Decidedly December – 2020

For our prompts today we have Favorite Hobby and Family. I have a lot of hobbies that I enjoy. Reading is one. The new Pop Sugar Reading Challenge just came out and I am excited to do that. I failed this year, reading only 17 books out of the 40 that I had set for my goal. You’d think I’d have been able to read more with the pandemic but no. I did cross off some of my poster pieces though. Pride and Prejudice, The Scarlet Letter, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Lord of the Flies and Great Expectations. I have the intention of reading Anna Karenina, Gone With the Wind and The Great Gatsby next year.

I’d have to say coloring is another hobby. I did do a lot of that because I can watch TV with the hubs while I’m doing it. Can’t really read and watch a movie. Here are some of my latest for the Escapist Coloring Club.

I think blogging might be a hobby. I might have wanted to be a writer and this is a way to do that on my own terms. I also like the interaction with the friendly people I meet (yes, that’s you if you’re reading this).

Participating in challenges might be a hobby too, to be honest. I’ve been doing the One Second Everyday video thing this year and am looking forward to the end result when I can see the whole year flash before my eyes. I have to start thinking about what to do for the A to Z this year too! Do you have your theme yet?

And for the other prompt, Family, well, I have to say that I am grateful that my family puts up with all my hobbies!

How about you? Favorite hobbies? Special family? Share!

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Decidedly December – 2020 – Fun Challenges

Admittedly I blog more when I have a challenge or two to follow. Fortunately in December I have them!

First up is December Reflections with Susannah Conway. I’ve done hers several times in the past and they are always fun. Some of the prompts are a little different and I’m looking forward to them.

Here is my take on Star. It is painted on a wall in San Francisco that we pass by every day.

And by way of Barbara at Teleportingweena I found this fun countdown to Christmas sponsored by a new to me blogger, Tourmaline. I think I’ll try playing this one too.

These are some decorations from my very first Christmas tree when I moved out on my own. My older sister and I had a craft day and she helped me make them. They are over 40 years old and they still get put up every year. The poor reindeer and Santa are missing eyes. Maybe I’ll give them a touch up.

Not sure I’ll be able to post every day for each of these challenges but I’m going to give it my best shot. Play along!

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Nifty November – 2020

Well, this month is almost gone. Hope everyone had a safe and happy Thanksgiving yesterday. Ours looked like this:

I have been busy working fortunately but found some time to make some new gift card holders for the holidays. Aren’t they cute?

Mittens

Snowmen

Christmas Trees

The top swivels on a brad and opens so you can put the gift card in the slot.

They each have a matching envelope and are up on the Etsy shop now.   I need to figure out how to do a virtual holiday boutique!  Maybe I’ll figure out how to use this WP again too.  The pictures are giving me fits, but you get the idea.  

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Nifty November – 2020

Next up in Nifty November is a cool new tool on Etsy. I can now add 15 second or less videos to the description of the items I have for sale. I made these cards a couple months ago and added a video to the listing.

Pop up cards

The video shows up in the second picture on each listing.

See it here: https://www.etsy.com/listing/896955879/pop-up-birthday-cards

This one has a pocket that opens so you can slip a gift card or money in it.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/899170979/birthdaycongratulations-card

And some Christmas cards. This one has a “tree” inside it.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/899174235/christmas-card

https://www.etsy.com/listing/883014840/christmas-card

Since I probably won’t be able to do any holiday boutiques this year, I’m hoping that by adding some videos to the Etsy listings they will attract some extra attention. The good thing is they are short and there is no sound so I don’t have to worry about saying anything!

Of course, feel free to share this if you think someone might be interested. I’ll be putting up some more videos on Etsy soon. Have a wonderful rest of your day.

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Nifty November – 2020 #SoCS

Lovely Linda gives us “jour” for our Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt. I was going to talk about my planner for next year so that works perfectly since my planner is actually part JOURnal as well.

I don’t know about you but planners are very personal for me. It took me a long time to find one I really liked and thanks to a post a few years ago by LA at Waking up on the wrong side of 50, I was introduced to Plum Paper. This company lets you design your own planner!

To start, Plum Paper offers many choices for covers. This is mine for 2020.

My daughter gave me the owl sticker and it matched perfectly

I like to put a picture or a quote on the monthly divider.

Each month starts with a goals page

There is a blank page next to the goals section and I added a “Currently” sheet with some washi tape and underneath I recap what happened in the month.

The monthly spread has lots of room to write, even though this year there hasn’t been much going on.

You can pick your own title headings for the daily pages. This year I used Top Three, And Then, Quick Quotes, Today, Doodle-E-Do and Snapshot.

At the end of the month there are either one or two pages depending on how long the month is. On one I put a picture of the full moon for the month and a selfie

On the other I use a reflections page.

This is my cover for 2021. I am in love with it. It was a special one for October and a portion of the proceeds for using it went to breast cancer.

For the daily sections next year I changed a couple. Instead of Quick Quote I used Around the House because I am going to eliminate the household planner I usually use, for the doodle section I chose Inspiration Station and for the snapshot at the bottom I went with Oh My Word to help me incorporate my word for the year.

If you don’t need a daily planner, they do make a weekly one and also an academic planner style. You can choose which month you want to start with. I’m a January to December girl. I am hopeful now that we have a new President, the virus will be better controlled and there will be lots of things to do to fill up my planner du jour next year!

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Nifty November – 2020

I should have started my Nifty November series with this one yesterday so that it would actually be Thursday but I forgot about this door and I don’t like to bombard people with multiple posts in a day so even though it is Friday, here is my first entry into the Thursday Doors hosted by Norm. That was a mouthful, still with me?

I haven’t done a Thursday Door before because I didn’t think there were any interesting doors in our neighborhood and lately that’s the only place I’ve seen when I walk Benny. Then I started noticing something unusual:

Over the next couple of days this happened:

And finally, this:

Mind you, I never actually saw anyone painting it. I walk the dog twice a day and although we don’t go down this particular street every day, it is one of the ones that is in our usual trek because it is right down the block.

Who says garage doors have to be dull? Thanks, Norm, for letting me play along.

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Nifty November 2020

So stressful right now with the election results taking FOREVER. Honestly, I’m a bit disappointed in our country. In my opinion it should not have been this close. I guess I am naive to think that we all should embrace empathy, dignity, compassion and honesty as our core values.

To help me concentrate on something else, I thought I’d start November off with some nifty little things going on around here. I’ll begin with my entries into the Escapist Coloring Club for this month. While we weren’t able to see our Giants play in the World Series, it did hold our interest so that we could root against the dreaded Dodgers. Sadly, even our bad mojo could not keep them from winning, although again, IMHO, the whole baseball season this year needs to have an asterisk behind it. At any rate, it afforded me the opportunity to do a lot of coloring.

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All of these are from the “Magical Jungle” coloring book I got for Christmas last year. In fact, I’m almost done with the whole thing!

Also nifty, I think, is the fact that I could use one of the pages I colored as the background for my bank credit card. What do you think?

Hopefully your November will be Nifty too!

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