So, guess what I got for Christmas. Yes, you guessed it, a TiVo!

Eh, onward and upward.

My greatest frustration (besides wedding arrangements) this month has been in learning to take decent photos in order to post them. Jon is patient; his face never melts around his eyes every time *I* have a meltdown because my “pictures are fuzzy!” And, I am learning. Slowly.

We had super-great fun this past Christmas. We made 30+ Christmas Cards by hand, envelopes included, and some of them turned out spectacular despite a handful of glaring mistakes. Most of those mistakes readily disappeared under hills of glue, tape, paper, and embellishments. Draw a line that isn’t straight enough? No worries, cover it with double-sided sticky tape and pretty ribbon. Tah dah, said line has vanished!

We made apple butter:

And dog biscuits:

And about 4 dozen too many cookies. Nevertheless, it was all good fun and rather fulfilling. I haven’t done a strictly hand-crafted Christmas since about 1995 or earlier and I was beginning to feel too commercialized.

Granted, my artistic abilities have also suffered since then, too. Yes, it’s my fault. Really. I let working at the jail and cleaning up my family’s messes overrule my common sense. The freedom I have now has supercharged my creativity. I’ve had to slog through a lot of emotional baggage. I felt weak and vulnerable for so long that I forgot I could be strong, brave, independent, etc. Now, although I think my art is still timid and unsure of itself, I believe it is evolving in many good ways. For example, I finished a wine box conversion I started, hmmm … 12 years ago:

I find the outside of this box a little too conservative, but I haven’t yet learned how to balance my minimalist nature with the “ALTER THE HELL OUT OF IT, WOMAN” mentality that screams inside my head and demands to be heard (and explored). The inside of the box is my gem. I love how easily it came together with the vision I had before I started. I’ve turned the project into my “letter box”, a place to store my calligraphy equipment. I’m on a roll to overcome that whole, “but I’m a lefty and can’t DO calligraphy!” attitude I’ve been carrying since I was 19 and figured out how damn complicated you right-handers can make my life. :P The WHOLE world was reborn this December when Jon asked the magic question.

No, not that magic question. THE magic question: “Do you have a real pair of left-handed scissors?”

Well, I thought I did. Turns out, I didn’t. Holy wow, what a difference that question has made in my ability to cut a straight line. God bless the man; he’s a keeper!