Merry Christmas!



Its here! I hope you all ripped open your presents and gave out waaay to many hugs! May your day be filled with warm love and heavy filled hearts! Christmas for me has never really been about Christ, but the feeling of togetherness. I don't think it really matters what religion you are. Just grab your loved ones and hold them. I think thats what the whole season is for anyways. 

What does Christmas mean to you? 

The End is Nigh!



It is time my lovelies! Christmas is tomorrow and I have a surprisingly huge amount of wrapping still to do! Now is the time for gathering with the awkward cousins, aunties and uncles. Fortunately I pretty much adore everyone in my family. They still make my anxiety get away from me though. In the end I just don't do well in social situations! But tis the season, so muster though it MUST! It doesn't even feel real yet, and before I know it its all going to be over! The ending-ness of Christmas is always the sad part. Good thing we have New Years to shake off the Christmas leftover blues!

I hope you're all ready for the big day!!


Thaumatrope Christmas Giftys!

Phew! After tons of popcorn, popped and coated with caramel then shoved into lil' baggies, I'm officially done with Christmas! The eve of the great holiday we've all been building up to is tomorrow so I thought I'd share what I sent my pen pals and made my sisters for Christmas. Every year I try to make at least one lil' thing that is hand made and unique! This year I chose Thaumatropes! Now, you've probably never heard of it, but I can guarantee that you've seen one before. You can read about it HERE! But I'll give you the short version...basically it uses the persistance of vision to put the two images together when you spin them! Still not sounding familiar? Remember the bird and cage spinny thing from Sleepy Hallow? Ahh, see I told you, you've see one before! Now for giftys I made my own! They are surprisingly easy! I think I might have to get into the habit of sending of of these to all my new pen pals!   

 
Insta-beard!

 
Foxy Lil'Mask!

 
Camp-fire yah!

 
Mysterious Mustache!

 
Bug-hunting!

My illustrations aren't anything too terribly special, but I think they turned out pretty well! I was gonna try and do a video of them so you could see what they look like when spinning. But alas I ran out of time! Never enough time when it comes to christmas! I love that these are flat so they are easy to tuck into envelopes for pen pals! 

 

 

One of my pen pals sent me these lil photos of random girls. So I used them to make some Thaumatropes! In the end you have to get it to spin really fast to get it to merge together successfully. But its kinda neat! I thought it could be fun to do them with photos of your family and friends! Wouldn't that be awesome to get a personalized on of these in a birthday card?! Oh, I'm getting so excited by this idea and the endless possibilities! 

Ok ok, now I'm done nerd-ing out over my new victorian paper toy! Do you make handmade giftys? Anything special this year?

Lovely Things: Food!

It's that time of year where I digress and become quite lazy. Well, towards my blog that is. Why is it once your life speeds up the blogging world get left behind. Which is quite sad when I really start to dissect it. But alas, I'll get better. I AM getting better! I figured I haven't blogged much about Christmas so here are my obligated Christmas-y posts! 

FOOD! It's not the holiday season with out food. Here are some recipes that I've found that I would LOVE to try if I ever find the time! 

Spur of the moment cookies? Yes please! Lemon Cookies found at Though and Though! 


I've never heard of Juniper sugar before, but it sounds hella fancy! I need to fancy it up a bit and give it a go!  Chocolate Sables with Juniper Sugar Apt. 2b Baking! 

If I can plan it right I'm going to try and make these for Christmas morning. I think Zo would LOVE that! Eggnog Cinnamon Rolls found at A Beautiful Mess! 

Tis the season to gain weight! Woohooo, embrace the chunky love! 

List of Thoughts...

something for march.

Ten things that have been on my mind as of late:
1) Why does time speed up in December?
2) Homemade gifts are the poor man's advantage. 
3) Of course the one time I'm feeling creative would be when I don't have time to actually be creative. 
4) Anytime someone says Christmas isn't fun when you get older is CLEARLY doing it wrong. 
5) Pretty much in love with THIS!
6) It's impossible to keep the floors clean in the winter time. Right when I mop someone tracks dirty snow though the kitchen! 
7) Wouldn't mind THESE for Christmas! Not practical, but totally bad ass! 
8) I should read more...and write more. How I long to be a poet. (We all have dreams, right?)
9) Being sneaky and planning the prefect present and making it a surprise is the best thing ever! 
10) Still haven't sent out my Christmas post cards, oopsy! 

Too much to do, not enough time! I'm sad I've been neglecting my bloggity blog lately. There just isn't enough time!! Things will slow down soon hopefully and I'll have time to rant and rave about the craziness I've going on in my head. Also, have some time to read some blogs! I've 800 posts on my bloglovin' that need to be read! AAhhhhh where did the time go! 

Out Going!

Awe man, the busy holidays are seriously cutting into my mail art time. I always under anticipate how much holiday "stuff" sucks aways your time. Theres NEVER enough time!! I did get a couple letters sent this weekend. The stack I need to respond too is slowly growing. I did finish a lil' picture book that I made for my dad, for his birthday. Which I'm oddly proud about! I'll have to share that soon, but for now here's some mail art!


Pretty simple! I bought THESE new nifty envelopes that are pretty awesome! They have neat print on the back side, which I failed to photograph.  Oh well! 


On that rare occasion that I pay attention.

Untitled 

I stumbled upon THIS lil' grammar quiz the other day. Now, I knew that I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed, but I'm becoming quite keen on writing and figured I couldn't do that bad. I was quite surprised to find that I scored a 80% (Which is passing if I was still in school! Three cheers for the minimum requirement!) This started quite the conversation amongst my co-workers, as many of them did know the "rules" either. Zoei sent me THIS and THAT, which apparently is how she was able to remember the silly rules and score so well! In the end my question is...Does writing a blog help you with your grammar? Or because its a free-form sort of writing it hinders you in a way. I mean, I make up words all the time when I'm writing a post. I also have the bad habit of using, way, too, many, commas! Now you think I'd have the upper hand because I also write a TON of letters. But after I thought about it, my letters are probably worse then my blog posts, because its lacking the auto-correct function. But I suppose spelling is a whole other beast aside from grammar.

So what did you score?? Do you think writing a blog helped or hurt?




Letter Findings: Frieda and Georgia

I've recently stepped up my mail art game and have been digging around a bit more on the interweb. I've come across some cool findings! This is a letter from Frieda Kahlo to Georgia O'Keeffe. I admire and adore both of these talented ladies. Both of them very passionate, troubled and oh so intriguing! I've read this letter about a million times. At first I felt a bit creepy, like I was reading someones diary when they weren't looking. In a sense I suppose its something similar to that. But I can't help myself!




Ah man, letters are amazing. I hope when I'm old I can dig though my letters and be enamored all over again. For more information or to see it bigger, go HERE! (Also dig around in there catalog, they have some neat stuff. I've been obsessing over it.) 

Winter has finally arrived!


Yup, winter is officially here! We got a ton of snow today! Although I'm relieved that the anticipation of the snow is over with. I'm still not a fan of the stuff. Its wet, cold and causes traffic jams. Our 30 minute commute turned into a hour and a half crawl home! BUT, alas it does feel like the Christmas season is among us! 

The morning didn't start out too bad, but it ended up snowing all day! 

Little Shu-Tzi tracks! 


 Well I suppose it sure is beautiful to look at. It could always be worse! Just cross your fingers that traffic is a bit better tomorrow! Bundle up my lil snow bunnies!! 

P.S. I need a new camera, instead of using my phone camera. I'm not sure if I'm ready to invest in a DSLR, but if cameras are ya thing and you wanna chat about it, email me! (remikeahi@gmail.com) I could use some help trying to pick/decide and overall improving the quality of my photos! 

Out Going Mail: Cloud Envelopes!

Got all caught up on my mail this weekend. Only to get 4 more letters today. Which is awesome! I think this means my mail man finally got things straightened out! No more lost mail, hopefully! I had an awesome mail day today! Can't wait to get some responses out!

Paper bag envelopes and white colored pencil! I wasn't too impressed with the pencil, so on the next ones I used some white acrylic craft paint instead. 




Happy mail day!