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Melting Monday | 100DayProject Day 58 | Card 41a+b

100DayProject Day 58 | Card 41a+b

It’s not so great that I remembered that Altenew has a monthly colour challenge on their card blog. Now I’m going to want to make cards using the Altenew inspiration challenge colours as well as the Color Throwdown challenge blog colours. I’ve include the links to the current Altenew and the Color Throwdown challenge blog posts here in case you’re curious.

Card 41a | Altenew Let it Shine course Lesson 5a | Metallic Paper | using Altenew April Inspiration Challenge colours
Card 41b | Altenew Let it Shine course Lesson 5a | Metallic Paper | using Color Throwdown Challenge #831 colours
starting Card 42a | Altenew Let it Shine course | Lesson 5a |Metallic Paper | using Color Throwdown Challenge #831 colours
starting Card 42a | Altenew Let it Shine course | Lesson 5a |Metallic Paper | using Altenew April Inspiration Challenge colours

Melting Monday

Luna was very happy that her favourite spring pond is now completely melted. She’ll have to enjoy it while it lasts, because it disappears again by summer. She likes being in water, but only when her feet can still touch the ground – she is a good swimmer (when tossed in) but never ventures into water deep enough to swim by herself.

Everything is continuing to melt at the cottage. There is still ice on the lake as well as the occasional patch of snow on our lot and in the woods. Luna takes advantage of the snow to roll in and it was handy to clean off the soles of my boots after I planted the ferns I dug up yesterday from the side of the road. I had an early morning walk with Luna and an early afternoon walk with Roland and Luna. She was thrilled to discover that her favourite spring pond is now completely melted. I did some crafting at the cottage and some more at home. Heidi went home last night and to a coffee shop to get some marking done. Roland helped her with some multiple choice this evening. I enjoyed a nice catchup talk with Ivonne when she came over to get some of our extra cilantro, mangos and jalapeno peppers. I’m glad that her volleyball is over and she’ll restart walking with us on Tuesdays.

Picture This Year

I’m continuing to follow along with Tracey Clark’s Picture This Year 2025 photo prompts. I only started on April 7th so I’m also slowly working my backwards through the 96 prompts before I started.

Picture This Year prompt 94 (hole) | April 4 prompt, photo taken today | It’s a bit hard to see the hole that I dug into which I place the 3 ferns that I dug up from the side of the road yesterday, but it is there!
Picture This Year prompt 93 (twist) | 3 April prompt, photo taken today | After I dug the hole, transplanted the ferns I had dug up and stomped down the earth my boot treads were filled with mud. Luckily there was still a patch of snow around to ‘do the twist’ with my feet to get most of the mud out of my boot treads. So interesting that I could immediately have a photo to take after I checked out the prompt which proceeded the ‘hole’ prompt once I had taken that photo.
Picture This Year prompt 111 (ribbed) | today’s prompt and photo taken today | It has been ages since I used this crimping tool to add some dimension and interest to the front of a card. I haven’t yet finished the card front, but I did at least get enough done to be able to take my ribbed photo for today. I did get all of the ink blending done on the envelopes, inner layers and back of the 2 cards.

Shadows on Sunday | 100DayProject Day 57 | Card 38 | Card 39 | Card 40a+b

100DayProject Day 57

Card 38 | Altenew Let it Shine course Lesson 4a | Shimmer and Sparkle Pens | Color Throwdown Challenge #831

I made reasonable progress today. 40 cards within 57 days has put me back up to just over 70% completion rate. I am beginning to accept the likelihood that it will take me well over 100 days to make my 100 cards. There was a lot of colouring on my first two cards. The third card had no colouring at all so it went more quickly, although I did make 2 versions of Card 40 so that added some time. I am continuing to try to use the current colour palette from the Color Throwdown Challenge when I am making my cards. CTD831 colours are sage green, yellow and coral.

Card 39 | Altenew Let it Shine course Lesson 4b | Shimmer and Sparkle Pens | Color Throwdown Challenge #831
Card 40b | Altenew Let it Shine Lesson 5a | Metallic Paper

Shadows on Sunday

It was lovely and sunny this morning when I took Luna out for a forest walk. I took a few photos squinting up into the sun then decided that it would be better to position myself in the shadow of a tree. Shadows can be a good thing. They can make interesting photos. Many years ago when I was following some photography blogs there was a Shadow Shot Sunday challenge that I did for a while. I still remember some of the photos that I took, perhaps because I also posted them on my blog at the time. But it has made me a lot more interested in capturing some shadow shots from time to time. I am fortunate that my family and friends are generally quite tolerant of my requests for shadow shots. It is a nice alternative to selfies to get yourself into a photo. No timer and running back into the shot involved either.

Roland and I took Luna for a forest walk in the afternoon once it had warmed up more; it had become quite windy after my morning walk which made a walk less enticing. I grabbed a shovel and a few buckets because I wanted to transplant a few of the tall ferns that grow along the side of the road near where we start our forest hikes. Unfortunately those ferns totally dry up rather than staying green and there are no fiddleheads appearing yet so I’m not 100% certain that I dug up the correct plants. Maybe I just have some weeds that I won’t actually want in my garden. I’ll plant them tomorrow. What reminded me to dig some up was that photo prompt 95 was ‘plant’. Roland took a saw up into the forest and started clearing some downed trees while I dug up my ferns. I helped him haul away some branches. There still needs to be another trail clearing session with a chain saw but we made some good progress. Luna was pretty bored sitting around waiting for us.

Heidi and I made shrimp tacos for dinner with mango salsa and grated cabbage. They were pretty good. Next time we will try to figure out a nice coleslaw recipe to slightly soften up the cabbage a bit and/or we’ll figure out a better creamy sauce recipe. Heidi headed back home after dinner. Luna was not pleased that one of the three new smoke detectors that Roland tried to install seemed to be faulty because it kept blaring. Roland had to entice her with peanut butter get come back inside. She is so afraid of sounds like that, thunder and fireworks since there was a particularly loud finale fireworks at Stefan’s cottage birthday cottage about 4 years ago. Before that she didn’t cower at all from such sounds, now she is terrified. That fireworks night she ran off into the woods and it took more than an hour of us all up on the roads nearby looking for her.

Picture This Year | Prompt 95 (plant)

I didn’t bother to take another photo for today’s prompt 110 (sign) because I decided yesterday’s photo was good enough. So I just took a photo for the plant prompt. After I took that photo I looked back to see what prompt 94 is; it turns out to be ‘hole’ which will be quite handy for me since I’ll have to dig a hole to plant those (hopefully) fern plants that I dug up today.

Picture This Year prompt 97 (April 5 prompt, photo taken today). I dug up some fern plants from a nearby ditch to transplant along our driveway. I hope these turn out to be the ferns that I want and not some type of weed that I don’t want.
My shadow on the rock reminded me of the old Shadow Shot Sunday photography challenge that I did for a while way back in 2011-2012. I have enjoyed taking shadow shots since then. I’ll try to keep an eye out for shadow shot opportunities on Sundays again.

Shadow Shot Sunday – Throwbacks

Since my theme today is Shadows, I decided to look back on my old blog to find some photos that I took as part of a Shadow Shot Sunday photography challenge.

2011 03 30 | Just a few days after discovering Shadow Shot Sunday I was brushing my teeth in the bathroom and noticed my shadow on the wall, and the reflection of that shadow in the mirror. I wish I’d had more time to experiment with creative photos of these shadows
2012 01 15 | Another beautiful day for a walk – clear and crisp. I fit my walk in the neighbourhood by Jim Durrell before Stefan’s hockey game
2012 01 12 | I was so happy that Roland and Heidi took a few photos of their brief visit to the cottage (since they were sort of in the vicinity) after Heidi’s ringette game in Buckingham. I would have loved to be with them, the snow-covered forest looks so magical against the brilliant blue sky.

Stacking on Sunday | 100DayProject Day 50

At the summit of one of the hills on our hike. Such a gorgeous day!

Stacking on Sunday

As I start writing at 10:12 p.m. the original theme for the day is slipping my mind. So I’ve changed it to Stacking on Sunday. We had a wonderful hike in the forest with Luna this morning. She’s taking advantage of there being a lot more snowy patches at the cottage than here in Ottawa so she did a lot of snow angels on route. For the most part we didn’t have troubles navigating the snowier sections where there isn’t as much sunshine, but Roland did get a soaker when his boot went through the snow and into a puddle well over the top of his hiking boots. I got a photo of Roland and Luna at the top of one of the hills and as I scrolled through my photos for the day I remembered my original theme of Summiting on Sunday – which had me thinking about progress on some goals because I am now half way through my 100DayProject. Do you have any goals that you have accomplished? It also makes me think about getting out hiking – ’tis almost the season for that so I hope that you’re finding opportunities to be outdoors.

I did a bit of crafting while Roland finally got the chainsaw going. It turns out it needed fresh gas to run properly. Which makes me think of a theme for a Friday – because I know that, like a chainsaw, I run better on quality fuel and it’s high time I make a few changes in my eating habits. But, back to the Stacking on Sunday theme. Once he got the chainsaw going he cut a few trees that had fallen earlier this spring into logs. I helped him to stack the logs and branches, adding to our already good collection of logs for our summer campfires.

We had gone to Costco on our way to the cottage to buys some chicken thighs to make Honeyed Chicken in the evening. We also picked up a bike trailer since we’re getting new bikes and want to be able to bring Luna with us on outings. Louise came by at 7:00 and we really enjoyed our evening making the chicken together. I thought that would be a lot more fun that just sharing the recipe with her. Which is was.

The finished tray of Honeyed Chicken.
The Honeyed Chicken portioned into containers for the fridge and freezer. I put 5 pieces in each container which is generally good to feed two people.

100DayProject Day 50

I made just one of these boxes to hold my extra mini ink pads today. The pattern is below. I had forgotten the sizing for them so had made a few boxes of other sizes before calling Heidi to get her to measure them at home. I need to make a separate blog post to show how to make these which will be easier to find the right dimensions when I need to make them in the future.

I did some crafting at home as well and had done a bit of cutting and assembling of some boxes in the car on the way to and from the cottage.

This was one of my crafty projects today. I made these to hold my blending brushes which you can see below.
The boxes grouped together in sets of 4 so they will stand freely on the desk.
These box nicely hold and separate the blending brushes by colour.
These are the solid coloured cardstock box pieces that I cut (that I had previously cut to size and scored) in the car paired with their patterned paper pieces that I had cut to size a long time ago . These will be used soon in a class at The Canadian Mental Health Association. These boxes are sized to hold A2-sized greeting cards.

I forgot to include photos of these cards that I wrote yesterday.

Picture This Year | Prompt 102 (solid) | an extra Prompt 100 (stack)

Picture This Year prompt 100 (stack). This is an extra photo that I took today for Thursday’s prompt. This isn’t even the whole stack of logs that we ended up with after all the chainsaw work that Roland did cutting the tree trunks into logs.
Picture This Year prompt 102 (solid). This was the prompt for yesterday which I photographed today. These are all of the solid coloured cardstock boxes that I cut on the way up to the cottage today. I had already cut them to size and scored them but there was a lot of cutting to form the sides of the box and tabs which get tucked inside.

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