 November 29th, huh? I'm looking at the computer because I have no idea. I've gotten a cumbul-cumbul. You know? Oh yeah, yeah. So I got a couple of videos filmed for December that I'm going to work on editing this afternoon along with the vlog for last week. I'm going to try to get that edited today and get the writing for next week done today. Hopefully that's a like all on my agenda. So I can do some more filming tomorrow and more editing tomorrow. Yeah, so we're working on a December project and I don't know if I'm going to get the videos up on the channel every single day. I'm going to try to film something every day but I might just do a compilation where I just put the video up once. I don't know. I don't know yet. I don't know. Anyway, I am doing some more purging. I have like one or two more days in November to purge and or use things up. I went through some cross-stitch kits that I found and gave some to my daughters, one of my daughter's best friends and my former daycare baby slash adopted daughter Jenny. I didn't know until this weekend that she does cross-stitch. So she went through the kits and pulled a couple out that she wanted to do and I am going to purge the ones that I'm just not interested in ever doing. I have three here. I think I'm going to treat their bigger kits than I usually like to work on but they're not super huge. They're like four by three. So I think I'm going to be working on those. They're this guy and they're from the UK I think. I tend to like UK cross-stitch kits. I don't know what the deal is with that but anyway I like the designs. That was fun, not. So I was working on the December videos and my YouTube mixtra hard drive died. Like it's like dead, dead. Like there is no recovering it dead. It's not even trying to spin up. My husband's like did you smack it? Because you know he is an engineer and he works in the electronics industry. That's his salute. Did you smack it? Right? Yes. By the way I smacked it. I didn't know. I always look at him like really? You know you work with multi-million-dollar computers and that's your solution? Did you smack it? Anyway, smacking it didn't help. He's ordered me a new one. The debate is now do I bother downloading all my old video off of YouTube? I think the answer to that is no and I think I'm going to keep it as a working editing hard drive but I think once things get loaded to YouTube I'll probably delete them. I'm going to keep it fairly clear in case one of the other ones acts up and I need to move things over. Anyway, fun times. I was just messaging with some friends and asking them what they think about. Do I need to bother be bothered downloading all the old YouTube videos because I'm friends with some fairly large channels? They don't save any of their old videos. It's on YouTube or it's not on YouTube? It's just yeah. Anyway, I'm going to go see if my computer is done saving the last December video I filmed today and then see if I can get things loaded and scheduled then I can turn this stupid thing off. That would be a good idea. Hey guys. You ever choke on a sip of water? Yeah, that's me today. Anyway, it is about 12 30 on Monday November 30th. Don't get excited. I looked it up already. I was just sitting down and getting ready to eat lunch after printing all of the addresses for Christmas cards and realized I forgot something to do before I eat lunch. That has to do with our new December daily affirmation journal. So I'm going to set that up and print that. Then I'm going to have lunch. Then we're going to film a couple episodes for the December daily. I do think I'm going to film them ahead. I don't know if I'm going to film like all 31 days this week, but I do think I'm going to like film them in blocks and then air them on YouTube. I got the first five days of the new December daily affirmations journal done and I am editing them right now and I'm loving the process, you guys. It's not like Picasso or anything. It's not your traditional art journal sort of splash booking maybe sort of I don't know what it is, but I like it. Anyway, I hope you guys like it too. I hope you like watching. I hope you like doing and I hope you share. That would be great. All right. I think Amazon came. Maybe the mail came. I'm going to go check. I'll be back. It's Tuesday morning, December 1st. Don't get excited. I only know that because you know yeah I looked at the computer. It's 9.36 am. We have a live broadcast this morning which I have yet to set up for or announce and it's supposed to start in like less than a half an hour. So I better get to it. My daughter's texting me. I don't know what about. Yeah, it's a thing. So anyway, it's 10.33. My hair is wet. I obviously just got out of the shower. I didn't even finish my coffee until about half an hour ago. You know, COVID and Wednesday and I didn't have any pressing engagements first in this morning. I do want to film a few more pages in the December daily. One of them is for patrons. I'm going to finally explain to you all my process step by step for doing the video. For those of you watching it on YouTube or in the Facebook art groups, you're going to get a speed through video. But if you want to see the talking one, you have to be over on Patreon. Why does my eye look red this morning? I don't know. Maybe it's just the camera. No idea. Anyway. So I am going to log on to all the social medias and I'm going to double check on things, answer comments on YouTube. And then we're going to get started with the filming because yeah, it won't do itself. All right, I'll be back. Try to take two because I inadvertently showed my address and take one. Anyway, I've shared this on social media or I'm going to share this on social media tonight, but I just wanted to share with you all a couple of DIY projects, inexpensive projects I'm working on. So as you all know, if you're following me here on YouTube and on social media, I'm doing my version of a December daily, which is more about positive affirmations and making the best of what is going to be a strange holiday season at best, rather than focusing on all the stuff that's going wrong. I know that's way easier said than done. Trust me, I made the mistake of watching a news video a couple minutes ago. Anyway, we're working on the positive affirmation video and journal and I'm loving working on it, but I have so many pieces and parts when I'm working on it, like there's literally like no, you can't see them out on the table, like it's so full of stuff. And when I want to stop in between and work on something else, a stitching project or I'm going live or something, like it just takes me so long to clear the table so that there's got to be a better way. So I made a organizing box out of this is just a cardboard box. We got a flat of tomatoes in at the store that we're still eating. They're delicious, but the flat didn't need to be in the kitchen. I have a little plastic tray here, which is from the Dollar Tree. I messed that up because I oops lifted it up anyway. And I've got some bags here on the side that have stickers in them, literally a jar from a Home Chef meal kit that I'm just the pens and pencils I'm using on this project are in my glue stick, my scissors, notepads and the journal itself and some random big scraps of paper in the back. This is going to work great for me because now I can just take this when I'm not working on it and I need to work on something else and take it up off the table, put it on the ironing board or put it over here on one of my shelves down there out of the way and easy to clear the table. So when I'm done creating in the journal, I put everything back in the box and then I'm good to go. And I didn't spend any money on it. I had all of these things. The other thing is I'm working on a pen palper project with some friends and family because we figured we're all stuck at home. This corona thing is just ridiculous and scary and dangerous and wouldn't it be great to reconnect with each other, document our journey through the pandemic and everything and someday put all the letters back together in a book. So we are working on the pen pal project and I've got my first two letters here and some blank note cards I found in my stash. Funny enough, I'm going to have to buy more because I'm using up all my note cards finally that I've had like 20 years. I still have ones from when we got married. I got blank note cards that say Mr. and Mrs. Robert Aaron's. Yeah, so we're using them all up. Anyway, to make a box to hold all the note cards and stationery, I have another box from a meal kit. This was a shrimp taco meal kit from Contessa Foods and they come in these beautiful great boxes which I just love but I never have the heart to throw away because they're great boxes. So I am going to use the box, there's a random piece of cardboard in there. I'm going to use the box and I'm going to at the very least just put a label on it but cover it or something and that's going to be the stationary box for the pen pal project for the pandemic. So using what you have, you could make some really great storage solutions for your art room that work for you without spending any money. You can make them look prettier than this. This one's, you know, still got all the labels from the tomatoes on it. I'm not going to cover it. I like the way it looks but you can definitely make it look prettier, cut it up and reformat it to work in your space for what you need. If you don't believe me, watch Mike Deakins vlog which just came out today. I will link it down below in his vlog. He does a DIY project and he has a video on how to do it in a different video and I think it's linked in a bit below his vlog. Anyway, check it out but look around your house, see what you have and what will work for you for a storage solution. Now if you're like me and you're tempted to save everything because you can use it someday, yeah I've got the someday disease from my grandmother Jenny. God bless her she's passed now but when she did pass I didn't realize how bad for her it was because she had a garage full of empty boxes and boxes of boxes and boxes of jars and I'm definitely that person so I designate a special space for myself up here upstairs and when that's full I have to get rid of things or I have to use it up before I can save anymore. Otherwise I definitely have the someday disease and I'll just I'll fill my house up with empty stuff so don't be don't don't get the someday disease. Anyway, we are going to go for a walk in a little bit hopefully the video will load soon and yeah we'll make it work but yeah look around to see what you have when you have a project that's a little messy and you need to corral it a little bit maybe you have some bits and pieces and parts you can make a tray for it with. All right that's it for the minute I'll be back. It's just after 10 o'clock and I need to film five more December daily pages. I think we'll be doing some bonus pages for the lives going forward this month which is why I put the box together yesterday that I did so that I can have everything sort of set and organized and work on other stuff in between. Anyway, I seem to be incapable of getting started before 10 a.m. any day this week that just seems to not be a thing for me right now I don't know what it is COVID fatigue or I don't know and I'm actively avoiding the news and anything other than creative videos or soap opera or tonight is Thursday so Grey's Anatomy and Station 19 are on. Any sort of reality TV is a no-go for me because it's just all depressing. We're all busy arguing about having to wear a mask and be socially distant and it's an infringement on our rights and COVID is fake and really really COVID is not fake. Yes some people get them out of case and get over it very quickly some don't and it overwhelms our medical system and if y'all would just wear a mask and do what you need to do we wouldn't be stuck in this situation we're in and especially in the United States right now it's not about you and your rights it's about humanity and we can't get the economy back on track with if people are dead and the vaccine is going to be a few months and coming for most of us and it's yeah not going to get it's going to get worse before it gets better especially with people not doing what they need to for the holidays and not sticking with their little social bubble and traveling when they shouldn't be and all that things anyway and in the meantime we also don't have any stimulus money for any of the people who really need it the businesses and people without work and global only country in the world that's not helping their citizens the way they should it's shameful it's not about politics i don't give a damn who's in the white house in fact i didn't vote for either one of them i just want whoever's there to do their job that's all i want anyway it's my little tirade for the day in the meantime i'm going to work out some of my stress about it in my december daily and we're going to work on focusing on the positive so i'm going to set everything up and turn the filming lights on and shut the doors and get it done and i will be back i'm 16 am have some international christmas cards that need to go out today well i want to go out today and because they're international i have to take them down to the post office and get posted just the easiest way so i'm gonna go do that i need some classes so i'm gonna go do that and i have to go to the bank i'm just gonna use it drive through atm uh will i stop anywhere else that depends on how brave and safe i'm feeling so we'll see you guys i'm back um anyway i've been back for a bit and i had some lunch um i got running errands and i said i may or may not stop in joe ans i don't know if remember now i did find some other things there so i got wrapping paper because i had a really good deal on wrapping paper i got a couple christmas ornaments and stuff like that but i was looking for more winter themed things i could use in the december daily and of course they were just completely wiped out like half of the arts and crafts department of the store was just wiped um which has been on and off since this whole pandemic thing started to be fair anyway um i decided though that the kind of embellishments that i wanted for the december daily i probably wasn't going to find to begin with i did show prior a small set of um semi-precut images from it was a german creator and it's the labels in the trash now but um i'll try to put the name here somewhere um and they were they're really good um but they were really small smaller than i thought there was like one um deer sort of woodland animal in the tim holt set that i got the paper pack i bought locally actually funding it up has woodland creatures in it do you see a theme so i'm really enjoying using the snowflakes and the woodland creatures so i thought well kind of what i want is kind of specific and probably nobody's going to have it i could make it myself but maybe there's somebody out there with a digital download that could use the business right now and that i could help spread the word and that i could use their images to make some diy sticker flakes to use in my journal because you can do that with digital downloads mine or anybody else's right you don't have to just print them on paper you can print them on label paper this is avry i don't know avry it's a like full sheet of label paper it's not a full sheet because i cut off the bottom right but it's a full sheet label paper and you just run it through like you would any other paper and you print the images and leave a space in between so you can cut them out um this is from opi design studios this is one of the two sets that i bought i bought evergreen and i bought woodland winter woodland watercolor i think i'll link them both below i really like her images i wanted some deer i wanted some trees her images are really nice high quality high resolution illusion images without the background so that you can layer them so she has this trees and then she has this guy and i really wanted one or two of him on top of the trees so i layered the images before i printed she also had this other one that was sort of a lighter toned color that has different kinds of deer and sort of lighter shades so because she's got this this is the one from the winter woodlands and this is the one from evergreen so you can see the shades of color she used are slightly different the trees are different too because you have this one from evergreen and then you have these that are sort of a brighter green from the other one and they also had this tree which again i printed and i printed in different sizes the winter woodland set also had just sort of these arrangements of foliage so i have cut out a whole bunch of them i've got these other ones to cut out but i think i want to just give you guys all the idea that you can use anybody's digital downloads mine or anybody else's you don't have to print it on paper print it on sticker paper as long as you're not selling it you're using it for your own work and your own use for most of us that's fine you print it on sticker paper especially if you like maybe you're into planners but you want a few trees or deer to put on the side of your planner i mean i would much rather make my own stickers than go buy them because frequently i want something specific that i just can't find anyway i have that doesn't mean i don't have store-bought stickers i do but i haven't bought any store-bought stickers in a really long time and i'm trying to use what i have so i have finding a lot of joy lately and just making my own out of digital image imagery i also need to go online and look at mike deacon's digital downloads because i think i want to get a few more of his i've only got one or two sets of his i'm going to get a few more of his and print them on label paper too not for the december daily for other stuff so anyway check it out give it a thought check out opi design studios website i love her files now they're kind of expensive but they are large large files so large that when you download it from etsy you're actually downloading the download instructions because her files are so large and so high res that they're not um it's focusing on the computer they're not um they're too big for etsy um and i did it i did it it works just fine it's very safe and secure um but and right now her store is um on sale i don't know how long it's going to be but right now when i bought the files her her stuff is on sale so anyway um in my opinion even at regular price it's worth the price and you're supporting a fellow creative it's always good all right that's it for the minute i'm going to get to cutting and watch some youtube while i'm doing it and i'll be back i use the restroom um it is 2 54 p.m and we're just headed home and done for the day this is the most errands we've done in one day and most people-y things since this whole nonsense with the pandemic started but i think we got the majority of the christmas present buying done there's a few things we need to order online to be drop shifted drop shipped to different people around the country but other than that i think we're finished and we should be able to get that done tonight too so i'm hungry we haven't had lunch yet hangry yes so we're going to head home unload the car and yeah it's and it's getting dark i should say yeah it's after three o'clock there's a giant wall of clouds headed in and evidently a store so yeah that's fun the table is set up for christmas gift wrapping as is the irony board um and there's off camera that way the pile of gifts we have to wrap plus i think my husband's got some stuff in his office so i guess what we're doing tomorrow and wrapping presents trying to get the majority of them wrapped number one to get that done but number two so i can put my table back to rights yeah anyway um i think that's it for today and for this week it's been a crazy busy day i i don't think that we knew when we left the house we were going to that many different places um but we have two favorite sort of european markets here in the area there's a lot of them actually up here german and russian markets and we probably about way too many cookies but oh yeah yeah i i'm just i guess i'm lucky we didn't come home with a grocery bag full of sausages and things too it is just the two of us it's ridiculous anyway the dangers of shopping when you're hungry uh anyway it's you know crazy weird interesting world it's certainly never boring um but um you know any day on the right side of the dirt it's a good day right so anyway um i hope that um you guys have had a good week as good as it can be for you and um if you haven't big virtual hugs from me and um how can we help you we as a creative community help you uh make it better um it's difficult for everybody right now and i feel for the entire world but anyway um yeah don't forget to like share and subscribe the videos on my channel i do certainly appreciate that even when i ramble on in the vlog um i appreciate the thumbs up if you will and uh you know support the free content here on youtube and over in the facebook art groups um there's lots of links in my video description for doing that there's also my instagram link and all that kind of stuff if you want to just follow me on instagram or over on facebook or something like that you can find all that stuff out down below there's a link tree list of links you'll find all the places i am on the internet on that list for the most part probably a few places i forgot that i am because that's a thing anyway um i will see you all next week please stay safe stay healthy stay creative please wear your mask and go out and do something nice for yourself because you deserve it all right i'm going to get downstairs and i'm going to have some more water maybe make a cup of tea before dinner and yeah finish up the gift dropping manana all right bye guys