Stickers

Had some time last night to get the stickers test printed on the sticker paper and cut out via the handy dandy cricut.

Yeah, that made it sound easy. It took over an hour. First all the colors were messed up, so we tried aligning the ink cartridges…ha! All we could get was an error at the scanning portion. “Scan test failed”. Multiple times. Finally I said screw it, and we tried cleaning the head of the ink cartridge. That helped a little. Then we cleaned it twice more with alcohol and printed two full sheets of nothing but red. That finally did it, and we were able to create the matte stickers you see above.

Yeah. Matte.

Ugh.

I’m not a fan of matte. I think glossy looks far more professional. I should have researched the sticker paper better, but it was cricut brand and on sale at half off and the description said to use the “kiss” setting to cut only the sticker and not the backing paper, which meant cutting it would be easy.

Ha!!!

The cricut maker has NO kiss setting that I could find! So after half an hour I finally turned to YouTube who told me to use the sticky note setting. Which worked perfectly, by the way.

But they’re still matte.

So I wondered what would happen if we printed it, then put a layer of clear glass contact paper on it, then cut it? That would make it glossy and protect the design, too. (I love clear contact paper, for future reference. That stuff is great).

So we did that. Needless to say that stickynote setting no longer worked. We tried increasing pressure. Nope. Used the sticker paper preset. Nope. Etc. Etc. It took several tries, but….

See that tiny circle on the right side about halfway up? Yeah. We got it to work.

Who knew that sticker paper and contact paper were that thick? To be fair, this sticker paper is pretty close to cardstock. Way thicker than I expected.

Anyway, so that’s sorted out. Now we have to print them all up, but that’s for another day. Until then, gotta get dinner made.

Have a successful cut kinda day!

Jo 🙂

Low Battery

We’re on day 4 of the roku remote battery being dead – or so the roku says:

We’re waiting to see how long it keeps working for. It gets lots of use – my dad watches several hours of YouTube a day – so its an interesting experiment.

Here’s a bonus spider and a web that are unrelated.

Back to work.

Have a miracle battery kinda day!

Jo 🙂

Frames and Pickles

‘Sup? Not a lot that’s newsworthy here. Got the first layer of putty on the desk. Need to sand it and probably touch up a few spots. We did get the picture frames for the LotR paintings though. My mom painted a whole collection of them either before I was born or else when I was very tiny. Though they’re not all pictured here there are the two from the animated Hobbit (pictured below), then there’s the ring poem, Treebeard, then the fellowship, the bad guys, the elves, and…I forget who else. Anyway, as a kid these were always my favorite paintings of hers, which from an artistic point is sad because she has much better ones, but I was a geek even then. In her painting box we found the sketches for these, and the references she used from TV guide for the Hobbit characters. The rest she made up because no one had animated them yet or she hadn’t seen it. (Not sure when these were painted vs when the Return of the King or Lord of the Rings animations were released.)

Anyway, the frames worked well. I wanted something heavy and fancy originally, but given there are eight of them and wall space is tight, I think this is better. The box they shipped in was cray-cray huge, though! When it showed up I had no idea what it could be, ha ha!

So, now we just need to take the crow branch down and get these hung up. Maybe Wednesday. Then I’ll post pics of all of them.

I mentioned pickles in the title. Why? Because when we went to Texas someone introduced me to the world’s tastiest pickles. Which I’m now almost out of. And I can only buy in Texas. What??? I’m going to have pickle withdrawal!! I do have a jar if the chunks left, but they taste the same as the seasalt hamburger chips. Boo!!

Now I need to go eat my Ramen and get to work, but I leave you with a bonus gnome. Isn’t he adorable???

Have a Halloween gnome kinda day!

Jo 🙂

Sunset and Pokemon Oreos

I’m going to preface this with a you do you warning. If you want to boycott Oreos, you do that. If you want to buy a couple of boxes, you do that, and most importantly respect what other people choose to do.

Now that’s over, you can guess by the following gallery which way I went.

If you count, you’ll see I’m missing two – piplup and squirtle. The two backwards oreos were charmander and sandshrew. I bought 2 boxes – not the packages, but the box with the individually wrapped two packs because that’s what they had. Plus I’m keeping one of the boxes, so score. I did get a mew, but alas they’re only selling for 50$ now, so I think I’ll just eat it. I’ll let you know if a 50$ oreo tastes different than a normal one.

(Seriously, for those not in the know, Google mew oreo sale. Four days ago they were selling for over 1,000$ a pop because Nabisco and Pokemon sold the public on the idea that the mew cookie was the rarest and people are literally collecting them to keep. I read one very long discussion on how to preserve the cookies is blocks of resin, for example. But yeah. 1,000$ for a cookie. Why, oh why do I have a conscience?)

I actually bought those cookies a couple days ago, but haven’t had the time until today to go through them. They’re all safely bagged up now and will be eaten.

Got a lot of boring house cleaning and such done today that’s been put off. Also made peanut butter cookies for our year of cookies thing we’ve got going on.

They turned out very big – so big I had to double hash mark them. I wonder why they require the fork marks? Was it a stylistic choice someone made once ans everyone else was like, “oh, great way to differentiate them from other brown colored cookies!” Or if it was just someone who didn’t want to flatten them by hand (you roll them in a ball then squish them with the fork to flatten them). I should google this.

All right, here is the answer from https://www.bakingkneads.com/why-do-peanut-butter-cookies-have-fork-marks/

So now we know. (And if that photo is unreadable, just go to the page and scroll down a bit.)

So, we’ve had a little education, and now it’s time for me to wrap some things up and hit the hay. Tomorrow is Shenandoah’s 150 year celebration but I can’t get anyone interested in going so I guess I’ll skip it. Might have been kind of fun, though. Normally I’d talk Mel and Monica into it, but they have covid so it’s quarantine for them. And they’re both pretty miserable, too.

So, I leave you with some sunset photos.

Have a mew cookie kinda day!

Jo 🙂

Testing it out

I mentioned Halloweenapalooza was coming up. No. I haven’t tested those stickers yet, haven’t had time, but I did get the new display stands for the books.

They’re actually cupcake stands but I’m gonna replace the plates with black painted boards and then maybe drape some lace over it. I had hoped to have the display stand in front of the books, but they’re so tall they block the row behind them. Oh well. We’ll see how this works.

Speaking of Halloweenapalooza, autumn is finally here. We have pumpkin spice coffee, pumpkin donuts, and actual pumpkins. The thing that makes me sad is that pumpkins have become so mainstream now that it’s almost a meme. Why is that sad? Because I’ve loved pumpkins since before they were popular. But now it just looks like I’m tagging along with the masses.

*sigh*

And here’s a bonus kitty photo.

And now I end this and try to get some work done.

Have a pumpkin kinda day!

Jo 🙂

New Fridge

The new fridge arrived.

That’s it wrapped up in all its plastic and padding. The delivery guys had to take the kitchen doors off to get it through, but then we did the installation ourselves.

Well, my uncle and my bro did it. My uncle used to do refrigerators and plumbing and air-conditioning and all that so it’s his wheelhouse.

See how sad and naked it looks? Don’t worry, we filled it.

And more importantly, the magnets are back.

Hubby hates them, but boo hoo.

And now I have to make dinner.

Have a fridge magnet kinda day!

Jo 🙂

The Desk

I’m back. I suppose I should have put this in the last blog, but, eh. I didn’t.

As you might know, I’m slowly turning Mom’s old bedroom info a craft type room. It’s going to have my Barbies, some of my craft stuff, the printer, the Cricut, that kind of stuff. I posted pics of the repainted cabinet and dresser earlier. There’s still a china hutch to paint, and then there is the desk.

No, we’re not painting it, in fact I hasn’t planned to do anything to if. The desk belonged to my grandma and grandpa Mutchler, and was one of the few things my grandpa promised I could have that I actually got. Before they owned it, it was from the offices of Lake’s Nursery in Shenandoah. My grandpa worked there, ans got it when they got did of it. It sat in their living room in their house in the country, and when they moved to Shenandoah it sat in their dining room. (Maybe that’s why in my books Jorick has a desk in his dining room.) But I spent a lot of my childhood at it.

Anyway, it’s large, so until now there’s been no room for if. We stored it at my dad’s house, then when we moved here and Dad moved in with us, we put it in the garage. I believe I mentioned what the ungrateful stray cats did to it. But, we had to strip the veneer off the top and will eventually redo it. In the meantime, after I fix a couple spots with wood putty and try that orange pet odor cleaner, I’m going fo just contact paper the top for now. Damn Beasts.

Anyway, so the room was ready for the desk,  the desk was cleaned and ready for the room, so we brought it inside only to discover that there was no way it was going to get past the door. No biggie. We took it off the hinges. But, it was 1/2 inch too large to go through the doorframe into the room.

1/2 inch.

So we had to take the doorframe off, clear down to the plaster. On one side, because the other side we plastered in when we redid the walls in that room. That meant we couldn’t take that side off, which made it basically impossible to get the door frame our. In the end we has to just loosen it and hacksaw through the nails one at a time. It took a long time, but, at last, the desk made it.

Looking into the front room. The wood on the right is the stuff we plastered in.

Looking into the room. Yeah, see the mess in the front room we gotta fix?

All the woodwork that needs put back.

The desk in all its glory. I have no idea where the missing handle is. It came that way. Since it’s a double drawer, it was just for show anyway.

I need to work on the top still, but I did get the drawer liner put in.

John Jones helping me line the drawers.

And that is the saga of the desk so far. I’m going to eventually put my photography light box on it, ans also use it when I use the cricut and the printer, which I need to so soon but first, to get the door all put back. *sigh*

Have a Lake’s desk kinda day!

Jo 🙂

The Dresser, the Bookcase, and Cookies

So the dresser handles arrived and now you get to see it!

Yeah, I forgot to take a before pic of it, but I did of the cabinet:

And then we made cookies, trying to get back to our year of cookies thing. It was Amish Sugar Cookies last week. They’re really good!

Recipe from: https://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/amish-sugar-cookies/

They have a really good texture and flavor, so another recipe to save.

More later. Gotta get to work.

Have a cookie kinda day!

Jo 🙂

Stickers and a New Squishable

So, with Halloweenapalooza coming up, gotta start figuring out my table. I can’t do the selfie thing thanks to covid and people frowning on putting fake teeth in their mouth (so glad I spent a fortune on it to get to use it for one season!) So we bought one of those game wheels from Amazon and are going to do a wheel of fate game where you spin to find out what happens to you after you meet a vampire in an alley. I’ve got the stickers designed now, but I need to test print tomorrow on paper, then try a test print on the sticker paper.

Three of the eight options

So we’ll see after the test whether they are the final versions or not.

We got our new squishable today – a friend for Nostradom the plague doctor. It’s the plague nurse.

I think we will name her Florence. That’s also a bit of the newly redon bookcase in there. Waiting until I get the handles for the dresser to post them both, speaking of them, they are supposed to be here Friday now, and here is what they will look like:

Hmm. Not much else of interest. Had some more of that delicious homemade salsa last night. I don’t think I mentioned it in here, but I got a bunch of tomatoes for free from the lady who runs the gun store in Clarinda and since I know we’d never eat them that fast and we also don’t eat canned tomatoes, salsa seemed like a good idea. First time I’ve ever made it and canned it, so I was quite happy with how well it worked. We’re down to five jars left, lol!

salsa is in the bowl, obviously.

And that’s what I’ve got. We did get the top of the desk cleaned off – had to take the veneer off of it because those fuzzy bastards ruined it. For now I’m just going to put contact paper on it and later we will buy some new veneer, stain it, and glue it on and all that jazz, but I don’t have the time right now to mess with it. Ergh.

Gotta go. Have a homemade salsa kinda day!

Jo 🙂

Flying Circus

Since Mom passed away – actually after we realized she wasn’t ever coming home and going back to normal- we stopped our weekly family game night. We’ve done it here and there, but not as an event like we used to. So, we’re trying to get back to that. (Trying to get back to a lot of things, but I digress.)

Yesterday Dad dug out a couple of his old paper games, Death Maze and Flying Circus. They opted for the airplanes, so that’s what we did.

We never made it past the introductory version of the game, though we did play four rounds of it. Chris (the Germans) won twice by loading the dice, and Dad and I (The Brittish) won twice by stopping the bro from cheating. 😉

We also had some fancy root beer.

It’s vegan and non GMO and what not,but mostly it’s just root beer with sugar instead of syrup, which is always better.

Still waiting on the dresser handles, and have to sand the desktop today. And try to find something to get the smell out. I wonder if baking soda and vinegar would? I know that works on shoes. Damn stray cats.

Speaking of cats, I leave you with two that were once strays but never contributed to the delinquency of my garage.

The orange Fluff ball is my Taffy baby, and the concerned stripey one is Mustard aka Tubby Bubby.

Have a retro game kinda day

Jo 🙂