HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

VIOLETTE'S NEW DRESS

Miss Violette Spice Blythe is wearing her gorgeous new dress she received from enakitty in the Petite Blythe handmade outfit swap. She is hosting some new friends in a pre-Thanksgiving visit. The three Dotee dolls came in swaps from (l to r) Jane R, Moominbrooke and mcall. Thanks, ladies!

MY FIRST 'ZINE

I just finished these a little while ago. You'd think with how tiny they are, it would have been really fast to make them, but I was up until 3:30am last night working on the original. Then, this morning, I took the original to make copies. Then it took quite a while to bring them home, add some color and cut and fold.
Naturally, this is for a Swap-Bot swap. These are the first 'zines I remember making, and the swap guidelines set the style or method of making the booklet, plus the subject and title. That made it very easy for everyone to feel capable of doing a decent job of it. I am really hoping for more swaps like this.

ALTERED MATCHBOXES AND CIGARETTE BOX

These are the projects I finished and mailed off today.

I really do like the way these two matchboxes turned out. They were for a 'Handmade Stuffed Animal in a Matchbox' swap on...what else? - Swap-bot. Sewing is not really my thing, so I picked a very simple animal to do - a bird. The only thing simpler might have been a worm. And that would be hard to stuff. Inside the boxes, I painted a leafy tree branch for the birds to sit on during their journeys. In keeping with the bird theme, Egglantine made an artful contribution to the boxtop decoration.

My partner in the Recycled Cigarette Box swap likes mermaids according to her profile, so I decorated her cigarette box in that theme. This is the front.

And this is the back. There were items from certain categories we had select to put inside the box, but this was before I did that, so all you see is just the box.

I have not been joining any new swaps lately, and just fulfilling the ones that it was already past the deadline to drop. Things get busier and busier for me from the time religious education classes start in the fall through Christmas. I like to get my swaps out early, but lately, I have only been able to complete and send them right before the mailing deadline...which makes me nervous. In a few days, my 'Journal Entry a Day for 20+ Days' will go out. Then I have a Winter 'Zine to make and swap with five people, as well as a Handmade Petite Blythe Doll Outfit to make and swap with two people. (Wish me luck with THAT one!) After that, I will be done until I join more.

EVEN DEPRESSED...

I'm thankful that I'm thankful. ;)

You Are 87% Thankful

You're an incredibly thankful person, and everyone around you feels very appreciated.You inspire people to be more optimistic, forgiving, and grateful.

http://www.blogthings.com/howthankfulareyouquiz/">How Thankful Are You?

WEIRD DREAM

Just a snippet left this morning, but the main part of my dream was that behind the newly built apartment complex, where Chuck an I had just moved in, the workmen were building a fake sky from extremely large sheets of wood. It was painted to look exactly like the real thing, which could still be seen on the one side they were in the process of building and erecting. (Maybe because I noted how pretty the sky looked when I was taking Zach and Mat home yesterday?)

The apartments were single units situated in a curve, in a brushy area between here and Beeville. There was a ditch running behind the apartments with water in it (a combination of the ditch from last night's Amazing Race that the contestants had to pole vault over and the ditch and lake behind the houses in a crime scene shown on a Court TV show last night).

Vickie lived next door one one side, with a fenced backyard, and Dodie and family (all young children, though - maybe they were her grandchildren) lived in another apartment there. I was quick to point out the fake sky-in-progress, because I knew once it was finished, no one would believe it was not real. We walked out to and across the ditch, and I was concerned that Coconut was getting wet and muddy and might stray too far. I just seemed sort of dangerous and sinister. (Every time I watch CourtTV, which is not very often, I regret it.)

Dodie had one dog (a daschund?) and was wanting another, but her husband brought home a basset hound instead. I was so aggravated that she named the dog, 'Stupid'. Her other dog had a sadly unflattering name, too, but I can't remember what it was, now.

Our apartment had a cement and pebble floor, but different than any I had ever seen. And there was a chunk out of it in one place that I was going to have the landlord fix.

That's really all I can remember about the dream, except for Chuck coming home from work, visiting with Vickie in her backyard, and something about Dodie's (grand)daughter being in a fairy costume, up on a chair in ...the old school cafeteria(?)...while we tried to adjust her costume hem or something.

TRY THIS WORD GAME

http://www.freerice.com/index.php This is fun. Even though I donated a heck of a lot of rice grains, I never did get a score over 47. Watch your score on the bottom right - it changes with each question...something I didn't realize at first. I thought you just went until you missed and then got a final score. Not so!

DULLSVILLE

There is nothing like joining a journal swap to open your eyes to what a dull life you lead. Well, me, anyway. I joined a swap on Swap-Bot a while back, that involves keeping a journal for a minimum of 20 days/20 entries, then swapping it permanently with your assigned partner at the end of that time. Each entry is supposed to have one page of writing and one page of related art work or illustration. My gosh! I could almost run 20 copies of my Day One entry and glue one to each journal page. I never realized that before. There is slight variance in my daily reporting of whether or not I went out for lunch or something, but that's about it. So, in keeping with that scintillating subject, here is what I have been eating for meals lately when I don't go out:















I bought whole wheat pita bread and spinach and other veggies the other day. I stuff cheese and veggies in the pocket and then add Greek or Italian dressing. Yum! Y'all are on the edge of your seats, right?














If it wasn't for Swap-Bot, I don't know what in the world I'd write about. These are 6 MOO dolls I made for a Christmas themed MOO doll swap. Three of them have the faces of American Girl Dolls (Kit, Felicity and Kirsten) and three are Clement Clarke Moore who wrote A Visit From St. Nick. These were a lot of fun to make. I did make a few extra bodies, and hope to get faces on them and get them finished for some use before Christmas.
Then here is one I did after those. I used it as an illustration in that exciting journal I am keeping. It fits into a little envelope glued onto the page.

CUPCAKE SWAP

Look what came in the mail today! This was from 'CrochetCupcake' and it was way over and above the swap requirements. Needless to say, I was blown away with it all.

I have been trying to make some headway with my totally cluttered house. Ugh. You can't believe what a disaster it is...and how lacking in energy and motivation I am. :/ It all just seems too overwhelming. And even if I miraculously mananged to get all the clutter banished, it would still be deep in the state of disrepair. It seems hopeless. But today I did finally get the last of the art stuff and paper stuff off the floor where the bookshelf fell apart when I was struggling to move it a while back. And I cleared off much of the table yesterday...and put up the 5 skeins of yarn and two bags of stuffing from the living room, plus other miscellaneous stuff.

Zach is coming over to spend the night tonight, so tomorrow I'm going to have him help me get the scarecrows and their accessories put away. I'll need to wash their clothes, though, before those can be packed away in the attic for next year.

Anyway, it's almost time for Meercat Manor, so I guess I'll get the bills and checkbook and take care of that while I watch tv.

ALL SAINTS DAY...AND A HALLOWEEN REPORT

Whew! Halloween came and went in a flash this year. I felt like I had enough time to prepare for it all, until the day before, about noon, when Andrew called and reminded me that it was just a little over 24 hrs. away. YIKES! So I rushed around trying to get the rest of the Halloween preparations done, as well as finish and send off 5 down-to-the-deadline swaps, and get other regular and semi-regular stuff done. Halloween went well, but was a little on the skimpy side this year as to my yard decorations and all that. I handed out Halloween pencils to 149 trick-or-treaters this year. Down from last year, but not too bad. The first ones arrived at 6pm and the last ones at 8:45 or so. There were three flat-bed trailer 'floats'. One with all the kids seated on orange lawn chairs, one really big one with hay bales, and my cousin's with orange rope lights strung up and plastic jack-o-lanterns hanging from it. But no 'Gator Caravan' this year. Oh, and about the pencils - only one group seemed disappointed in not getting candy, and almost half the kids were visibly and vocally excited with getting them. LOL - go figure!
So many of the parents that came by with their kids commented that there were so many fewer houses participating this year. From my vantage point sitting on my front driveway, on the corner of the block, I could only see one other house lighted and hosting trick-or-treaters. It's really kind of a sad indication of the change in the times and culture.
There was a plethora of pirates this year, and lots of princesses, witches and ninjas. We had two little kangaroos, a king, a cowboy, a couple of super-heros, lots of ghouls and ...accident(?) victims. The best costumes I saw were a big brother who was an Orkin man, and a little sister who was a really cute cockroach. LOL! The parents I noticed in costume were a pair who were a doctor and inmate, Minnie Mouse (shout out to Laura!) and some white-faced, black clothed ghouls (or whatever they were supposed to be). I wore my black capris with a oversized jack-o-lantern shirt, with my black crocks with the doo-dads on them, and had my hair in two lopsided pig-tails with a black and an orange scrunchie. It was too hot for the Halloween socks, and I never got my Halloween crown made. Darn! Hopefully next year. Now for photos:

Mathieu, as a bee-keeper, won first prize at the 4-H Halloween carnival in Beeville. Zachary, who is in that in-between age, went as Rambo...sort of. He borrowed my Desert Storm combat boots for the occassion. He's not mad in the photo, just doing his 'TOUGH' face. The beanie bunny rabbit in the photo is my doing. I have been hosting Floppity, from Sweden for a week and was obligated to take photos of her doing various things in South Texas, before sending her on to the next spot in her world tour.

This photo is from last Sunday's religious education class. Actually it is after classes. Most of the class time involved me giving a lesson to the whole assembled group - all age catagories. I used a pumpkin carving object lesson, including a pumpkin parable and lots of analogies and Bible teachings that go with it. Then at the end, we had each student put their name in for a drawing so that someone will get to take home the jack-o-lantern. Enrique won it, and so he and his younger brother came to pick it up when it was time to go home. Aren't they cute?

As extra busy as I have been lately, I've been forgetting to take photos of my crafty doings and swaps received. This is one of the two sets I made for the Dollhouse Miniature Swap on Swap-bot. I like them - for myself - but am really, really not pleased with how they look, to send to my swap partners. *Le Sigh* The things I received were so much better in design and quality than mine. But this was to the best of my ability, so I had to send them.

This very poor quality (sorry!) photo is of the three Dotee Dolls I made for the Swap-Bot swap of the same name. Mine are the dark green ones. The brightly colored one at the bottom left is the one I have received so far. Because of the leaves and shadows, you can't see her dangly string of beads below her that features a really cool parrot bead.

I guess that is all I have for today. Tonight is the All Saints Day Mass. By then, I hope to have my house a little less messy than it is now, and the garbage hauled to the dump. If I have time and am not too tired, I may work on some art swaps that are coming up, so I don't get caught in another time crunch like I did this week.

QUESTIONS OF THE DAY: What was your Halloween like? How many trick-or-treaters did you have?