Mid-January update...........

Nothing much new here. It got cold, really cold, the day after we returned from Mexico, and had been going on for a month or more before we finally got a bit of a respite from the frigid temperatures! I hate the cold, hate the dark, and every year it seems a bit harder to take. Oh well, it's all downhill from here. :-)

The first warmish day I made the boys go outside for some fresh air, and they had a fun round of goofy hockey with a tennis ball and dollar store hockey sticks. I do the play by play, Howie Meeker style, which is very popular with the kids. And seems to prevent fighting, which is pretty much inevitable in any activity. Sigh.

Teaching at the university is going well, so far. I am enjoying the night class format, which surprises me a bit. I thought I would be tired, and that the three hours would be too much, but it's so much better than the three 50 minutes lectures a week I did last year. It's much less stressful in terms of commuting and child care and scheduling, and the three hour format seems to lend itself very well to having a different waste management topic every week. And the students seem keen, which helps!

A Few Layouts

These are a few of my favourites that were published in Canadian Scrapbooker Basics, Volume 2. This volume is an introduction to stamping, and if you haven't seen it, go check it out! Gorgeous layouts, great inspiration and really useful step by step instructions for all the basic stamping techniques.


American craft papers and some Fancy Pants acrylic stamps


Stampin Up papers, Fancy Pants stamps and some terrific RiffRaff chipboard!


Blew the dust off my Making Memories foam stamps for this one. Fun to use them again! The butterflies are stamps from a Scraptivity kit early last year.

The Kindness of Strangers

Since I have become involved in online communities, I have constantly been touched at the kindness and generosity of virtual strangers on the internet. Some of the 'virtual strangers' even become real life friends. It's an amazing thing.

For the last week, I have been trying to get my Cricut (a die cutting machine for those of you that don't scrapbook) to talk to my computer. I had managed it a couple of times, but then the USB connection committed suicide, never to cooperate again, and I could not, despite hours of fiddling, numerous cables, ports, installation and uninstallation, make any progress. SO frustrating!!!

I finally posted about my problem in an online forum, hoping that someone had had a similar issue and solved it. Time went by, nothing helpful was posted, and I had pretty much given up hope. And then, a person posted a suggestion that had promise, and we ended up emailing each other and over a matter of days, we were able to solve the problem. Thank you so much to Todd in Michigan for taking the time to help a stranger. I could not have done it without you. I'd still be swearing at the computer. ;-)