January 30

Ah, another “play day”… some crafty friends were coming over to play, but I didn’t get a chance to take a photo. I needed to start work on taking a thorough inventory of my Club Scrap materials for sale, though, so I opted not to play with them. Diana, Laureen, Judy and Paula ended up helping by shopping and eliminating some of my stock!  LOL  And they wanted to work on making some cards with some of my card workshop materials…

Here is part of my stock that I was counting, using the opportunity to print out miniature ALSB layout labels to put on the Crafter Classics and other ALSB collections…

  Close up of the labels I’m putting on the packages…

January 29

Yay, another Club Scrap shipment arrived — “My Funny Valentine,” in the tradition of the WOW (“Weekend of Workshops) projects… The staff handpainted the boxes!

January 28

Looks like the neighborhood wild daisies that got tricked into blooming early are going to stick out their entire life cycle now… every time the weather warms up, they now start to blossom. They sure look different than when they bloom normally in the spring. It will be very interesting to watch how they continue to fare as the regularly-scheduled blooming season starts pretty soon, in about a month or so… big plants and small sprouts side-by-side…

January 27

Aaargh… more car troubles… for the past week or so, the battery has seemed to be not holding its charge any more; so I went to get it checked out. They did need to replace it. I’m just glad I took the opportunity to get a new one before my next trip to Tucson…

January 26

Time to compare a little with last year…

Here’s my front yard with the cactus and ficus tree. On the ficus tree, you can see that the brown leaves frozen in the hard frost I mentioned on January 2, did blacken and have started falling off on their own (in 2006 I believe I had to cut them off). (Also, weather report today says we’re due for another cold snap coming Wednesday–this time I’ll cover the tree!)

To compare, here’s the photo from last year; I like to see how much they’ve grown in one year… Looks like there are more new cactus pads than I thought there were.

January 25

Imprint in the cement on the sidewalks in my neighborhood, which was developed in 1972. My house is slowly deteriorating, but the original sidewalks remain pretty much in good shape, after 39 years…

January 24

Okay, time resurrect going for walks for exercise in the morning. I’d started last year but let it fade after a couple of weeks. But I really need it, even if it’s sporadic…

So I started again this morning by walking to the grocery store instead of driving, to pick up a few necessities. It felt very good, especially on the way home loaded with 13 pounds of groceries… lol