I think today instead of ending with my thankful thought, I will start with it. Guess what - Kim from Today’s Creative Blog featured me yesterday! Isn’t that cool? I encourage you to go check out Kim’s blog. I’ve had it on my must-read list for some time now. She has a knack for finding some very interesting people working in various media, all of whom are making beautiful things. It makes me wish I had a million hours in the day so that I could keep up with all of the creative blogs I discover through her. I’m thankful to be included in such a nifty “club.” Thanks, Kim!

And to all of you who have wandered over here from Today’s Creative Blog, welcome! Make yourself at home. And come to think of it, maybe some of you creative types would be interested in getting in on the Color Challenge… It’s a monthly event around here, each month based on a color. If you can craft something in brown, upload an image to flickr, and add it to our pool, then you can join us. The more the merrier, all media welcome! You can find out more here.

The pictured images are a few recent challenge submissions that I really like. These particular entries are polymer clay. Interesting how many different hues of brown have been showing up in the pool. I am noticing a really wide variety this time around that I didn’t notice when we did orange, olive, or aqua. Maybe “brown” is just too broad a color name. Perhaps I should have said “chestnut.” Heh. Anyway, my fault for not being specific enough, so I will accept anything from the brownish family. You’ve got a few more weeks to get your submissions in (where did November go already??).

It’s Friday, so you know what that means? Flickr favorites of course. Such a feast for the eyes, that flickr is, wouldn’t you say?

Will you look at what I played along with last night? I, who haven’t exercised in years. I, who have finally decided that I am ready to be serious about losing some weight. I have set a rather lofty goal of 25lbs, but to be honest, if I lose the 15 I gained during the Summer of Comfort Eating and Elastic-Waist Skirts, it will be enough to make me happy. I have to do something. My body is clearly complaining about the extra weight, every time I do anything the least bit active - and sadly, these days I consider moving from a seated position to a standing position to be “active.” Wish me luck in de-pudging. I signed up with SparkPeople.com, who made the video. They have a few tools that might come in handy, and it’s free, so why not?

Anybody have any suggestions for some good family workout videos? I think I’d like to include the kids in this endeavor - particularly the little round one who is entirely too fond of his tv and computer time. (kinda like his mom…)

Happy Weekend!

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Originally published at Polka Dot Creations. Please leave any comments there.

Some days when the boys are home from school, I get all domestic and get in the mood to take care of laundry, clean up the kitchen, maybe catch up on some business email.  This is not one of those days.  When it became clear to me that the guys were hunkering down for a long morning of imaginative play in their pajamas, I decided I wanted to play something myself.  So, I sat on my bed with a pile of fabric, cut out the pieces for my mother-in-law’s birthday present, and I cut out the fabric for a skirt.  I didn’t stitch up my MIL’s napkins, but I did make this skirt - my Thanksgiving skirt.  Yes, I realize these guys are roosters and not turkeys, but I couldn’t find turkeys.  Or pilgrims.  Or cornucopias.  Or depictions of Thanksgiving feasts.  So roosters it is, and I think they’re nifty.  Specifically, the fabric is Alexander Henry’s The Roost.  The skirt itself was made without a pattern.  I just folded it selvage-to-selvage, stitched it into a tube, hemmed it, and made an elastic casing on the top.

I still felt like playing after that, so I colored my hair.   I spent this summer squirting peroxide here and there on my head, leading to streaks of lighter color.  I did have a plan, but I kind of lost interest in pursuing it at some point, and stopped bothering.  And it was starting to look like I stopped bothering.  So, I got my hands on a box of temporary 28-shampoo Chestnut Brown and went to town.  Now I look more like nature intended ;-)  At least for the next few weeks, anyway.

I didn’t make the soup this morning - I did that on Monday, but I did eat the leftovers for lunch yesterday, and that’s when I took this picture.  It’s Turkey Curry Meatball Soup, and despite the fact that it’s full of vegetables, I really like it!  I even liked it for lunch a few days later, and I am not a leftovers fan, generally-speaking.  Good thing it was delicious, because the recipe made quite a bit.  As part of my “get organized” initiative, I’m planning our meals for the week, and giving each day a “theme.”  Mondays are to be “try something new” night and this soup was the first candidate.  I’m so glad we liked it, because I now have three containers of it frozen for future “grab something decent out of the freezer” nights.

Day two and I’m already thinking of skipping the NaBloPoMo festivities.  Not that I won’t post every day, because I might, but I think I’ve lost interest in the idea of being part of the whole organized movement.  Still, being thankful is always a good thing, so I’ll end this post with what I am thankful for today:  Days off from school that we can spend playing (together or on our own) and spontaneously visiting with family.

And with that, I must go and straighten up the living room - my mother and nephews are coming over shortly to join us for lunch at Stewarts (see?  I meant it when I told them “maybe another day”) followed by a little play time.

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This morning I tried a new soap. One minute I was a 36-year-old woman taking a shower and the next I was five or six, in a movie theater with my grandparents watching Pete’s Dragon and eating butterscotch candies from Granny’s pocketbook. That’s some powerful soap.

Ahem. Anyway. I’ve decided we spend too much time staring at screens, be they computer monitors or televisions. This point was driven home to me this morning when I suggested to my little henchmen that we should have a few hours today with no TV and no computers. From the looks on their panic-stricken faces, you’d think I had put forth the idea that we spend the day organizing our underwear drawers and vacuuming.

At approximately 9:30am, after ample warning and time to play a few games, I turned off their computer monitors, closed the lid on my laptop, and set the timer in the kitchen for 2 hours. Then Eamonn and I set to work making a pie. I was under the impression that I had taken a glass pie plate from among my grandmother’s things (the other grandmother, not the one with the butterscotch candies) a few years ago. I thought it was part of the small collection of items I picked out when my parents were cleaning out Grandma & Grandpa’s house in preparation to sell it. I suppose I could be wrong. Or maybe I put it somewhere weird. Either way, there was no pie plate to be found. Eamonn crawled into the cabinet for me to check the dark corner in the back, but he came up empty.

So we improvised. Round, rectangular, what difference does it make? It all tastes the same, right?

And as far as that goes, it was good but not great. We used pre-made crusts and canned filling and you can tell. Don’t get me wrong - I still had a piece for lunch, and will probably have another slice or two before the day is up. But I think the next time I want to take the easy way out pie-wise, I’ll just do my usual thing of throwing a Mrs. Smith’s Apple Pie into the oven. Those are delicious.

When not baking, I flipped leisurely through Sue Heaser’s new book, and the boys tried on their clearance costumes from yesterday. The two hours ended when the oven timer beeped, the little people scurried off almost immediately to watch their new Backyardigans DVD, and I (who really am no better when it comes to screen time these days) flipped open the laptop, did a quick email check, and processed my pie-making photos. It’s probably pretty sad that we find ourselves twitching when the tv and computers are taken away, and I think for all of our sakes, I’m going to institute more of these screen-free times. I’d like to see more baskets of books in strategic places around the house. I’d love to find the boys engaged in a good story sometimes, instead of bathing in the blue glow of the computer screen. Aidan has been able to read since he was four years old, but he considers it more of a utilitarian skill than something that can bring him pleasure. Eamonn is learning to read now, too, and while it’s hard to deny the contribution that tv and computer games have made toward that goal, I think I’d like for his reading vocabulary to extend beyond play, quit, bonus features, and scene selection.

It could be worse. Most of the games they play on the computer have significant educational value. When they watch TV, they are watching either PBS, or DVDs from our collection. And often (as is this case this very minute) the TV seems to just be there for background noise. A few minutes ago, they set the language to French (on purpose), quickly got bored because they couldn’t understand what anyone was saying, and proceeded to play some imaginative game completely unrelated to what the French Backyardigans were doing. This kind of thing happens a lot. So, they’re not playing shoot-em-up games all day or being barraged with harmful advertising, but they are missing things with their eyes on the screen so much. I need to think about ways to restructure our days and minimize the amount of time we spend being passively entertained, and now is a good time to do it, while I’m working on tasks, calendars & scheduling.

As for me, I have some business-related work to take care of this afternoon, but I am craving some more screen-free time. I’m going to drag the vacuum down to the family room, crank up some Polka Dot Radio nice and loud, and do something physical (not to mention useful) with my time! Actually, forget Polka Dot Radio for the moment - I have this strange desire for Christmas music suddenly. Maybe I’ll indulge in a little Christmas Broadband for a while.

I hope you’ll pardon me now. There are halls to deck!

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Originally published at Polka Dot Creations. Please leave any comments there.

Hi. Remember me? I used to blog here. I got on this “organizational tear” for the last two days that completely consumed me. I’ll save you the gory details, but in a nutshell, I finally found an alternate calendar and a task management system to try so that I could stop using Outlook. I’ve been using Thunderbird for my email for at least a year, and having to run two separate programs for my schedule and my email wasn’t cutting it. In fact, I was avoiding opening up Outlook altogether, and as such pretty much ignoring my schedule. That wasn’t really working for me lately…

Anyway, it took two days of trial-and-error, testing, setting up difference scenarios & then changing my mind and trying something else, but I think I’m happy at this point. I’m ready to get uber-organized, and keep up with all of my responsibilities. The only thing I miss in my new setup is a way to sync with my Palm. That’s not as important as it used to be, though. I haven’t been carrying my Palm with me much these days. With luck, somebody will develop an appropriate hotsync conduit before too long. I should be able to wait.

I made another scarf like the others - spread out the work over the course of the week - and I really love it. I haven’t photographed it yet, but I will tomorrow, while I’m wearing it, since it’s for me. Heh. I have three more destined for the shop, that I hope to finish this weekend.

Guess you noticed the gratuitous kid pictures? The pirate got his costume out of his aunt’s box of “things she got at theme nights at the club” (there were several pirates at school, but I bet the others didn’t have a flamboyant silver skull and crossbones on their hats. heh.). The dragon wore a costume that his brother wore for the two previous years. Never thought we’d get so much mileage out of a last-minute $10 Wal-Mart purchase.

One more Halloween over,  three more bowls of candy to try and keep my hands out of…

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This is everything I ate yesterday. Wait - what’s that sound? Why, it’s the collective gasp-in-horror from all of the motherly-types out there reading this. My own mother scolded me in the comments for this photo on flickr. She knows me pretty well - you’d think she’d have realized by now that I eat like some kind of carb-addicted salt fiend whenever possible. Neil has made feed-bag and salt-lick jokes at my expense many times. Don’t worry, I don’t take that kind of abuse lying down. I usually take it sitting up, Dr. Pepper in one hand, other hand halfway down the throat of a pretzel bag. Heh.

So, anyway, when I saw that Laura of Katydiddys was having a Weight Loss Challenge, I thought maybe it wouldn’t hurt to jump on that bandwagon. Now, if you recall, less than two weeks ago, I grabbed the tailpipe of the Flylady bandwagon, and I’m still hanging on. I’m not really sure I can stand on both wagons at once without incurring a nasty groin injury (just how much self-improvement can one girl take?), but I’m going to give it a shot.

Week one’s challenge is twofold:

1. Keep a food diary, including a visual record (hence the photo above), and be artistic about decorating the diary. I have a nifty little software program on my Palm that helps me keep track of Weight Watchers points, so I plan to use my Palm instead of a physical journal, but I am considering making some kind of decorative sleeve for it, so that I get to stretch my artistic muscles.
2. Go for a 30-minute walk alone every day. This is going to be really hard for me. Thechallenge began two days ago and I still haven’t done it. I almost did it this morning, but after filling up four huge garbage bags of unwanted garments and lugging them to the van [see Flylady reference above] I figured I’d gotten all of the exercise I wanted for now. The thing is, the goal of the exercise challenge is not only to get moving, but also to have some peaceful time out in nature to help the creative juices flow. I love that idea. In theory. I just need my legs to get the message and take me outside…

Part of the challenge involves getting hooked up with a partner. Your jobs are to support each other, send each other encouraging little things in the mail, etc. My partner is Kara of Innocent Charms, who, coincidentally, just won the color challenge the other day. Small world, eh? So wish us luck over the next 6 weeks - my goal is to lose 10 lbs, which may or may not be attainable in that time. Hopefully I can stick with it long enough to find out.

Oops - gotta go get this little stinker from preschool!  Hopefully I’ll be back later to chat about creative things.

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Originally published at Polka Dot Creations. Please leave any comments there.

To borrow a phrase from Aidan, “THAT’s it!” (It’s very important that there be much emphasis on the word “that’s” if you want to get the full effect.) There are parts of my house that are scary-messy. Not just messy. Scary-messy. So I’m getting back on the Flylady bandwagon. Well, not completely. I may just ride sidecar. Here’s what I’m thinking:

I already am doing some of her morning routine stuff, in particular starting a load of laundry every day. What I want to add is a couple of 15-minute cleanups and some zone work. I should have no problem fitting that into my schedule, I just have to do it.

I thought it might help me to photograph the process. Goodness knows I’ve become a flickr junkie, so if I tie this cleanup process into that, maybe I can have a better chance at success, right? Maybe. My plan is to do a 15-minute cleanup in the current zone every day as well as the daily missions. And then, assuming I am still all gung-ho about this, I’d like to do another 15 minutes in whatever area of the house is screaming for it at the time. I’ll take before and after pictures in each zone and for each mission and post them in my newly-created Flylady set.

This week is Zone #3 - The Main Bathroom and One Other Room. The “other room” they suggest you work on this time around is a kid’s bedroom, so I’m going to take that suggestion. The boys are living in a little pig sty all their own amid the larger disaster area that is our home and it would be nice to tackle that. So, I’ve taken my “before” pictures, which you can see above, and I’ve done my 15 minutes in each room (already, quite a difference, but you can’t see any pictures until the end of the week ) and done my mission in each room. If you’re dying to see how well I cleaned the base of my toilet, you can go to flickr for that. I don’t want to sully the pristine pages of this blog with an image so heinous as that of my hairy toilet before I took a bottle of Windex to it…

If any of you here are recognizing some of your own slob-like tendencies in me, consider this your invitation to join me. I’ve created a flickr group for this purpose.  Nothing is a better motivator to clean than the embarrassment of letting people see what a mess you live in. Think about the mad dash you make around the house, shoving things in closets, when you hear that your mother-in-law is on her way over. Yeah, you know you do that Snapping a few shots of your crumb-laden carpet and posting it all over flickr is the same kind of motivator. You want nothing more than to vacuum that sucker and post an “after” shot that says “see? I took care of it - all better now!” At least, I am counting on it working that way. Heh. If it doesn’t, I’m doomed to walk in crumbs for the rest of my days.

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Originally published at Polka Dot Creations. Please leave any comments there.

In the Encyclopedia of Me, P is most certainly for Polka Dots, and I’ll tell you story of how that came to be:

Fifteen or sixteen years ago, when I was a college student, I spent my summer working as a teller in the local bank where my dad was (and still is) the manager. One of the other tellers had just bought these simple black canvas shoes that were decorated with white polka dots. I thought they were nifty, but being a poor student, I couldn’t afford to buy a pair for myself. So, I went to Woolworth, got myself the $2 white canvas shoes they had, and put my own red, green, blue and yellow polka dots on them with fabric markers. I wore those shoes for the rest of the summer and well beyond that (in fact, I only managed to discard them last year, though they had been threadbare and the soles had worn through many years earlier). When I returned to school that autumn, I went back to my job working at the Computer Aide Station, wearing those shoes. Unfortunately for me, there was also somebody who worked there at the same time who was fond of plaid pants. The proliferation of polka dots and plaid in the Aide Station caused the mean, grumpy boss (who himself generally wore gray, brown, and blue solids and nothing in the least bit adventurous) banned plaid and polka dots from the computer center. I was forbidden to wear my shoes again as long as I was working there. Of course, it was all in good fun and I didn’t pay any attention. In fact, I later bought myself a funky polka-dot bucket hat and matching shorts and made sure I wore them to work as often as possible

There’s a lot more to the Polka Dot story, but that’s how the whole thing started. After the banning of polka dots from the computer center, I guess I ended up on a polka dot crusade. I created a Vax Notes group called “The Polka Dot Palace” (Tina, remember that?) which was the precursor to my BBS of the same name. I later changed the name of the BBS to the Polka Dot Cottage, which I resurrected nine years later on the Internet. Somewhere in there I bought a car, got a POKADOT license plate, and started a business. Polka Dots and I go waaaaay back, although I rarely wear them myself these days.

P is for Polka Dots. And actually it’s also for Party, which brings me to my next topic…

It poured on us! We were supposed to have AE3AWPE on Thursday, but it had been cloudy all morning and by Noon it was raining and three different weather forecasts were calling for severe thunder storms all afternoon. So I called everybody and told them to come Friday instead. Fast forward to 2pm, when the party would have started had I not postponed it, and the clouds parted, leaving behind a gloriously sunny day. And I mean gloriously. It was beautiful, perfect water party weather. And I had told everybody to stay home. Darn.

Friday dawned, sunny and warm, with a favorable forecast. We set up snack stations and water toys, I put out the dye buckets for the Moms to do some tie-dying, and friends began to arrive. About an hour into the party, that storm that never came on Thursday decided to drop by. It rained buckets. Being a water party, it wouldn’t have been that big of a deal were it not for the accompanying thunder and lightning. We spent the remainder of the party indoors.

Had I just stuck it out on Thursday and not postponed the party, we’d have had a long, lovely day in the back yard with a dozen of the boys’ friends running through the sprinkler. Instead, we had an hour of backyard play with 6 of the boys’ friends (several couldn’t make the rain date) and a few hours cooped up inside. We all had a nice time anyway, but it’s somewhat frustrating that everything would have gone exactly according to plan if I’d ignored the threatening clouds and the inaccurate forecast! Ah, well. There’s always next year

I lied the other day. I made two more skirts: the one above with the gorgeous Amy Butler print that I’ve been dying to use for ages, and another one which is from Joel Dewberry’s Aviary collection (what’s with me and the birds lately, I wonder?). That brings the total to 11. I also made another one of those shirts. I have obviously been enjoying the Summer of the Elastic-Waist Skirt, but there has been one drawback - I haven’t had a built-in indicator (aka pants getting too tight) that I am overdoing it on the munching. These skirts have been waaaay too forgiving. So comfy, but so dangerous for the waistline.

So I have come to a decision. I stepped on the scale this morning, knowing I had put on a little weight, only to find that I was a mere 2lbs shy of my all-time non-pregnancy-weight high. Oh, dear. Last time I weighed this much was 1998, and I remember hating it then. Nine years later, I’m not as miserable about it. No offense to my parents or anything, but “skinny” is just not in my genes. Little by little I am giving in in to heredity and just accepting that I’m meant to have some pudge around the middle. I’m not at the point of total surrender yet, though

So, starting today I am on a diet. Well, sort of. It’s more of a “pay more attention to what I am eating, eat a little less of it, and try to slim down somewhat” challenge. Heh. I took a set of “before” pictures and uploaded them to flickr (I set them to private - I’m not insane enough just yet to show you the least flattering images of me ever) . I recorded all of my vital measurements with the images. Periodically, I’ll take more pictures and take more measurements, and if I ever see a decent amount of success with this, then I’ll make the pictures public. I am not a believer in starving myself, and frankly I have no intention of being miserable from giving up all of the foods I enjoy. I’m just going try and improve my ability to practice moderation. Wish me luck. I thoroughly enjoyed being 130lbs a few years ago, but I’ll take 140 at this point and like it

I hope you enjoy this week’s Flickr favorites. I’m looking forward to seeing how the prominent colors in my favorites change when the seasons change. I anticipate a turn towards warmer hues in the coming months…

It’s a beautiful open-window day, with a breeze blowing in. Any moment now, I’m going to crank up some tunes and do a bit of cleaning. Happy Saturday!

Lisa

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Originally published at Polka Dot Creations. Please leave any comments there.

Hello! It’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything here other than bestseller lists. I have been busy with one thing or another for months, but I have a few minutes tonight to post an update, so I thought I’d take advantage of it. So, what have I been up to lately?

Well, from a polymer clay standpoint, I haven’t done a whole lot, except that I’m getting more and more involved with the local guilds. I’m lucky enough to live within a reasonable driving distance of three polymer clay guilds (New Jersey, Northern New Jersey, and Philadelphia), so I’ve been taking advantage of it. I’ve been involved in polymer clay for 10 years, been active in one online pc group or another for much of that time, and been a member of local guilds, but I’m only just now actively participating. The kids are not so little anymore and it’s easier for me to take off for a few hours on a Sunday afternoon, or for a weekend workshop. It also helps that my husband is practically handing me my pasta machine and pushing me out the door I tend to have bouts of Mommy Guilt, not sure I should be ditching my family for a whole day or two days in some cases, but he knows it’s Good For Me and that I’ll enjoy myself, and he always convinces me to do it. Besides, I think they have a good time spending a weekend in their pajamas watching japanese monster movies!

So, in mid-January I attended a 72-hour clay-a-thon hosted by the South Jersey Polyholics (an offshoot of the Philadelphia guild) and it was a real blast! I’d never done anything quite like it. We took over a hotel near Atlantic City and clayed to our hearts’ content ’til all hours of the night. Fun! I got a chance to try out a couple of techniques I had floating around my head for a while. Here are a few samples:

Aside from that, I haven’t really done anything clay-related lately. I do have to make a batch of Birthday Magnets for my son this weekend. He’ll be 6 next Sunday and I always make magnets as party favors (see this article I wrote after his second birthday: http://www.pcpolyzine.com/0204april/favors.html)

On a personal note, I have been keeping really busy around the house. I have had some serious Housekeeping Issues developing over the last few years. The clutter in my home has been taking over little by little to the point where it was suffocating me. But trying to crawl out from underneath it was completely overwhelming. I finally reached rock bottom and created a website to help inspire me to clean up. My thought was that sharing my embarassing living conditions would motivate me to change them. I don’t know if it’s working, but *something* is, and I’ve been on a real roll for three weeks. I’ve lugged bags and bags of junk out of the house. I’ve filled the trunk of my car twice with piles of things to be donated to the local thrift shop and I’ve filled up 10 garbage cans with things nobody would want. And there’s still plenty more where that came from. How have I lived with all of this cr@p for so long?? I really hope I don’t burn out on this task, but I’m actually enjoying taking care of my house right now. It’s been a long time since I had a sense of pride about it. For the longest time it’s just been an embarassment and I’ve been living in fear of drop-in company. I’m still not done, there’s a lot left to go, but I’m not embarassed anymore. Some days I feel like calling up everyone I know and saying, “hey come over and look in my closets- there’s no longer an avalanche when I open the door!” Our “laundry room” is just a small corner of our unfinished basement, and there’s nothing at all pretty about it, but today I scrubbed clean the sink (eliminating about 8 years of accumulated laundry soap scum) and hung up a fun picture on the wall - the ugly patched-up cinderblock wall. If you had told me a month ago that I’d be taking pride in that crummy little section of the house I’d have thought you were nuts.

Anyway, I’m finally in a really good place with the house. I’m seeing improvements every day, I’m enjoying the routines that are helping me keep the clutter under control and I’m feeling happier than I have in ages - it really spills over into so many other areas when you’re not drowning in junk… Ok, I’ve gone on enough about that! If you want more, you can check out my website: http://www.clarkesworld.com/cleanup

I’ve got some orders to process tonight, and then I’m either going to put away some more of the books & videos that arrived this week (and it’s a LOT - I was running out of so many things, and I went and restocked all at once - now I’m buried in books!) or I’m going to put my feet up crack open a Dr. Pepper, and find something mindless to watch on tv for a while! That last option sounds really good, actually. I may add some pretzels and cheese dip to the mix…

Have a great weekend, everybody!

Lisa

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Originally published at Polka Dot Creations. Please leave any comments there.