Jen FitzGerald's Blog, page 100

Adventures in Crafting

No, Christmas hasn't been decorated for. I'm terribly lazy about it. Well, it's not the putting up, it's the taking down that kills it. But that's not what we're here to talk about...

I've been crafting!

My sister-in-law and my niece made some snow globes which I saw while visiting for Thanksgiving and which I thought were cute. So I hunted them down during my trip to Michael's and found the little globe. I also a found a cute little figurine to go in it.

But did I open the globe and read the instructions while at the store? No, of course not.

So fast forward an hour-ish and I'm sorting through my purchases. I open the globe and read the instructions. I also needed glycerin and a box of some sort of water-proofing solution. Okay. No problem. I'll go back another time. In the meantime, I open the figurine package only to find one of the birdies' little wings has broken off. It was disappointing, but then I remembered I have some Sculpey clay and I created a new little wing for the thing.

Now, the bird was originally while, but it's fixin' to go in a snow globe, so I'm thinking white's a bit redundant. I know, how about blue? A little bluebird of happiness! I made the water blue as it was also white. I get that if it's frozen over then, yeah, it's gonna be white. But again--white glitter/snow--redundant.  And it's my snow globe, so I'll fix it up the way that makes me happy.

So here's the repaired figurine. I'm sure you can tell which wing is the replacement!


Next step will be re-add the eyes and re-color the beak. Then I'll waterproof the whole thing. So more pics later.

One of our long-time Christmas traditions is buy or make ornaments for the kids. All three of them have an ornament for every Christmas they've celebrated, even if I was broke and could only afford to make them with whatever I had at hand. There were a few Christmases like that. Last year, they got these, remember?


This year, I bought ceramic ornaments at Michael's and will decorate them. I've found a couple of ideas on the Internet to play off of, so wish me luck. Luckily my Sharpies clean off with rubbing alcohol. The acrylic paint should wash off with water before it dries. We'll see how it goes. Pics later.

And of course, I realized I forgot a couple of people, so there will be yet another trip to Michael's. (It's a hardship.)

And after a month of not working on DD's birth sampler, I have picked up needle and floss once again.

Doing any Christmas or other holiday crafts?

The End of an Era

For the last eight, nine years, our company has been managing the facilitation of access to electronic case files for our county by local and not-so-local defense attorneys.

And now, the county, rather than the defense lawyer's association, has switched gears and has opened and is managing a new system. I'll miss the money we (mostly I) earned from handling the system, but I won't miss dealing with the attorneys. Some of them are very nice, but some of them--despite their advanced degrees--are just dumb.

On another "end" note, we're looking down the barrel to the end of another year. Time to start making the final assessments on this year's goals as well as contemplating goals for next year. I already have two floating around in my brain. Other will depend on how I did on this year's.

My four-day weekend was almost too long. I suppose had I not sat on my butt for most of it, it might not have seemed quite so long. It was nice to go to bed and get up whenever the body dictated. Surprisingly, I didn't nap at all during the days even though it was raining and gloomy. DH and I had laptops on our laps and the TV playing for three days straight. We ate when we were hungry and there was no cooking.

Hope your holiday weekend was just as relaxing. But now...back to work!

Have a great week.

Happy Day After Thanksgiving...

Dinner was a delicious offering at my sister-in-law's house. Thanks, Tracey! And we made it home safely, though slowly in the pouring down rain. It was still warm at 70ish on the way home. The cold front arrived sometime overnight and now it's brrrrr chilly!



My apologies for the video--I did not actually watch it before I posted it. It was the official music video and so I just posted it. Last night, I wanted to listen to the song, so rather than put the ear buds in, I played the YouTube official video and was a little shocked by the video...ahem. Again, I'm so sorry. And if you skipped it, you're lucky. I wish I could unsee it. The song itself is fine, but the video...don't be tempted.

I think at some point I mentioned NANOWRIMO and that I was going to be working on a fan fic for an exchange. Well, I turned in the fic two days late, and it's not even finished. I guess I should say I was able to end the fic at a good and logical place, but the story isn't over for our intrepid heroes, even with 22K+ words of it. So the writing will continue, though there's no longer a deadline to worry about. I can take my time and participate in life again. Being immersed in that world was exciting and invigorating, but when I came up for air, I was a bit tuckered out and crashed early for three days straight.

I had fun in that world though and want to go back, so I've started writing the next part--though not at a such a feverish rate. I spent some time on a timeline and started an outline, though it needs a bit of fleshing out. Just a bit though.

The rest of the weekend will be spent holed up at home. We're supposed to have rain all weekend. Who wants to be out in that? The only place I might have to go is Pet Smart for dog food. Let's see how long we can hold out.

Enjoy your long weekend!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I suppose I should expound on all the things I'm grateful for, which hasn't change much last year, so I'm still grateful for all the people who put up with me and for my house, a car, and food!

But today I'm happy because it's a four-day weekend which is starting early for us and because I've written this mini-epic and I love it.

So we're celebrating with some music. This song became the defacto theme of this fic, which reached a stopping point because I had to submit it, but is not finished...

Enjoy and have a wonderful holiday with those you hold nearest and dearest. Or those who are just closest. :)

Temptation, thy name is Robin Robins...

I got into work Friday and found this:








Who's Robin Robins you ask. Well, she owns/runs this marketing program for IT and MSP companies to which hubby belongs. Each year at Thanksgiving, Christmas and Valentine's Day, we get a lovely gift from her, such as the one above.

But here's the thing...I'm sort of unofficially participating in this weightloss-off with DH and his family. They hatched up a plan over DH's birthday last month and he encouraged my to join in the fun. Since it's been my goal all year to lose that last 10/12 pounds (and it's now crunch time), I figured maybe a little healthy competition might help.

Anyway, we're supposed to weight in each Monday morning and chart our weight. And you know what, I've actually lost weight each week, even if it's only been a few ounces.

And now THIS!!!

Well, I figure as long as it all stays at the office, I'll only be tempted three days a week. And if I only have one bite of something each day and add five minutes of walking on the treadmill, then I ought to be golden.

Right?

Right.

So that's the plan.

Fall Friday

It's been a month since our last Fall Friday and the trees have definitely changed. There's technically only a month left of official fall, but for us here in Texas, we sometimes get lucky.

I gotta say, my camera and my photog skills leave a lot to be desired, but here's what the trees are looking like.




On a side note, the grass is loving the chilly overnight temperatures and warmish sunshiny days. I haven't seen my yard look so green in years. I haven't pulled a single dandelion or sticker bug either. Of course, we now pay a guy to come mow every two weeks, so that's definitely helping with the weed control and the lush-looking grass.

Hope you have a super weekend!!

There is TV in my immediate future!

Yeah, like this afternoon! It's ten years or more since I've had access to live TV. When we still attended church and there was a big push to get out of debt, we got rid of cable. I've never missed it much until last year when Sonshine left home and the house was super quiet. I've finally adjusted to that, but I've wanted to get back into watching NASCAR and baseball and to checking out hockey. It's also be nice to be up to date on TV shows I'm watching rather than a week or more behind.

So anyway, DH needed to upgrade our Internet connection at home and was able to secure basic cable for additional $20/$30 (we'll see how it actually shakes out). It's what I was hoping to pay anyway, so having better Internet in the bargain is a boon. Now if we could only get a WIFI device that worked consistently.

In other news, we had a storm blow through this past Monday. Tornado watch, possibly tornado warning, but no TV, so I had no idea what was going on outside except that it was blowing pretty hard and it was keeping me awake. See what my priorities are??

So when I got up Tuesday morning, I was rather surprised to see this:




I heard nothing!

Damage was only to the fence and relatively easy to fix but we gotta cut up the huge length of tree. I think we'll be hiring out!

Anyway...  hope you have a great rest of the week. See you Friday!

Monday, Monday...and the heat is on...

Yeah, so I missed Friday. Sorry. By the time I remembered I hadn't posted, the day was half over and I just decided to let it slide.

I mentioned several projects last week, and I have just had another one ramp up. So even more busy and now with a deadline for completing a fan fiction looming...

This weekend the words just poured out of me. I'm not sure where they're coming from but I'm not complaining. The biggest issue is that my fan fic eyes got way bigger than my time-frame eyes. The story started out as one thing and morphed into something else during the pouring out of words. Yikes. I have to have this thing submitted by the 23rd... I'm already considering asking for an extension of a few days.





See those last two lines? Those are the weekend's words.

But now it's Monday and I have all the standard Monday tasks to get done...

Hope you had a productive weekend!

Happy Hump Day--

Enjoyed my second viewing of Benedict Cumberbatch's Hamlet. I caught more of the dialogue, actually understood a few more of the funny bits rather than taking my cue from Benedict, and mostly succeeded in following the plot despite the beauty that is Ben. He has these really lovely arms and I was a bit distracted while they were uncovered. I keep thinking I need to read Hamlet or at least the cliff notes to really  wrap my brain around the whole thing, including the humor, so that when it is released on DVD, I'll be ready.



In other news, the weather is lovely still. Although, surprisingly, DH has even complained that he's cold. I had to close the bedroom windows and kick the heater on over the weekend. I've had moments of chilliness, but that's not unusual...

My NaNoWriMo project is coming along nicely. I'm enjoying the story and rediscovering my joy in writing. I've just over 11K words, though I'm not keeping up with the recommended daily word count and was never aiming for the 50K word goal. Could I do it? Perhaps with a bit more prepping before hand. But I've found that knowing too much about what happens makes me not want to write it.

Not sure I'm ready to dive back into pursuit of publication, either, because writing fan fiction is a unique endeavor and I love it. I don't have a lot of original stories rolling around in my head like many of writer friends do. My ideas are sparked by the characters I love from TV, books, or movies, the characters who touch something in me. So, yeah...

Well, then, time to get the day started. Have a great rest of your week. See you Friday.

SHERLOCK is coming...

I love the BBC's Sherlock as most of you know. The show airs three movie-length episodes every two to three years. The next series won't be filmed until next spring and subsequently aired until 2017, but fans have been given a treat in the interim. The lead actors, Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, shot to super stardom as a result of their roles in Sherlock and have become hot acting properties. Happily they were able to carve out some earlier this year to film a one-off episode that takes our Sherlock, normally set in contemporary London, back to his time roots--Victorian England.

Not only will it be airing on TV (PBS here in the States), but also in the theaters!






So Sonshine and I will be going to see it (since he'll be in town).