 Hello everybody. Happy New Year's Eve. It's Sunday. Yeah, it's still morning. We'll be going over later to one of the kids' house to celebrate New Year's Eve. But right now, it's not in here right now. I just finished the 2023 sketchbook and closing out the year. It's in the other room. I forgot to put it in there already. And yeah, let's hope for a good 2024. I do need to make another storage box for 2023. I've been meaning to for a while. But the journals are done. And yeah, it's all good. I'm gonna go downstairs now and have some water and do some crocheting. And we're gonna just, I think, chill and relax. Mr. is gonna try to watch football. And yeah, before we go over for the festivities tonight at the kids' house. So anyway, I'm still full from last night, but that pasta was really good. Anyway, I think that's it for the minute. My brain feels like it's asleep, but you know, post-vid symptoms. That's why blaming it on anyway, accurate or not. I'll be back. Hey guys, it is a few minutes after midnight, 1-1, 2024. Six quarter after. Happy New Year. We are headed home now. We're tired. And I think we left with more food than we came with. Your presence. Yeah. Yeah, anyway. That's a tomorrow's problem. Right now we need to go home. I'll be back. Hey guys, good morning. It's Wednesday, January 3rd. I don't think I filmed anything yesterday. I was busy working on the Italy journals for my sister and dad and babysitting. I didn't get anything else done yesterday. I was lucky in between naps and stuff to get, you know, dishes done and throw some laundry in and stuff like that. I got a little bit more work done on the black, white, and gray Afghan. It's almost done. And of course I have probably two more in the works and, you know, more projects lined up. Of course, I've always got lots of projects like up here. They're always. Anyway, right now we're going to go pick up an order I placed with gerions. And I need to stop by Dollar Tree and I need to go buy the bank. So I'm going to just run a bunch of errands and then we're going to come back today and do some more work on the Italy journals. And yeah, I think that's the plan for today. Anyway, I'll be back. Hey guys. All right. So I've been home for a while. It's evening almost. I've been working on the Italy journals and you know what? I got them done. Elizabeth, don't watch this. Anyway, they are finished. They are bagged up and ready to be gifted. The point of doing these is to tell a story about the event or the trip or something. And I try to, when I go somewhere, bring an envelope. And generally, it's one that looks like this. I get these from Amazon. And I start out planning my bag and my trip by grabbing one of these and printing the itinerary if we have one, plane tickets, hotel stay, all that stuff, putting it in here, add a handful of paperclips, and a pad of sticky notes, and a black pen. Every day, gather up all your little receipts and bus tickets and the little brochure from the hotel that you're staying at, your luggage tags, paperclip them all together, stick a sticky note on it, write the date on it, put it in the envelope. I don't anymore try to do the journal while I'm gone because there's just no point, too much is going on. And I want to focus on the trip and my friends and family. I will bring usually a small sketchbook and do a few small sketches in it that may or may not stay in the book. Usually I will tear them out or if I want to keep them in the book, I'll color copy them and put them in the travel journal when I'm done, when I get back. I will also save, you know, coffee cup labels if there's a cute saying on it, or fortune cookie, fortune, or you get the idea. I'll link a video down below to me making a travel journal because I do think there's a video on my channel. I also have a very small art travel bag that I bring with me, a minimalist travel bag and I'll see if I can find that and link it too. If you want a full tutorial on doing one of these, I guess I can do that, but there's a lot of junk journaling videos out there and really it's just a junk journal, but it's about one particular event and telling a story about that event. Does that make sense? Anyway, I'm going to go sit down for a minute and have some water. I'll be back. Guys, this is the first time since we caught the vid at Thanksgiving that I think my table's been this clean and the ironing board. But you know, now I have to catch up on projects and what used to be my drying rack has become projects and waiting. Yeah, that's a thing. And we're going to go grocery shopping tonight because the next couple days are kind of busy-ish. So I'm going to sit and relax for a little bit till Mr. Gets Off will work and then we'll go do that. I'll be back. I don't know why when we're in the truck I bothered to turn the light on. It doesn't help. Not too much. It's only like five o'clock-ish, 5.30, something like that. And it's pitch black out, but you know, welcome to the Pacific Northwest. Because it looks like it was at 4.40 today. Yeah, so anyway. Yes, we're in the car and we're going to go do our grocery shopping Wednesday night or Thursday night if he doesn't have Masonic Lodge. That seems to be what we like to do and not have to do it over the weekend. So we're going to go do that and pick up a few things. And I commented to Mr. that this is the first time in ever, it seems like, at least since Before Thanksgiving that I have had anything close to a normal amount of energy. And I did all the work on the two journals today and I got all of that done and believe me it was a lot of work and I promised to film something at some point and I will do that. In fact, I have an idea because we have a future thing coming up and I might film a process while we're doing it anyway. It's a long story. But I feel close to normal, which is amazing. We'll see if it sticks. Hopefully it sticks. Anyway, we're going to go get some errands done and pick up some groceries and yeah, we'll see where we are after that tomorrow is babysitting day. So junior's coming over and I was thinking when he left I was going to have to keep working on the journals. I don't have to now. It's done. So I can work on some crocheting projects and things that I want to do. So yay. All right. That's it. I'll be back. Okay, junior went home before he got here. I got all the scanning of crochet patterns done that I wanted to get done today that I did not think would get done this morning. But it did and I got them printed and I'm going to go upstairs and put them in my binders and Bob is off to his meeting. So it's all good. After that we're going to work on the mushroom bag because I've got to start putting those granny squares together. I'll be back. Hey guys. I think I forgot to vlog this morning. It is 4 20 p.m. Friday January 5th. I don't think I've vlogged much the day before yesterday either but I was babysitting. Anyway, it's been another good productive day. I finished my mushroom bag. I did put a lining in it and it's all done. It's still a little bit damp but she is done and cute. I used one of Mr's old t-shirts to create the lining and then I did a herringbone stitch type of deal by hand to sew the lining to the bag. That way it wouldn't show because I didn't really want it to show too much. But yeah, pretty happy with that. I've just been working on that all day and puttering around the house, doing laundry, dishes. Kids are coming over and a little bit for dinner which means I've got to order some pizza because we're just ordering it today. We're not making anything or anything like that. Counseling this morning went pretty good. It's always good to have somebody who's a neutral third party to discuss things with because yeah, helps you clear the mind a bit, doesn't it? It's so nice. Anyway, I think tomorrow Mr and I might go antiquing and thrifting. We're looking for a couple of things and we'll kind of see what happens. Sunday the furnace people are coming to do their annual checkup on the furnace and replace filters and stuff like that. Otherwise, I think it's going to be a quiet weekend. Next weekend is going to be busy. It's my dad's birthday. Bob's going to California for an event with a friend. It's going to be busy, busy, busy, busy. But that's for the next vlog. So anyway, all right. I think that's it for the minute. I'll be back. I did think of one more thing. So if you all haven't heard of one, the yarn addict, where have you been? Anyway, he recently did a beanie tutorial that was out of pink yarn, his least favorite color, although he's learning to like it a bit more. I think I got one shade of pink and a shade of tan sandy color and I am going to make the beanie from his tutorial. I think that's going to be my next project. I also cleaned out my pattern binder that is in my bag that I carry around with me and changed out a few things. And so we're ready to go. I think my next project will be the beanie. And then I'm going to try to make it another cardigan. We'll see how that goes. Hopefully it's not too big. I'm going to try a different pattern once somebody else wrote. So I might even do a gauge swatch. We'll see. I'll be back. Hey guys, I would say good morning, but it's already after lunch. We had a late start this morning. We are going to head back out again. We've already been out once this morning. I for 30 bucks bought an antique secretary desk on Facebook marketplace and need some TLC. It's been stored in the warehouse. I think at one point it had a top which isn't here anymore, which is okay because I don't need that. We're going to take all these things off. The inside actually looks like it's in pretty good condition. I know you can't really see that. There you go. Everything seems to be pretty intact. The drawers all need a little TLC. They're a little loose. The fronts are a little loose from the bases. And there's a little few chips of veneer, which I'm not too worried about that, but I do need the drawers to be sturdy. So we're going to have to take each drawer out and glue and nail it back together. Replace any little pieces of missing wood, that sort of thing, but Mr. is going to help me with that. There's a little ding here in the back, but overall I'm pretty happy with it for 30 bucks. It's a good deal. And it'll be great in the painting corner upstairs. It's not too wide. It's not too big. It'll be perfect. Plus all the drawers can be used for storage. Yeah. Looking forward to it. All right. I'll be back. Man, it's cold out here. We're headed out to the garage. And yes, for those that don't know, it's my husband's barracuda. He's a car guy. Anyway, so we got the new antique secretary desk home and we've already taken it apart. The guts are out of the desk. The back is off and you know, it's going to be in the art room. So it's just, let's just, you know, make it so it's, you know, the drawers are stable and the whole thing is pretty sturdy. It's, I mean, you know, for the fact that doesn't have a back on it, that's doing pretty well. And Bob's like, no. So he's going to actually fix it up for me pretty, you know, as best as he can get it. We'll probably have to put a new back piece on it. But the inside didn't come out in one piece. Look at this, you guys. This is the part that goes inside the desk. And these columns, secret pockets. I think originally it was supposed to have a glass top on it. That's long gone. It was used as a prop at an event venue. It was used and abused, but actually considering how old it is and the fact that it was used and abused, it's not that bad a condition. The drawers need some re-gluing and repair. They were fixed a few times over the years, but not necessarily very properly. So Bob's already glued and clamped a couple of things and he'll keep working on that. And yeah, it's going to be pretty cool. I can't wait to get it upstairs. It's going to be very nice. So that was a great part of the day. I also finished the beanie inspired by Juan the crochet addict. And if you haven't seen his channel, I'll link it below along with the video from the beanie that I made. He did one playing with pink yarns and I used a blush pink and an oatmeal. I'm not into the neon pink. That was as close as I could get. So Juan, you're braver than I am. Anyway, it turned out pretty cute. It's very nice. But I sat and watched the video and wrote all the steps down in my notebook. And because I prefer to work that way than from video. Anyway, it turned out really well. Then of course I started a new afghan. Anyway, we got all the boxes for the Christmas decorations downstairs from the attic. So tomorrow I think we're going to focus on getting the Christmas put away because it's time. Anyway, it's been a fun week. We're glad to be mostly feeling better. I was to have a few symptoms but for the most part it's pretty good. And starting to get back to normal and get things done and all the things and can't say I'm mad about it. We went out thrifting today. We didn't buy anything for ourselves but we found some things for daughter and I hope she likes them and it's all good. Yeah. So anyway, I, oh and I also, of course I did, cut myself a couple times, taken the desk apart. Yes, I washed it out and cleaned it. Yes, I've had my tetanus shot. Anyway, I think that's it for the minute. I can't think of anything else. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff to do or be done. My dad's birthday party is this time next weekend and I am driving up with Rebecca Paulyus and the baby. Bob is going to be in California and another commitment that we have with a friend. I can't be in two places at once and neither can he. So we kind of split. We split it up. He's going to go to one. I'm going to go to the other and so yeah. But that's for next week's vlog. Anyway, this week's been good. I hope you guys have had a good week. I hear hearing more and more friends coming down with a vid and y'all try to stay healthy, stay hydrated, all the things. Try to not get sick, but you know, I even got it. So I want to know what to tell you. We're going to go back to starting to walk this week. We haven't been that since we got sick. We haven't been doing that. We both miss it, so that's a thing. Anyway, stay healthy, stay happy. Check out the video description for relevant links. Please don't forget to like, share, and subscribe. If you want to support the free content, it's like two bucks a month. Go and join my Patreon. I post free patterns over there. They have their own private YouTube channel with so many videos. I don't know how you'd get through them all. Along with monthly posts from me, we have a new live chat thing over there with me and you guys. And I have written out the Afghan pattern that I use most of the time and given that to them. So if you, it's a crochet pattern. So if you want to do any of that stuff, go join my Patreon. I'd appreciate it. I also have art. No, I have, yes, art. I have stamp designs with both Rubber Moon and Art Foamies. They're both USA based companies. They're both small mom and pops. I sure would appreciate, even if you don't buy my designs, go support their businesses and go over there and go shopping. There's some great stuff over there. I'll link them down below and yeah, go out, have a great day. Do something nice. That was fireworks or something. At least I hope that's what that was. Go out and do something nice for yourself because you deserve it. Stay safe, stay healthy, be happy, and I'll see you next week. Bye guys.