recycling Christmas and greeting cards

i wanted to mention a place in Nevada, called St. Jude's ranch for Children . St. Jude's Ranch for Children has a 40 year history of healing and caring for abused, abandoned and neglected children. what they do is take used Christmas and greeting cards and turn them into new cards.

Currently they are accepting used, all-occasion greeting cards from November 15, 2008 thru February 28, 2009. You can mail your donations to:

St. Jude's Ranch for Children
Card Recycling Program
100 St. Jude's Street
Boulder City, NV 89005

take a look at their website to learn more about how the program works.

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a few of my new years goals have been to get new stuff added into my etsy shoppe ( i have so much stuff to add) - but i just hate the process of doing this on etsy (have i brought this up before?) it is so time consuming and takes a ridiculous amount of steps. (yes, i have definitely mentioned this before....) my other goal is to finish the tutorials and get my website going so that i no longer have to load all this stuff into etsy. with that said, i'm adding a few things in there tonight, such as this box: ( notice the tiny little shells that are sewed into the tulle.)

So how are the post holidays going for ya? me and tuck are still congested from our colds. what is it with colds these days where you don't really get "sick" but have a few symptoms for a day or so, but then you are left with weeks of congestion? today the wind is blowing something fierce so that is causing allergies and headaches. last night i finally watched "Dark Knight". dillon had an improv show, so he and jeff were gone, so i thought that'd be a good time to watch it without interruption. so me and tucker watched it. i thought it was okay, but i'm a chick. i think it was more of a guy movie. plus i didn't really get the ending where he chose to be hunted. guess i missed something..... anyway. i got this birdfeeder for Christmas. it is called a "cardinal feeder", but i've yet to see one cardinal fly in there! (but they do eat what is falling on the ground...) right now we've got yellow finches, house finches, chickadees, wrens, nuthatches, sparrows and the tufted titmouse flying in for snacks. i actually watched a chickadee sit still and hang out by herself in the feeder yesterday morning. chickadees are very active and i have never seen one just "sitting" before. it was cool.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to my family and friends

I just wanted to wish all my friends and family a very Merry Christmas. We had a lovely day; the weather was beautiful and sunny. i got to sleep in (yay!) since i was up all night with a scratchy, dry cough (boo!). we opened our gifts and then Dillon went to play a video game, i set about cleaning up, doing laundry, getting things ready for dinner (you know, "mom" stuff). we decided this year to have a very informal dinner, no company and no set time. i would cook and then we would eat when we wanted. it was very relaxing.

Oh, and the winner of my blog giveaway is Abbie Galie, who guessed 150 ornaments on the wreath. i actually used 151 ornaments! thanks for playing.

the last two pictures i took at a local nursery where i went to find a terra cotta tray for my bird bath (mine cracked). it was so cheerful and warm inside the nursery. the temp was about 75 degrees or more and the sun was coming in. it was just gorgeous and i felt so much better breathing all that healthy air from the plants. i 'll have to pop over there more in the winter as it gets colder and grayer. (maybe i'll bring my beach chair and a book and set up in an isolated corner of the greenhouse! )

my friend, Z, got her Christmas present today. I was going to make her put it under the tree, but she sounded so excited that i told her to go ahead and open it. this is what i made for her. i think she was quite happy!

blog giveaway

well, i 've been quiet for a few days and that usually means that either i'm not feeling well or Tucker isn't feeling well. well, Tucker, it turned out, has bronchitis. wednesday night he was up til 5am coughing, coughing and coughing. i stayed up with him, suctioning, singing to him, talking to him, keep him company, etc. and then i spent the next few days trying to recover! we took him to the doctor on friday and she started him on an antibotic. i swear a few hours after the first dose, he was already sounding better. Friday i ended up sleeping in until 11:00am, something that rarely ever happens. i'm just not one to sleep in. i have some many things i want to get done on a daily basis and usually sleeping isn't one of them! but i was exhausted, had a horrible headache and needed to rest. so rest i did. i'm still a bit tired, but getting there!

my project for the last few days was working on a wreath. i decided i wanted to make a wreath using vintage ornaments. i've been collecting these for awhile, so i had plenty on hand. i started it last night and got about 1/2 done before i ran out of glue stix. stopped at Michale's this morning to restock my stix and back to work (why is that they only had 1 cashier on a saturday morning, a few days before Christmas and with a line 12 people deep? ugh!)

i made my first wreath when i was in college and had gone home for Christmas break (that was also the time i made all these adorable "gingerbread people" ornaments out of felt. ) my mom was making them and she showed me how. we would go deep into their property (she was living in Greensboro, NC at the time) and we would look for grapevine. then we would wrap it in a circle and begin the decorating. we used a glue gun and whatever supplies she had on hand (i really don't remember what it looked like!) i just fondly remember the time. so now that my wreath is completed, i thought it'd be fun to guess how many ornaments it took to fill in this wreath? whoever comes comes the closest will win a prize (a prize i am still determining)