Give It Away Before It's Given Away

Kind of a weird title for a post but it's good advice. It really hit home this weekend as I spent time at an auction of my godmother's things. My aunt Angeline was a saver. I heard that she had saved every greeting card she had ever gotten. (She lived to be 90+) So you can imagine how much stuff was at this auction. There were 9 trailers filled, furniture on the lawn and more behind her barn. So much to sell that there were two auctioneers going at once.

 

                                                             9 trailers like this one!

This was a hard auction to attend because it brought back so many memories. As a child I spent many hours playing with her children and slept over often. One trailer had all of her shoes (lots of pairs all in their original shoe boxes--who saves the boxes?), purses and hats. You know the kind women wore back in the 30's,40's 50's? I bet there were 50 hats. I would have loved to have taken some home with me but they were bought up by people willing to spend more than I was. Sad to see her clothes strung on a line.

 

 

 

I'm looking around at all the stuff I have accumulated thinking who wants to go through my stuff when I'm gone? Do I want it all thrown into boxes and sold to strangers? I don't think my children would do that but who knows? (One of my daughters is the total opposite of a saver--she's a thrower!) I think it's so sad that my aunt didn't give away more of her stuff when she was living. I think she would have gotten some joy out of seeing her friends and family using her things.

 

So that brings me to think about taking my own advice. I really need to clean out some closets and give away what I'm not using. Goodwill and the Salvation Army would be happy to take whatever I want to donate. But I'm thinking there are things I have that family and friends would use if I give it to them. Why not do it now?  Lord knows I'm not getting any younger and I shouldn't wait until these things are so old they're considered antiques!

 

What about you? Are you a saver or a thrower?

 

(On a happy note I did manage to score some of my aunt's things as a remembrance of her.)

 

 

 

Wordless Wednesday

Vampire and Witch Photo Effects

I was going to call this post "How to Turn Your Husband into a Vampire" but I thought you might get the wrong impression. Actually, the biggest reason I didn't call it that is because Jerry got a peek at how I had turned him into a vampire.  After that he made me promise not to use that picture on the internet. (He's no fun...)

What I really wanted to tell you about (and show you) is that you can use the new Halloween features on Picmonkey to turn your loved ones into vampires,witches and zombies. (that was the longest sentence in history!)

 

So I took found this picture of me dressed in black. Then I did a little editing in Picasa and saved it to my desktop. I went to the Picmonkey site and uploaded the picture. I chose to use their Witches feature. You can add creepy things like hats,weird eyes, colored skin, spider webs to name a few. Things like bats and spooky backgrounds can be added too.

 So here is my finished picture. My hat doesn't quite fit but I like the green skin! (I make a very smiley witch.) Too bad I can't show you Jerry's picture as a vampire. It is WAY better--really freaky!!! You'll just have to take my word for it. Head on over to Picmonkey and have some fun changing your own loved ones into creepy creatures...or not!


(Picmonkey does have other Halloween features you can choose from that aren't creepy. They have a cute Trick or Treat feature I was thinking of using on a picture of my grandchildren.)

Wordless Wednesday

A Simpler Time...

Before Pinterest and Blogs I used to have free time. Some evenings I'd relax by reading a good book or watch a little tv. Now I spend most evenings reading blogs, writing blog posts and/or looking at Pinterest. Weekends are spent trying out crafts or recipes that I've found. Sometimes I long for those good ol' days...

So I saw this really cute Candy Corn Cookies recipe online.  Then a friend at work showed me a cute Halloween craft in All You Magazine. Well I just had to try both. Conveniently I could use the cookies as part of the Halloween craft. I made the dough and cut out the cookies. Putzy,putzy, putzy.

The cookies are very cute and very small. So it took me quite awhile to get these all cut out.

 

Now after they had baked and cooled they each needed to be dipped in yellow candy melts. Putzy,putzy,putzy and VERY time-consuming. Luckily hubby was up checking on his deer stand so he didn't see how much time I was spending in the kitchen.  You can see from the picture after the first 100 (it seemed like that many at least) I just wanted to get done so I wasn't as careful as I could have been!

 

So now on to the All You Craft. It involved spray painting a mini pumpkin black. That wasn't too hard. Then I needed to glue on eyes, add ears, a nose and whiskers and a little bow on the stem.

Did you know that if you don't put the hot glue on just right it takes off the black paint? Guess how I found that out.

 

After the cat was finished I put the cute Candy Corn Cookies in a little jar. The cat's head is supposed to sit on the top of the jar. All You Magazine calls them "Kitty Canisters". It's not my favorite Halloween decoration.

 

 

 

So now that I have used up my weekend making crafts I saw online, I'm starting to rethink how I'm spending my time. I really miss having some down time in the evenings. And you  know, some of these things look a whole lot cuter when someone else makes them!

48 Acts of Kindness in 48 Hours

On one of the blogs I follow (Simply Celebrate) I read about a fantastic idea. The author of the blog, Sherry, celebrated her birthday yesterday. To help mark this special occasion of turning 48 she decided to do 48 kind things for others in 48 hours. Here's what she had to say...

"It's my 48th birthday and I just returned from a retreat at a Buddhist monastery in the Sierra foothills of California. During the retreat, my teacher, Cheri Huber, used the expression "unrelenting kindness." I've been turning the expression over in my mind. And holding it in my bones. So it isn't surprising that when I got home and began to think about what I wanted for my birthday, the expression, "unrelenting kindness" dropped in. Last night, I found myself making a numbered list from one to 48. I decided that I would find 48 people to offer kindness to..."

She then invited her readers to send her the name of anyone we knew who could use some uplifting. I had someone in mind right away. I gave her the email address of that person. Sherry responded with a couple of suggestions/questions and said my friend was #42 on her list!

I think what goes around, comes around. I believe that Sherry is going to get an abundance of kindness in her life too. I am also inspired to follow her example. Although in my case, the number of people on my list would be higher! No worries. I can handle that. What do you think of this idea?

Wordless Wednesday