Tribute To Good Friends

Monthly, seven of us who have worked together try and connect for dinner.  Sometimes only five can make it or three and often no one since we all live really busy lives, but last night was special.  Our friend Nita just got a new great job offer and all seven of us rallied to celebrate Nita's great success.

I have known Pat, Chris, Pam and Eleanor  for over twenty years, working with them at previous companies. Patty and Nita I have known  for about twelve years. The one thing we all have in common is that we lived the hell of many system conversions.  For those of who have never been involved in a company system conversion it requires long exhausting hours of meeting and testing and more testing and then retesting, always trying to race to the go live date.  You either get really close to each other through it all or hate each other.  We have been lucky enough to really like each other and stayed friends even after the conversion horror.

Pat is the drama queen of the group.  She always has an issue. She has fallen numerous times, thankfully never getting really hurt,  She ran over her glasses with her car.  Lost her skirt in a car wash (how does that happen?) and went on vacation got her sandal caught in her gas pedal and drove into a convenient store taking out the ATM machine but thankfully no humans.  YIKES!!!!  Now whenever any of us hear of a similar news story we check to make sure she was nowhere in the vicinity at the time.

Chris she is my Reality TV friend.  We both love similar shows and can laugh and laugh over really not much of anything.  She is silly and goofy and fun but through it all,  I always know she is there for me and I hope she knows that I am also there for her.

Pam I met forever ago.  She was so young just starting out, trying to juggle work and motherhood.  She is still trying to juggle both worlds.  She is a great co worker, smart and reliable and a great dedicated mom.  She makes it work.  I am so proud of how far she has come and all her accomplishment.  Pam and I have had tons of fun traveling together on business a number of times.  I once offered to carry her pocketbook for her and then I left it somewhere.  We eventually found it and thankfully she has not held my stupidity against me.  Now that's a friend.

Eleanor is the sweetest, dearest. person that I have ever met.  She is good and kind and always has a positive attitude. In all the years that I have known her I have rarely seen her angry or upset.  I often kid her that her always, looking for a silver lining attitude gets on my nerves, but the fact is, that just being around her makes me a better person.

Patty is a great friend to all.  She is so caring to everyone she knows.  Always going out of her way to help others.  She is a wonderful daughter, sister, and aunt to her two nephews never missing any of their games.  She is there to cheer them on, always.  Patty does the same for all of us she cheers us on and inspires us.

Nita the lady of the hour.  Nita is a hard worker who even when she is knee deep in her own hell she will come to your aid without being asked.  She is smart and kind and knowledgeable and a great mother, daughter, sister and friend.  I wish her much success on her next stage in life.

From left to right standing,  Eleanor, Nita, Pam, seated. me, Chris, Pat, Patty

Each one of these ladies are very special to me and I am so lucky to be able to call them my friends

Mary Ann

On A Purse Frenzy

Wow the weather here in upstate NY is rough today  Looks like cloudy, hot, humid and chance all week of rain.  Honestly for me sometimes the rain gives me a break to stay inside and create new things for our upcoming Round Lake Craft Fair.

I had so much fun designing and producing my purse key chains  I decided to do some gift tags inspired by my new favorite thing purses.  I cut out some oval tags using my cricut machine and enhanced them with purses that I also cut from cricut.  I enhanced them with some other colors, a little embellishment and bingo my tags have arrived.

Set of four purse tags

My biggest challenge when I make things is picking the colors

They look cute on this gift bag.

Mary Ann

Nice Start To The Week

Well its Monday again.  Wow!  it comes quickly and I am very excited and lucky to be guest posting on A to Z Challenge blog today.

Click here to go over and visit and see what I had to say about fitting into the blogging world.

Another great start to this week is how far I have gotten with the key chains.  I am designing them for the  Round Lake Arts and Craft Festival that I will be participating in August.  Since I am a huge lover of purses, I was inspired by all the fabulous purses there are to choose from, hence my purse inspired key chains.   I use Swarovski crystals  beads, chains, and ribbons to enhance my mini purses.

Some blue tones

Reds and greens with an added pair of sunglasses to some.

Pinks and purples and black with yellow trim

I like to make each one unique since I hate to do the same thing over and over.  Purses are not the only design that I have done.  I will leave some others to show for another day.

Mary Ann

A Hole Lot Of Something, Hopefully Nothing

Sometimes a hole in things could be a good thing.  Like a doughnut hole. or a hole in one in golf, or getting the hole in the side pocket in billiards.  Hmmmm but a hole in the side of your house can never ever be a good thing.

My story starts one day not long ago when I found a small piece of my siding laying on my front lawn.  It had been really windy so I assumed it has blown off of my house.  I walked around circling a few times but could not see where it belonged anywhere.  So I put it to the side hoping that its rightful place would be found soon.  So last week I had a contractor come to give me some estimates on a few things I needed done.  I remembered the piece of siding and asked him if he could locate where it went.  With his eagle contractor eyes he located the place where it belonged way up in a corner of one of my dormers along with a perfectly round hole.  I immediately called an exterminator to try and determine the origin of the hole. Hoping that it was just a fluke.

Well after few seconds of dangling on the steep side of my house he determined that it was a hole could have been  made by a squirrel.  Whoo hoo actually it was more like Boo Hoo.  I hate woodland creatures,  I am a city girl.  I especially do not like woodland creatures that may or may not be living in my home, above my head.  I have to say I have never seen nor heard anything that would make me think that I had any issues except the hole.  Which I am told is a good thing.  Not the hole, but that I have heard nothing.

So he is coming back today to put on a swinging door on my house hole that will let the little critters out but not let them back in.  Hopefully there are no disabled, old or senile woodland creatures in the bunch who cannot find their way out of the house hole.  

Your cute but stay out of my house hole


Mary Ann

Gearing Up

Got some good news on Friday that our items were approved through a jury process for the 2013 Round Lake Arts and Crafts Festival in Round Lake, NY.  Its a two day event Sat. August 17 and 18.  Its track season in Saratoga, NY, which is only a few miles up the road, so I am hoping for good weather and a good turnout.  Since my daughter and I are relatively new to the whole craft fair thing we are planning our space to try and draw buyers in.  Our first craft fair experience was not so good since we honestly had no idea what were were doing.  Our booth set up instead of drawing people in kept them away, I think.  We just had too much stuff crammed into one space.

This is how not to set up your booth, way too busy and we sat in the front because there was no other room for us inside.  We probably scared people away.

 So this time we are brainstorming ideas and colors.

Since one of the things that I do is design and make jewelry I have been rolling around ideas how to showcase them.  Our spot at the Round Lake Craft Festival is much larger then this one so we will have some room to spread out but that also means we need to make sure its eye catching from a distance.

This is what I came up with early this morning.  Its only in the planning stage so we will see how it progresses.

I stated by drawing a sketch of what I wanted to do.

I thought if I could cut heads out of heavy cardboard, paint each in a coordinating color and them attach them to each other.  Each head would display one of my necklaces and then on the table below would have more of my jewelry.

I even created a cardboard head that I could use as the template.  It needs a bit of refining but the size is exactly what I was looking for.

Because of my obsessive personality I will need to take a trip to Michaels in a bit to get my supplies.  If it turns out the way I am thinking it should, I will share.

Mary Ann

Saying Goodbye To Miss Kitty

Well I have blogged before about my odd cat Kitty.  She had a really sad start to her life but in the last year or so she seemed to be coming around.  Well yesterday when I woke up Kitty was nowhere to be found.  This was totally unusual because Kitty really only lived in a few rooms.  After a thorough search of her usual spots I ventured downstairs and found that my poor girl had died during the night and there she laid in the basement, a place that she normally would never ever go to.

I was devastated and sad in addition to being really scared that I would have to get her to the vet to be cremated.  I am really not good with anything dead not even a mouse or bird that I may find outside but I knew I had to do it. So after the initial shock, I carefully got Kitty into a box lined with her blanket and took her to the vet and where I said my final goodbye.

I am still feeling her loss this morning.  She would always get excited when I opened the blinds in the morning and immediately demand a pet to start her day.  I miss her doing her crazy laps around the kitchen when it was time to eat.  I will even miss her hogging my blankets in bed on a cold winters night.

I will never know what caused her death but I am hopeful that the years that she spent with me were happy ones.  I know they were for me.

I will miss you Kitty

Mary Ann

Back In The Swing Of Things (I Hope)

So I have been away from blogging for two weeks.  I think the back to back month long challenges really did me in, along with trying to do some updates and decorating to my house.  I have mentioned before that my husband has Parkinson Disease and at some point we will have to move to a one floor house.  Right now our bedroom is upstairs.  I have to say I will not miss the stairs either since my laundry is in the basement and there is lots of stair climbing for me on wash day.  So I am trying to take it room by room.

I started with our forth bedroom which before had really bad old stripped wallpaper.  I decided it would make a perfect office space. I did not take any before pictures so you will just have to take my word for it that it was really, really ugly.  Pulling off that awful paper was my first step and it was a bear.

When I was done I decided to go with a textured paint which had not done before but had seen it in a few open houses that I had been to recently.  I used Valspar paint in a gray color call Beachstone.  Applying it was worse then ripping off the wallpaper.  You could not roll over it at all because it would take off the texture that you just rolled on.  Its a small room and it took two gallons of paint.  I hated every minute of it but when it was done I do like the way it came out.

Its a bit hard to capture the texture on camera but you can see it a bit in the middle. The gray is a  bluer then I had wanted but that is kind of what happens when you pick a paint color. Its not always what it seems on the paint chip.

I also decided to paint an old desk of my sons yellow using Valspar Tea Room Yellow.  The stool is a grey plaid and I was excited to find it on clearance in Target.  Love a bargain.

Still need to get some curtains, a chairs and accessorize but the worst is over and I will soon be on to the next room.

Yikes I am really too old for this.

Mary Ann

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