life

Memories on Monday | 100DayProject Day 44

Memories on Monday (like a Throwback Thursday)

2010 04 07 – A Fresh Face

Wednesday: ‘A Fresh Face’ was my Picture Spring photo assignment for yesterday (Spring is the season of renewal and rejuvenation. Beyond the blooms, our spirits feel alive! Today, as you soak it all in, capture yourself in a self-portrait. Celebrate yourself! You’re worth the hoop-lah!). I didn’t do that assignment yesterday, so I’m sort of doing it today. I didn’t have time to take any photos before leaving for Stefan’s 6:30-8:30 hockey practice, so I brought the camera along and asked him to take a photo of me. So here I am and “I am enough”. I say that because interestingly enough I came across a blog yesterday about the very subject of celebrating ourselves: iamenough (a self-kindness collaborative). Anyway, back to our day: very rainy. I took the children to their 3:20 dentist appointments then we had a quick pasta dinner. Roland took Heidi to her 1.5 hour soccer gym practice. I enjoyed having some time to do some digital scrapbooking in the rink lobby while Stefan enjoyed his time on the ice. Stefan watched a bit of hockey when we got home and Heidi finished her homework when they got home. I’m off to bed with just enough time to spare to brush my teeth before my 10:00 target.

It turns out that the link to that I am Enough collaborative on Tracey Clark’s website no longer exists. But I do see that she has a calendar of daily photo prompts which I am going to investigate.

No morning walk for me before Roland and I played pickleball 8:00-10:00 and took Luna for a walk when we got home then I had lunch and organized myself for 1:00-3:30 Crafty Crew at the Dementia Society. Then I met Louise at her mechanic. She came over for a quick dinner (pasta) then I dropped her at home before 6:00-7:30 curling. Of course we stayed after for a quick drink (Ginger Beer which I think is made in the States not Bermuda so I will have to find another drink – although the curling season is almost over) and now I am getting this blog post done.

100DayProject Day 44

Nothing to report. But I did have 4 helpers at Crafty Crew today and we made quite a bit of progress on the 2 bee-themed cards for an upcoming online class kit. The bees are adorable. And I still really love that flower stamp. The ladies were a huge help die cutting, stamping, colouring and assembling kits. I glued the bees together since I didn’t want to subject anyone to that fussy work. There were 3 extra Thank You containers of oatmeal chocolate chip cookies which I brought and which were well received.

Fun and Games Friday | 100DayProject Day41

Fun and Games Friday

I did a short walk with Luna checking out how the neighbourhood spring perennials were progressing. A few new tips were popping up. I really need to get back on track with getting to bed early. Enough of staying up late to work on blog posts. I was quite tired when my alarm went off at seven so I didn’t leap out of bed and I managed to (very easily) talk myself out of heading to the pool for a swim. I even briefly crawled back into bed after getting dressed with a vague notion of getting some more sleep. I expect I will end up having a nap on our way to Heidi’s team’s 10:30 ringette game.

Rather than starting to make a card, I decided that I need to focus some of my 100DayProject efforts on getting my craft room disaster back into order. I have a reasonably good system for organizing my supplies, I just have a very poor record with putting things back where they should go and establishing a ‘home’ for my new things. So, I spend way too much time when I am working on a project trying to find things, moving stashes around to find a good spot to work, etc. So I set my timer for 5 minutes to put some things away. Then I started to work on cataloguing and filing a few new products for 5 more minutes. It took me a few minutes to figure out what the weird light pattering sound was. It turns out that water was dripping from my overhead light fixture in my craft room onto my very crowded work surface. I am really glad I was down there working at my table when the water started to come in. I was able to grab a plastic painting drop cloth to cover it up and we added a few plastic containers to catch the drips. It seems to be coming from the washing machine which is above it since the water is soapy. And, so Roland is trying to figure out what’s wrong with the washing machine during the spin cycles. We’ll wait for it to finish before pulling off the light fixture. Fun and Games! So much for my new found resolve to get and keep things in better order in my craft room.

In addition to watching Heidi’s ringette game we’ll also be playing a game of curling. I wrote a few cards before heading out to her game. It was a very good and exciting game with her team tying the score with 6 seconds left but unfortunately losing after 2 -1/2 minutes into the first overtime period. Heidi spent the afternoon and evening with her teammates, having lunch then watching the two semi-final games together. Roland and I dashed from her game to a brief practice ice session we had at our curling club since we hadn’t been on the ice at all yet this week. I baked some oatmeal chocolate chip cookies then it was time to pick up Karen and Peter to head to the Navy curling club. We won our first game and really enjoyed our après game drinks, snacks and conversation with our opponents. Then we went to Pub Italia in Little Italy for dinner.

100DayProject Day 41

I didn’t do any cardmaking today but I did watch the next few lessons in my Altenew For the Guys course. I look forward to getting on with making an Interactive card for Lesson 4, a Pop Art style card for Lesson 5 and a Gaming card for Lesson 6. I did do some google image searching for a few inspirational pop art images to help me with the design of my card for Lesson 5.

https://creativetreats.club/2025/04/04/oatmeal-chocolate-chip-cookies/

I did take off the plastic that’s covering the worksurface in my craft room just now before heading to bed so that if I have a bit of time between our 2 curling games tomorrow I will have a spot to work on those cards. I think that the reason my overhead light stopped working a few days ago is likely because water had been gradually accumulating in the light fixture for a while until it overflowed today. There were some wet spots on the table which has a wood surface so it is a good thing I took the plastic sheet off the check things out tonight rather than later in the day tomorrow.

Friendship Friday | 100DayProject Day 27

Tonight we hosted a potluck dinner for our Waterloo University friends. Usually we are the 5 couples who live in Ottawa but tonight we were also joined by a couple who live in Waterloo but are up for a wedding tomorrow. It was so nice to see everyone. It’s hard to believe that many of us have known each other for more than 40 years. So grateful for Jane being the glue that organizes 3-4 dinners each year for the Ottawa crew and that we’ve had a few larger reunions at our milestone years of turning 50 and 60. Friendships are so important and I love that we have kept up our friendship with this group for so many years. We already have our next dinner booked for May plus and extra girls luncheon in April to celebrate Jane’s upcoming retirement.

I was mostly out of the house today: walk with Luna then swim then drop off the car then Costco then lunch with a friend I met at work more than 30 years ago then out to Arnprior with Roland and another friend who I’ve known more than 35 years where we spoke with the owner of a small bicycle business whom we are going to buy some new bikes from.

So no crafting time (yet) and it’s already 10:10 p.m. and we have a curling Bonspiel tomorrow morning. We’re in the early draw so we’ll be leaving home just after 7:30. However, I will try to spend a few minutes before bed but I am going to post now so will add any 100DayProject progress photos tomorrow. Maybe I’ll soon make a card inspired by the beautiful photos that Connie brought as a hostess gift. As I was walking this morning I figured that it won’t be too much longer before some spring perennial flowers will be out braving the frost on my morning walks with Luna.

Mystery Monday | 100DayProject Day 23 | Card 15b and Card 16

100DayProject Day 23

One and a half cards complete (since I stared Card 15 yesterday) to bring me up to 16 cards in less that 24 days so I’m getting closer to 67%. Still a long way away from 100% progress. Tomorrow I’ll be finally getting out my Gina K Fuse machine to try foiling. I am looking forward to it. I have had the foiling machine for maybe a year now and keep meaning to try but somehow haven’t gotten around to it.

Card 15b

When I got into my craftroom this morning and saw the 2 partially made cards on my worksurface I decided that they were good enough; there was no sense in starting them over for this lesson assignment even though there were some things that I’d like to try if/when I use this technique again. I realize that I’m rather rigid/structured in my card designs, this technique of building up an arrangement with random flower and leaf images is definitely out of my comfort zone. In the end, the black sketching and adding a sentiment seemed to finish the cards off well enough for me. As Gina K likes to say on her crafting videos, it’s better than horrible. I preferred the less bold letters on the sentiment.

I used the same technique on the envelopes, back of card and inside of the card.
This card is very similar to the first card, I just used a darker in on the pinky/orange flower on this one.

Card 16

I think I prefer to flowers all to be coloured the same colour.

I was pleased with how these cards came out. I made 2. Actually I stamped the cards and envelopes to make 6 of them. I am sort of thinking ahead to the 6th Lesson in the Altenew Clean and Simple Boutique Cards class which has to do with packaging cards. However, I ended up putting the other 4 cardbase / envelope sets aside because I really should progress on my lessons rather than make extra of each card. Although I really do like colouring with my watercolour markers and had hoped to make a set coloured with each colour. I tried a multicoloured bunch but think I prefer the single colour per bunch.

The dark colour near the bottom was definitely too dark, I would have preferred to have repeated a colour. I think it is nice to have different coloured bunches, but I’m not sure if I like the different colours within one bunch.

Mystery Monday

I haven’t quite decided my theme for today. As I did the shorter loop with Luna on the very icy path, I was considering misstep as a theme. I was really trying hard not to take a wrong step and fall down and break a wrist. Grippers would definitely have been handy but they are all up at the cottage. Luckily my only misstep was stepping off the trail onto a grippier snowy area and getting a soaker. And so I have on a new pair of socks. It is a Mail It Monday so I plan to write a few cards. If you don’t like mailing cards you could also merely make it a Message Monday and send an unexpected Just Thinking of You message to a friend or family member. Maybe I should rename my Mail It Monday? But a bit of breakfast and 8:00-10:00 Pickleball followed by a lunch with some friends await so it’s time to pause my writing. Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

I’m not quite sure which buttons I pressed on my phone today when I was sending this photo to a few friends as a ‘Memories on Monday’ text message, but the effect is interesting. You’ll have to imagine them sitting on our dock boat with the lake in the background.

I haven’t written or mailed any cards yet, but I did make my Card 16 as well as finished my Card 15b. And I sent out some Memories on Monday photos to some friends as text messages when I had to sit out a few times in Pickleball. Our numbers seem to have risen again and there were lots of spares today. Roland has been scanning in a few old photos so I have one of those to share as a Memory on Monday as well.

One of the photos from him parents’ negatives that Roland has been scanning recently. Cutting our ‘Congratulations on your Engagement’ cake at Roland’s parents’ house about 30 years ago. We got engaged on a Marchish? kakaying trip in Belize and got married in August of the same year. As Stefan commented when he saw the photo, purple squad. Memories on Monday is a good day for this memory to have surfaced.

Roland and I played on opposite teams at 7:45 curling tonight. His team creamed our team. They seemed to get almost all of their shots. We seemed to miss almost all of our shots. Thus the 12-1 score for the 6 end game. But it was still very enjoyable.

Wide Open Wednesday | Day 18 of my 100DayProject

100DayProject – Day 18

No progress to report on my 100DayProject although I might try to sneak in a wee bit of work on it before going to bed. But it is 10:10 as I write this because I’m just back from book club where we celebrated pi day a bit early. We enjoyed quiche, chicken pot pie, apple pie and a berry pie. I wish we had had a family tradition of having a pie meal on pi day every year. Heidi was mentioned that she never gets to celebrate pi day with her math students because it falls on March Break so I think she’ll be happy if we develop a new family pie on pi day tradition.

It’s now10:47 and I did take about 10 minutes (or was it more?) to try out the Garden Delights stamp set. I just realized that there is actually a few more small stamp layers to fill in the centre of the flowers but that will have to wait until tomorrow to add it. I haven’t decided if I’ll go for the darker two shades of green or for the lighter 2. And I haven’t decided if I’ll do a mix of the two types of flowers or just the one type. I’m leaning towards just using one for simplicity, although I think I will include some of the second variety of leaves. Tomorrow’s 8:00 swim is now in as much jeapordy as my Tuesday one (which I skipped). Fingers crossed I get up when my alarm goes off at 7:00 despite me being so poor at adjusting to the time change.

It’s beginning to look a lot like I’ve at least started my Card 10!
This is definitely not a card that I’ve made, but rather it is thefeatured project for my Altenew All About Layer 4 Class 4 which I will be using as my design inspiration for my Card 10 of my 100DayProject. I had better pick up the pace since it is now Day 18

I received my Advent Calendar on December 6 and did the first card on December 9th. While I’m currently only batting 500 on my 100DayProject, I am making much faster progress on my daily Altenew card quest than I had on my daily Advent Calendar quest.

Wide Open Wednesday

It took me until the turn around point of this mornings walk for me to decide my theme for today. The stream was finally wide open after having been covered in snow and ice for many months. It was also a theme quite consistent with a thought after I set out when I figured out why the toes of my socks were wet: while they weren’t wide open, there was certainly an opening in the toes of my boots where the soles meets the upper part.

On my way back home I considered what I would do if I had a wide open day. It’s definitely a good thing to think about every once in a while. How much of the things you do every day would you want to include if you started your day with no routine or any commitments? If your ideal wide open day would vary tremendously from your typical day I think its definitely time to start thinking about making some small tweaks each week to better align your typical day with your ideal day.

I definitely had a good day. I enlisted Heidi’s help in tackling the disasterous kitchen rather than just doing it myself. There is still lots more disaster areas to tackle on the main floor, but somehow the kitchen always takes priority and all of my energy. Having some help is less draining for sure. It’s not what she was planning for the middle day of her March Break I’m sure. Here’s to hoping I can tackle some my disasterous desk in the family room tomorrow. I had a crafternoon at the Dementia Society with 2 of my Crafty Crew volunteers and we got a very good start on making 2 sets of cards. I decided that I really like the two cards I made with the Spellbinders Advent Calendar bee dies (back on January 5 and February 21 which were doors 6 and door 18) so we’re making them for my online class to do.


I liked the Spellbinders Advent Calendar card featuring the sequins from door 18 along with the bee die from door 6 that I’m making card kits featuring this design for my Dementia Society class.
I liked the Spellbinders Advent Calendar card featuring the bee die from door 6 that I’m making card kits featuring this design for my Dementia Society class.