Productive Procrastination

My mom is coming this week for my birthday and Mother's Day. My apartment looks like a warren of weasel are squatting in it. I have no clean white socks. My fridge and freezer are basically empty. You all know what that means : time to take a deep breath, hunker down and do ANYTHING but what i need to get done! I decided that with Mom coming i should unpack some of the moving boxes that are still in the sunroom. To do that i needed to clean off the bookshelf. In doing that i found my Trivial Pursuit jigsaw puzzle, which i have always wanted to turn into a wall piece. I actually have two of the puzzles - one that is missing pieces and a complete one that Martin and Rob bought me while they were on the road one day. I put that one together and then started rummaging through the other box to pull a few pieces to glue on top of the completed one to give it cool dimension. Did you know that identical puzzles do not have identical pieces? Neither did I. I guess i always figured that they use a giant die to cut the puzzle, so all the puzzles of a certain picture would have matching pieces. Nope. So i had an interesting time pulling some pieces to highlight, but i was determined (and who wants to clean off the dining room table anyways?) and have the first 9 steps of this project done (put it together, glue the front, glue the back, paper the back, pull out highlight pieces, figure out where the extra pieces go, seal those pieces, attach the pieces at various heights, seal with gloss) I am going to use extra game pieces to make it look like i am in the middle of a game and mount the puzzle to the wall. I will finish it when i figure out HOW to attach it to the wall.

There was a lot of drying time in this project, so to keep busy i worked on a canvas that was on sale at Big Lots. I decided a few months ago that i wanted to do the front wall in my living room with a quote and scrapping canvases, like the one i did as an example for the class i taught last year at Scrap Camp on non-traditional scrapping: Each canvas is going to be a word or emotion, like the one of me and Chang in the snow is "Joy" and i decided to do "explore" using 2 pictures of me on vacation. I love these pics together cause they are different (they are a decade apart (97 and 07); one is desert, the other city; one features nature, the other art; one i was with Rickki, the other i was alone), but similar (both are of me exploring and in both i am randomly wearing pink). The pictures of the completed piece were all blurry cause of some lighting issues, but you'll get the drift: Since i was doing something for the wall i decided i may as well look again to find letters to put up my quote; it has been a real challenge to find the right size, color, font, etc. I saw exactly what i wanted and it was on sale 25% off! The quote is Psalms 118:24 "This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it" which is a bit long for a wall quote, but it is the one i had my heart set on, so i bought 2 sets of letters and got to work. Turns out there weren't enough Ws so i had to go get another set, but i am happy with how it turned out:

(i don't know what was up with the weird lighting - i tried it with and without flash, with and without overhead light, and with and without sunlight, but every picture this afternoon came out weird)

Eventually there will be multiple canvases in different colors, but what i have so far already makes me happy.

I thought perhaps i should at least do some laundry, but figured while i was waiting i would finish off a project that i started a year ago. It is a piece for my bookshelf at work, based on my desk blotter. I have gotten so much accomplished, yet none of it was on my list of things to do this weekend! I guess I'll go home and get to that cleaning. Of course i do still have several cards to make...

Speaking of which: Happy Birthday, Rachel! I hope you are having fun in NJ and will enjoy your day off with Rob tomorrow!