AEDM And Back Home

I have returned home after a day of art and meeting other artists and then a trip to my sister's house for several days of sister time.

The art date at Kelly's house in Olivet was a wonderful experience. Artist's are such interesting and friendly people. At first it seemed to be a small gathering and then more came. I think I can name them all. There was the hostess, Kelly, and her daughter, Bailey; there was Tina and Puff; there was Lynn and Susan; there was Shauna and Nancy; and me.

Tina brought The Wizard with her. It is a die cut and embossing machine. I tried it on one of my recycled cardboard 2.5 x 3.5s that I use for ATCs and it did a really wonderful job. I just had to have one. I checked at Michael's and JoAnn's and they didn't have one, so I went online and found one at Ritz Camera at 35% off. I ordered it and can't wait for it to arrive. I will have to talk a bit to Tina to find out where to find the best, least expensive accessories.

What a talented group of women. There was work on ATCs with metal, sewing handmade purses, sewing a group doll book, embossing and die cutting, book making, and clay bead making. There was a large table overflowing with ephemera. I was able to get a couple of Stampington magazines.

There was also food. Because I am severely lactose intolerant, I had to stay away from most of them, and I can't even name them. I brought a salmon pasta salad and also had some of Kelly's dump cake.

I didn't do any art while I was at my sister's house, but I was creative. We played numerous games of Scrabble (one must be creative to come up with words when getting really awful letters), cribbage and yahtzee. We shopped at some of my favorite stores to find unusual art items - Big Lots, Michael's, JoAnn's, Pier One and the Dollar Store. I found lots of wonderful things - containers with small drawers on sale at Pier One; some copper mesh scrubbers at Big Lots that I am going to take apart and use; some metal charms and stucco on sale at JoAnn's; colored craft sticks and baby wipes at the dollar store.

Something is wacky with my computer since I've been gone. My first indication that things weren't "normal" was when I opened iTunes to listen to music and it said it could not find the iTunes library???? Then every time I tried to open Firefox, my computer froze??? Then when I uploaded the pictures from Saturday's art day in Olivet I got a window telling me that I had 4 more days to reactivate the software before it quit working???? So sorry, no pictures today. I will work on it and see what I can do.

For now, don't forget to live in the moment!