Girl's Crafting Weekend

Well, it was interesting! And we crafted...it was just not what we expected. The long drive shook up one niece's kidney stone so that by the time they arrived she was in too much pain..so we went to the ER and found out it was robin egg size and they kept her over the weekend for a stent procedure until it could be broken up.
So we loaded all our cardmaking supplies and spent all day Saturday in her room visiting and making cards anyway.
I had planned to use 2 sets of CTMH Card Workshops as warm up...and move on to freestyle cards....turns out the kits worked great with the limited things we could pack. At least we did a few crafty things and she was getting good care and her problem solved. She has stayed since...

LONG WEEK - Cannot Brain

It's been a long week...results of my proposal review in a meeting tomorrow, and trying to prepare for a girls' weekend...I want to do some blog-hopping, but right now, this is how I feel....

So, I will just leave it at that and go to bed!!!

WOTWW#219 - A Clean Slate

Good morning! Welcome back to WOTWW!!!
Although last week's photo was a mess -- this week I have a clean desk as a result of hours of cleaning up and putting things away.
Why? Because I'm having my nieces over for a stamping / scrapping weekend!!! 
I spent time picking up so that we all had room to work and put up a folding table next to my workdesk. That means of course that I have to not only pick up my work desk but also my stamping table and my cricut table. LOL. The disadvantage of not really having to put anything away when its just me!!
I'm also still on a horrible deadline at work so I don't have a lot of time to explain my desktop.  Some of my projects are bundled up and yellow manila folders at the end of my space. And my little scrap bin is chock-full and I haven't put it all the way in my color scrap folders. That's just as good as it gets!  Take a good look because it's not going to be this clean for very long!
Suffice it to say that its clean and I have a clean slate to create! YAY!
Hope you all have a wonderful week and I can't wait to do a little blog hoppin' to check out your desks too! 
See you at the stamping ground!

WOYWW#218 - A MESS

Happy WOYWW#218, Ladies!

I am finally doing it.  A partial photo of my workdesk with a MESS!  

This week has been very busy with work (I'm on a 45-day deadline requiring extra effort - translated in many late hours), and a brand new diet to incorporate for DH with extra shopping and food prep - so not much happening besides those things.  

My dirty little secret is that I clear a spot to work on, and push everything to the edges until I do a massive cleanup and all the ribbons go back into their containers, and markers to their bin, and tape back into their proper drawer, etc. I just can't let go of the pieces until I've used them all.  The only way I can past that is to bundle up all of the matching papers into a manila folder to work on later (maybe). That way the papers I've worked to match are still all together and I feel good about saving money (LOL) and using all my scraps.  Let's just be real here.  I obsess over using all the scraps to feel better about the stamps I buy so I can use them...
Last weekend in our clean up before Great-Grandson's overnight stay, I ran down to the basement with my stack of papers I've collected for my 6x6 project and threw them on the top of the pile. The project involves trying to make as many coordinated cards as possible from a 6x6 stack.  It's part of my Rub-on Fail series - LOL.  Other patterns in the stack include a dressmaker form, so you can see some Tim Holtz stamps and a small test dressmaker form die cut I made with my Cricut using the CTMH Artiste cartridge. I have some other french themed cartridges, just haven't tested them yet. And let's see....what else is on this part of my desk?

My heat gun is top right, where I turn from my stamping table and where DH has installed a heavy duty outlet bank so I don't blow the lights out while I'm heat embossing and have the space heater on in the winter.
Some of the fruits at the top are leftover from the July CTMH Stamp of the Month projects I was making. The baker's twine rolls are from my whale cards.  Under the twine rolls are whaley bits that I would still like to use in more cards.  Under the shelf are many pieces that still need to find a home on a card.  Top left are pieces of CTMH Dream Pop paper that I can't put away yet.
And I see that there are still aqua rub-on failure bits on the right -- as I'm working, I try to keep my really small trash pieces off the floor, so they make a pile on the right, where I can just sweep them off into the trashcan or recycle bag. And the distress ink was out for this week's Mojo Monday card. My first sentiment fancy oval is peeking out under the red dotted paper. 
I've got to run to work, so Happy WOYWW Wednesday to everyone at ...[I stopped typing here and cruised over to the Stamping Ground to copy the link to paste here and stopped to read Julia's post -- funny - we both have a mess today . So my sentence was stuck at  "at..."]  the home of WOYWW.

Have a WONDERFUL WEEK!

New Diet

Last week we had news that DH is diabetic. So the past week has been re-evaluating our food choices, and spending a lot of time learning about diabetes and what he can eat, as well as doing a lot of food prep on fresh vegetables to fill up on.  
Barnes & Noble loves us, because we have 4 new cookbooks!

Hopefully we can control it with diet. I cleaned out my pantry on Sunday and have lots of sweet things to donate to a food pantry.
The bonus is that we will both be healthier with a better diet and taking care of ourselves. We just need to take the dietician classes now, and learn to balance the diet so that he's not starving! 

I don't know if a whole T-bone and bread and baked potato will still be on his menu...but we will certainly try to work out how he can still enjoy his steak & potatoes!

Another interesting journey!