little lights

Today I did a little craft project with things around the house to be able to have some candles hanging on the wall to add some romance to the space. 

I had small glass jars with a little lip and some wire. I wrapped the wire under the lip of the jar and twisted it tight. Then I put a twist in the wire to use to hang the jar and above that twisted a spiral and put a tea light in. 

Providence

Today I had the opportunity to go spend the morning in Providence, walking around and snapping photos... so here are a few of the shots I took. 

sniffles of inspiration

Apparently running a 10K in the snow on Sunday after a few days of trying to fight off a cold brought on the cold. As I've been blowing my nose and listing to reports on the news of some cases of measles in Boston I've begun thinking about get well cards. 


I am often struck by people on public transit who wear face masks and gloves and exercise other self protective regiments to not get exposed to others' germs. While I understand that some people have delicate immune systems and these actions may be very necessary to their health I also believe that for many people those actions keep your body from being able to protect you so that you have to then always be in a haz-mat suite to keep yourself healthy and you would then miss out on so much. 


Anyway... with these thoughts I have created a new card and posted it in my etsy shop. 

rainy day thoughts of travel

In the front of the house I can sit and watch the rain drops hit the window and snake their way down. And looking out at the street I can see it melting holes in the snow and more of it disappears.

From my office in the back of the house I wouldn't know that it was raining without looking down and seeing the drops splash in a puddle on the ground.

I spent some time watching the rain and enjoying my coffee this morning and enjoying being inside. And decided this grey, wet weather reminded me of London and so I spent most of the day today trying to plan a mini European adventure to visit a friend living in Germany until June and then go to a wedding in England and perhaps spend a night or two in Dublin on the way back home. Although there is something lovely and romantic about planning this adventure it's also been harder than I anticipated. Since I've been thinking about it over the last month plane tickets have begun to get more expensive and my etsy experiment hasn't taken off the way I had hoped (so next week should begin a focus on shop) thinking about the expense of this induces some anxiety. But you only live once and you can't take it with you so here we go!

hoppy necklace

One of the projects that I got supplies for was making necklaces out of used Scrabble tiles. I have the tiles, little screws with eyes, necklace cords, my photos and glue... I even picked out some images and glued them to a tile already when I was making glass tile magnets but had lacked the courage to actually drill the hole in the tile, so today I set out to finish the transformation from Scrabble tile to necklace.

My partner has a dremel. A nifty looking tool, like a drill but with small bits. With no instruction on how to use it I jumped right in, I found a drill bit that I had and fit it into the dremel. I found the center of the top of the tile and marked it with a pencil, then I held the tile against the bit and turned the dremel on. It zipped right into the wood tile without a problem. It did create a lot of heat and you could smell the wood so I set the tile down for awhile to let it cool off before attempting to insert the screw. I used a small pair of pliers to help with the screw and then I just had to slip it on the cord.

The tile has a photograph of hops on one side (which are an ingredient in brewing beer) and a photograph of a glass of beer on the other side. I think it will be a nice compliment to my I love you more than beer card. The card, actually sold so I'll have to re-list it when I list this.

engagement party gift bags

Today I put together little gift bags for everyone coming to the engagement celebration. I didn't want to go too over the top and tried to think of things that would represent the couple. I also wanted it to be things that people may use and not just something that has the couples names all over it that will probably end up in the trash.

I started with a note to say that these were things we've learned from the couple

• to stay sweet - chocolates
• keep the fire burning - candle & matches, I decorated the tea lights using a sharpie to draw grass on them and since they are getting married at their summer camp I used the camp logo on one side of the match box and on the other put a sketch of their names 'carved' in a tree
• stick together - magnets, I got a roll of sticky magnets and printed a photo of grass, a photo of the outside of a bowling alley to which I added the quote We cannot really love anybody with whom we never laugh - Agnes Repplier (because they belong to a bowling team and we're going bowling as part of their party), a photo from the top of Mount Katahdin in Maine with the quote Life has taught us that love does not consist of gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction - Saint-Exupery (because she used to live in Maine) and a magnet where I rearranged images from their save the date
• let love grow - seeds, I bought a songbird seed mix, I divided the mix and wrapped the seeds in saran wrap, then I typed and printed the planting instructions and printed a picture of similar flowers, I cut both things out in a heart shape, put a seed set in the middle and hand stitched the two hearts together

Their engagement story has the guy wrapping a blade of grass around the girl's finger as a ring so I used 'easter' grass in the gift bags.

snow

Holiday Monday. It hasn't snowed much in over a week but this morning we awoke to beautiful flakes falling. It's incredible how different snow is, sometimes you can see each flake other times you can't make anything out.

Today was beautiful, delicate flakes so we went outside for a walk and to admire these beautiful unique flakes. It's not often that we get this kind of snow where you can see every detail of the flakes and we wanted to take full advantage.