Busy times

I guess I dropped off the face of the Earth... no it's hasn't been THAT dramatic, just a combination of things. My year end financials here at work was due to the accountant this Wednesday, last weekend was our spring Brownie camp and I have been suffering with a Fibro recurrence. This one left me with severe neck, arm and elbow to wrist pain. But, I'm on the mend.

Lina and I have been working on a little gift pack for a new pen pal in Australia - you know who you are! We are so excited. We have decided on a theme for this first mailing and I am hoping to get it in the mail by the end of the weekend.

I am also working on ideas for booga j's pincushion challenge. My current idea involves handpainting cotton stretch velvet, however, I think when I actually sit down it will evolve into something different (and with materials on hand).

Now that other things in my like have settled a bit, I expect that I will be able to blog on a regular basis again. Hope so! I've missed surfing the net and recording the inspiration I find.

That New Look Thing

Hmm, what are those table post thingys below? Well they are the only way I could think to organize the 100s of links I have. So as I slowly delete them from my bookmarks, I am placing them in organized posts. I figure I can find them easier that way. So that table at the bottom of every page will link back to these posts. It might actually work. I am sure that down the road some other way will pop up, but for now, this isn't too bad. If anyone if interested feel free to browse. It will definately be a work in progress.

Beadwork Resources & Inspiration

Beadwork
Mine	Others
Icicle Ornaments Art Doll - February 2005 Art Doll - March 2005 Buggy Hairclips Flower Hair Pin Purse - Leaves of Change In progress Art Doll - Tiara and Sceptre Bead Wreath	Embellishment cafe

Toys - Resources & Inspiration

Toys
Mine	Others
	Finhold Gallery - Unique Teddy Bears * Inspiration

Basketry Resources & Inspiration

Basketry
Mine	Others
	Basket Makers * Resource/Tutorial

Netting Resources & Inspiration

Netting
Mine	Others
	Knots Indeed * Resource/Tutorial

Website Library

Website Library
Whimsical Style	Details Art & Green Shoelaces (Interior Decorating and Unique Gifts) Sticks (Furniture and Unique Gift Items)

Felt Resources & Inspiration

Felt
Mine	Others
	Morna Crites-Moore*Sewn Folk Art

Leathercraft Resources & Inspiration

Leathercraft
Mine	Others
Gypsy Purse Gypsy Purse II Leather Leaf In Progress	Anderson Leather *Inspiration - braided seams

Pincushion challenge

Thanks to whip up for passing along the info that Booga is pondering a monthly pincushion challenge. Check it out!

Tidying up

Well, I definately have a long way to go in my cataloguing but if you scroll down to the table at the bottom of the page, you can begin to see my feeble attempts to get my links organized. So far only "tatting" and "beadwork" go anywhere but I can't wait to get everything done so that I can just click on a topic and access all of the links. I am far too lazy to remember which post I referred to a specific site in.

Hopefully it will prove useful for someone else some day too.

Yay! eBay.ca!

Here's my glad bounty of Handcraft Illustrated that came in the mail yesterday. I even got to sit down this morning with blackcurrent tea and browse uninterrupted for 20 minutes. Oh my! I definately have to keep collecting. These are mostly from 1995 and I have never seen any of them. There are quite a few projects I want to try. Yay eBay!
 

Mischief Mittens and Girl...

The Girl is, of course, Lina. I was trying to take a few pictures of some of the items I have been working on and Mischief jumped into the fray and got into the way, then along came Lina and before we knew it we were in the midst of a cat and girl photo shoot. He's grown so big and has been trained to stick by Lina's side at bedtime. The rest of the time he's into everything and what he gets into he bats around the house so that I find pencils under cubboard doors and hair elastics on the stair. He also likes to carry things in his mouth but we have not figured out ow to get him to fetch yet.

The rest of the week...

Well, what a week it has been. When I last blogged I left off because the after school care program called me as Lina was not feeling very good. I knew she was coming down with something Monday morning however I did not realize it would come on so quickly. Tuesday I took her to the doctors and the infection was already in her lungs. I brought work home with me and we spent two days on the couch watching everything imaginable on the tube. It's not very efficient to work on a couch with a sick child but we got into a system whereby I would time the refilling of fluids and medicine with my bathroom breaks and she would try not to wiggle too much and upset the piles of receipts I was trying to enter into the computer.

Yesterday I HAD to get back to work in the hopes that my boss and I would have a few moments to get caught up on things, Lina was getting a little bored with being at home and I honestly thought she would be on the mend. Last night when I picked her up, she was almost hoarse and hacking badly. She stayed with daddy instead of coming to Brownies with me; we were selling Girl Guide cookies around the nieghbourhood. Last night I was awake all night listening to her coughing and haking and sniffling. I got up with her numerous times and kept the cough syrup, tylenol and kleenex running.

This morning we are all worn out, Lina just got up, it's 9:30 so she probably had about 2 hours sleep. And... she's mad at me for letting her miss her bus. She wants to go to school today because there is a book fair at school and she wants to buy something. Tears already, man is she tired. I hope she beats this illness soon.

April Showers

So far April has been a busy month. My mom came up from Petawawa on Friday night to help me with Brownie Badge Day on Saturday.

Saturday Lina, Mom and I went to a local church for the big day. Lina was earning badges of her own, Mom assisted me to present two 1 1/2 hour sessions of "Share your Talent for Music" to 7 and 8 year olds. To earn these badges, the Brownies were to:

Learn a Canadian Folk Song
- we learned Donkey Riding thanks to a wonderful resource online: The Great Canadian Tunebook which does not only supply the words but midi files of the melodies.

Play or sing two different types of music
- here we sang the folksong and also at the end of the session tried our hand at singing in the round. Again I found a wonderful little site on the net called Beyond Row Row Row your Boat which has the music, words and midi files for some great little rounds. Mind you they were a little complex to teach the girls, but they enjoyed listening to them. We sang the Girl Guide standard "Make New Friends" which another group working nearby on their "Wodd Works" badge spontaniously jumped in and sang with us.
- we also talked about what kinds of music the girls liked and then listened to many snippets of different genres of music and talked about how the music made them feel. Both the morning and afternoon session had a variety of music interests in them.

Make up your own song, play or sing it
- here we really had fun. I brought in some tupperware containers and a bag of elastics and the girls experimented with rubber band guitars, they played on an xylophone I brought in, it was really fun listening to the girls playing their guitars and tuning it to create tunes.

Make a musical Instrument, such as a drum, cymbol, or flute out of recycled material
- this last one was the best. We made wonderful music with straws (check this one out, it really works!). We made kazoos with waxed paper and combs and the best part was that we made Kalimbas from wood and bobby pins that the girls coloured with crayons and could take home.

All in 1 1/2 hours - amazing.


When we were done, the three of us went to the mall. Lina wanted to shop. She's been saving her allowance to buy something. I say something because going to the mall always results in some adjustment of her plans. She has been checking out the flyers to get the best price for a lava lamp. It was either that or the newest Barbie thing, a Mermaidia doll. The doll turned out to be to expensive, the lava lamp not as appealing when facing an entire pink isle of Barbie. But, she spent quite a bit of time making up her mind. I gave her a few options, such as save for two more weeks and I will kick in the rest of the money for the doll (earning $2 a week for cleaning her room means that it takes quite a bit for her to save so I try not to make it a descourage exercise for her). She surprised me with shopping savvy when at one point she had two toys in her hand and proceeded to tell me she didn't think one was worth the price the store was asking for it. I think all in all she spend half an hour making her decision. I kicked in abot $4 and Lina is now at $0 again but it was a worthwhile learning opportunity. If it kills me, Lina will be far ahead of the game as far as being money smart if I have anything to do with it.

Well, I'll finish the rest of the update in a bit, the afterschool care program has called and I need to go pick Lina up from school. I knew she wasn't feeling great but I was hoping she would make it throught today.