Reducing Your Carbon Footprint

Hey Ya'all,

I've had a wonderful morning and wanted to jot down a few thoughts before heading out to the bibliotecha and lunch. Don't worry, I'll bring my camera with me...and use it.


Jerry and I love to have lazy mornings drinking coffee on the lanai...we drink this wonderful Colombian coffee named OMA. It's smooth and creamy and delicious! As we sit there - me journaling or reading my "How to speak Spanish" books and Jerry reading the paper (I say that loosely because it's in Spanish) - we like to watch the birds and plants and sky. 

This morning I brought my mini quilts downstairs to work on while I was having my second cuppa. Here they are upstairs a couple nights ago.

As I was beading one of my mini quilts this morning, I got sidetracked because I have this container of beads that aren't sorted. OMG - NOT sorted!!! 

Norma will understand.

I haven't beaded a lot in the last couple years so it hasn't bugged me (too much) (the unsorted part) but I decided to trot upstairs and bring down my box of empty containers just waiting for something to be put in them. And then, guess what? 

I sorted beads. 

See those little tubes of beads? I  put them in there. And that tin top with the beads in it is just a fraction of what I still need to sort.

It's not as if I don't have a gazillion things to do to get ready for our trip to the States...finishing the minis being one of them, I just couldn't help myself. I have this compulsion to sort and organize (and I'm afraid Sophia has caught it). 


There is a method to my madness though. I was looking specifically for tiny blue seed beads for that mini quilt laying under the tin top and I just couldn't help myself. I figured if I sorted out some of those in the jumbled up box (not pictured), it'd be easier next time I went looking for just the right thing. As I said, it's a compulsion and I just couldn't help myself.


You do understand...don't you Norma?


So, as I'm sorting beads, Jerry is talking about the hummingbird feeder he made and wondering why it isn't working. (He has a lot of time on his hands). I told him I'd looked online (after he made that first one) and found some videos that showed how to make them and offered to pull them up for him. 

That was the end of my bead sorting for now. Thank goodness. I don't know why I said that because I really enjoy doing it. It just makes me feel a little crazy. I'm sure Norma will get it.


So, upstairs I went again...(because the computer's up here) and pulled up hummingbird videos for Jerry.


Did I ever tell you how I ended up in a cast the second week we were here in Colombia? I was walking to Hillary's house and as I strolled along under a bower of bougainvillea and yellow trumpet bushes (they were big), I noticed hummingbirds drinking nectar from them. I love hummingbirds. So, of course I was looking up and walked right off the sidewalk into what I thought was a hole and sprained my foot. Doc said it was a hairline fracture but I'm ignoring that.

Anyway, I digress.


He got busy making his bird feeder while I got out the paint stuff he needed to make it attractive to those little beauties. And...as many of you already know, I have another compulsion. 

I can't throw away paint. So, when he finished with the red (that's the main color they say hummers are lured in by), I of course, had to use up what was left in the tray.

After adding red stripes to the borders of my mini quilts, I laid out some of my wonder undered bits and pieces and got out a bag of rubber stamps. Uh - which I'd sorted yesterday when I was thinking about using one of them for my business/contact cards.

Here's how they turned out...

Anyway, here's what those pieces look like after stamping...

And if you look down to the blog entitled 'Bohemianism' you'll see some of them after I painted the last layer. I love to layer. As Sue Benner says, 

"Layer, Layer, Layer".

Here's a muddled picture of the first stamp I used...

 And the second stamp, which I made under the tutelage of a very dear lady named Dorothy who could teach us ALL - even the Colombians - how to make something out of nothing.

 I also used the following stamp without even knowing what it was until I'd stamped it a few times. After I figured out that it was a star container holding Christmas ornaments (is that what you see cuz I'm still not positive) (yard sale find), I stamped it onto paper, cut it out and glued the pix on the stamp so hopefully, I'll know next time.

BTW, Be sure to clean your rubber stamps as you go when using paint or else it'll dry on there and get really nasty. I found this pad at a yard sale and love it. 

I put a little of the cleaner on one side and rinse water on the other. Then, any time I put the stamp down, I set it on the damp surface and it keeps the paint from drying. You can use damp baby wipes for this too and then incorporate them into your projects.

Now my little tray of what used to hold the red paint is about dried up so I spray a little water on it and just paint something that needs another layer. The brush(es) still hold lots of paint.

Then I like to spritz again and just dump whatever drips there are onto a piece of fabric that needs over-dyeing and hold it up and let the rivulets go where they will.

Not finished yet. After washing out my brushes in a container with a small amount of water, I'll sop it all up with another piece of fabric or paper that needs some color. 

If I've been using the stamp cleaning pad, and the colors aren't muddy, I like to spritz that too and dump it on the next thing I get my hands on that needs a face lift.

Then, and only then, will I take my brushes and containers down to wash them in the outside sink which is next to the washing machine which you can just barely see part of  through my jalosied, gated, window...

That's the view from my upstairs dressing room because I was too lazy to go back up to get the camera to take a picture of my awesome outside sink when I went down to clean brushes. 

And I feel great about making those little pieces of fabric that are much more interesting and sometimes downright pretty...AND,  I'm doing my part to keep my environment clean. 

I think they call that reducing your carbon footprint.