Posted on 10 Comments

Reasons to be Cheerful

How does this thing *work*?

My Underwood typewriter circa 1905.  It no longer works, but it is the most often photographed (and heaviest!) piece of home decor we own.

Mechanical pencils.

Afternoons that are warm enough to spend on the front steps, eating pretzels and drinking root beer with the boys, after the school bus comes.

The work of my hands

Buttons: making them, hosting challenges with them, selling them to local yarn shops, and just plain running my fingers through them.

Rediscovering skipping.  And jumping rope.

I don't think I will admit...

The occasional evening when it’s ok to have donuts for supper.

Avon’s Honeysuckle perfume – the old stuff, from 1966.

Fancy Schmancy Moo Cards to mount my buttons on.

I think it's the end of the line for the tulips

Tulip petals, which every time I look closely at them, make me think about how I could duplicate the look in clay.

The improvement I see in my photography since I started getting interested in taking pictures.

How about you?  Anything making you particularly happy these days?

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Posted on 10 Comments

10 thoughts on “Reasons to be Cheerful

  1. New blog post: Reasons to be Cheerful http://tinyurl.com/d5dmfz

  2. What camera are you using now? It looks like you stopped using a flash and are shooting at a quicker speed. I am learning, but since I started using a higher shutter speed (close to a “sport mode”) my pictures have looked better. I am a student of the craft and interested in what others have stumbled upon.

    See what dani@little fists has been blogging about: I’m Dragging

    1. I’ve got a Canon PowerShot S3 IS, which I bought used almost a year ago, and really love.

      Yes, I avoid the flash any time I can now, but I haven’t done anything with shutter speed, yet. I still have plenty of experimenting to do 🙂

  3. Little things thrill me each day. Personal, good feedback on Etsy or improved sales in general, in a day to day sort of way.

    The crackly ice in the mornings on the way to the bus. I love that stuff.

    Chasing beads. Running my fingers through them. Probably a lot like your buttons.

    Packing boxes! It’s odd but I am having fun leisurely packing and decluttering instead of madly doing it right before I move.

    Paying cash for things in an effort to stick to my budget. It’s like a diet.

    Trying a new colour combo and item type for a product and having them sell. Yay!

    Watching my kid figure out basic algebra faster (by oh… 2 years?) than I did. Now that was wonderful!

    See what Elaine has been blogging about: The Shop: Etsy Updates

    1. I spent the summer between 8th grade and high school teaching myself algebra with an old text book that my grandfather (who was a high school math teacher) gave me. It was probably the nerdiest summer ever, but I loved it, and as a result I had already learned the first half of freshman algebra by the time I got there.

      Have you noticed that kids are learning things like algebra a lot younger than we did? They seem to introduce these things earlier and earlier. And it’s great that the kids mostly can handle it, too.

      1. Well this was certainly ‘algebra’ lite but it was using symbols to replace numerical values and equations to solve for it.

        I think that the increasing emphasis on number systems and logical problem solving in early school is a *good* thing. Would love if they did this for their health classes instead of berating them with Smoking is Bad. Sex is Bad (Catholic school, the joys). Drugs are bad.

        We had ethics and rational decision making courses in senior high but by then that was a missed opportunity! Distracted teenagers with a frame of reference are nowhere as impressionable as 10yos.

  4. I have such fond memories of Avon’s honeysuckle perfume! I think I had a set of four, but that one was my favorite. Just recently what makes me cheerful is making flowers on my flower looms. That and baking bread from scratch.

    1. My mom had the honeysuckle and lily of the valley, and while I liked them both, I loved the honeysuckle most. Avon re-issued it in 1996, and I bought a bottle, which is almost gone now.

      Mmm, I think some bread-baking is in my future.

  5. Oh my goodness…..those beautiful buttons….and then the stack of donuts….I need to go lie down 😉

    1. LOL! Maybe this post should come with a warning 😉

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