What the week holds and cranberry sauce

 I grabbed two bags of cranberries the minute I saw them appear at HEB. I have always loved making cranberry orange sauce.  It has become the first thing I do when I start thinking about Thanksgiving. And this year I have the week off!

Cranberries, sugar, grated orange rind, sugar, water

Do you ever re-use the tops from parmesan cheese containers?

(this pic looks exactly like one I posted last year!)

This week:

*Its Radiologic Technology Week!

*The boss treated us to Potbelly Sandwiches yesterday and it was yum.  Plus, that was the best all-butter sugar cookie I have ever had!

*I am taking a dear friend to lunch at one of my favorite restaurants

*I have two live Zooms to attend for free Imaging CEU's

*and, a 6 month follow-up with my new PCP

Most of my "projects" will be little ones this week - I have some reading time to catch up on!  I am starting Tom Lake by Anna Patchett.

What does your week look like?

Gina

Kids' art collage

It was time for me to create something out of the kids' school art that I could never bear to part with.  You can only store this stuff for so long.  Eventually it will crumble, decay, smell funky. My "kids" are now 36, 35, 31, and 27.  But I still love this art so much!  I gathered all the pieces that I could bear to cut and glue and purchased a 30x40 canvas at Michael's for about $40.

Then I made this:

I love everything about this project.  It makes me feel joyful to look at how detailed and colorful they created art.  That they loved hearts, rainbows, helicopters, snakes, birds, dogs, and patterns.  Happy kids make happy art!

I laid the large background pieces out on the canvas about where I thought they should go, then took a photo of it.  I tried to make sure I had a least one of everyone's handprint and written name.  I decided to leave a small border around the edges of the canvas by painting the edges in some leftover wall paint.

This will also go nicely on the wall I am hanging it on - the guest bedroom.

After I spread some archival Mod Podge on the canvas and backs of the pieces, I carefully placed them by referencing the photo I took.  Then I used a rubber brayer to smooth them out.  Then I just started layering smaller pieces of art.  Admittedly, there are still some wrinkled places - but authentic art is organic like that, no?  I gave it several coats of clear acrylic spray when it was all dry.

I fished around in my stash and found two picture hangers to affix to the back corners, used my tape trick, and hung it up.

Looking at it soothes my grieving mama heart.

Its visual proof that my children knew they were loved and felt safe and happy.  Which is everything I have ever wanted for them, or myself for that matter.

(P.S. I didn't come up with this idea on my own, I just followed directions I found on-line)

Gina

Little project - dining room window

Last week wasn't great, but as long as I kept movin', I felt better*. So, I re-did that window cling in the dining room.

You can see to the left the patterned clear cling.  It let way too much light in, and I had a difficult time getting the outside of the window fully cleaned, so you can see that through the cling, too.  It was a no-go.

It took me maybe an hour to remove the textured cling and replace with a green colorway of the same magnolia print I had on there for years. The process is not complicated, just a little time-consuming, and for odd-shaped windows a bit of pattern matching.

I wasn't aiming for perfect - a done something is always better than a perfect nothing. (This is a big shift for me.) And its so hard to get a good picture of it - especially when cloudy outside.  But its done now, and I can cross it off my list.  A friend suggested I take a break from these projects, and I'm thinking it will be good to put a few of them off until the New Year.

Happy November!

Gina

*thank you for your kind words on my last post!