Another Year Gone By.

The past two months are a blur. Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Eve have come and gone and we're already past the middle of January 2016. Why does it seem that time is moving more and more swiftly as I get older?

Some of the highlights of the past couple of months include gardening. Yes, gardening. In December. In New York City. Early winter 2015 boasted some of the warmest weather in recorded history with temperature hitting 70 degrees two days before Christmas. As a result, my garden was in quite a confused state. My front yard hoop house, which had been winterized with a plastic covering, was now as warm as a spring day and producing a bumper crop of cilantro and some red leaf lettuce. The lettuce was sufficient for a small side salad (yum) and I am still harvesting cilantro for cooking. I find this winter cilantro to be even more fragrant than the warm weather variety.


The holidays would not be complete without some Christmas-related crafting. Although I was busy with many things, I made time for some last minute card and tag making. The tags came from my RTU (Ready To Use) stash of leftovers and I embellished them a bit with gold edging and text cut from gold card stock. For the cards. I decided to go simple. Instead of designing something from scratch, I chose a free ornament cutting file from birdscards.com, mounted the finished ornament on cardstock squares that I had in my RTU stash, and used one of my favorite card styles: the matchbook. The cardstock I used for the card was double-sided so the inside was a coordinating print to the outside. A bit of ribbon, a small ornament and a bow round it out. I printed out my own greeting on my computer, slapped in inside the completed card and, voila!, a finished card. You can find the free cutting files on Birdscards.com's website HERE .

I also made time to create an winter themed over-the-door sign for the Dorchester Senior Citizens Center. A couple of years ago I made a spring themed door sign and I thought it was time for another season to be represented. Again, I used cutting files from www.birdscards.com for the corners and some of the snowflakes. The plan is to eventually create signs for every season so they can be changed every three months.

Valentine's Day is around the corner and I haven't done a thing to prepare, craftwise. I better get moving. Looks like the next few months will be a blur also.


Ballo ergo sum
- Gitana, the Creative Diva