As some of you may know, I recently went back to work. So, that is seriously eating into my creative time. I hope that explains why postings has dropped off sharply and why I haven’t been making much lately.
However, a couple of exciting developments are in the making. The first – and biggest – (at least for me) is the fact that I recently purchased my domain! So, now with everything else that I have going, I need to figure out how to move the last almost 400 posts, photos and comments over to my very own “OnMyCreativeSide.com”! And with that, I want to change up the look of the site and I still need to come up with a logo. I’ve only been trying to do that for like the last four years!!
I took a couple of extra days this weekend to make it a five day Fourth of July weekend. First, my “baby” (the guy I oft refer to as “The Kid”) turned 21 on the last day of June. Whew! where did all of those years go? I swear that he was just learning to walk and talk and now he’s all grown and legal in all 50 states! We had hoped to do something we both enjoy – abandoned house hunting and thrifting in some unexplored towns around KC, but it has been raining and outrageously hot and humid and it seemed more relaxing to just hang around the house and watch old movies. It was his choice, so that’s what we did. But we did manage to hit our local thrifting places before settling into a whole lot of nothing.
Okay, so I did get a little ambition. Or rather, its just my nature to not be able to sit and do nothing while watching television. So, I took the opportunity to get some small things done and work a little on some larger things.
First, I finished up my Altoids tin project. I saw this a while back and thought it was adorable. I started to collect the tins and then just never got around to making them. Easy as any project that I’ve ever done, I don’t think instructions are necessary.
So, the next project was to come up with a really neat way to showcase shredded money that I collected. Seeing as how The Kid is a numismatist, I thought it would make a great birthday present. And although its called “Millionaire’s Money, it isn’t quite a million dollars. I estimated that it is somewhere around one hundred thousand dollars, give or take. The dome stands about 12″ tall and has a diameter of 9”. Its stuffed in there pretty tight so that there wouldn’t be any settling or shifting of the money shreds over time. I composed the type using Photoshop and printed it on a clear transparency sheet and simply tacked it using E6000 glue onto the inside of the glass and started filling. I used the same glue to adhere the glass done to the base, I do not want to have to pick up this stuff if it happened to escape the dome!
Here is the text I used: Millionaire’s Money: A fortune in shredded currency. It comes from genuine United States current shreds which are created from notes no longer fit for circulation. They have been with withdrawn from circulation by the Federal Reserve system as officially authorized by the Department of the Treasury. Many thousands of dollars were used to fill this dome.
Next up is something that I have been working on pretty much since high school. I was a big fan of Edgar Allan Poe since I discovered my love of reading and writing in high school. Once I read everything Poe wrote, someone suggested King, who was still in his early years of writing. First book I was hooked. I always bought hard cover books, as I considered them as much of an investment and as it turned out, I am glad I did. Once I realized that I had most of his books, I wanted to showcase them as well. I found this awesome Mission styled bookcase with glass doors and negotiated a decent price. Once home, all it took was a decent cleaning – I like Old English – and a quick re-arrangement of my master bedroom and it was done.
Then I scoured the house to find all of my Stephen King tomes. Turns out I’ve been buying duplicates, but that’s okay. I went through all of them and set aside the first editions and the best looking of any dups.
Got a list off the internet and made a inventory of what I still need to collect. I haven’t decided for sure, but I may go for different versions of the same book… there are various flavors available. I am shooting for all first editions, but I won’t get rid of the ones I purchased (usually with funds scraped together and which meant forgone meals). The ones I fell in love with.
I’m really please with how this turned out. The wood matches perfectly my bedroom suite and even though the style is a little different, it still looks great. Next up for the bedroom? New wood floors.
Did a little baking, also. Seems like its been a while since I mustered up the desire to do some baking, but I promised this wonderful person at my new job that I would make her some bread pudding. She is just about the sweetest and most helpful person and I have always been a strong believer in telling people good things.
The one on the right was for her. She likes her break pudding with chocolate chips, I usually make it with raisins. The others didn’t last long in my house and I barely ate any! If you’ve never had home-made bread pudding, you should. It takes just like french toast! And if you want, you can drizzle syrup on top of the pudding. Always (and I mean ALWAYS) tastes best warm out of the oven.
And because The Kid asked (and didn’t want a cake) I made him his favorite treat (and oh so easy to make) I made graham cracker cookies. You can’t get any easier than this:
I’ve also been working on my plants. I have this extraordinarily green thumb, even if I tried I don’t think I could kill a plant! But I am quickly running out of room and right now they take up way too much room on the dining room table. (Good thing we rarely eat there!)
One thing I am always on the lookout for is bowls and pots that would make good planters. Oh and little thins like this chair that once painted red, makes for an excellent plant stand. That little chair was a whopping $2 and the pot was just a $1 at our local Savers! I think I’ve seen that little pot, it has a lid but was missing the middle clear glass section that made it look like a gumball machine. But works perfect for what I needed it for.
I have tons more stuff to write about and hopefully I won’t get so behind again in the future. And I am nearing a milestone and am excited about how long and how well this blog has been doing. And its all thanks to you!