Nifty Little Gifties

Phew! I managed to catch a cold on top of whatever intestinal flu nastiness I had, so I'm not feeling all better, but my choices are no longer to either lie down or faint so y'all, I'm declaring it--I AM WELL!!!

Mind you, I still did a lot of tricking the girls into lying down with me today, and they've basically run through their screen time for the rest of the month, but I did finish my biggest, most important project this evening--my Craft magazine tutorial submission is ready to roll, as soon as the editor sends me her dpi and size preferences for the photos. For those of you who've been following my photo saga or who know something about photography, I'll just tell you--middle grey matte board, it rocks.

In other news, I'm waaaay behind (obviously) on prepping for the Fair and Green Gift Festival that I'll be vending at this Saturday (along with the Kitchen Girls, among other awesome local celebrities), but while languishing in bed off and on yesterday I did manage to finish up punching out the tiny little holes in these nifty little gifties:
Gift tags! From old greeting cards! I wrote a quick-and-dirty tutorial for them over at Crafting a Green World, but they were a Thanksgiving event unto themselves, I tell you:It seems that my late Mama, before she became too unwell, collected every single greeting card she had ever received--in our back hallway was a huge drawer, crammed to overflowing, with cards dating back from the 1950s. While spending the better part of Thanksgiving weekend sorting through them just to cull out the cards from exes (cards from exes are EXCELLENT for crafting with), I came across so many fabulous treasures that you'd just never find unless your grandma was a packrat, too.

For instance, look at this awesome card: It's freakin' adorable, right? It's from a big stack, held together with a rubber band, that came, apparently, from a baby shower held for my Mama when she was pregnant with her baby who was stillborn. The condolence cards for his death were in the same stack--keepsakes of joy and keepsakes of grief, all together.

There were other bittersweet cards from loved ones long gone, cards for graduations and anniversaries and Christmases 30 years ago, and cards from...
me. You betcha, in grade school, I used to dot the "i" in my signature with a CAT HEAD. Sometimes, though, I'd just sign my name like this: It was my trademark, see?

Here's the biggest mystery of the bunch, though:That's to me, when I was a small child, from Aunt Birdie. She sent me a Christmas postcard, and a Christmas sticker, and some Christmas cut-outs from a box top, and just check out this beautiful letter:

"Dec 23 83 (I was seven)

Dearest loving niece and loved one. Wish you was here with me for Christmas. I guess you are looking for Santa Clause to come Christmas. I hope he brings you a lot of nice gifts and nuts and gum and apples, oranges, and all kinds of good things to eat and nice presents. Are you looking for him to bring you a sweet baby doll? I hope he does.

I love you so much, wish you was here with me. I so all alone and so lonesome. Tell mother, dad, grandmother, all hello for me. All my love to my sweet thing.

From Aunt Birdie Gann."

Breaks your heart, right? Here's the thing, though--WHO IS AUNT BIRDIE? Never heard of her. Never seen her, never seen a photo of her, don't remember anybody speaking of her, don't know this name At. All.

But wow, she loved me, didn't she? And she was all alone and lonesome on Christmas. But because Mama saved her letter and sticker and postcard and cut-outs for me, after I probably looked at them and thought they were stupid and left them lie, I can remember her now. I feel more loved today, thinking about Aunt Birdie, who wanted me to have gum and apples and oranges for Christmas and wished I was there with her.

And thanks for the Christmas cut-outs, Aunt Birdie. I'll put them on the tree this year, I promise.

Let There Be Light

I've been in desperate search of light lately--well, mostly I've been in desperate search of over-the-counter and breastfeeding-safe pain relievers, but I've also been in search of light.

Our house is in a great neighborhood and is in good condition and is a good walk to most places we like to go, but it has basically no natural light. The windows are teeny-tiny little things stuck on odd walls in all the numerous teeny-tiny little rooms, and none of them face south. But I have this absolutely terrific assignment to write and photograph a craft project tutorial for Craft magazine (Make's little cousin), and I am desperate for good light in which to photograph.

So I'm limping around the house this afternoon, and all of a sudden I'm all, "Hey! That one window, now that the leaves are off the silver maple, actually gets pretty good light. If only there was a table next to it." I have numerous traumatic injuries, y'all, and yet many heaves and ho's and curses and whimpers later......there's a table next to the one window in the house that lets in terrific natural light. Never mind that it's shoved up against our old dorm couch on one side and the wall on the other, and that the entire bare wall that the table used to be shoved up against is all gross now from being next to the table. Just...never mind.

And the table? Looks like this: I barely even deserve to have furniture.

So I had myself a happy little time trying to figure out some ways to photograph my piece.

Straight above?Looking down at an angle?Definitely not straight on:My digital color enhancements are also pretty off because I have terrible eyesight, even with glasses. I may have to whip out my 500-page camera manual for this project.

But all afternoon I have been obsessed with photographing the light at this window. For our afternoon snack I set the girls up with some cut-up bananas, a couple of handfuls of dark chocolate chips melted in our new crockpot, and a little bowl of crushed pistashios--dip, roll, munch--and I insisted that we do all this at the table by the window, even though the crockpot cord wouldn't really reach and nobody could therefore sit comfortably:
But ah, the light.

Wow, though, I really need to wash the window now.

p.S. Check out my tutorial for aromatic herb ornaments over at Crafting a Green World.