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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.

Throwback Thursday | 100DayProject Day 54

100DayProject Day 54 (started Card 34)

I didn’t get very much crafting done. A bit of a start on Card 34 for Lesson 2 (embossing powder) of the Altenew Let It Shine course after watching that video last night in bed before I turned the light out. I did package up some lemon squares to bring to Ivana’s in some boxes I had previously made. One was already decorated but I did colour in the flowers on the black box – those are the same flowers I’ll be using on Card 34.

Picture This Year

I didn’t take a particular photo for today’s prompt with was focus. Nothing specific came to mind. I did try to make the focus of this photo the lovely bright yellow centre of the flower so if I don’t come up with an alternate photo in the next few days I actually think this will do. I should learn how to better focus on just part of the image when taking photos with my iPhone; something to investigate for another day.

PIcture This Year prompt 107 (focus). I love the bright yellow centre of this flower which was what I was trying to make the focus of this photo that I took of the beautiful flowers that Louise dropped off this morning.

Throwback Thursday

It’s 9:50. Heidi and Roland just left for the cottage. I’m quite tired and still have to get a big batch of Italian soup into the freezer and organizing my craft things to bring so I’ve opted to drive up separately in the morning. I had an amazing lunch at Ivana’s (see the photos of the delicious open faced sandwiches she made (I want to invite her to teach me and some of our friends how to make these in the fall)) then we went to Multicraft to peruse what they still have left at 50% off since they’re closing. I came away with about 3″ of basic patterned paper for $20 and some alcohol inks. Then I made the soup, did a bit of crafting and it was time to head to the curling club for our last curling of the season. We got home about 9:25.

I enjoyed my early morning walk then had another long walk with Roland and Luna on which we bumped into Dulce and Gonzalo so we had a great visit with them on the walk back. And we saw Louise on her way out to Collingwood after she dropped off some flowers, chocolate and nice napkins for Easter. She’s kindly bringing up the water play table we bought for Amelia’s first birthday and a Lego set of Charlie. I had a great catchup call with Stefan on his walk home from work when I was making the soup.

Throwback Thursday to 2010 04 17

Saturday: Roland took Stefan to his 1:30 game in Gatineau then dropped him off at Sam’s. The boys had a blast in the spring forest and enjoyed dinner back at the Jordan’s afterwards. I had to pick him up before the party ended for his 6:45 game, but atleast it worked out that he could make a lot of the party (and bring along a nice full bag of food to contribute to the food bank – which I think is a great idea; our children certainly don’t want for much). I enjoyed going to Guertin arena – it brings back memories: of going with Karen in high school to watch her cousin Mickey play there against the Hull Olympiques; and of me playing there sometimes when I played a few years of ringette with the Hull team after graduating from university. As I write this 12 days later, it says Heidi had soccer practice 1-3, but I think she and Roland must have skipped it since Heidi had her first ringette tryouts at 5:00 out in Goulbourn. I baked lemon squares to send over to Ivonne’s since their family was celebrating her birthday (we dropped by later for the black forest cake).

And a few photos that Roland has been scanning in from his parents negatives.

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.

Stay at Home Saturday | 100DayProject Day 49 | Card 31 | Card 32 (started)

100DayProject Day 49

Card 31 (Pop Art)

I started and finished my card for lesson 5 of the Altenew For the Guys course in which we were to make a Pop Art inspired card. I searched for some images and used one as inspiration for the card. I used Gina K masking strips to create the grid then ink blended the red grid.

Card 32 (Glitter) (started)

The first lesson of the Altenew Let It Shine course is entitled, Glitter. The lesson demonstrated making your own glitter cardstock. It was the first time I tried to do that. And will likely be the last. I actually had to have two attempts because I decided to try to burnish the glitter by running it through my diecutting machine rather than just using a bone folder/spatula. The adhesive of the 2-sided adhesive paper beneath the glitter ended up sticking to the printer paper I had put over the glittered cardstock before running it through. The next attempt I put a piece of acetate over the glitter before burnishing it in the die cutting machine then ran it through again with my hello die. Clearly I shouldn’t have put a piece of printer paper over it even after I had it burnished.

I am only partway through putting the card together. There were a few other techniques in the class including stamping the floral image on vellum and colouring the image on the wrong side with alcohol markers. All of my alcohol markers are at the cottage so I thought I’d try to colour ink by mixing some ink with some Simple Solution Acrylic Medium. I’m not sure if that’s going to work. I’m letting it dry overnight.

Stay at Home Saturday

We stayed home last night and today since Heidi is having some friends up to the cottage. We definitely had a slow start to the day and eventually got out to walk Luna then we went to the Cottage Show at the EY Centre. We bought a few new decor items for the cottage which are still in the car so I’ll photograph them tomorrow. We also bought some date humus as well as some soup mixes. It’s always fun to try out some of the interesting food and to support local small businesses at events like that. We were a month too late to buy end of season cross country skis at Fresh Air Experience. We’ll head back there in early December. We also went to Bushtukha to look for some hiking boots for Roland and some light hikers for me. But it was quite busy there so we’ll go back another time. Roland has had a very frustrating time trying to put in a replacement part into the leaking washing machine. He went to Princess Auto to buy a wrench but still had no luck getting it apart. So he went to Metro and got some nice steaks on sale for his dinner to bolster his mood. I did some cardmaking while Roland watched some curling.

Picture This Year

I’m going to try to start following along with Tracey Clark’s Picture This Year 2025 prompts now that I have discovered them.

Picture This Year prompt 101 (bag). This was Friday’s prompt and I took the photo on Friday. I love this bag that Heidi gave me for Christmas. The other side is the outline of the lake that our cottage (which we bought in 2001), is on. Heidi did a great job with our cottage logo, which like the lake image is also on the matching sweatshirts that she gave us all for Christmas.
Picture This Year prompt 100 (stack) | This was actually Thursday’s prompt. I had the idea on Friday and took the photo today. I had Heiid’s Bananagrams game out because I had borrowed it to play at our girls getaway near Montebello. Even though you don’t actually play with the letters stacked I thought the game would be a helpful prompt for this photo prompt.
Picture This Year Prompt 103 (out). This is actually the prompt for tomorrow and the photo was taken today. While I was taking the photo for Prompt 100 (stack) I realized that the Bananagrams game would be helpful for this prompt as well. In fact, I like it better than my stack idea.
Picture This Year prompt 97 (vibrant). This was Monday’s prompt and I took the photo Monday night just as I was heading to bed. That was the evening that I had discovered the challenge. These bright pink (can we say vibrant?) laces were calling out to me to be photographed when I caught a glimpse of them out of the corner of my eye as I was reading through the April prompts which I had printed out to review in bed. I’m not sure whether I’ll go back and do some of the past prompts, but I do hope to continue doing many of the daily prompts for at least April and May.
Picture This Year prompt 98 (bird). This was Tuesday’s prompt and I took the photo on Tuesday. The birds in the conservation area were quite elusive on my walks so I decided to use this photo of the bird card that I’m making to cover off this prompt.
Picture This Year prompt 99 (line). This was Wednesday’s prompt this photo was taken on Wednesday. Everyone was very good about lining up on the woods while I got my phone camera set up in the ‘Y’ of a branch with a timer setting. It was such a fun afternoon with all these friends in the woods near Montebello between Ottawa and Montreal where we met to celebrate a recent 65th birthday as well as a recent retirement.

Less Tech Tuesday | 100DayProject Day 45

Less Tech Tuesday

It has been an easy day to use technology less; I have hardly been at home with extra time to spend on my phone or computer. It’s 10:00 p.m. and I’m just starting to write a few words. No early morning walk nor swim for me today. But I did have a wintery wonderland walk with Roland and Luna. It was magically beautiful and I loved it. I’m in a very small majority; almost everyone else I know is so ready for winter to be over.

I did do a wee bit of crafting before my 10:30 online class. I had forgotten to press send on the reminder email last night so my participants had reached out to me at 10:30 to check if it was still on. We made 2 cute cards that Vicki had created for us. I haven’t yet had time to address them and to get them out into the mail but I will do so later this week. Then I picked up Louise to bring her to pick up her car at the garage. Then I had a quick lunch before driving to Vicki’s for our road trip out to Scrap en Masse in Planteganate. It’s an amazing paper crafting store, very well stocked with great staff. Vicki was picking up some online orders and I really enjoyed browsing and couldn’t resist picking up several products. Then it was a stop at Costco to buy some flowers and food and home for a quick Costco shrimp taco dinner with my brother Kevin, Heidi and Roland. Then 7:00 walking with Luna and 3 friends. Then picking up Karen for some grocery shopping for our 3-day/2-night ladies getaway near Montebello to celebrate Sheela’s retirement and Karen’s birthday.

100DayProject Day 45

I decided that I’ll put a ‘wobbler’ behind a perched bird for my interactive card lesson of my Altenew For the Guys course Lesson 4 (which will be card 41). The class made a very cute wobbler card by coiling up jewelry wire and hot gluing behind a stamped image of two of those wacky wavy inflatable arm-flailing tube men (tall boys) (did you know they apparently were invented for the 1996 summer Olympics). I only got as far as die cutting, ink blending and assembling the bird and the perch as well as inkblending the ‘bamboo screen’ background. Those are Spellbinders products from my most recent SCT Crop and Create event supplies. I still need to make some flowers for the background using some of my Altenew products and to make the wobbler. I am using the colour scheme from the latest Color Throw Down challenge (mauve, mint, yellow). And I have a new stencil that I’m going to use in the card that I’m making for the Pop Art inspired lesson (which will be Card 42). I haven’t yet figured out what I will make for Lesson 6 which is themed Gaming.