Angelicscalliwags Rag #04

I’m late, I’m late, I’m very very late….! Darn it, this post was meant to be posted on Monday! Only problem was, I hadn’t finished writing it. So, here it is, three days late.

This week has been all about my master’s essay. It’s due in on Wednesday and I’ve been trying to figure out what synthesising is. Apparently we have to synthesise two or more pieces of research in order to come up with an original thought. It’s a sort of weird thing to have to do with what is essentially a review of one piece of research. It’s only worth 12.5% of my final grade and I think I’ve done enough to pass, but honestly, I’m not sure I’ve synthesised anything and I’m pretty certain I’ve not thought any original thought.

Birthday Celebrations

It was my lovely mum’s 80th birthday over the weekend. We threw a happy 21st birthday party for her! 

She had waffles for the very first time and lots of lovely presents to open:

My Son…the Odd Job Man 😊

Thomas popped over to do some work for us – painting the outside windows. Isn’t the lighting gorgeous in this photo?

Gary’s Grass Conference

Gary’s away at a grass convention this week. Yes, you heard that right. Grass. There is nothing Gary likes more than grass, except maybe his wife and family. Aside from us, grass really rocks his world, and whilst I literally can’t think of anything less interesting, apart from actually watching the stuff growing, Gary can not wait!

I have many plans to keep myself as busy as possible whilst he’s away. He left Saturday, so I reorganised my office from top to bottom, adding labels to everything and showcasing some of my stickers at the same time:

I spend hours in this tiny room everyday and for it have any chance of being fully utilisable I need to make sure everything is organised and every spare inch is used. I’m loving the labels!

It was so much fun!

Small Art Business

Yesterday, I set myself a challenge to see how many items I could make in 12 hours for my Etsy shop. I focused on replenishing stocks of my greeting cards, ensuring I have ten or more of each card. I also wanted to make a start on creating stickers from elements of each of my paintings. This was fun and frustrating in equal parts. I’m not completely familiar with my Silhouette yet so each time I venture forth, it’s not a given I’m gonna get it right! So how did I do?

I ended up making over 200 items. I recorded the whole day and will post the video at the end of this post. I also took a photo of the stickers en mass:

Didn’t I do well?! I also printed and made up over 50 greeting cards. Yay me!

Anyway, I made a video of it, if you’d like to take a look:

The Stewart Initiation

Ollie, a member of our old youth group, and close friends with Lillie, Charlotte and Ads, was round here last Saturday. A new youth leader has been appointed and it happens to be someone Lillie was on her discipleship year with. Anyway, to welcome him to the area, the guys had a video night with a few friends. Ollie happened to make the comment that Ben (the new youth leader) was being initiated into the Stewart fold (we are the Stewarts, for those of you who don’t know!). Then he went on to say it was a bit like an Oxford blindfolded initiation, except here you’re blindfolded and told how much you are loved. How lovely is that? It made my week 🧡

Books

I’ve (almost) read a couple of books this week (or should that be last week?). The first was ‘From Mopping Floors to Making Millions on Instagram’ by Ronnie Brown #ad and the second I’ve not quite finished, so will discuss next week. I enjoyed the first book, which is a sort of rags to riches tale, and chockablock full of really sensible wise advice. 

That’s it for this week. Have a wonderful week!