Filling My Days!

When I lasted posted, I told you I was looking for things to keep me busy. Well, before I could get totally bored, I heard from daughter #2. She invited me up to her home this weekend for a small celebration in honor of grand daughter #3 who is graduating summa cum laude with honors distinctions ( wow, that's a mouthful...and in just three years no less ) but who will not be having a ceremony because of the virus. This will be the first time we will see each other since my 8 plus weeks of isolation...and we will be distancing and being safe. It is also the afternoon where we will view grand daughter #2's virtual ceremony as she graduates from FSU. Of course, this is not how we had expected these milestones to be celebrated but, it is what it is and we are just so thankful that everyone in our family has been safe and healthy through these trying times that we are not dwelling on the negative.

In any case, she asked me if I could come up with a banner and some photo props. "No problem" I say as this is right up my alley. Except that I can't get to any stores to buy supplies and I am still out of printer ink so there will not be any printing of things.

And so, I went old school. I pulled out all of my old machines and went to town. Morgan is graduating from Flagler and their colors are crimson and gold. I didn't have the exact colors of card stock but some close enough...at least for the banner. I actually had EXACTLY the right number of crimsons to cut the letters...until...the Cricut machine snagged and mis-cut the M. I was just about to cut some scraps to piece it together when I realized I could cover the big gap with a mortar board...and I even had a gold tassel to make it even cuter! Sometimes ideas are truly born of necessity. No one would ever guess the mess hiding under that mortar board. Lol

I wanted to make the pennants on the banner in the shape of the Flagler logo and thought I should give a nod to the logo as well. Boy do I wish my printer had been working. That lion would have been so much easier if I could have just printed him and cut him out. I ended up drawing him from the image and cutting him out. He's not perfect but I don't think anyone will care.

 I had planned to do just one lion and put him between the two words but, when I saw how long this would end up, I decided to make it two lines and then it was just crying for a lion at each end.

I still have to figure out how I want to string this together so it hangs correctly but, that will be for tomorrow.

Day 2 I started on the props. I was now out of anything resembling crimson and gold so it was on to red and yellow!

Somehow, I ended up wanting to use lots of words. My initial thought was to just use paint pens and write the words but, for whatever reason, that just didn't look special enough for this special occasion and so, out came the Cricut. And, when it became evident that a lot of these letters were going to have to be very small, out came the Xyron machines for the adhesive. Let's just say that the lettering was a job! Some "words" may or may not have been uttered. Even using the Xyrons, there was extra adhesive everywhere but, in the end, I am loving how they turned out and I hope we get lots of really cute pictures because I will definitely be back to share them if we do!

It is now after five and I am tired and ready to call it a day...except that as the days went on, my usual organized self began to just pull things out without putting other things away and I am left with this:

And seriously, that isn't even all of it. I just kind of got on a roll and didn't look back. Oh well...there is still tomorrow. I have to make a few graduation cards as well so, no sense putting all of this away just to take it all out again. For now, I think I will try to just "let it go"! Stay safe and stay tuned.