Weekly Wrap Up - Week of January 8th

 

        So, this week was typical, not much going on except work. That’s the one constant in my life….work. I really do enjoy my job but I do have a handful of clients that are really demanding and not at all gracious or grateful for what I do for them, but anyway…

          Monday – I was physically out of sorts, not feeling well, but I’ve started eating better and I knew I just needed time for my tummy to sort itself out. I chopped up a bunch of Romaine lettuce and had thawed out some ground turkey for salad for dinner and lunch during the week. The minute the turkey started to cook it smelled horrible, I guess I didn’t freeze it in time. Turkey is very, very delicate and can go bad quite quickly! I was bummed as I had looked forward to a salad all day.

          Tuesday – Work as usual and I had an appointment at 4pm for a thyroid ultrasound/sonogram…not sure I get them mixed up. I had thyroid cancer in 2008, you can read about it HERE, so annually they do these exams to make sure it’s still all gone, it should be since they removed both my thyroid glands and it’s been 15 years but I guess you can’t be too cautious. I stopped at the grocery store and picked up some fresh ground turkey, called my sister on the way home and she was planning to make tacos, I told her to come have turkey taco salad with me and I would go the next day to have tacos with her, she agreed and we had a nice dinner with mom as well.

          Wednesday – Work was busy as usual and mom had an appointment with her primary care doctor and my sister Lisa took her so I didn’t get any tacos that night! But I had a turkey taco salad, so I was still a happy camper.

          Thursday – Was planning on taking mom to Walmart and The Dollar Store but had a long day at work and I was exhausted and mom was too. I had a turkey taco salad again …I’m telling you I can have this 24/7 and it never gets old! 

        Friday - Was a tough day of work because we have a 3-day weekend coming up as Monday is Dr. Martin Luther King Jr Day and we won't have to work that day. I woke up out of sorts again, super grumpy for no reason at all. I emailed my sister and told her I needed a sister night was she available and she said yes and asked if I want to go out to dinner or stay in at her house with wine and yummies? Wine and Yummies please! Here's pictures of what my sister considers yummies, Kabobs with Steak, Chicken, Sausage, peppers, red onions and zucchini! They were delicious. 

Kabobs straight out of the Oven, she also made some in her Air Fryer, we preferred oven.

Kabob on fine china ...hahaha! 

Kabob off of the skewer and on a plate, Yumminess overload!

First a shot of our favorite tequila, Agavero. I needed this after the week I had!

        So that was our Friday, even though it was a tough day it ended with sister time, good food, good wine and a lot of conversation and jazz music.

        Saturday is usually mom's day. I do whatever she wants to do. Almost all the time what she wants to do is go shopping. So we did just that. First stop was Goodwill, mom loves a thrift store. They were remodeling our favorite store so there was not much of a selection, mom bought nothing which was out of the norm for her, I found and bought this bag.

        Pardon the bad lighting, but it's the only place in my bedroom that I had a hook available to hang this. Beautiful hand beaded bag in mom's favorite colors. It had a super long strap.

Close up of beadwork, it's just stunning!

You can see how many beads of varying sizes and styles were used.

View of the other side of the bag.

            Even though I loved the bag, I saw my mom's eyes light up when I showed it to her, so I bought it and as we stepped outside of the store I gave it to her as a gift, she could not believe it!

        Our next stop was a Ross Store. I bought a dress and I had always wanted a stackable mug set and this one was perfect! It's Valentine's Day theme, but I have the Corelle set of dishware with pink hearts that match perfectly so I can use them year round.

Aren't they adorable?

The cups match my plates perfectly.

        So after Ross we went to The Dollar Tree because I was hoping to find some Valentine's Day Decorations for my living room. I'll post pictures of the finished decor in another post. Somehow I've lost some of my decorations so my decor was pretty skimpy. I did find quite a few things, but my favorite was this little pink bear. To make her "valentiney" I crocheted a little red heart and sewed her hands to it so she looks like she's holding it. 

        After that we had burgers and fries at Freddy's Frozen Custard and Steakburgers. That's not on my approved food eating list, but I'm not going to limit my life, when it's being out enjoying the day with mom I'll eat where she wants to eat and enjoy myself!

        Then we went home, happy, tired and full of burgers. Saturday night was when I crocheted the heart for my bear above and enjoyed my new mugs with some sugar-free hot chocolate and whipped cream. 

        Sunday started out great. My sister Lisa and her granddaughter Roselyn came over for coffee and then Lisa's son Isaac came to surprise his mom and ended up at my house with a big box of donuts...of which you will be happy to hear I did not partake.

        I did some chores and started learning how to crochet roses while I watched football. I am so devastated that my Dallas Cowboys lost against the Green Bay Packers. They fought their way back to a respectable score...but too little too late.

        As I write this it is Dr. Martin Luther King Jr Day and I have the day off. Probably Dr. King's most popular quote is his "I have a dream..."

        But my favorite quote of his is "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that." - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

        Everyone have a good week. Mine will be a 4-day work week so although it will be hard, it will be short.

Thrift Store Art Supplies and The Lisa Mermaid

I am a lover of thrift stores! There's just something about hunting for hidden treasure that I love. I get this from my mother who has always loved thrift stores. She and I can spend hours on a Saturday morning on the hunt for something special. 

About a year ago, I found one of those treasures, canvases for 99 cents each! There were probably 50 of them, I bought 10. The canvas was covered with a piece of faux brown suede. People tell me that they were probably used in a sound studio to muffle noise. It is a 16 x 20 inch canvas which is a nice size.

I took the fake suede cover off  and found that underneath was some thin green foam, about 1/4 inch in thickness. Here's the foam after I removed it. 

Unfortunately they had glued down the foam in certain places and the foam did not want to come off!

I tried everything, a knife, a razor blade, acetone, sanding paper. I was able to get almost all the foam off but that glue must have been made from the stuff they glued the Apollo 13 with, because nothing I did even made a dent. I had several big blobs of glue!

I was taking an acrylic art class at the time, so I took it to class to get some advice from my art teacher, Alex. Alex said, "Well, if you can't remove it, make it part of your painting. Try some mixed media. Paint the glue blobs to be 3-D rocks." Brilliant Alex....just brilliant! Why didn't I think of that.

I happened upon a YouTube video on how to use tissue paper to create art. The video below is from Amy Pearce at Her Art from the Attic. It's amazing and now that I've watched it again I think I am going to try this one today.



I figured that the tissue paper would give the canvas enough texture that you wouldn't notice the lumps where the glue was so I added the tissue paper and again showed it to Alex who said that it looked like waves in the ocean and I should try doing an ocean painting! Brilliant! So I painted it like this to start with. 

If you look closely you can see the lumps where the glue was.

I set this aside for several weeks and one day I happened upon another YouTube video done by Angela Anderson at Angela Anderson Fine Art. It was a tutorial on how to paint an Ocean Coral Reef and lo and behold, I already had the basics of it done!



Following along with Angela, I was able to come up with the painting below. I knew I wanted to add a mermaid but because of the ridges in the texture the tissue paper, I was scared to try it. I usually draw my subject in with white kids chalk and the ridges didn't allow for smooth drawing. By now the art class was over so I didn't even have Alex for ideas!

One night I held a paint night for myself, my sister Lisa and our friend Lupe. We try to get together every few months to paint, de-stress and just spend time together. Lupe had found a picture online that she wanted to try to paint and when she saw the ocean reef painting she insisted that I take the mermaid picture and use it. I loved it, it was perfect. Thank you Lupe!

The great thing is that the mermaid is not facing me, so I didn't have to deal with trying to draw a face with all those ridges. So instead of doing a drawing first I just went for it and painted her in.

So here she is, my finished painting which I am gifting to my sister Lisa because she is a true mermaid, a lover of the sea, the ocean, the beaches and anything oceany!

I give you The Lisa Mermaid!

Here's a close up of the mermaid herself. I used some glitter paint in silver and white for her tail. You can't really see it here but her tail glistens with glitter. I also used a glitter paint that dries clearly on her skin, so her skin glistens. She's absolutely beautiful.

Now I have to figure out what I'm going to do with the other 9 canvases that are covered with suede! Yikes! Any ideas?

Books Read in 2015

I've been keeping track of books that I've read each year since 2009. From 2009 until 2012 I kept track on my own and on my blog, but in 2012 I signed up for Goodreads and they keep track for me. So here's my countdown: ( you can click on each year to go to that post and see my list of books if you so desire)

2009 - 24 books
2010 - 24 books
2011 - 29 books
2012 - 26 books - Goal was 30 books
2013 - 18 books - Goal was 30 books
2014 - 33 books - Goal was 20 books

and drum roll please ......

Of all those years that I have been keeping track I only met my goal one year, in 2014 and then I far exceeded it. I blame Facebook, television and my iPhone for distracting me from reading as much as I should and used to read!

But, instead of beating myself up I'm setting the same goal for 2016, 35 books and forging ahead to try to meet or beat this goal!

Goodreads has done this cute little page that not only keeps track of how many books, but also, how many books and how many pages...

It tells me which of my books was the shortest and the longest...

Which of my books read was the MOST popular with Goodreads and also which was the LEAST popular...

And which of those 19 books was the highest rated on Goodreads, (which I entirely agree with, it was an awesome book!)

Here's the books I read in 2015:

To help me meet or beat my goal, I will be starting with these three books that I was able to find yesterday after a successful Goodwill shopping trip with my mom:

Excellent books that I was so lucky to find! Schindler's List has 4.34 stars on Goodreads, The Red Tent has 4.14 and A Beautiful Mind has 4.09. Have you read any of them? Which would you recommend I start off with?

Happy reading in 2016 and let me know if you have any recommendations of books that I should add!

Baby J Sunday! Hat and Fall in the Air!

I just finished reading the book Barracuda by Christos Tsiolkas. It's one of the September book selections for my online book club, From Left to Write. Without giving anything away I have to say that I really didn't enjoy reading this book. I should be working on a blog post for the book as it's due tomorrow, but unfortunately the book just wasn't my cup of tea and I still feel like I don't have a clue what the book was about.

So I will work on that post later, but for right now I want to share my Baby J Sunday, Sunday, Sunday photos! Let me start by saying that I didn't take too many today. Baby J was super fast today. She's a hard one to pin down. You aim the camera at her and say "Baby J, say cheese!" She says "Cheese" and is off before you even have a chance to snap the photo!

My sister Lisa (Baby J's grandmother) had recently asked us to keep an eye out for hats for Baby J when we're on one of our Thrifting Treasure Hunts. Yesterday mom and I were out running errands and had a chance to stop at one Goodwill Store. We usually hit them all but darn it, we just ran out of time yesterday!

But we were in luck because there were tons of Halloween costumes at Goodwill and we found a beautiful little white hat with a furry trim and a white veil. We knew Baby J would love it and she did!

First photo is Baby J in her white hat, she did love it and wouldn't take it off. It makes my mom so happy to see Baby J enjoying the things she buys for her! Don't you adore that DIMPLE???? As usual we had breakfast and then Baby J dragged us outside to play with the dogs and her sidewalk chalk.

One thing that frightens her are loud noises, like big trucks that go by that have really loud motors! In the bottom left picture she had just come running up to me scared. You can see she looks a little shaken up, but she had beautiful hair going today. Love her curls!

Then it was time for Baby J to head home and you can see her kissing her great grandmother goodbye, wearing her pretty little hat. She has a special bond with her Nana and it brings joy to my heart to see my mom laughing at this little wonder.

That's it for Baby J Sunday this week, I hope next week I'm either a little bit faster or Baby J is a little bit slower. Have a great week!


 

A Jewelry Store? A Bookstore? An Art Gallery? Yes to all!

It's no secret that I love to read! I've mentioned many times in previous posts that I like to go to a special Goodwill Store that we have close by that has books, books and more books! The best thing is that most of them are 80 cents! You can't go wrong with that! Even buying online books at 99 cents can't beat my bookstore. I've also mentioned many times that someday I was going to take pictures of this store and write a post about it. Today is that day!

A little background...the reason for my title to this post is this bookstore has many faces. It's a bookstore, true, but it's also a nick-knack store, a jewelry store, an art gallery and much, much more! 

Here you see books! What I love is that the employees that work here have this store super organized. They have signs posted above each section that says whether it's Fiction, Non-Fiction, Education, Health, Parenting, Religious, Cooking, etc, etc...you get the idea, right? The books are all alphabetized by author in each section!

And in little nooks and crannies, like on the shelf at the bottom of this photo, they tuck little treasures, like dolls, candle sticks, looks like there is even a Santa Claus cookie jar down there! Darn, wish I had seen that!

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Here's the front entrance and they have a bookcase there facing the outside with some of their newer inventory of books. I usually grab about three or four books the second I come in!

And I forgot to put in my title that this is also a Hallmark Store!! Well not really, but see that nice, neat little section of different greeting cards? Nothing goes to waste once donated to Goodwill!

Also look carefully and you will see lots of other goodies, see some purses hanging on the wall behind the cashier? They also have some vintage jewelry back there too!

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Another shot of books and they also sell boxes. I've bought some of these boxes many times to move and sometimes just to store some of the books I've bought and read and need to return to Goodwill so someone else can benefit from them!

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I could spend hours in this place, which is why it's nice that they have created such a nice little reading area. All of this is donated stuff and almost all of it is for sale, but these tables and the little couch and a few chairs on the other side are not for sale but for customers to just sit and relax and look at books. 

The store has regular customers that come in and sit on weekends and just pass the time, just like a Barnes and Noble Bookstore...except without a Starbucks. 

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Another shot of books! As you can see there is a never-ending supply of books coming into this store constantly! Can you also see those posters and pictures set alongside? There are treasures to be seen everywhere!

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Another shot of books! When you read as much as I do it's really a nice option to be able to have such a huge selection for such a great price...plus, when I finish I donate them back so the Goodwill continues to profit from the books and someone else gets the pleasure of reading these books over and over again! Win-Win!

I thought this was an interesting little corner to share because this is all their vintage books. I've been looking for a first edition copy of the book, The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew by Margaret Sidney. It was a book I read over and over as a child until it fell apart. I always check out this section and hope that one day I will come upon it. That will be a happy-happy, joy-joy day!

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And say you come with someone that is not into books...well they won't be bored, just tell them to stroll over to the Art Gallery! I love this section!!!

Here's a shot from the entrance, this room is located at the back of the store and there's lots of natural light which is perfect to show off all this cool artwork you can buy. It's all for sale! Someone that really loved ballet must have recently donated!

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More artwork! Isn't this fabulous? And all hung and displayed so nicely. And the store is so clean!!! 

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Can you see why I love this place and constantly rave about it and devoted a whole post to it? And I'm still not done!!! Yes...there is more to see!

I probably should have started with this photo as this is the front of the store. 

Where to start! Ok, so on the shelves to the left you see magazines. Yes, they even salvage magazines, lots of Oprah's and Southern Living and others. More artwork of course, probably their newest arrivals! And lots of little nick-knacks on the shelves and even on the floor! You can see in the background what appears to be jewelry, it is!

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This is a very cute section too. They don't sell the little bookshelf itself, trust me I've asked because I love it, but it is always filled with lots of cute little treasures!

And because I was so busy taking photos I wasn't really paying much attention to what was on the shelf and now I see that little angel blowing a kiss!! Love it! Shoulda bought it!

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And now...my favorite section in the whole store...oh c'mon....who am I kidding, the whole store is my favorite. But you know how you save the best for last? Well I always save looking at the jewelry for last because it is my favorite part.

I have found tons of cute bracelets and necklaces here for great prices! And the great thing is the pieces I find here are unique one of a kind items that no one else has!

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And I didn't leave empty handed. Along with all these great pictures, look what's in my shopping cart?

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I think that book in the front is one my mom or sister threw into my cart because I just looked around here at home and I don't have that book and I know it's not a book I would have been interested in. But the low-carb cookbook and the Atkins book behind it I will love going through.

So this is why I don't own a Kindle. Owning a kindle would keep me from the pleasure of visiting this great place filled with books and treasures and jewels and artwork and would probably put Goodwill out of business considering that I visit this place almost every weekend...but wouldn't you if you had it in your home town?