Catching up and More Art

Ornery finally got the oven installed at the rental property last night. The electrician recommended by the property manager helped him in the morning to wire it in, but he had to go back after work to finish remodeling the cabinet because of course the oven was not the same size as the old one.

He started working on the new couch table for the living room this weekend, and actually made quite a bit of progress despite not really getting started on it until Saturday afternoon.  He spent most of the morning helping me rearrange the kitchen cabinet contents to make my work space more functional. I am pleased with the results, but still have a bit more to do to finish it up.  After four hours of working on it, I was more than done!

I am not sure why we were in the house over the weekend. The weather was incredible with the high on Sunday 78 degrees! I opened my studio window and enjoyed the day--except for the yappy dogs...

Here are some of the things I worked on from Friday through Sunday.

Pages for a traveling art journal

Pages for a friendship journal.  These are sent alone, not with the journal.

back sides of the pages above.

Altered Rolodex card. I used pieces of art journal pages I had trimmed off to weave the background.

another altered rolodex card. This one is called Family Game Night.

Happy Art Swap cards for February. (#haswap)

An ATC I made for a swap using Fibers

More scraps cut from Art Journal pages, and I added some embellishments I had in my stash.

Metal ATC for a swapbot swap. I have tiny cuts all over my hands from weaving that background!

Junk Journal/Letter for a pen pal

This last item is a conglomeration of odds and ends that people have sent me as extras in swaps and with letters.  It gathers in a couple of piles, and before long I have a huge mess. The pen friend to whom I am sending this always sends me lots of extra fun stuff in her letters, so I decided to do something new and different for her and created this journal. There is writing on all eight pages, plus a wide variety of ephemera and other things tucked in here and there. The back cover has a pocket with string closure and it contains an altered Rolodex card and an ATC. One page has a little envelope on it with a washi feather inside.  The whole thing will take her longer than a minute to read and since she says she re-reads my letters several times, I figured I'd give her more to look at.  :)  I do the same with her letters, and I have really enjoyed the things she has made for me. Hopefully she will have fun with this.

This week we are saying our last goodbyes to wheat. We'll see if the loss will be sustainable, but for now we are hopeful that it will help us to lose some unwanted pounds and improve our health.  Of course on Saturday a neighbor came by selling Girl Scout cookies, but we only bought one box of thin mints and decided they just don't taste as good to us as they used to.  That's a good thing!  It is amazing the number of foods that list wheat as an ingredient. I don't plan to give up all grains, and I am not going to try to maintain "gluten free" practices, but giving up just this one ingredient will be a significant change and require a dramatic lifestyle adjustment.