First Fire, Now Rain

If the fires weren't bad enough, now it's raining. It's been raining since about 5am. I just checked and so far, we've gotten 2.54" since then. It's raining at about the rate of .13" per hour. See here's the thing... First the fires burn all the plants, leaving the hillsides and mountains bare, and now the rain comes and causes mudslides. Fantastic. I have no problems at my house. This rain will actually be beneficial since the ground in my yard is very hard. Now I can pull all those weeds I've been meaning to get to but never wanted to because it was too much work. It'll be easy peasy now. If it stops raining enough tomorrow, I'll be outside in the mud. YAY! I bought some Peeps today.

What's that chicken noise?

Okay. Confession time. I have a hard time getting up in the morning. I always have. I am a night owl, and the thought of getting up before 6am just makes me cringe, but I have to do it if I want to keep my day job. I thought the time change would be great since my morning clock would be an hour earlier, but no, it adjusted better to the night and now I just stay up later. This is how bad it is with the alarm clock.... I have this cat, Gizmo. He is a Bengal and he has been declawed. Now wait, don't go all PETA on me because he's declawed. I didn't do it. I inherited the cat and it was done to him before I got him. Calm down. So when my alarm would go off in the mornings, he would paw at my face and the blankets around my face and I would wake up enough to put him under the covers. He was bugging me. He didn't really want to go under the covers and I realized the alarm was going off and that was the reason why he was pawing at the covers. So I guess I wasn't paying enough attention to Gizmo and he gave up. Then Frankie, my littlest orange tabby, took over. Except she has nails. She sticks one of her sharp little nails into whatever body part is sticking out of the covers when the alarm goes off. That wakes me up and then I hear the alarm. Well, after finding all these little red poke holes all over my body, I decided enough was enough. I had to get a different alarm. I bought a cheapie little electric alarm clock at Longs this weekend. Just your basic plug-it-in-and-go model. So last night at 10:00, I set my old clock to 5:30am and the new clock to 5:45am, brushed my teeth, took my pills and went to bed. I woke up hearing my regular alarm at 5:35am. I hit the snooze. Then I felt Frankie snuggle in next to me on the bed. Then the 5:45am alarm clock went off and I got out of bed, did a few shoulder stretches and got in the shower. Gizmo loves to sit on the toilet and watch the water in the shower. Don't get all weird on me again, he is not watching ME, he is watching the WATER! Bengals love water. So I'm done with my shower and I'm squeegee-ing the shower door, when I hear "cock-a-doodle-doo", only in the real bird sound and kind of soft-like. Ok, that was weird, I think to myself. I wonder who got a rooster? So as I'm getting out of the shower, I grab my towel and start to dry off with Gizmo watching me (ok he is watching ME at this point), and I hear "cock-a-doodle-doo" again, only louder. Hmm, I say to myself and to Gizmo, what the heck is that? "Cock-a-doodle-doo!!" went the rooster again! This time, Gizmo's eyes get really big and he is looking into the bedroom. I walk into the bedroom and hear "Cock-a-doodle-doo!!!" again and look towards the sound, thinking it's going to be a rooster in my bedroom, but nope. It was my cell phone!! I guess in a senior moment, I set it to go off at 6am with the rooster sound. I've always said I could sleep through a tornado or a supernova explosion, and now you know. I need 3 alarms to get my butt out of bed in the mornings. I wonder if I could sleep through the rooster? Thank god for Saturdays. I can sleep in!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

Happy Thanksgiving to all of my friends and family. I am fortunate to have each and every one of you in my life. You inspire me, encourage me and keep me down to earth when I tend to fly off on my tangents. Thank you for your compassion, your caring and your love. I send it all right back at ya 200%. Happy Thanksgiving, my friends. I love you all.

So many projects, so little time

My blog needs updating. My house needs to be cleaned. My taxes need to be done. I need to balance my checkbook. Phone calls to make. Designs to finish, stamps to be made. Painting to be done. Closets to clean.

I totally missed Mercury. Jupiter is in my house and I don't feel it. Not yet. Just go with the flow. One project at a time. Don't stress.

What's with the Christmas carols already??

So Berry Sweet

These stamps are some recent additions to the justjohanna line. I love strawberries and I love these stamps. I think the strawberry topiary is just the cutest! Well, not the cutest of all justjohanna stamps, but it rates right up there! I colored this stamp with Prismacolor pencils. Some day I will write down all the colors I use. Actually, the list would probably be shorter if I wrote down the colors I did NOT use. I just love using lots of colors and blending, blending, blending. I hand drew the scallopy edge on the topiary section. This card is A2 size. This next card was done using a 2x2 piece of Stampbord. First, I stamped the images on the blank Stampbord and then I inked up the Stampbord with various Versamark Chalk inks in the colors I wanted in the particular areas: red & green. Then I used a stamp positioner to stamp the images again over the top of the previous image. I used a fine point black pen to draw the lines around the images. After it dried, I used the scratch knife to scratch out the white areas on the Stampbord. I drew the scallopy edge. This card is 4x4.

It's Peep-a-lishus!

Look what I found at the Goodwill yesterday. Peep candles!

These will go into the Peep shrine. I may share a photo of the shrine sometime, but right now it is in a secret place. Only the Peeps know where to go.

Peeps are tasty, marshmallow goodness.

It's about time

This was my grandfather's watch. His name was Sidney and he died back in 1977, and of his treasures, I received his pocket watch. I know, that seems like a strange thing to pass down to a granddaughter, but I will tell you why I got his watch.

I remember my parents buying me watches and a month or so later the watch would stop working. These were wind-up watches, so they thought I was overwinding them, but I wasn't. Watch after watch the same thing would happen, so when the battery operated watches became available, I'd buy those, but within months, the watch would die. Time after time this happened so I just quit wearing watches. I have a drawer full of watches I've bought because they were beautiful or trendy, but the same thing happens to all watches on me.

Then I found out that that was the reason Grandpa wore a pocket watch. Wrist watches stopped working when he wore them, too. I did a little research a while back, and it turns out we have some magnetic or electrical "thing" in our bodies that interferes with the workings of the watch.

This was the last watch Grandpa Sid owned before he died. It isn't an expensive watch nor is it very pretty, but it was Grandpa's and I feel the connection to him every time I look at it on my dresser.

Christmas Cards - justjohanna style

Did you know that justjohanna has a new holiday supplement out now? You MUST check it out. There are some very cool stamps there. I LOVE the new 12 day of Christmas stamps. They are so creative! For this first card, I've used the two Baby Dango Reindeer, the Tree Whimsey, the Gingerbread Star and the Rockin' sentiment. I colored the images with Prismacolor pencils. I just love those reindeer, don't you? I wanted to make a card that said it came from a warm location, so I chose to do this card. I think the colors even make it look tropical, don't you? For this card I used the Holiday Palm and the Warm Wishes sentiment. That's it. I colored the tree with the Prismas. I color everything with Prismas. I just got an order from Dick Blick with some Prismas in it, but I found out that I didn't order enough, so I guess I'm ordering again. Darn!

This last card was fun to make. I used the Holly Sleigh, Annabelle Birthday Left, Claude Turtledove Left, Mouse Reindeer Left and the Loot sentiment. I drew in the reins and colored all the images with my Prismas.

You can find all these great images AND MORE on the justjohanna website in the new holiday supplement. If you would like to order some stamps, you'll have to go here. Start making a list, you'll want lots of them.

Sunday afternoon

I've been working hard on some southwestern cards for a magazine. I'll post some cards later today, but right now I'm off to The Pink Pineapple for a photography class. See you later, alligators!

Oh happy craft supplies day

Oh happy day! I got my Dick Blick order today. I got the oh-so-tempting-sale flyer last week and couldn't resist stocking up on a few things.

As you can see here, I got a crapload of canvas boards. Hey, the smallest ones were only 34 cents each! Here's what I got: six 4x4 panels, four 6x6, four 8x8, six 4x6, two 5x7, four 6x12 and two 8x10 panels. That's 28 fantastic panels to paint on and goof around with. The total? A whopping $13.74. Oh and I got some of those cool white Sharpie pens; two each of the broad and thin tips. And I got 38 replacement Prismacolor pencils and 4 replacement black Verithin pencils. I feel like it's my birthday!

Next step: put some paint on those canvases. Hooray. I'm planning on making some Christmas present with these. I'll post what I can. My sister looks at my blog all the time and I don't know about my nieces or my mom, so I won't be posting their stuff. I will have stuff to post in the next week. You can see my practice stuff. Thanks for stopping by. I appreciate your traffic.