A. Russ Original

I know that I have a pen/pencil problem … there I said it … isn’t admitting the problem the first step to recovery? It has been going on for YEARS! You should see the cup of pencils on my desk at the office. I use mechanical pencils every day I am at work and know if one is missing and not in its appointed place when the day is over… everyone has something right… I have pens & pencils… The trouble in the craft room started when I when to use a sharpie that had been stored on its side in a box of pens (kind like my ‘scraps’ it was a mess!) well, you can imagine that it didn’t make a dark mark like it should have… if it had been stored up-right on it’s head! I had seen a few pins on Pintrest about how to make all kinds of projects with toilet paper tubes… Now, I’m not one to spend months collecting TP tubes to make a flower art piece for the living room wall … but I found an idea for a pen/pencil holder. So we commenced to saving TP tubes and even paper towel tubes… I’ll explain in

  I have been quite busy the past few months and wanted to stop a minute to share the Cricut creation I put together for Mother’s Day 2014 The Cricut Craftroom had this cute tulip card for Mother’s Day, so I picked out some pretty pink plaid paper and some iridescent pink paper for the tulips and off to the craft table I went!                                                 I choose a vellum envelope to mail the cute card out … hoped the mail folks along the way enjoyed the beauty too! Happy Mother’s Day 2014

Some of you might have seen my FaceBook post about the painting classes I’ve taken over the past few months.  I’m NO artist and I don’t see my paints going for millions after I’m dead and gone (although that would be cool!) but I have learned that I enjoy it! I get to spend the evening with my friends laughing and cutting up… and trying not to let my OCD’s get the best of me! During each of these outings I have made an effort to let loose and have fun… the first time I went, I worried about every line and how chubby my birds had gotten, how hard it was for me to make a straight line free-hand… then, it was like a light bulb went off… the instructor stated something I say all the time, just in a different context… “it’s not wrong, it’s just different!”   IT’S NOT WRONG… IT’S JUST DIFFERENT… while I said that for years about directions to a address, about the way someone details a wall section, or the way instructions are written… I’ve said that about anything, someone else did or doe