Ahead and Behind Schedule

Hubby left town this afternoon for a few days which means I can dispense with my usual little to no cooking and not much laundry or cleaning...which means I can camp out in my workroom. Matt was outside all day in the beautiful weather playing his heart out with the neighbor kids, just as a boy should do. My behind is that I signed up for a journal swap. The journals were to be mailed out by April 27th. Above is the beautiful journal I received from Michelle Geller last week. Ain't it fab? I LOVE it. That's what I get for procrastinating-I could just curl up into the fetal position if I allowed myself to try to match her talent...

...fortunately I already had something in mind that I wanted to use this swap as a chance to try for a long time. I took off the front and back covers of an antique book and embellished/collaged the front. I forgot to photograph the inside but I used some antique papers that Hope gave me recently as the journal pages. They are very old company invoice pages that have turned a nice shade of sepia. I bound all with ribbons and used my new Crop-O-Dial to help. I hope she likes it, it's on the petite size, but size is not everything, right?

My ahead was that while I had all this almost limitless time in my workroom I tried another new project. This week is teacher/staff appreciation week at Matt's school. Last year I spent way too much money on...I can't even remember what. Last week Hope went took a class at the cottage in Leesburg given by Amy of Inspire Co. where she made three different kinds of May Day flower holders. I took detailed photos and copied one of the ideas for the teachers' gifts. This is the one that uses baby food jars. Not to waste the food I got blueberry apple sauce because I knew one of us would eat that. The others were made with tin cans and water bottle bottoms-genius all of them.

They were fun and easy to make and each has the (dur, as you can see) the teachers', principals', and administrative assistants' initials. I got the cutest little bags in great colors at Target today and will pop each one into a bag and make a fun tag to go on. I used all materials that I already had except the jars and the bags but I think it's a cute, sweet treat that I hope they like. And they aren't even due 'til Tuesday! I've got glitter and glue all over me which reminds me of Mellie. I don't have a recent update as I haven't seen her since Friday night. I heard that her dad might be coming to town this weekend plus other relatives so I thought I'd not interfer with family time. I hope to see her tomorrow and then I can do some updating. You are always on my mind sweet Mellie...