Thing 6

Almost a week into Thing-a-Day and I'm not out of steam yet! I'm glad to have made it this far without choking and giving up. I have a few more "things" actually planned for the rest of the month, but I don't have enough of them to cover every day, so I'll end up winging it. Who knows where that'll take me!

Today's thing is a collage. I have been flipping through my magazines to cut out good recipes and toss the piles of ads that remain, and as I was doing that I started cutting out anything that produced a happy thought. This was the result:


Oddly, I found this to be a deeper introspective exercise than I thought I would get from sticking a collection of magazine cutouts to a cardboard rectangle. For almost two years now, I've been dedicated (to varying degrees, depending on the day) with a fantastic weight loss and healthy lifestyle website, Sparkpeople.com, which I cannot recommend highly enough. One of the many goal-setting tasks they ask you to do is set up a "vision collage". Put up motivators for yourself, like photos of the beaches you want to lie on in your bikini, etc. Well, I never did that, because the visualization stuff always seemed very fake to me, and I had a hard time taking it seriously. But in the interest of creativity and open-mindedness, this collage is a picture of who I am and want to be. I think it says a lot about me, and it's also giving me a lot to think about.

Thing 5

Back to the decoupage for Day 5. I saw some blank white Easter eggs for sale when I was picking up crafty items for Thing-a-Day, and I picked up two of them, thinking maybe I could do something neat with them. And I did!

Here's one side:



Here's the other:

I am so happy with it! I cut out the flowers from some wrapping paper - the cutting is the longest part. I need to pick up some varnish or something to coat the whole thing so the flowers don't ever peel off. I think I'll head back and get more blank egg-canvases to play with!

Thing 4

As with the last "Thing", I used my sister-in-law's birthday as a starting point for a project. It's also why I delayed posting these, since I didn't want any surprises to be spoiled. Anyway, during a recent chat, she mentioned that a birthday cake was always a good thing, and that if one were to happen for her birthday, Funfetti and vanilla frosting would be the best ever. She wasn't asking me for a cake... I was just looking for an excuse to make one!

So, Thing 4 is a birthday cake.


Because it's my husband's birthday tomorrow, it was a shared cake (luckily he was OK with the Funfetti choice), and to prevent any awkwardness about two people trying to blow out candles on the same cake, I also made two cupcakes so each could have a candle to blow out and make a wish on. I just poured batter into two spots in the muffin pan, and baked those before I baked the cake.

It was a yummy Thing.

Thing 3

My sister-in-law's birthday was last week, and we all got together tonight to celebrate with dinner out and cake at our place. For her birthday present, we got her gift cards to her two favorite stores (Target and Michael's), because with the massive house renovations they're working on, and the baby on the way, more "stuff" isn't what she needs.

Since I had Thing-a-Day to inspire me to creative endeavors, I made a gift box for the cards, instead of buying one or sticking them inside a birthday card. I think it turned out pretty cute! This was my first attempt at decoupage and it wasn't too difficult, and I think I'll be trying more projects like this during the rest of the month.


I used a foam wedge paintbrush to spread the glue, then I wet the butterfly in a bowl of water and placed it where I wanted it, smoothing it out gently with the foam brush and using more glue to paste it down completely. Then once it dried, I glued on a bit of ribbon around the edge of the box top, using plain old school glue.

Wii have made progress!

We bought ourselves a Wii Fit Plus around the holidays and we've been enjoying it quite a bit. It's got some yoga moves, some cardio (go, hula hoop!) and some balance games (at which I consistently fail miserably). We've both been having fun and playing a little when we find some free time, but we're mostly using it as a convenient weight tracker. Since we started this, I have been putting up with the stupid on-screen animated balance board and its irritating electronic voice saying sadly "that's overweight" with every damn weigh-in. Judgemental bitch.

Today, for the first time, the voice said... "that's normal"! It's probably a fluke, but I am trending downwards, which is wonderful. I'm trying really hard to make better choices, and ending up really hungry a lot of the time, but at least it's working. For now I'm just doing the occasional yoga move or fake Wii bike ride, and watching TV while sitting on my giant exercise ball instead of the couch. Once the spring gets here I'll be outdoors more often and start exercising for real. Maybe. I hope. I have a goal to reach, dammit.

Thing 2

I feel almost like I'm cheating because this is just a photo, but photos can be art, and since I am completely in love with the picture I took of Horton sleeping on my chair today, I submitted it as today's "thing".

OMG kitty paws!!

Jen's Library: You Don't Look Like Anyone I Know

You Don't Look Like Anyone I Know
by Heather Sellers

I picked up this book because I read in a review that it was about prosopagnosia, which is one of my favorite quirky cognitive disorders. It's a condition also called "face blindness", where affected individuals can see perfectly well, but because the face recognition area of their brains is impaired, they can't distinguish one face from another. The hardware's working fine but there's a bug in the software. They find other ways to tell people apart, like hairstyle, clothing, voice, and gait. It's got to be a frustrating disorder to live with, when everything about our social interactions depends on us being able to recognize friends.

This is a memoir of the author's experience with this disorder, but it's got much deeper layers, as she grew up with a paranoid schizophrenic mother and alcoholic father in one of the most dysfunctional families I've ever read about. Because she's afraid that her inability to recognize people must be a mental illness, she is afraid to find out what's really going on, reluctant to discuss it, until much later in her life when she comes across prosopagnosia and realizes she might not be crazy after all. Except that then the poor woman goes to doctor after doctor, gets referred to neurologists, and all of them tell her she can't have that, it's too rare; she's too stressed out and needs to relax. It takes forever for her to be diagnosed, and then even after she is, she has a hard time telling her friends family and coworkers, because they don't understand and think she's kidding.

This was a great insider's view of mental illness and cognitive disorders, and a lesson on how fine the line can be between being "crazy" and having a "condition" - it really depends on who's doing the labeling.

Thing 1

I took some time this morning while drinking my coffee and watching the weather channel (depressing today) to make my first "thing" for Thing-A-Day.

A Valentine for my Grandmaman. I'm safe posting it here because she doesn't use the computer at all, so the surprise won't be ruined, as long as my Mom and my aunts don't say anything!

I used a pre-made card from Michael's, and some scrapbook stuff and stickers I picked up here and there. I think I need to get a hot glue gun for future projects, because I'm not convinced my glue stick is going to keep things stuck. Inside the card I stamped "love you" in purple ink - it's how we sign off all our phone conversations. Never I love you, just "love you". Not sure she'll get it, but I think it's cute.

So, nothing earth-shatteringly fabulous emerging from my creative side, but it's pretty and I made it happen, which is the whole point of this exercise.

In preparation for Thing-A-Day 2011

One of the items on my grand 30 in 30 list was to participate in Thing-A-Day this year.

Thing-A-Day is a big online project encouraging people to take a few minutes out of their busy lives each day in February, and create something. Break out of the winter blahs by giving your creative side a chance to play, for half an hour a day. It's not supposed to be symphonies and grand canvases - although my hat's off to you if you can pull that off in 30 minutes - but more like poetry and sketches and craft projects.

I heard about this project through one of the message boards I very frequently frequent, and I spent a lot of time last year looking through all the amazing things my online friends were creating and feeling jealous that I didn't have that creative spark. I often want to be creative, but my inner critic tells me to shut up and sit down before I ever get a chance to start. This year I've duct taped my critic and I'm going to jump in and create stuff. I am under no illusions that I will win any accolades for my work, but maybe by letting go and messing around with pencils and glue and paper for a few minutes every day this month, I can start a habit of being more creative. You don't get good at something by watching others do it and then sighing and wishing you had their skills, after all.

I signed up on their site and I hope to be able to upload one project a day to add to their collection. I will probably post my creations here as well, except for those that are destined to be gifts for people, because I don't like to ruin surprises! I'm nervous about sharing, because I have a horrendous fear of judgement and failure and general mocking, but I need to get over that sometime.

Have a look at the creations from last year on the Thing-A-Day 2010 site and think about whether you want to come along for this year's ride.

What's for Dinner: Hamburger Stroganoff

Hamburger stroganoff is a comfort-food classic for me, something that's un-fancy, very yummy, and easy to make. Some nights - ok, maybe most nights - I don't want to make a fancy filet au poivre with gorgonzola mashed potatoes and green beans almondine. Actually, now I do want to make that, so I'll have to add that to my to-do list.

Back to the program!

Hamburger Stroganoff

1 lb lean ground beef
1 small onion, diced
1 package mushrooms, sliced
8oz of medium-wide egg noodles, cooked and drained
1 cup beef gravy made from a powdered mix (I have a "Roast Beef" gravy mix from Canada (Berthelet brand) and I've never tried with any of the kinds available here, but that stuff is AWESOME and you all need to import some.)
1/2 tsp freshly grated nutmeg (or more, to taste)
1/2 cup sour cream

Using a deep skillet or frying pan, fry the mushrooms in butter until they're brown and soft, and set them aside. Saute the onions until they're soft, then add them to the mushrooms. Brown the ground beef, draining off any fat if necessary. Add cooked and drained egg noodles to the pan, and then add the prepared beef gravy and bring to a boil and let it simmer for 5 minutes to thicken slightly. Grate nutmeg into the mixture and stir. This really is best with fresh nutmeg - the taste is very different compared to the ground stuff in the jar. When you're ready to serve dinner, stir in the sour cream.


I personally love adding canned peas to this. Don't ask.