Paper crafting!

For under three bucks in supplies. ... but I have to make or buy some envelopes but still!  Kinda feeling good. :)

Paper cutters.

In a day of sad thoughts and frustrations, one thing has brought me quite a lot of joy.  Nope, it's not lipgloss today (although Evening Glow is my favorite today and I'd recommend it.  Texture is comparable to Bare Minerals "Moxie" line and it's a third of the price and the color is very pretty!  Behold: )

No, not lipgloss but paper cutters.

While 12 inches would be too small and a 15 would be manageable, I kept thinking... but 24 inches.  So much length to work with!

This one has a rotary blade, tres fancy!  Don't know if I'd like it because I haven't worked much with rotaries.  Not at all, actually.  But ... mmm it's all architecty lookin' $106.  Spendy spendy.

or the Vantage trimmer (left) and Swingline lite (right) each for 47 smackeroos:

 

The Stakcut is nothing to mess with.  Cuts 30 sheets!  And severs the souls of your enemies!  for only $143!!! The dark grey just looks like it means serious business, doesn't it?


This 24 inch Swingline would look stunning in your elementary school classroom!  But there are probably better guillotines for less than $206

Aren't they beautiful?!  So much slicing!  Such straight lines!  Today's ability to make it through, brought to you by papercutter daydreams.  And that will also be my next album title.

Esteregstor

Making eggs yesterday!  Nora was the most supreme and enthusiastic egg destroyer I've ever seen.   Saddest egg casualty was my sweet brown egg with a lion and lamb on it. 

Nora's favorite ways to break eggs:
Crack them against the oven door
Grip them with a two handed death grip and stab her thumbs into them with baby strength
Stealth egg murder.  For example,  when an egg thinks it is safe hiding in a mug of dye and she attacks the murk with a spoon until she hears the Crack!
Overloading a mug with five eggs and try to smash them in.
Climbing on the dining room table and stealing one out of a basket and cracking it against the table

Beast mode

I gotta take a moment to celebrate myself and sing myself so pardon me in advance.

But dude some days I rock!  I pulled off what will be an incredible sneak and wrote some good riddles. I took care of people's emotional needs and logistical needs in a lot of ways today.  I wrote a pretty good rubric and self-evaluation guide. I taught nearly two full extra periods for no dollars just because reasons.  I came home and made five dozen Christmas cookies and five cookies shaped like snakes with stars for eyes, and now I'm gonna go mulch my perennials.  And I had a vague creative idea that won't win a damn thing but it's an idea I believe in and want to keep up long after Christmas.  I hope it is still good as the details flesh out.

Fueled by love (and one cup of coffee.  But maybe we'll make that two). This is how it's done!  And tonight I look forward to grading but probably quitting early on that so I can continue studying a very good, consoling book.  Beat that! 

Oh man, and seven hours later the day is still great.  We got the swing up on the porch and out of the weather, then Nora and I spent a good time out on the swing singing and cheering at, get this, looking out the "window," as Nori called it.  She essentially meant looking over the railing and it was worth cheering about.  So we turned on the magical porch lights lights, watched the dark start to creep in.  The air was electric today.  And alive.

And mulching awakened that obsessive gardener in me.  I have to write more about this later.  Too many electric sparks in my brain bzzzeet! bzzzeeeet!  bzzzzaow!

Then Jonah was full of funny lines today at dinner.

"Are we herbivores or omnivores?"

"Omnivores."

"YES! I'm a DINOSAUR!"

And so on.  Then we went to his Christmas pageant, which was pretty dang cute.  He was a lamb.  Jonah looks like a cool, confident kid when he's in the context of a bunch of three and four year olds.  He's so self-possessed.  And Nora was owning the audience.  

And I got bedding, so you know, the excitement of linens.  Aw yeah.

And then errands and phone calls and music and yoga in the livingroom, and it's near midnight and I'm still ON FIRE to write and do and open windows and and and.  I don't know what to wear tomorrow, so I probably should just stay awake.  

And my awesome door idea is probably not going to happen after all because I don't have any glue-gun ammo left and I'm not thinking I'm going to prioritize going to the store for that tomorrow.  But it's a cool idea and it involved, in part, gutting a CD player.  Maybe next year.  Ack.

Okayokayokayokayokayokayokay.

(EDIT:  The rubric was not as good as I had hoped; a borrowed glue gun allowed me to create some version of my original plan.  I will save the part that involved a gutted CD player for next year.)

Collage

Welcoming the Season

Because everything isn't heavy all the time...

Holiday decorating isn't something I go wild for.  Many of my friends are domestic goddesses-- full displays for Halloween, Easter, Fourth of July, Boss's Day, you name it.  Not me.  I did make a pretty fancy bouquet of decapitated heads for Bastille Day that one year, but generally I don't care that much.  It's just more clutter and work I don't like dealing with.  Even Christmas decorations feel like that EXCEPT for the mantel.  It's my favorite thing to do each year, closely followed by putting lights on the tree (oh that battle!  the bloodshed!  the sap! the LIGHTS!).   Each year, it manifests differently. I wish I had taken more pictures of previous years-- like when I did pine garlands and clementines and twinkling lights.  That was pretty.  This year started with a blue disco ball motif, but I changed my mind and this is what we ended up with:

It's alright from straight ahead, but it's the details that make me linger when I walk past:

The mouse was the ornament Nora picked out on vacation this year.  It joins our collection with the fox and the skunk.  I made those little Santa hats a few years ago when we had my frame full of birds hanging in the living room.  The hats fit these critters just about as well as they fit my bird collection.  The gourds are from our garden and look just as good for Christmas as they did for Thanksgiving.   Gourd haters be damned!

My bird ornaments all found homes on the dining room garland-- that garland was from Papa back at UNISIX and the bird in the center is the one I had hanging in my curtains there, so it's just lovely and sentimental.  I almost didn't hang up the two cages that made their way into the collection-- they make me sad.  But in one, the bird has fallen off the perch, and a cage with a dead bird in it is just right.  I mean, the symbolism, right?  That's what happens, right?  So I figure it encourages the other birds to make the most of their freedom.  The other cage is empty--a threat?  I didn't like a cage hanging up at all, honestly, so I tried to pry the door open, but nearly broke apart the whole thing, so, eh, it went up anyway.  It was a gift, after all.

In other domestic fun, I spent nearly two hours moving the livingroom furniture around and setting up the stereo station.  True to the typical way helens do things like this, I moved things around no less than six different ways and ended up settling on the first configuration I came up with.  Coulda saved myself a lot of heavy lifting.  At least Chris helped me do the last move.  It would have been more annoying to go back to the beginning if I had to wrangle all that furniture myself. 

Delightful irony:  after moving furniture so much today and yesterday, I'm sitting on the floor to write.  Ha!