Sylvia's Simple Shots

Cool Water by Dianne Warren.   Another Saskatchewan story.

Juliet, Saskatchewan, is a blink-of-an-eye kind of town -- the welcome sign announces a population of 1,011 people -- and it''s easy to imagine that nothing happens on its hot and dusty streets. Situated on the edge of the Little Snake sand hills, Juliet and its inhabitants are caught in limbo between a century -- old promise of prosperity and whatever lies ahead.

But the heart of the town beats in the rich and overlapping stories of its people: 

the foundling who now owns the farm his adoptive family left him; 

the pregnant teenager and her mother, planning a fairytale wedding; 

a shy couple, well beyond middle age, struggling with the recognition of their feelings for one another; 

a camel named Antoinette; 

and the ubiquitous wind and sand that forever shift the landscape. Their stories bring the prairie desert and the town of Juliet to vivid and enduring life.

It was a different kind of book and a nice change of pace.

The sun is shining this morning and the place is bright and wonderful feeling.

I am learning a new way of living where everything has a home and it is returned there at the end of the day.  That I have only enough stuff for the space I have so that this practice can continue.

Big projects are on hold.

It means having to discern my very top priorities and concentrating on those.  

I have learned that in the past I have not cleared the stuff from one past time before moving onto another so stuff accumulated and sat around taking up precious space.

This place has space to breathe, relax and live a quieter life.   Is that what I want?

I did manage a few photo challenges this week.  Macro Mondays was Reflections so these were a couple of the shots I took.

This is a very old book which has fallen apart and I kept some of the pages to print cool stuff on them.  It's been sitting for about 6 years - am I really going to print on them?  And if I do what will I do with them?  I am no longer going to craft markets so supplies destined for those projects have to go. 

I love the depth of field I acheived in this shot.  The texture of the old book signatures are wonderful.

To me books are precious and should not be thrown away.  The ReUse center is now open so that is likely where it will go to be found by a teacher, student or other creative person.

This Y is for Yesterday book is the last of the Alphabet Series of books by Sue Grafton because she died before she wrote the Z book. 

This starts with high school antics which turn bad and I was not sure I was going to finish it.

It was better once we were with Kinsey Milhone the detective in the present.   

Crimes are committed by teenagers, some are held accountable, others are not.   Once prison sentences are done and the dues to society have been paid, one should be able to move on but those who have not paid drag those have paid down with them again.

Kinsey of course is in the middle trying to figure out the players, who did what and why things don't add up.

I did finish the book and it was okay. 

All Occasion Stack Class - Book Birthday

I started with the BoBunny Weekend Market Study designer paper with the great books on it.  With the great colors in this paper I selected brown, blue, green and burgundy card stock for this set of cards in the stack.  I have shown the brown one here.  I selected a taupe gross grain ribbon which I placed across the DP and taped the end to the back.  This layer was then glued to the card front. The greeting was color printed on taupe card stock and punched out with the SU Decorative Label punch.  I then punched another label in the same color as the card which I split in two lengthwise from one point to the other.  It could be split widthwise as well.  I trimmed the points I cut through off so they don't show when I offset them.  I then glued the solid colored label halves offset to the top and bottom of the greeting label.  I placed 3D foam tape piece at either end and placed it over the ribbon.