Da NaNa NaNaNa, Ya Say It's Ya Birthdayyyy!

... well it's MY birthday too, yeah!

I'm trying to get this typed and posted before midnight so it get's timestamped while it's still actually my birthday, but my hand is swelling up & hurting so we'll see ... (dogbite - not fun) ... Anyway!

I participated in a couple swaps at Swap-Bot recently and wanted to show the results; one was a Gemini Birthday swap which yessss even though my partners ALL sent my packages early, I did wait until today to open them. I have Extreme Willpower! Here they are, in no particular order:

PACKAGES AWAITING ME!
(note: Apr 2014 - in going thru all the posts trying to update old broken image links - I have been unable to find copies of the pics for these swaps! Bummer ...)


All were excellent, thoughtful, well put-together packages and my swap partners really took care to read my profile and sent things perfectly suited to me - I loved EVERYTHING! So big thanks to them for making today a super special day :) I'll be trying to make the rating rounds tomorrow, at least before the weekend's over ...

Next stop: ATC MEGA SWAP! It's a week past the mailing deadline and I ended up with 18 out of 20 cards ... though at least one person sent 2 cards, so we'll see if those missing ones show up later. But for now ...

I REALLY WAITED TO OPEN THEM ALL TOGETHER -

And here they are, at last! Really nice looking set of cards altogether, don't you think? I stacked the envelopes largest to smallest, then opened them and layed them out in that order - kinda funny how batches of similar hues/colors ended up together.


Fun swap, I'd totally do that one again sometime. And finally - a completely unexpected surprise from my family - as usual I requested "no gift" and as usual they ignored me ... I hope I didn't ruin their excitement or fun in giving it, beacause I REALLY DO LOVE IT! but I realllly didn't want them $pending the money on me like that. But they did and there ya go. So anyway, here it is:

** again - had to dig thru my pic files to replace the originals and this was the earliest one I could find -

it didn't actually come with the stickers on it, that's just something I did later **

I KNOW, RIGHT!? It's great, I've casually mentioned wishing I had a sewing machine now and then (gee, they really DO listen, whatta ya know?) but I certainly didn't expect one. It's not the biggest fanciest thing ever but it looks pretty darn cool to me! I can't wait to get started using it, but since I'm a total sewing novice it's gonna take some time before I'm posting any of the "Makings from the Machine", I'm sure. I can also pretty much guarantee a cutback in paperart stuff as soon as I learn how to work it, since I tend to get completely 1track for a time when it comes to new arenas / projects / etc ...

Bedtime now - I'm so tired and my hand hurts real bad. But otherwise it was a super duper birthday (even without cake or the song) and hopefully thats a sign for how this "new year" is gonna go ... which is what I'm doing right now! Going!

~ gem ~