Being Thankful

I've been a busy crafter the last 24 hours! Here are two thank-you cards I made last night with my Basic Grey Wassail paper pack. I'm sad to say that after five cards, I'm using up my paper.... Come to think of it, if I can mangage to make two or three more cards from that 6" pack, I will have 11 cards for well under $10! Cheaper than the dollar store and more special than Hallmark. ;-) (Of course, if you factor in the Cuttlebug, the stamps, the ink pad, the embellishments....hmmmm...)

Saying Thanks with Snowflakes

Sending thank-you notes is so much more fun now that I'm making my own cards. I love having the time to create a card specifically for someone. Sending a handmade card is a gift of time, creativity, and gratitude!
Supplies: DP- Basic Grey Wassail, stamp- CTMH For Every Occasion, snowflake- Spellbinders Snowflake Wonder, tag- Cuttlebug die

"Sew-long 2008!" Challenge

Gina K. over at A Day in the Life blog has issued a challenge to create a card that has stitching on it. Now I LOVE to sew and quilt, and the challenge brings together those interests with my newer passion for creating handmade cards, so I decided to play along. I dug out my Paper Quilts book, and settled on a simple block pattern.
The Wassail paper pad from Basic Grey was a natural choice, as the papers remind me so much of vintage fabrics. The stamp is from Close to My Heart's "For Every Occasion" set. The brad is a Wassail glazed brad, and the metal snowflake is from a Making Memories set I purchased several years ago. Now I'm thinking how cool it would be to use Amish colors with this pattern....

Birthday Greetings

My father-in-law's birthday is less than a week before Christmas. We always try to separate it from Christmas celebration, and so I made him a card that was definitely NOT a Christmas card. We also bought him a bar of gourmet Toffee Chocolate that I wrapped like a package. That and a signed copy of one of Elmer Kelton's books should make him feel remembered on his special day!
Supplies: CTMH DP and stamps, Nestibilities

Snowman Soup

Karen Ewert's blog Stamping Videos is one of my favorites; her videos are great and I always have success when I try one of the projects she features. My latest attempt is Snowman Soup. I had never heard of it before, but I fell in love with it immediately! The mug is really cute, too, but I'm saving it for another time. I found some cute bags whose white swirly decoration seemed to fit perfectly with a snowy theme. I decided to go all out with my soup project and ordered several boxes of Godiva hot cocoa as my soup base! Then, as I was checking out at Albertson's last week, I spied a display of yummy Bob's candy canes, larger than those in the multi-packs. I opted to split the poem into two parts and make sort of a tag card. Now I'm thinking that a batch of shortbread cookies would be the perfect complement to this special hot coocoa treat!

Organizing My Virtual World

My messy virtual world is stressing me out these days. I have pieces of myself on various wikis, blogs, and my personal website, as well as a newbie Second Life avatar who has been loitering on Orientation Island for too long... One solution I've come up with is to use this blog to connect these fragmented parts of my digital footprint. I think one of my resolutions for the upcoming year will be to spend more time creating content on the spaces I already have rather than creating new ones to try out different tools and sites.

7 1/2 Habits for Lifelong Learning

Now for the hardest habit: accept responsibility for my own learning. Yes, it's the same one. The hard part about it is sticking to the path and following all the way through. For instance, I wanted to podcast, and so I learned about podcasting, figured out how to podcast using a PC, and created a couple of episodes. I have taught podcasting workshops and help others get started. But how many episodes have I actually published to the web? Less than 5 in over a year... Finding time to learn new skills is not the problem. I MAKE time for that. But once I've figured it out, the new skill goes into this long queue of things I do in my spare time. I do realize that I only have a limited amount of spare time, but I don't prioritize that time like I should. I look back after a month's time to see that I haven't spent time on some things I really intended to. I have downloaded the learning contract and realize that the chart with the tasks and target dates might help me.

7 1/2 Habits for Lifelong Learning

Great presentation! It clearly lays out how to approach learning successfully. Probably the easiest one on the list for me is accepting responsibility for my own learning. I have been self-directed from an early age, and when I am curious about something, I search out ways to learn on my own. I like to buy books and teach myself new things like quilting, scrapping/card making, and web design. I taught myself how to use Dreamweaver five years ago from a shareware tutorial called "Getting Interactive with Dreamweaver." After I completed the tutorial, I created my website Texas Schoolmarm for my classroom. Of course, it didn't look like what I have up there now. I have continued to improve my skills and added to my site as a result of online technology classes through ESC Region 11, as well as time spent reading the Help documentation ;-)

Welcome

I have created this blog as part of the Library2Play 23 Things professional development. I already have a Edublog and a WordPress blog installed on my website server, but I decided to play along and try out Blogger for this experience. Even though I love having the control that my own Word Press blogs gives me, I am always looking for tools that teachers can easily use in their teaching.
Creating an avatar was a new experience for me, though. I've never valued them and so never took the time to figure them out. (An avatar is what is keeping me in the limbo land of Orientation Island in Second Life, by the way.)