Do you remember Cloud Grazer? When I first shared him with you I called him Steam Punk Inspired. I stress the word “inspired” because I felt that I had fallen short of the whole “Steam Punk” look, and I was a bit embarrassed by that.

Thanks to the folks over at Regretsy I now realize that I had nothing to be embarrassed about.  Oh, but someone else does. Feast your eyes on this “Television Tube and Cheeze Whiz Jar Lid Necklace Steam Punk Recycled” that someone is trying to sell for $40.00. If I missed Steam Punk by a mile, then this little beauty is from the next galaxy!

I know it isn’t nice to poke fun at other people’s art and I firmly believe that art, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. I was going to keep quiet about the tube on the garbage Cheez Whiz lid, really I was. But when they called it Steam Punk, I just couldn’t contain myself.

I’ll send myself to my room now and I’ll try real hard to think of something positive and nice for my next post.

Ah, the cycles of life. Every year at this time the clementines begin to fall off the tree, the birds start singing and building nests, Abbey starts to redecorate the front walkway with feathers, and American Idol returns to the big screen in my family room. And just like a migrating bird returning to its favorite perch, I return to take up my position next to Recliner Man to watch AI three nights a week.

It’s been a bit rough for me, so far. Overall they advanced a very weak pool of guys to the top 20, maybe leaving some better ones in Hollywood week. And while the ladies are a strong group with some very interesting performers, they aren’t all up to snuff. Some of the performances have left me feeling like we were still in the audition rounds, where they delight in showing us the disasters.

This week it was easy to pick which guys were on the way out but the girls gave me a little shake up. I thought Michell did well with a bad song choice, and would buy another week. I really thought DiDi would be leaving with Haeley. Poor, Haeley. She is so sweet and even with her clunker singing, she was fun to watch. My heart was breaking for her with every butchered note and stifled tear, during her farewell performance. Another one that tugs at my hear strings is Katie Stevens. She has a beautiful voice and good control, but she is such an old soul. They keep telling her to young it up (while telling everyone they need to stay true to who they are) but I don’t think she has it in her to do that.

What are your thoughts on Ellen DeGeneres as a judge? I am enjoying her presence on the panel more than I ever enjoyed Paula. It doesn’t hurt that I came into this as an Ellen fan. I think it is nice to have an injection of humor when things get a bit gloomy and I like that she judges from a place that is closer to the rest of us in front of the televisions.

I can’t wrap this up without mentioning Danny Gokey. I was a big fan during his time on the show. I enjoyed his performance last night, but wasn’t a huge fan of the song. But, what I really want to comment on is the non-stop talking that followed. I didn’t remember him as being such a high speed chatter box. Seriously, I was starting to wonder if he was ever going to put a sock in it.

Your thoughts?

A couple of rough rides this week, but nothing earth shaking. My car decided to start having an acceleration problem so we took it into the shop. After trying to tell me someone had done some bad work under the hood (gee, they were the last ones under there) then shifting to telling me that the problem was bad because I’d driven so long since it started (Hello, we brought it in at the first sign of trouble), they came up with a long work list under the hood and a new catalytic converter under the car. Oh, and a big chunk of money out of my savings account. I think I am still paying for my snarky comments about Recliner Man’s old ride. Those car gods are brutal.

Do you like the picture? Abbey has decided that the big orange thing in the garage belongs to her. She demands to go out and check on it at least once a day. Recliner Man isn’t all that excited about paw prints and cat claws on his new baby but he has a super soft spot for Abbey so she is getting away with it. I find it all quite amusing.

Last night my primary email account got hacked. Everyone in my contact list was sent an email about some new phone I supposedly bought. Today I’m changing passwords on just about every account I hold online. I’m hoping it was all an automated attack and they didn’t collect any information from the emails I had saved. I had a few receipts in there, from recent purchases and new account/password notifications from various places. To be safe, I’ll be going though all of them and making changes. I’m also going to stop using my email account as a storage place for important information.

Other than those two bumps in the road, this has been a good week. The weather has been beautiful, my thumbs are getting better, I had a lunch date with my son, and I’ve been doing a bit of crafting. All in all, a good week. I hope your week was good, and if not, I hope next week will be better.

I’m making an effort to retrain myself to post frequently. This is made more difficult by the fact that I really haven’t done anything since my last post but I am determined to give it a good try.

This is a photo of one of my new toys. It is a Lux Rotary clock from the 1930’s. This one runs really well when you place it on its side but gets a bit cranky when set upright. I plan to spend some time tinkering with it once my thumbs are back in action.

I’m not calling this clock a toy, this one is a real treasure to me. It is exactly like the first one I owned back when I was about 9 years old. I loved that clock but after one too many falls from the nightstand it found it’s way into the trash. I’d never seen another one like it. Last month I happened across one for sale on Etsy and just had to have it. I have lots and lots of clocks, and I’ve always understood the roots of my attraction to them. However, it wasn’t until I added this beauty to the collection that it all felt right. I don’t expect any of you to make sense of that, particularly since I don’t, but just know that I am feeling very happy and content right now.

A funny side note to these two wind up alarm clocks was Recliner Man’s shock that they needed to be rewound each night.  I know he is just as old as I am, and that all the wind up alarms of our youth had 24 – 36 hour springs in them. How quickly we can forget the ordinary when something better comes along to replace it.

This has been a slow moving blog for quite a while. I don’t know if that has bothered you, but it has been bothering me, a lot. One of my problems with blogging is that I had developed something of an identity crisis with this blog. When I started blogging I planned for it to be mostly about paper crafts and a little bit about me. As time passed I was doing less and less crafting and the blog was becoming more about me and my other interests. I felt a little guilty about the waywardness of it all but real life reality was leaving me a bit low on craft related things to write about. Then I broke my thumbs and had an excuse for less posts and time to contemplate my plans for the blog.  I contemplated and contemplated and then realized that I was using the broken thumbs as a crutch to avoid making a decision.

I gave myself a little talking to yesterday and finally came to a decision. This blog is going to stay what it was naturally evolving into. It’s about me and my life. Crafts will always be part of my life, but so will taking photos of my cat and baking pound cakes. If you hang around you will be getting all of that.

One of the things that helped me make the decision was taking a good hard look at who my readers are. There aren’t a lot of you so it was pretty easy to place you into categories. Most of you are family and friends, there are two lurkers who don’t want to be friends, and  a few are random people who stumble in to see one post about Kitchen Bouquet or Paper Kimono folding. Knowing that most of you fall into the friend category made it a lot easier to decide that this was a place to share of myself, and not just of one interest. While thinking about this I also realized that the blogs I most enjoy reading are the ones where I have found new friends and can keep up with their day to day adventures.  Thank you, friends, for joining me here and for sharing yourselves on your own blogs.

So what does all this have to do with today’s photo? Not a whole lot, other than it is one of the many things I’ve been doing lately. Before I figured out how to craft with broken thumbs I figured out how to mouse with broken thumbs. I’m a computer addict and I think if I lost all four limbs you could still find me here at the desk, moving the mouse around with my nose. LOL Anyhoo, I’ve spent quite a bit of time on eBay and Etsy, tracking down childhood memories, in the last 2 months. This lamp is my latest find.

When Recliner Man was a boy a lamp just like this sat on his bedside table. He loved the images of the deer and this lamp became one of the few items from his youth to survive as a treasured memory. Most of the things he remembered where handed down to younger children in the family, and they either destroyed them or claimed them as their own in later years. He isn’t sure what the fate of this lamp was, just that he hadn’t seen it in years.

It took a while for me to find it since his memory was of the deer, more than anything. This particular lamp is most often associated with its fire and the grizzly bear that appears on the other side from the deer. I did a lot of searching before I found the deer images. Then there was the issue of the price. These old beauties can go for a pretty penny and Recliner Man was feeling a bit let down when I told him that. He wasn’t quite ready to assign much value to holding a memory. Lucky for him, he is married to a gal with broken thumbs, a new obsession with finding deals on eBay, and a strong belief in the value of childhood memories. (So many little boxes have been arriving in the mail that he has taken to calling it EvilBay, but we will discuss that another time.) I’ve gotten pretty good at swooping in at the last second and scoring items for a low price, so I set my sights on the lamp as a surprise for him. As luck would have it I save a bundle and the lamp arrive just in time to be the perfect Birthday gift for him, yesterday. The smile on his face tells me that it was worth every penny.

I think I only saw one Motion Lamp in my childhood but it was enough to leave a lasting impression. My grandmother had one with images of the Niagara Falls and I was mesmerized by how real the rushing water looked. Watching this one in action makes me realize how easily we were amazed by low tech special effects back them! For anyone who isn’t familiar with them: These lamps have a 2 layer outer shade with the image you see being lined by a layer with alternating opaque and transparent designs on it. Inside of this is an assembly consisting of a light bulb and another opaque/transparent shade that balances on a point above the bulb. This inner shade spins as the bulb heats up and casts flickering shadows, via the 2 layers of opaque/transparent designs, onto the outer shade. These shadows give the illusion of movement in the fire and water. I don’t know how well I described it so check out this link to a video on You Tube.

I saw the hand doc again today. He says it will take another 6 to 9 weeks to heal.  Guess I won’t be parting ways with the splints any time soon. Today’s x-rays were much clearer. I could see the tip of the left bone was broken into 3 pieces. The tip of the right bone was so shattered that I didn’t even try to count all the pieces. Doc still thinks the bone will regrow and hold it all together so I should be just fine in time. Lots of time.

I did a little playing to come up with today’s image. Not a great work of art, to be sure, but not half bad when you take the splinted thumbs into consideration. It is kind of hard to tell, but I started out with an image of a thumb. Not mine, as I wanted to spare you the icky black nails and bruises. Even the doctor commented on how ugly they are.