Rayen

I really enjoyed the pearl wave painting I did, and it helped exercise my beleaguered right hand, so I invested in two more kits of similar design. This gold, pearl and rhinestood moon is really glitzy. I want to turn it into a topper for a gift box. I also got a bird painting for my home office. I completed the first one on the same day it arrived. Generally I can do these in one night. The hand-eye coordination is good practice, and I think the results are pretty.

I'm feeling very blah right now. This month has traditionally been hard on me; there are the birthdays of two loved ones now gone from my life that I have to get through, the pumpkin spice nonsense explodes, and Christmas things show up everywhere in a big way. As I write this it's been raining steadily for two days, so I can't really spend any significant time outdoors. I need inspiration and motivation, stat. I have been looking in my own photo archives to see the projects I most liked from past Octobers in hopes that it would jog something, and saw this thrifted crocheted baby blanket that I acquired unfinished with the yarn and hook the maker had been using, and I finished it. I loved that project. In 2024 I made a small quilt from a pound of fabric an Etsy seller chose and sent to me. That is a challenge I really enjoy and I've made several quilts that way. In 2023 I completed the second embroidered recycled linen quilt in some of my favorite ...

While my guy and I were out running errands and mall walking, we stopped by a big church thrift store two towns over and I found a couple of bargains, which the very nice lady working the register packed in this luxury leather goods sack. Very fancy. :) For $5.00 I was able to get a mint-condition cream tablecloth with silver and gold embroidery, which I plan to use for Thanksgiving. I may have to shorten it a few inches. It came with three matching cloth napkins. I also needed some blank cards, and I found a pack of 12 brand new with envelopes for $2.00. That's about sixteen cents each. Here's my receipt.

This may not look very impressive, but it's a slice of something I've been working on all year. Backstory: my favorite cake happens to be plain cheesecake, and when I was diagnosed with diabetes it was one of the things I had to give up. I suffered greatly! Ha. Actually I thought I could eventually come up with a sugarfree version, but that turned out to be quite a journey. The crust was the real issue for me. The cheesecake filling (a half-size version of the filling from this recipe by the Sugarfree Diva) was fine, but I tried five different variations of the almond flour crusts and disliked all of them. I cheated and used ground up graham crackers, but that wasn't sugarfree. Finally I thought, why not use sugarfree Oreos? That was the tweak I needed, and now I have a mini cheesecake I can indulge in without any guilt whatsoever. :) Sugarfree Oreo Crust Mini Cheesecake For the crust: 6 sugarfree Oreo cookies 1 tablespoon margarine or butter, melted For ...

My guy and I drove out to Brownwood in the Villages last weeked to walk the farmer's market, and on the way home stopped in at Wildwood Antique Mall so I could look for some things for October decor and projects. Of course I came home with a little haul. :) I found another ghostly framed picture at the same booth I bought one last year , and had to own it. I might have to do a whole wall with these eventually. This pumpkin brooch will be adorning the October tote for my calendar project. I also invested in a mystery bag of jewelry, and got a nice set of silver and pearl pieces. I considered cutting up this kitchen towel for its Halloween colors and using the pieces for my tote, but I think I'll keep it intact and use it in the kitchen this month. I want to make some prim stuffies for Halloween, but I forgot that I used up almost all of my quilt pieces for my 2025 calendar project, so I looked for and found some very cheap to bring home. This is ...

Recently I read some fiction in which a terribly abused character regarded death as a dark, quiet room. She doesn't die during the story, and in fact her life turns around in a huge way shortly after that. The imagery of death as she viewed it was what stayed with me. In a bright, loud world where life is perpetually coming at you (and constantly subjecting you to some form of abuse) death as a dark, quiet room seems quite appealing. Being done with all these exhausting people seems very peaceful. All the pain stops. You're finally alone (and I do understand that longing more than I realized I would.) As a writer I've thought of death in a zillion ways, probably, but I keep coming back to crossing a finish line. The end of a life is that kind of end -- we're finished with this whole beautiful, disastrous mess of existence. I don't want to debate what happens after death, because we'll never know until after we die, assuming consciousness survives. Al...