Let's Try This AGAIN!!

Goodness Gracious....I'm trying to start up this blog AGAIN, and hoping to take part in contests and blog hops!  My few posts for the past couple of years have been nothing but doom and gloom, so I'm hoping that the autumnal season will bring creative breezes along with peace, luck and happiness.

I'm going to get this off my shoulders now, and hopefully not bring it up again.  2012 continues to bring more life realignment than ever.  I'm still wallowing in the stress of my inherited hoarded house due to the passing of my mom.  The stress along with putting myself on the bottom rung of the priority ladder caused me to 'code' twice at home recently leading to a medivac situation and open heart surgery. 

I've been spending time trying to realign many things especially putting myself first.  Wow, it's so hard.  I'm a dedicated person and this is really hard to do.  But along with an unending list of doctor visits, cardiac rehab sessions, gym visits and recipe searching, I am going to be a dedicated crafter.  I need to do this for me.  I just love to gain inspiration from so many, many bloggers, crafters and designers.  I will do this without hesitation starting in September. Before then, I'm going to post some cards that I've made along the way.  Not necessarily works of art, but a chance to get the ball rolling and seeing that I can come up with ideas, and complete them.

So thanks for bearing with me through another gloomy posting.  I'm really thinking more positively these days, and am looking forward to joining up and in with an exciting and inspiring group of papercrafters!

Irene Emily

I've had many good intentions for so long, but life hands you curves that you have to go along with.  I have so many ideas spinning in my head, like many of you, and was well on my way of creating a space for me to papercraft.  Well, the tiny space came, the drawer units were in place, etc., etc......and then it happened, my mom of 90 years entered the last stage of her life.  She passed away this past January.....anticipated, but not expected.  Irene still lived in her seven room rancher.  She was tough as nails, and stubborn as they come.  She was very proud that she managed to stay in her home after my dad died in 1971.  She traveled, was active in many organizations, and retired as a classroom teaching assistant at the age of 80.  During the last 50 years Mom collected European Christmas decorations, Czechoslovakian straw dolls, Italian embroidered linens, china, pottery, cut crystal, milk glass, wrapping paper, along with twist ties, straight pins, broken jewelry, plastic lids, paper bags, empty gift boxes, sugar packets, etc., etc.!  I'm sure you know where I'm going.....  Now, as an only child, I have opted to clean out her house all by myself and not hire a cleaning crew.  My cousin's son, Anthony, is my brawn, and carts out all of the trash for me.  I had a dumpster emptied three times for a total of over 11,000 pounds of trash.  Now that the dumpster is gone, there is a relentless pile of bags and boxes on Tuesdays and Fridays for pick-up.  I have exchanged my creative time for some cathartic sorting. 

I'd like to share just a couple of things you may find interesting about my mom.  She was a League of Her Own baseball player in the late 30's and early 40's.  Playing for the Landisville Go-Getters as left fielder, she was a reknown player.....not just word of mouth stories, but in the newspaper clippings that I found in an old scrapbook.  She was awarded a gold baseball (about the size of a gumball) for outstanding play.  At a championship game that was being played at Bader Field in Atlantic City, NJ, my mom went for the fly ball that if caught, would have won her team the NJ title.  The ball came, mom ran for it, hit the cement wall straight on.  Next thing she knew she was coming to with a roaring crowd behind, and the baseball in her glove.  It was her crowning moment and I have the newspaper story to prove it!!  It's very exciting!  I also found the wax candles we made with ice cubes in a half-gallon ice cream carton back in the 50's, sequins she used to make me a gown for my Barbie, and the felt slippers that I made her when I was a Brownie in scouts.  Mom was a crafter, early on, and is responsible for my love of crafting.  We had different likes in the crafting world, but this creative outlet was a life saver in many aspects of my life throughout the years.  A lot of the stuff I'm finding is trash, but the memories each piece stirs up do stay with you.  So I tossed the aged candle, the moth-eaten slippers and so many other memorable trinkets.

I will go back today and repeat the ritual that has been a part of my life for the past six months.  I will continue to feel melancholy, emotionally stressed and sorrowful, but I am more uplifted by the good memories and the omg's that are brought to mind each day as I relive and discover. 

I know life has to move on, so I am finally going to do that.

Crafting in the Works

This is the second time that I'm writing this entry...I hit the wrong button and lost my truly inspiring post!! It really wasn't that inspiring, but I managed to write a few clever lines...so, here I go again!

Well, thanks to inspiration from many crafting blogs and true determination, I am finally on the road to creating my own craft space. I can't function where I'm set up now and feel very stifled! So I'm purging my daughter's first bedroom dresser set which is "high-quality" pressboard, cardboard and plywood!! You know what I mean....the drawers pull out crooked, sawdust spews all over, they don't stay on the center track and the bottoms are falling out!! Really if you looked at them you'd never know it. They are faux cherry with federal brass pulls...the outside shell is not laminated, but has proven to be indescructable....just don't pull out the drawers!! Hopefully the dressers will end up in the home of a DIY-er who will give them some new life.

So now.....I'm going to put a long work table/desk in the space where the long dresser was, a tall storage cabinet where the tallboy was, and fill in the side spaces with the storage cubes from Michaels. I'm probably going new with the first two choices unless I decide to repurpose an old table from my mother's hoarders-style basement! I decided to go with white as the room is a pale yellow with white moldings. There's an antique cherry bed in there which I will probably replace with an old iron headboard at some point. The room colors are primarily pink, sage, ivory and yellow with bits of other dainty colors. My mom is near 90 and has started giving me 'jingies' which include little cups and saucers, milk pitchers, sandwich plates, milk glass, Hull pottery, etc. I've been using that room to display what I have, so the white should work well. I'll post pics in the near future so that you can see what I came up with.

Hope you are having an inspiring day!