually be Thursday but I forgot about this door and I don’t like to bombard people with multiple posts in a day so even though it is Friday, here is my first entry into the Thursday Doors hosted by Norm. That was a mouthful, still with me?
I haven’t done a Thursday Door before because I didn’t think there were any interesting doors in our neighborhood and lately that’s the only place I’ve seen when I walk Benny. Then I started noticing something unusual:
Over the next couple of days this happened:
And finally, this:
Mind you, I never actually saw anyone painting it. I walk the dog twice a day and although we don’t go down this particular street every day, it is one of the ones that is in our usual trek because it is right down the block.
Who says garage doors have to be dull? Thanks, Norm, for letting me play along.
So stressful right now with the election results taking FOREVER. Honestly, I’m a bit disappointed in our country. In my opinion it should not have been this close. I guess I am naive to think that we all should embrace empathy, dignity, compassion and honesty as our core values.
To help me concentrate on something else, I thought I’d start November off with some nifty little things going on around here. I’ll begin with my entries into the Escapist Coloring Club for this month. While we weren’t able to see our Giants play in the World Series, it did hold our interest so that we could root against the dreaded Dodgers. Sadly, even our bad mojo could not keep them from winning, although again, IMHO, the whole baseball season this year needs to have an asterisk behind it. At any rate, it afforded me the opportunity to do a lot of coloring.
All of these are from the “Magical Jungle” coloring book I got for Christmas last year. In fact, I’m almost done with the whole thing!
Also nifty, I think, is the fact that I could use one of the pages I colored as the background for my bank credit card. What do you think?
There’s a new routine in our house for the past 3 weeks. Our son got a new job and I am driving him into San Francisco every morning so that he doesn’t have to take public transit and increase our risk of Covid exposure. I don’t mind it. It is a familiar thing for me to drive the kids somewhere, that’s what mom’s do. This is a typical loop drive, hop on the freeway, hop off the freeway, up a couple of blocks, and then back down a couple of blocks and hop on the freeway again. Sometimes we talk, sometimes we don’t.
I have been keeping my eyes open for new things. Here are a couple I’ve managed to catch, thanks to my son who takes the pictures while I drive:
A Big Dream on the side of the hill
Sunrise over the airport
That same sun coming up over the SF Bay
The City itself is a different world. Our drive takes us through downtown and in front of the city hall. Right now in the area across from city hall there are huge tents set up with voting machines. We see lots of “interesting” people as we go too. Seems like every day I see something I haven’t noticed before. It’s kinda fun.
What’s been happening where you are? Any new routines started? Share!
Really, it seems like this year is taking forever. Or it’s flying by. I can’t decide which. I feel like I’m in some kind of dystopian novel or huge circus. Things will never be what we thought of as “normal” again but will we be able to have some semblance of the life we had? Who knows.
For the moment, I am grateful that I have been busy with transcription work. It has meant that for the last three weeks I have been typing all day, sometimes up to as late as 10 PM. Fortunately, I work from home which allows me to do that. Unfortunately, that also meant that I was not able to blog as much or even comment on as many other blogs as I usually do. And definitely not able to spend time in the studio, which you know feeds my soul.
I have finished the major portion of one of the projects so I have a brief time to say hello and share some things with you. First off I’m going to tell you about a new nail polish product that my friend, Amy, is selling. You may or may not have heard of Color Street Nail Polish Strips. They come in a package of two strips of eight different sizes.
This one is Caribbean Coral
A few months ago Amy had a virtual party and I bought a couple of colors to try – just to kind of help out a party host. You know how you do that (how many Tupperware items do you have?) I also won a free set for playing one of the games. I love winning prizes! I don’t use nail polish on a regular basis but I do like the way it looks when my nails are longish and they’ve gotten to a decent length so I decided to actually give the nail strips a try.
I chose No Way San Jose for the first go around. I will confess that I did not watch any of the videos that I’m sure are available to show how to apply them. In my mind, they are stickers and being a crafter, I should know how to use stickers, right?
The strips break apart to different sizes to fit your nails.
I chose to apply them before I went to bed. I started with my left thumb and took one of the larger nails. It went on pretty smoothly and I used the file they give you to file down the extra bit. The next ones were a little trickier, but I think it was because I was trying to get two nails out of one strip. I should have cut it in half before starting to apply but I didn’t so it ripped off too short. The instructions say to stretch it a little as you put it on and I stretched another one a little too much. Out of the 16 individual strips you get, those three are what I have left.
I did find it easier to stretch the sheet BEFORE I started to apply it. Then it fit better and it wasn’t so awkward. If you get a bubble or it doesn’t quite meet the edge, you do have some time to pull them off and restart but now that I’ve had them on, they are on there well. The instructions say that you can use regular nail polish remover to get them off.
As I told Amy, I don’t think they will make me type any faster but I do like the way they look. They are not perfect but even when I use actual nail polish I don’t get them perfect and there would have been no way they would come out like this if I had polished them right before bed with standard liquid polish. Plus, usually I put on a base coat, then two layers of color and then a top coat over that. These are perfectly dry as you put them on and it is just the one coat. They are shiny and smooth and even with the adjusting, it only took me about half an hour. I’m sure the next time will go much faster. You may also get a tip or two if you watch the videos – LOL
This is the set I won. I love glittery!
The package comes with a nail prep pad and a file. The prep pad was just a tiny square to wipe off your nails before applying the strip but it wasn’t any special formula or adhesive. The file is okay but I used one of my own after all the nail strips were applied. I had chosen the two colors thinking that they would match with the sparkly Tokyo Lights but when I actually got them all, they don’t really so I may have to find another color because I want to use the glitter as an accent nail.
The bottom line is, if you are looking for a quick and easy way to get your nails polished, these may work for you. I am very happy with the way mine turned out. They have some special ones out for the holidays now too. Lots of interesting designs and some gorgeous colors. You can check out Amy’s shop here:
They have some great names for these don’t they? Of course there are solid colors and different glitters. They even have some that look like a French manicure if you like that style.
I will say that some of the designs go fast but it seems like they restock pretty frequently. I’m sure they will be coming out with some Christmas ones. If you get some, I’d love to hear which colors and how they worked for you. Also, you’d be helping to support a small business owner like me and that’s always a good thing. They would make great stocking stuffers, if we are even going to have Christmas this year. Who can tell?
Anyway, nice to see you all again. Hopefully I’ll be around a little more often!
Janet's Smiles 