Month: March 2025

Mail It Monday | 100DayProject Day 37 | Card 27

Card 27 | Altenew For the Guys Lesson 1 Geometrics.

Mail It Monday

It’s 10:30 and I’m just getting started with writing some words for today. I haven’t even yet written my cards that I’m going to mail, but I have picked the cards and recipients out. In addition to working on my 100DayProject to create cards, I am also trying hard to get cards sent out into the world, too.

I skipped Pickleball this morning to try to put a bit of order into all the crafting supplies and tools that I haul between home, the cottage and my different crafting classes. It is very out of control; I am always loading too much into the car and bringing it into the house, cottage and carrying it up and down the stairs from my craft room. I really do want to get some more duplicates of some tools to lessen how much I move around and how much time I spend packing and unpacking. But mostly I need to get my projects more organized so that I’m only bringing the supplies that I need for each project.

We had 3 participants in our in-person Card Crew program at the Dementia society with 2 volunteers. Everything went well making cards similar to ones that I had made with my Spellbinders Advent calendar supplies. The husband of one of the participants gave me a card that his wife made last week to take home in which he had generously included a gift card. It was so lovely to see his wife’s shaky signature; I remember how my mom’s handwriting gradually deteriorated until she was no longer able to sign her name. It’s not easy aging, and living with Dementia adds an extra level of challenge and caring for a person with for Dementia is even more daunting. I love seeing how much the husbands of two of my participants are so patient and loving with their wives and hearing from the wives in class how much love and appreciation they have for their husbands.

I stopped on the way home at a participant of my online Creative Cards and Crafts program to bring her the most recent kits for her and her sister. She gave me some homemade Chinese dumplings which were perfect for my dinner after I had a nap. I was feeling quite tired and knew that if I didn’t have a nap it would be a real struggle to stay away heading out to Orleans for Heidi’s 7:30 ringette game and back home again. I get very sleepy in cars, even when driving; I’ve been known to pull over into a parking lot for a 10-15 minute nap on the hour drive to the cottage.

Then Luna got her second solo walk of the day with me after my dinner. Roland had an early morning shift at the ringette Nationals tournament and has another one tomorrow.

One of the sample cards I had to show my program participants. I made this during my Spellbinders Advent Calendar project.
The other sample card I had to show my program participants. I also made this during my Spellbinders Advent Calendar project.

I made my Card 27 based on the first lesson in the Altenew For the Guys course entitled Geometrics. But seemed to not find the time to post about any of the recent cards that I’ve made.

It’s now 11:17 and I am still struggling with my Google drive not synching properly to my laptop so I’ve done a bit of a workaround to get a few photos included in the post. But I need to get to bed so I can go swimming at 8:00 tomorrow morning. I’ll update this post tomorrow to add in some more photos.

Sleet on Sunday | 100DayProject Day 36 | Card 25 | Card 26

100DayProject Day 36

I made 2 cards today: Card 25 based on Lesson 5 of the Altenew Easy Ink Blending Techniques which covered Faux Watercolouring. Card 26 was a slim shaker card using the technique in Lesson 6 of the Altenew Easy Ink Blending Techniques course entitled Putting it into Practice. Since it’s almost 11:00 p.m. already I won’t be posting the details of how I made the cards. I do hope to get those posted tomorrow since I’ve been trying to use the colour scheme in the Color Throwdown Challenge #289 to which I can link my cards using that colour combination until tomorrow.

Card 25

I have been using my Gardenia Duo stamp set quite a bit lately for my class assignments. I need to get busy making thank you cards to send out to everyone who so kindly made donations to the Dementia Society in my mom’s memory. I have quite a few nice card designs featuring the Gardenias that will be perfect for those cards. Gardenias were my mom’s favourite flowers.

At 26 cards made by the end of Day 36 I’m at about 72% completion rate. I definitely have some catching up to do, both on making cards as well as posting about them. If I continue to do 2 a day for the next week that would put me at 40 cards by the end of Day 43. Definitely an ambitious goal! I did get one lesson from my next course, For the Guys watched entitled Geometrics.

Card 26

Sleet on Sunday

As forecast, there was freezing rain today. Luckily it turned to just rain later in the day and we didn’t get nearly as much freezing rain as they had been forecasting earlier. We opted to take Luna for a short walk on the road followed by a short walk in the woods when we realized that it wasn’t raining too hard and that it was actually slipperier on the roads than on the forest, especially because we stopped back at home and put on our spikes. We definitely had a sluggish start to the day. And Luna came back rather soggy from our walk. We packed up and headed home before lunch in case the roads got icier. I did some grocery shopping at Costco and Farm Boy for Heidi who has a big week coming up with her ringette Nationals here in Ottawa starting tomorrow. I also made her some pasta sauce and will make a few more things including some soup early in the week. I’ve got the carcass from a Costco chicken boiling with some celery, carrots and onions overnight. She had a practice this morning and did some school work before opening ceremonies then had lots of laundry and other prep for the week to tackle before making her egg bites, getting her smoothie ingredients packaged into baggies and back into the freezer, boiling her pasta and assembling pasta and sauce containers.

Snow Angel Saturday | 100DayProject Day 35

Snow Angel Saturday

Another (10:15 p.m.) start to my writing. So it will be a short blog post today.

We had about 5 cm of fresh snow overnight so it was back to being a winter wonderland. Of course, Luna was quick to be making snow angels as soon as we were out the door on our way for our morning forest hike. The first walk of the day was just me and Luna. We did 2 more forest hikes with Roland. While the lake is still covered with ice, we’re not sure how safe it is, so we’re avoiding going on out the lake. It was such a nice day to be outside. Since my theme for the day is Snow Angel Saturday, I couldn’t leave it to Luna to make all of the snow angels so I found a nice flat patch of freshly fallen snow on the driveway after my morning walk. It was a good thing made my snow angel early in the day; a lot of the snow had melted by the afternoon.

Luna and I just did the Mount Saint Kincaid loop this morning; I didn’t have on grippers on my light hiking shoes nor did I have gators. So it was quite slippery and my socks and pant legs got wet from the snow. The addition of grippers and gators made the other 2 hikes much easier and more pleasant.

We left it too late to roast the Butterball turkey breast that we had brought up for dinner. We won it back at the Gobbler Bonspiel back in December. So Roland BBQed salmon filets. And I made Apple Crisp for dessert. I’ve added a blog post with the recipe here.

100DayProject Day 35 | Card 23 | Card 24

I made cards 23 and 24 today but will post more details about the process of making them another day. I’m going to add the photos of the finished card in this blog post then I can later link that photo to the blog post with the details about how I made it. I’m not sure how well that system will work, but I’ll give it a try. That is sort of what this 100DayProject is all about: experimenting.

Card 23 | Altenew Easy Ink Blending Techniques Lesson 3 Adding Details to Ink Blending | SCT C&C Spellbinders
Card 24 | Altenew Easy Ink Blending Techniques Lesson 4 Emboss Resist

Apple Crisp

Background

This has long been a family favourite. The recipe came from way back in high school and was in the first cookbook I ever bought which was by Betty Crocker. It’s high time I added the recipe to this blog. I did post it on my other blog way back in 2010. It’s handy to have it available electronically rather than just a paper copy. I do prefer using a paper copy, but I don’t yet have a paper copy of my favourite recipes up here at the cottage. Of course I had to have 2 servings. After I’d already eaten one serving, I decided that I should have a different photo for the featured image for this post than the photo at the top of the page. So, I had to serve up another portion. I figured that since the bowl was dirty I might as well enjoy eating the second serving rather than just putting it back into the bowl.

The featured image is from the original 2010 post. I really love that pie plate. I bought it many years ago when I was downtown on French language training and went with a few of my classmates down to Laura Secord ice cream and chocolate shop for a much needed afternoon break. Exactly why the shop was carrying ceramic pie plates I’m not sure (I guess for a nice fall display), but I came away with a pie plate as well as an ice cream cone that fall afternoon.

Ingredients

4 cups sliced tart apples (about 4 medium)

2/3 – 3/4 cup brown sugar (I use 2/3 cup)

1/2 cup flour (whole wheat is nice)

1/2 cups rolled oats (I use quick cooking)

1 tsp cinnamon

1/3 cup butter or margerine, softened

Method

Heat oven to 375′. Arrange apples in baking dish. Mix remaining ingredients (a pastry blender works well to combine the ingredients); sprinkle the ‘crisp’ mixture over the apples. Bake until topping is golden brown and apples are tender, about 30 minutes. Serve warm, optionally with ice-cream or whipping cream.

Notes

I really like using McIntosh apples for this recipe. They soften up very nicely by the time the crisp portion is crisp.

Source: Betty Crocker Cookbook

Forest on Friday | 100DayProject Day 34

This photo wasn’t taken in the forest, but rather is of my one house plant at the cottage.

100DayProject Day 34

I completed cards 20, 21 and 22 but will only post about card 20 today and will save the other 2 to post later on the weekend.

AECP Card 20 (Clean & Simple Boutique Cards Lesson 6: Envelopes, Packaging and Creating Gifts

Boxes for A2-sized cards

The lesson had a few great ideas for decorating a clear acetate box which I want to try when I have the materials at hand. It also suggests some decorative ways to wrap a stack of cards to give as a gift which I will also eventually try. But for today I opted to make and decorate a box which is my favourite way to give away cards. In addition to sharing my process for creating a box to hold A2-sized cards I’ll share how I create envelopes for A2-sized cards. And then, of course, I had to make a coordinating card to go with the box and envelope I created. I will add the photos for the envelopes and card to this post tomorrow.

Forest on Friday

I slept in since I had stayed up way too late last night so I missed the morning walk with Luna and Roland. Roland came home saying that Luna loved her time in the forest. Plan A had been to go on the road but he reported that the forest was free of snow so they walked there. I was thinking about making my theme for the day Free of Snow Friday, but it actually isn’t free of snow, there’s just a lot of it’s gone on the south-facing side and the rest was frozen but not slippery so easy to navigate. So, my theme for the day is Forest Friday because I really enjoyed my excursion in the forest with Luna around lunch. We took our time and tried to find a few interesting things.

The stream had some very pretty ice formations and while I was admiring them and trying to take a few photos Luna did some stick foraging.

It won’t be long before some fiddleheads appear but for now just the green of last years ferns do a nice job of brightening the forest floor.

It will definitely be quite some time before any mushrooms are popping up from the forest floor but there are always interesting fungi to be found on the sides of trees.

Since I had won a buffalo plaid hat at the Rideau Bonspiel last weekend I was keen to see how well it went with my buffalo plaid cottage jacket. Luna wasn’t keen to be close to me in that attire.