Resolutions and Virtual House Cleaning

Huh! I should probably be doing real house cleaning - but what fun is that?!

I am trying to streamline my computer time to allow myself more time to do all the creative things I want to do. For example:

Some time ago, I bought the supplies to do encaustic painting and tried it a couple of times on consecutive days and then put it away - I want more time to play with it.

A long time ago, I borrowed a light table from my dear friend, Nancy, and have yet to take it out of the box. At the same time she let me use some really cool buttons and metal things with wonderful designs on them to use to play with clay and foam stamp making ideas. They are still in the box, too.

I have a large basket filled with interesting, mostly flat, pieces of wood that I am intending to paint or otherwise alter. They just sit neglected in the basket.

I have supplies to make cards, a Wizard, a drafting table and books on calligraphy (and of course, pens), I have texture in jars to play with, I have a few "steampunk" gadgets to play with, I have a bazillion dominoes, both classic and bamboo to play with, the list goes on and on.

Maybe that is the way we all are, but I was absolutely overwhelmed, so last night (or was it early this morning) I did some virtual house cleaning. I began with my subscriptions to Yahoo! groups. I weaned myself to 5 smaller groups (I think I stayed in one large one) so that I would actually get more out of them. Later today I am planning to go through my blog subscriptions (I subscribe in Google Reader and have about 200 subscriptions). Some of them don't post any more. Some of them have changed, some of them are about things I am no longer interested in. Some of them are not what I thought they were when I subscribed. This is going to take some time and then I have to be more selective with the mouse on the "subscribe" button.

Meanwhile, I am still eating wisely and trying to get this cough under control. Here is yesterday's lunch:

Yes, I was eating it at the computer!

I saw a really cool tree with cross stitched pics in it and it reminded me of one of my favorite ones that I made about 25 years ago that we still parade out every Christmas and hang with the dated ornaments along the dining room wall. It is a little blurry, but I think you can see it okay.

That is Tigger hanging down at the top.

You know it is hard for me to be at the computer very long without opening Photoshop and playing. I got into making patterns again, but decided to try making them by aligning the edges instead of using the Offset Filter. It is more difficult than I thought.

Here is what I have so far:

 

 

 

Well, I stayed up too late last night and just got up about an hour ago.  The hubster is waiting for me to get ready to head into town with him to pick up the ham and shrimp and other supplies for Christmas dinner and to do any last minute gift purchases.

Gotta go; hope to see you again tomorrow!

xoxo