Just surviving by hibernating!

July is always the hottest month here in our desert, but it seems that August is THE. WORST. MONTH!!!!!   My plants always wilt and die.  The birds are panting.  I've set up 4 dishes of water for them (2 in front and 2 in back) and I even cleaned out the big water found (which doesn't work) for them in the front yard and the doves enjoy it.  I also leave the hose running out back into the birdbath and I have 2 bowls under it to collect the water.  Our neighborhood Cooper's hawk has shown up twice to enjoy a foot soak and a drink.

My garden HAS survived the summer (first time in years...).  I think it is mainly because except for our brief Arizona trip to Heber/Overgaard, we've stayed home all summer.

Not much else new here.  Oh, grandchild #5 arrived last week and I spent 3 days helping our son with food and laundry.  The little one is now home and she is keeping her parents awake at night!  HA!

We MAY take a trip to the eastern Sierra sometime in October, so hubby is busy researching Air B&B.  We went for 5 nights last October and got photos of the fall colors, but we might just go to Idyllwild for a few days instead.  The trip to Heber/Overgaard (6 HOURS) nearly did me in as I had to drive the entire way.  And home, except for a 45 minute break!!!!!  I haven't uploaded the few photos I took yet...maybe today if I can locate my uploader!

Be safe and stay well.  We are staying INDOORS these days.  It was 115 here yesterday and we have a heat wave through the weekend here...UGH...NO FUN!
~Cheryl Ann~

I've been AWOL again!!!!!

You know, we already have 4 grandchildren:  2 boys and 2 girls and #5 (a girl) is due to arrive...ANY DAY NOW!  Phew!  We have been busy babysitting the 1 year old grandson while his 4 year old sister was taking swim lessons.  Mom decided she couldn't be in the pool with the 4 year old AND watch the little man, so we babysat for 2 weeks.  Swim lessons are now over (thankfully), but now #5 is due.

I've been busy creating journals.  I REALLY enjoy this!  I even got my sewing machine out and stitched around some of my photos and attached either scrapbook paper to them or writing paper!  I put ruffles on pages.  I'm having quite a good time.  I HAVE to have a creative outlet, you see!

We're heading over to Arizona in a couple of weeks...going up to Heber/Overgaard for a few nights.  Hopefully we will get a couple of storms up there.  We found a cabin that is pet friendly, so Ripley will come with us.

OH...AND BIG NEWS>>>

Hubby traded in his Nissan X TERRA for a Nisson Rogue hybrid!  We are LOVING it and we usually get anywhere from 33 to 39 MPG!  What a difference!  In fact, we both forget to look and see whether or not it needs gas!  HA!!!!!

Here are some recent pics:

Sewing zig zag stitches around my photos and attaching either writing paper OR scrapbook paper to the back of them.  Now I can insert them into my journals!

These were journals #3 and #4.  I am now on #15...I'll TRY to remember to get some more pics of them.  I did one from a Sunset Western garden book (hardcover) and it nearly did me in!  I actually THREW IT across the room!  I couldn't get the pages sewn in because the spine was so stiff!  I even ripped my stitches out and redid it TWICE!  It is finished now and it is my go-to journal!  I LOVE its "bigness" and will take it with me on our vacation because it has a TON of envelopes in it!  Oh, and I'm experimenting with painting leaves and then using a roller on them onto muslin.  I have GOT to post photos!

THIS is what I'm doing with Home Depot paint samples!!!  I'm going next week to get more samples!

 I finished these 7 back in early July...One is a Western one!  I LOVE it!  (the tall, skinny one in the back row...)

 3 more done in July...

 My hardcover ones.  The others were made from a 9x12 inch envelope.  These are NOT.  The green one on the right is a Reader's Digest book, pages removed, and I sewed in my own.  I haven't sewn the Good Housekeeping Cookbook, which I'm still adding pages to, or the second Western Garden book, on the left.  It is another hard cover book, just like BIG BERTHA (below)...

 THIS is my BIG journal!  I messed up the spine.  I didn't get my sewing holes lined up correctly, so I had to redo them and I made a REAL MESS!  Oh, well...I dearly LOVE this one!

 140 pages!  Can you believe it?  4 sewn in signatures.  A signature is a group of pages.  I think each signature has 15 or so pages...

 I used Dollar Tree bags at the beginning of each signature.  TOO STIFF!  DO NOT attempt this!

Inside front cover.  I kept the original inside cover and back inside cover pages, then added all the other pages.  This one was a REALLY HARD ONE to do because of the stiffness of the Dollar Tree bags.  However, I just couldn't let them sit around and the colors blended so well with the book...live & learn...sigh...At one point I was so frustrated I threw it across the room!  I put it to bed, got up the next morning, and finished her.  Phew!

Journals, journals, and MORE JOURNALS!

I have been so occupied making journals that I scarcely have time for anything else right now.  "Busy hands are happy hands" has never been so appropriate.

I've finished 10 journals now in 3 weeks.  PHEW!  I keep them in a basket, but I'm heading out this morning to Dollar Tree to get... A BIGGER BASKET!

I'm neglecting housework, laundry, but I did do the dishes this morning!  Ha, ha!

Bronchitis, heat, and I have a new passion!

Between the bronchitis, which took over a month to get rid of, and then my complete LACK of energy, I haven't been doing much.

Well, actually, that's not true.  I have a new passion!  I'm making journals!  And, giving them away to family & friends because right now I need the experience of making them and learning from my mistakes!  Finally, it is a great way to spend my days INDOORS!   (It was 119 here this week and we have two days of 118 degree days coming up next week).

So, yes, I had that HORRIBLE bronchitis that was going around and I was basically so tired that I did NADA.  NADA.  I didn't even get up to visit my horses!  That's how tired I was.  I seem to be over it now and my energy level is back.

I discovered journals after trying canvas, fence boards, 12" square wood cuts, and decorating my photos.  I really wasn't happy with any of those things.  I don't remember how I came upon journals, but I've always loved writing!  My first poem was published in first grade!  I was a writing coach at my district for two years and the students in my class always had higher writing scores than the other teachers at my grade level...(snicker, snicker...).  My kids wrote EVERY DAY.  They learned to spell.  They learned to write a complete sentence (in 3rd grade, for crying out loud!).  Yes, they struggled, but they also succeeded.  Every year except my last two, I published their year long writing in a spiral bound book and sent it home with them.


...sigh...

So, somehow, I think on Facebook, I discovered junk journals.  That's when you just grab whatever you have and make it into a notebook/journal.  Of course, I ran around the house and quickly filled up 3 boxes of...junk.  Old mail, old writing paper, new writing paper, paper bags, magazines.  My husband thinks I'm NUTS!  I even went out into the garage and found a whole box full of stationery that I used at school which was left over.  I somehow hadn't gotten around to giving it to a thrift shop!  THANK GOODNESS!

I'm on a roll.  I made 2 Edgar Allan Poe journals using what is called the "altered book" method.  That's where you keep the book pages and glue stuff on top of them.  They were awful.  I wasn't happy with them.

However, not being an expert seamstress like my maternal grandmother, I couldn't sew ANYTHING!  So, the sewing machine went in for reburbishing and now I sew lace and other things onto papers!

I now find books for 50 cents, gut them (take out the pages) and then build them back up.  I decide which pages should go into them.  I've made 4 that way.  Two went to one of my colleagues who retired the same year I did.  One is my first one and I'll keep that one.  Another one I did for a friend and I'm already working on #5. I've learned to get over my fear of sewing, although I do still occasionally swear at my sewing machine!  I gesso my covers and add items to them.  It is a wonderful outlet for my "creative energy".

Hubby finally asked today, "When are you going to make some money off these?"  HA!  Probably NEVER, but I don't care.

Oh, and I CLOSED my ETSY shop.  They were charging me fees for stuff that NEVER SOLD and I had just HAD IT!  NO SUPPORT, NADA!  So, bye-bye!

I just sneak some of my grocery money into my purse each week and trek over to either Michaels, Hobby Lobby, or JoAnn's.

Here are some photos of journals #1, 2, and 3...I don't have any of #4 YET...

 This one is #1.  I didn't know how to stitch the spine yet, so I just used ribbon to hold it together.  I punched holes in EVERY paper and tied it with a blue ribbon.

 These are #2 and #3.  I gave away #1 and #3 yesterday.  The one with the owl was the first one I stitched.  I didn't get enough papers in it, unfortunately, and the cover doesn't sit straight...oh, well...live and learn!  I'll keep that one.  I put gesso on the cover to give it some texture.  My colleague wanted the purple cover on hers left intact, so I didn't do anything to it.

This is the spin and stitching on #2.  I somehow didn't get my pages lined up correctly on the inside, so they aren't even...sigh...lesson learned!  There is a learning curve here and I think I'm doing better, but on #4, I didn't make enough holes for the spine and paper, so I just double stitched EVERYTHING!!!  OY~

Oh, and with the HEAT WAVE, I'm stayin' INSIDE!!!!
Later!
~Cheers~
Cheryl Ann

Why I've been AWOL

So, the hubby and I were called to babysit a couple of weeks ago because the one year old had a runny nose and cough and couldn't go to daycare.  Now, we BOTH got our flu shots this year, soooooo.....

We lasted 2 days.  Then I got a sore throat. And a tickle.  So, the mother-in-law was called and she babysat for... 6 DAYS!

In the meantime, I got a nasty bout of bronchitis.  I honestly don't even remember most of a week.  I stayed in my pajamas and took naps all day.  I coughed all night and couldn't sleep (neither could hubby because of my coughing).  I drank TONS of hot water with lemon and honey.

I am now on day 15.  I still have the cough and my energy level is very low.  If I go out in the morning, I am DONE for the day.  I need to go get a green smoothie and get my energy level back up.

I have, however, been working on various crafts.  I'm now into bookmaking (journaling).  Yesterday I sat on the couch and tea stained the pages in one book that I bought for $1.00 at the thrift store and used brown shoe polish on the other one.  I love the covers and spines of both books, so I ripped out about 300 pages in each one, keeping about 100, which is still WAYYYY too many!  I'll go through them again this morning and try to get them down to 50 pages each.  I want to turn one into a nature journal and I'm not sure what to do yet with the other one.  The prep on the books takes a LONG TIME!  I've been watching YouTube videos on how to make journals (in my free time!)  I REALLY love the nature ones.

We DID drive to Temecula Saturday to see the grandson's last baseball game.  His team WON, so they went to a playoff game that evening, and they won that too, so he has another game this week.  In the first game, the grandson got a double and 5 singles!  And, 5 RBI's and he scored 5x.  He watches a LOT of baseball games on TV and hubby says he has "baseball IQ"...(whatever that is...)  I guess he just understands the game and the strategies?

AND, we are getting a new car!  The XTerra is being traded for a Nissan Rogue, a hybrid!  Don't know yet when we are getting it as it is in Northern California.  Hubby found it online (there are NONE in Southern California currently...), so we are waiting to hear when they will ship it down here and to which dealership.  We'll go from 18 mpg to 35 mpg.  We can drive to the Sierra on one tank of gas, not 2!!!!  I'm going to miss the XTerra, but with gas now hovering about $3.00 a gallon, it is time to rethink it. And, once the California gas taxes are increased...OY!  OUCH!  Oh, and it is being included with a 10' CAMPING TENT!  An attachable tent!  So, I guess hubby HAS been listening to me complain about not being able to go camping!  Whoo, whoo!!!  We have our sleeping bags, our cots, our chairs, our camping stove, and our cast iron pans.  We actually have a Coleman 4 person tent (unused), so we are looking forward to doing some camping with our son and grandson this summer!!!!

Speaking of summer, it was 109 here Sunday and Monday.  Ugh.  Today it will ONLY be 107.  It cools down by the end of the week, down to 90!  We've had to turn on the air conditioner in order to survive!  I left some water running at the birdbath and yesterday I had 3 hummingbirds, the Oriole pair, doves, sparrows, and finches.  They sure appreciated the water!

Take care.  Don't get this HORRIBLE bronchitis.
~Cheryl Ann~   I will post photos of my projects as soon as I take some!!!!!   :-)

Well, "Little Man" is doing better!!!!

Thanks to Grandma's EXPERT CARE!  (yeah, right...All I did was put him down for 3 naps the other day and spoon fed him some water and gave him his meals...) "Little Man" no longer has a fever.  NONE!  GONE!  Phew!  Yes, it is scary when a little one is sick.

Anyway, his mom dressed him up in some UCLA stuff and took 14 photos of him the next day!  I don't know why...she DID graduate from UCLA and she has tons of UCLA swag for both kids...

So, here he is, the day after his 103 fever:

Babysitting

So, the youngest grandchild (so far....another one is on the way...) turned one year old April 29th.  We had to babysit him yesterday because he had a 103 degree temperature.

It's hard to watch a one year old screaming because he is sick.  I gave him his meds for his fever, then put him down for a short nap.  Actually, he fell asleep for 15 minutes on top of me, on my chest, then took another nap.  Then we went outside.  He actually perked up!  He played with his sister's toys (she was at daycare), played with the rocks, and played with anything he could find outside.  He LOVES the outdoors!  This may the the one grandchild I REALLY get to cultivate to love the outdoors!  He looks so much like my maternal grandfather and has his blue eyes, too!  And, my blond hair!

Anyway, he screamed for his lunch, so I fed him, kept him up until 2 p.m. and then he took a nice, long afternoon nap!  SO DID GRANDMA!!!!

By 4:00, he was screaming for his afternoon bottle, so he got that and then mommie came home.  He ran to the side door with his arms in the air!  He is so dang cute!

This morning he is fine.  NO FEVER!  I guess grandma did a good job yesterday!!!!!  Here's "Little Man" yesterday...playing with his big sister's toys!