Economic Stimulus?

Oh Mr. Obama! I'm so in awe of your economic plan for the U.S. While you are putting all these billions and trillions of dollars into economic stimulus packages for the execs so they can fly around in their jets, you are also thinking of the little people and giving us a stimulus package so that we will go out and spend lots of money to support these tycoons. But wait a minute... what is our plan? We get a tax relief package in our paychecks. I think I'll go out and buy a new car with my stimulus package. Let's see, do you think that $21.46 will be a good down payment? But this isn't the end of it... We get to pay it back at the end of the year! His stimulus package for all Americans is that they take less taxes out of our paychecks today, but we have to pay it back on April 15th 2010. WHAT A DEAL!

Petunia sprouts

Finally they look like little plants! It must be froggy's influence. There is also one little scabiosa sprout in my experimental section (not pictured).

No snow today but it was really cold this morning. Had to be out today quite a bit and thought my fingers were going to crack right off! But it's beautiful and sunny this afternoon.

Walter's Bedtime

Poor Walter. When we were living in Lake Stevens and both working all day, I felt guilt about locking him up at night after being penned all day, and we started letting him sleep with us. We had to put a stop to that in Snohomish when he started having accidents at night. After a couple times of getting up at night to change the bed and wash the mattress we figured it was time for him to hit the floor. So he had a bed on the floor beside Dave. No, Dave wasn't on the floor, just Walter. He would beg and plead for us to take him to bed with us and it was so hard to say no, but we just had to. Then we found out that he was sneaking out at night to do nasties, so we had to graduate to a pen again.

So now we have this ritual. Before bed Dave takes him out potty and then babies him all the way back in, cuddling him and talking to him, but when they hit the bedroom door it starts in. He turns in to Mr. Grumpy. He growls and bites at Dave's hands. Then he sits him down on the floor and it continues. He will sit there for the longest time growling and barking. Then eventually he will make his way to the pen, still growing.

He gets in still grumbling and growling and will do that for several minutes before settling down.

Sometimes he will break the routine, and Dave will sit him down and he will literally run for the bed, but once in there he barks and growls for about 5 minutes before going to sleep. But then come morning, we can hardly get him out of the bed. Dave will bring the bed out with him and open the door, then get coffee and sit down at the computer, and maybe he will come out on his own, but quite often he has to be persuaded out.

Oh yes, and we continue to have daily snow storms. It's so wierd. Sunday it was snowing the biggest flakes you've ever seen. They accumulated quite suddenly and we even had a thunder storm at the same time. Then in the afternoon the sun came out and you would have thought it was spring again. Then today, the same thing. The flakes weren't quite as big as yesterday, but in my daily update from the mayor he said that the hills were quite slippery and they had snow plows out. Then in the afternoon we had a brief spell of beautiful sunshine again, and then back to the snow.

I worked for about 3 hours this morning coming up with this card. It was a 2Peas color challenge and the inspiration was a picture of lilacs. I didn't have a lilac stamp so I used a small stamp and made my own. But then I didn't like it, so decided to us a vellum overlay to mute it. I like the way it turned out. While I was sitting at my scraptable making little lilacs I was looking out on this -

Yet another freaky snow storm.

Card Challenge for 2Peas in a Bucket

For those who aren't familiar, 2Peas is the largest and most popular paper crafting website. They have forums and galleries where you can post artwork, classes and all kinds of stuff. It's been around for a long time, and while it has changed ownership it is still a good place to go for inspiration. I've been a member since I started scrapping in '03. The General Stamping board is having a challenge event called Winterfest 09. I've never taken part in any of the contests before, but decided to jump in to this one. There are so many incredibly talented people on that board though that sometimes I feel a little overwhelmed. But it is wonderful for inspiration. This card was for two challenges. One was a sketch; a basic design that you use to create a different card. and the other was to stamp on a chipboard accent for a card. I love flourishes and this is almost flourish overload, but I like it anyway. The paper is some that I bought at Stupid Prices last week. Got a killer deal. There were 300 sheets of good quality papers with three of each pattern. They are all kind of winter colors and lots of flourishes and pretty patterns.

Speaking of Stupid Prices and killer deals... we went today and I got an OTT Lite for $17! I'll tell you I snatched that baby up! I made them take it out of the package and plug it in first, and it works perfectly. I have another smaller OTT Lite and the retail price on it was $70. I used a 40% Michaels coupon, so I didn't have to pay that. If you've never used an OTT lite, they are like the difference between antenae tv and HDTV. The lighting is perfect and there is no color distortion like regular flourescent lighting.

Aerogarden Experiment

I took my little aster and scabiosa plants out of the aerogarden and planted in peat pots. When I went to buy the potting soil I also bought some Orchid Moss to use for my experiment... I'll talk about that later. But while I was reading on the Orchid Moss package it said that you can use orchid moss on tiny little starts when transplanting. So I took the little pods out of the aerogarden, wrapped them in orchid moss (that had been well soaked) and then packed Miracle Grow potting soil around them. They've been in there for a couple of days and doing well. Scabiosa

Asters

The Aerogarden Seed starter kit is resusable, however they want you to pay $19.99 to buy 45 more little pods to put in them. This kind of took the wind out of my sails for resusing, as it would take two packages to fill the tray even once. But then I thought about using moss as a plug in the bottom and building my own little starter pods.

So, that is what led me to the Orchid Moss. My first inclination was peat moss but I couldn't find a small enough package and then started reading about the Orchid Moss. I stuffed it into the hole (which is open ended) dry hoping that when it absorbs the water that it will expand and plug the hole sufficiently to hold the soil. The hole is just about as big around as my index finger so it made it easy to stuff. Then I added Ferry Morse Organic Seed Starter mix. I have used other seed starter mixes before and it didn't seem to absorb the water well, but this seems to be just fine. I planted the rest of the Asters and Scabiosa. Since I know how long it took to sprout before, I have a good reference point for the experiment. Even if it takes a couple days longer, it sure will beat spending $40 to start seeds.

You can also see my little petunia starts to the right. They are growing ever so slowly.

I hope to be doing some card making this weekend for the 2Peas Winterfest 2009 stamping challenge, so will be posting some cards later.