Another Etsy Milestone

With the Etsy order that came in today, I finally surpassed 600 sales! :) I am sending 4 origami dress cards to Finland tomorrow. Onward to sale #700.

Tuesday Trigger: Garden Glory

At the office: I went to the main building this morning to park my car in the garage and see what damage the flood had done this past weekend. My first thought when entering the suite was "Wow, it's kinda stinky." I guess that's to be expected considering how much water was in there. I heard it was ankle deep or even more. There were multiple fans blowing throughout the office and many offices had furniture moved away from the walls. The flood originated from the small kitchen, where the water line to the fridge broke. Not only did this affect our office suite, but the water leaked as far as 2 floors below us. Many of my co-workers either worked from home today or were working in my building. It was a little weird to have noise on this side of the street.

And as if things weren't weird already, the copier/scanner in my building broke. The workroom in the main building is closed until all the repairs have been made. UGH.

Card: Here's my take on this week's Tuesday Trigger (Garden Glory). Since I had a stamp that looked very similar to the flower seen on the pillow, my original plan was to do some watercoloring with my Distress Inks, but it got kinda messy and I figured it'd be best to move onto a different concept. Otherwise, I'd be up all night! Plan B was to punch out a bunch of squares out of teal, green and cream cardstock and arrange them in a grid pattern. I embellished the cream cardstock squares with a red heart for a pop of color and some teal buttons for some added dimension. Those Basic Grey Micro Mono stickers = best investment I've made in a while.
Card Specs:
Ink: Colorbox chalk ink in Warm Red
Paper: American Crafts- City Park (green), Abode (teal polka dots)
Stamps: Martha Stewart- Heart and Flower (heart)
Punch: Fiskars Square squeeze punch
Buttons: From Tuesday Morning
Stickers: Basic Grey Micro Mono Stickers
White Gel Pen: Uni-Ball Signo Broad White Gel Pen

Wee Memories Challenge #66

Even though I had the day off for Labor Day, I checked my work email this evening and found an email from the Executive Director. Apparently, there's some minor flooding in the main building. One of the accounting staff went in this weekend and came across all the water. Yikes! The mini crisis won't really affect me much because I've been working in the other building since earlier this year (although, people have made fun of me numerous times about how often they see me in the main building, whether it's to get meeting food leftovers or to chat with people).

My body woke me up around 6:20 this morning, just in time to feed RJ and give him his medication. Today was the first day that I've noticed less sneezing. Thank goodness because cat boogers are gross. After breakfast, I went to Staples to get a custom order printed so that I could finally assemble everything. I have been working with this Etsy customer since August 13, so I'm going to be really happy to ship this order off and put a check mark next to this item on my to-do list.

Productivity took a nose dive after I finished assembling everything. RJ was taking a nap on my bed, so I followed his example. We sleep in a similar fashion- belly up, limbs everywhere. I put the towel on the bed in an attempt to keep the kitty hair in one place, but that's probably a lost cause.
Here's my take on Wee Memories Challenge #66: "Just use any sentiment in your creation or as the "focal" point of your creation!" I wanted to make a card for my friend Page and since she's a fan of the Georgia Tech yellow jackets, I pulled out some Dear Lizzy paper with some bees on it (meh, that's close enough). Since the challenge focused on sentiments, I wanted to create my own sentiment using some alphabet stamps. Yeah, so the one that I came up with is kinda dorky, but I'm sure that Page would get a kick out of it. I also dug out my circle dies for this card as well, another tool that I haven't used in a while.
Card Specs:
Ink: Colorbox chalk ink in Blackbird, Yellow Ochre, Warm Red
Stamps: Studio G (typewriter alphabet), Fiskars- Friendship Garden (flowers), American Crafts- Dear Lizzy- Warbler (bee), American Crafts- Rue (question mark), K.I. Memories-Newsprint Lower (alphabet)
Paper: American Crafts- Dear Lizzy
Punch: We R Memory Keepers Corner Chomper
Die: Spellbinders Nestabilities Standard Circles Large

Wow, this was an awesome 3-day weekend! Back to the grind tomorrow...

Improvement

What a difference a day makes! For reals. I woke up early to give RJ his medication and then headed out to the grocery store by 7:45. My list was longer than usual, and I wanted to beat the post-church crowd and lines. I bought quite a bunch of things that would last me a while, so I'm hoping I won't have to go to the grocery store for a long time. I went with the intention of finding things to make with my "new" crock pot: chicken, canned veggies, fresh veggies, and seasonings. When I got home, I tried made my first dish in the "new" crockpot: Crock Pot “Kitchen Sink” Chicken Stew. I had never used a crock pot before so I was a little skeptical about tossing in raw meat in with everything else, but miraculously everything cooked and tasted awesome. Julie came by this afternoon to make brownies (I moved all the baking stuff from my parents' house to mine because they don't bake there very often anymore) and was around to try some of the stew. It was sister-approved. :)

I wonder if RJ ever misses being outside. The animal shelter identified him as a stray, and I signed papers saying that he'd be an indoor cat, so he'll never step foot outside again. I keep the door open sometimes so that he can soak up the sun.

A Not-So-Smooth Saturday

Ugh, so much drama today. My morning didn't start off the way I was hoping with going to an hour spin class. I got to the gym only to find a sign posted, saying that there would be no 9:30 AM super spin class due to the holiday weekend. I should have checked the holiday schedule before I left the house. So, instead of getting my workout in before going to a rummage sale, I went for a 5-mile run before dinnertime (59:41, 11:56 min/mile pace). I had to walk some of it because my legs felt like lead. Of course, I'm not really happy with the time, but at least I got a workout in.

Anyway, back to the rummage sale. It was at a local church near my parents' house. There weren't that many things there that were of interest to me, i.e. clothes, toys, books, but while I was in the kitchen section, I found 2 crock pots, a mini one and a regular sized one. The mini one was only $3, but I figured since the bigger one was $10, it was a better deal for when I need to cook things in bulk to last me the work week. This find was timed perfectly because I need to go to the grocery store tomorrow, and chicken is on sale, as well as other items that would go in a chicken stew. I can't wait to try out my "new" kitchen appliance!

I made the mistake of taking the e-collar off of RJ this afternoon, thinking that everything was healed up. I took my eyes off him for a second and he went back to licking where he should not have been licking. All the healing that had happened over the last few days flew out the window. I wanted to tear my hair out, RAWR! Between the sneezing and the healing that needs to happen at the neutering site, I'm going to be one happy cat mama when all of this is resolved!

I'm so thankful for the long weekend. I have two more days to make up for all the minor craziness that happened today.

Fall-To Layout #156

Today was work-from-home Friday, which I spent most of the time working on a poster presentation for a national conference coming up in October. I'm about 90% done with my draft, and I've given myself a Monday deadline to send it to the co-author for him to fill in the blanks.

I was behind a lady with a wailing child in the cart at Target. The child was throwing things out the cart and seriously having a cow. I picked up one of the things that she threw out and gave it to the mom. The mom didn't even look at me or say "thank you." Sheesh, YOU'RE WELCOME!

Here's my take on Fall-To Layout #156. I really wanted to start using the yellow flowers that I bought on clearance last weekend for the circle portion of the sketch.
Card Specs:
Ink: Colorbox chalk ink in Blackbird
Paper: American Crafts- Letterbox
Stamps: Studio G Ditto (sentiment)
Punch: Martha Stewart- Classic Butterfly
Flowers: Prima, Recollections
Pearl: Recollections

There's a rummage sale near my parents' house tomorrow. I told myself that I couldn't go check it out unless I went to spin class in the morning. I have really been a lazy butt lately and not really adhering to the race training schedule, so I feel like I need to get a workout in somewhere, somehow!

Another Best Wishes Card

RJ: After the third try, I have successfully given him his antibiotics tonight, yay! I left him on his own downstairs last night, instead of carrying him upstairs to my room. He came up on his own and hopped on the bed about 10 minutes later. I guess he doesn't stay mad for long (thankfully).

Food: Hmm, what to do with some very ripe bananas? Chocolate chip banana muffins, of course! I followed this recipe from Allrecipes.com. This took care of two things at once: I now have breakfast that I can eat in the morning (I ate all my bagels and English muffins) and now I don't have to feel bad about letting the bananas get really brown. I like my bananas on the neon green side. On another foody note, we had chocolate cake at the office today to say goodbye to one of the administrative assistants. Surprisingly, I enjoyed the cheaper cake from Safeway that we got on Tuesday more than I enjoyed the fancier chocolate cake from Whole Foods that we had today.

Card: I've been asked to make another card for a girl that's leaving my organization next week. She's pursuing her photography interests. We've had some good artsy-related conversations...I'll miss having those. I decided to go with an emboss resist technique today, similar to this card that I made on Sunday.

Card Specs:
Embossing powder: Stampendous! in white
Embossing ink: VersaMark
Ink: Tim Holtz Distress Ink in Barn Door,Wild Honey, Peeled Paint
Paper: American Crafts- Letterbox
Stamps: Hero Arts Cling Stencil Flower, Studio G Ditto (sentiment, butterfly)
Die: Spellbinders Nestabilities Labels 4
Punch: Fiskars Threading Waters border punch
White Gel Pen: Uni-Ball Signo Broad White Gel Pen
Pearl: Recollections