What do I do on my days off?

A friend at work this weekend asked me ' Marsha, what do you do on the days you don't work?' Hmmmm........well, I try to swim 3 days a week, I watch my grandson on Tuesdays, the usual minor cleaning, laundry etc., guild stitch ins and coming up to lots of publicity and fundraising activity for the guild, and oh, I don't know, but here is some other stuff I do.

My daughter, Dana, and I went to a Stampin' Up 'Stamp A Stack' on a Friday night not long ago. We made two of each of the cards shown below. It's a fun evening. We learn new techniques, someone has everything ready to go, the paper isn't spread out at our house and we walk away with a new bunch of pretty cards. I need to get busy and make some fun Halloween cards.

Then here is one of two batches of 'Triple Gifts' soap I made. It has gold mica sprinkled on top for extra special sparkle. I belong to the OhioSoapers yahoo group. Most years there is a swap in the fall. We have no theme this year so I decided on a Frankincense, Gold, and Myrrh soap made with three butters (cocoa, mango and shea). Double the triple gifts. Should be awesome for winter dryness.

Then here is a Christmas ornament I finished stitching. I can't decide which backing to use. The one on the left has a delicate, subtle, leaf pattern and the one on the right is a white on white pattern. Have any comments?

I've been looking at laying tools for a while, but they seemed expensive. Then I saw on mainely stitching's blog, http://mainelystitching.wordpress.com/, her new laying tool. Went to Etsy and voila! Perfect. I used it on this Christmas ornament to get the ribbon to lay right. So visit, silverWares at etsy.com if you are interested too.

http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=23899471

I'm not showing the whole ornaments yet, as someone may be peeking.
So, that's some of what I do. Course, this blog fits in there too. And have you noticed that I like sparkle? Emily, the Stampin' Up friend knows that almost every card I make has to have glitter or something shiny on it. What's up with that???

So that's what I do on my days off and even the days I do work since I don't clock in until 2:30. You can get a lot done before 2!

Marsha

Busy Day

I have a busy day, today. I took a 12 mile bike trip on the Little Miami River bike trail http://www.lovelandbiketrail.com/. It was a beautiful morning for a bike ride. Saw a lot of squirrels and a few chipmunks but no deer today. I was curious about wind damage as this trail runs along the river and is heavily wooded. Some trees had come down and branches of trees were snapped off. I took a few pictures so you could see.

After my bike ride, I stopped at the The Quilt Cabin - Home to pick out a fat quarter for my secret stitcher's Christmas ornament. It will be a scissor keep and I needed fabric for the backing and lining. It is the fabric on the far left. It was cheaper if you bought 5 so....... That pink is a wild card isn't it?

I need to stitch for a while on my letter Z for the sampler guild's quilt Queen City Sampler Guild. Thought you might like to see how that is going. This afternoon I am picking up my daughter after work and we are going to Kentucky. Our first stop will be the GAP outlet in Hebron, KY. Then a little something to eat and down the road to a co-workers house for a Stampin' Up 'Stamp a Stack'. We will be making 12 cards at her workshop. She had one in the spring and it was lots of fun. It's nice walking away with 12 cards all made and ready to use.

Now to show you Rich's brand new, just completed garage. It needs a little more dirt around it to level it off with the yard. It is really nice. It has 2 skylights, a garage door opener, and at least one window on each side. We really like it. He's going to paint the floor with an epoxy paint and then we can start putting stuff in it. Lucky we had the trees trimmed beside it before the storm came through.

Sept. 27th;

Thought you'd like to see the cards Dana and I made last night. There were 6 stations set up and we made two of each of these cards. The pop-ups aren't showing up in the picture.