Lobster Shorts card making, crafting, Food, The Great Outdoors, vegetarian, weight loss

Cards, Kayaking, and Indulgences

It was a long weekend here in Ontario. I spent the first day making cards and catching up on some chores. I’ll post a video of the cards I made and the supplies I used to make them with, below. Some of them were really cute and I loved the new dies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iodSizHJqnw

I saw the snake again this weekend. It’s much slimmer now, it’s either digested a giant meal, or has laid some eggs. It’s much more mellow away from it’s beloved garden hose (I mentioned in a previous post it was lunging at my spouse when he was trying to turn the garden hose on. We think it might have had a crush on the garden hose!). I was pretty close to it when I was doing some weeding, and it didn’t seem to mind too much. It was also between me and the door this morning and I had to step over it to get into the house. It didn’t seem to mind that too much either. I’m happy to see it’s in much better spirits these days. We had always got along in previous years.

We had wanted to go on a kayaking adventure out of town, but with potential thunderstorms looming, we decided to play it safe and stay on the local river. I brought my camera with the underwater case and took a looong video of the underwater view. It’s pretty murky as the day was gloomy for most of it, but I think it looks pretty cool. I’ll post that video below. I was looking for the really pretty rainbow darter fish, but they were mostly gone (I didn’t get them on the video). The Canada geese were also a lot more relaxed, including the ones with babies. They are terrifying and will come for you if you come too close. The local creatures seem much more friendly lately.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndAGkxPXFZs&t=12s

I indulged a lot this weekend. A LOT!

I had my regular big Sunday breakfast of a croissant and eggs with coffee and fruit. Monday, I had an omelet (pictured above). I had CRAVINGS this weekend. I wanted strawberry ice cream and cookies. And I had them, a lot of them. I have completely come off track lately. I haven’t worked out, or gotten that much exercise and my diet has been horrible the past week. I keep falling off the wagon and feeling discouraged with myself.

Time to pick myself up by the boot straps (what does that even mean??) and start again.

Lobster Shorts card making, crafting, Food, The Great Outdoors

This Week’s Cards, Sunday Breakfast, and Lawn Snake Update

This is such an easy breakfast to make, if you buy the croissants already made, which I did. I must admit I over baked them a tad this time. I am one of those people that if I drink too much coffee I get a headache, jittery, and my face feels weird. Too much coffee for me is two cups (unless it’s a latte. I can drink a plain coffee and a latte in the same day and not react). I rarely finish a cup of coffee. Most people I know get a reaction if they don’t drink any coffee. I have no reaction to skipping coffee in a day. We are all unique little snowflakes.

One of the snakes on the lawn is either about to expand the family, or had a giant meal. It still looks like this a day later. I don’t know much about snakes to be able to tell. It also has a favourite spot. If I want to check in on it, it’s usually in the same spot. Maybe it’s too full to move?

I made cards this weekend. I really love the paw print background with black cards stock on the kraft card base. It’s cute enough for a plain note card itself and I love these little dog cut outs too. They had more pieces like eye pupils, a tongue, and a couple more ear pieces and toe pads, but they were so small and finicky, I didn’t use them. They are cute without them.

I used a living room cutting die set that was fun to use with patterned paper. I still need to put a sentiment on it, but I’m not sure what sentiment I would want to use with this card. There’s always “Hello” which typically works on anything, which I used on the plant trellis card. The trellis card is on the plain side so I it’s not yet finished. The Father’s Day card is minimal, and I like it that way. It’s another set that would work with patterened paper.

I made these cards and more with a new coordinating envelope and die set. I made a couple more envelopes to use with letters to friends and family. They aren’t quite long enough to fit a standard letter into. I hope one day they make one that size. I have been looking for one. The rose paper on the top card gave me a cottage core vibe, which I have been into lately. I will get a lot of use out of this die. I love matching the envelopes and cards together. I’ll post a link of a video of mine where you can get the supplies I used to make the cards.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PBL6KjA8YU&ab_channel=LobsterShorts
Lobster Shorts card making, crafting, Food, vegetarian

Breakfast and Cards

This morning I laid in bed for about an hour after I woke up. Normally I get up right away, it was nice to be dozy and stay there for awhile. Breakfast was quick and easy. I heated store bought croissants in the oven while I scrambled eggs and made coffee. I sliced some bananas and served it with blueberries and a slice of cheese. It was delightful.

I’ve had a sweet tooth this weekend (of course I did). Saturday my spouse and I like to go for a walk around town and get a latte and egg and cheese sandwich from the Stonetown Cafe. We did that, but instead of a sandwich I got oatmeal cookies and a latte. She makes a delicious oatmeal cookie there.

I made more cards this weekend. I loved the size of the dies for these beverage cards. I’ve noticed they’ve started to make larger sized dies and I love them. I do prefer they fit on the note card sized cards, as that’s my preferred size to make. These did fit, it took up the majority of the cards surface, but they fit. They fit even better on a slimline card, which I rarely make, but they look best on that size. I loved how these cards turned out. My umbrella is placed too high, but I still like this card and love the die set.

The card on the left was a clothing die set. It had other accessories like a tie and suspenders and i made it into a Fathers Day card. I loved the dinosaur die set too. It came with a top hat, which is what convinced me to get it. Too cute! The little spines near the tail were a pain the butt to glue down, they were so little, but the rest came together easily.

I made these cards as well. The castle card had congrats on it because I’m giving to someone who just got a new home. The die set of that one is really big and needed 12″ x 12″ paper to cute the folding base out. I store dies in a binder, this one is going to pop out the top, but it’s worth it. I loved the die set. It cut out really well. Even the small holes popped out super well. Normally with small finicky dies you have to run it through the machine a million times and tear the pieces off a little bit. Not this set. It came right out. I was really impressed with it. I’ll post a video of the supplies I used, below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDuT6AVAwTY&ab_channel=LobsterShorts
Lobster Shorts card making, crafting, decluttering, Food, vegetarian

Oatmeal, Cards, and Decluttering

Ontario has interesting weather this time of year. Yesterday, I was in a Winter coat, and today it was over 20 and I was kayaking. The weekend started with coffee and a bagel at the Stone Town Café in St Marys. We sat by the river in the sunshine and watched a muskrat swim around in the river, while we had our breakfast.

I felt like decluttering more of the bathroom today and tackled my hoard of a medicine cabinet. It was so overfull, that things would fall out when I would take something out. Half the bottles were empty, or expired.

This is everything I removed. The allergy medication had expired in 2018! It’s good to check on these things. Most of these containers are empty and going into the recycling bin, but the little Rubbermaid container and the glass jar I’m going to wash out and reuse. The Rubbermaid container had corn starch that I was experimenting with using as a dry shampoo. It worked okay, but not as good as the spray on type. The glass jar is going to end up in my crafting room.

I used these masks with my spouse after I finished cleaning out the cabinet. I bought them because people make them look fun online. We watched a TV show while we had them on (Gravity Falls, cute show!). They were really moisturizing, but I’m not a mask person.

It’s still pretty full in there. A lot of these bottles are sample sizes from Ipsy, that I won’t be buying again when they’re empty, same with the brands that use animal testing It’s a lot more functional now and things don’t fall on top of me when I pull something out. Overall, I’m much happier with it.

Sunday breakfast was a bowl of oatmeal with peaches, maples syrup, and pumpkin seeds. I used steel cut oats and they took a lot longer to cook. I like the rolled better, but these keep me full longer. I’m not sure which one is going to win, convenience, or the steel cut.

I made Mother’s Day cards with a new cutting die set. I love these teapot shaped cards. Too cute! They come with a word set that says Tea Party. I LOVE tea parties. I’ll use them again for invitations when we are able to have gatherings again.

I made the one on the left with an embossing folder and used gilding wax to make the pattern stand out. The love birds card is cute, but my love birds look terrified. I need more practice colouring pupils.

The card on the left is my favourite. The one on the right is a little plain, but I love the spa girl cutting die set. I’ll have to play with it more.

This bookworm die set is super adorable. I love it! I’ll post a video with a link to all the supplies I used below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8gOLQEDzcE&ab_channel=LobsterShorts
Lobster Shorts crafting, Food, sewing, vegetarian

Coffee and Cloaks

It’s a beautiful Sunday so far. The weather called for rain and clouds and it’s been warm and sunny – a beautiful day. I started my day with coffee and puttering around cleaning the kitchen.

My spouse woke up just as I finished cooking breakfast. It was the usual scrambles eggs, home fries in the air fryer, and today a side of sauerkraut. I bought the sauerkraut in this photo from the grocery store, but currently, I’m almost finished fermenting my own (I’ll post about that later this week).

As for the cloak, it’s cute and whimsical, but I felt silly wearing it out. In fact I carried it until I found a quiet spot by the river where my spouse could take some photos. He was weird about it too.

I’m more “free willed” than my spouse, he is my gage for what is socially acceptable. This cloak seems to have crossed the line. I know you’re not supposed to care, but I felt uncomfortable.

Being a warm day, I wasn’t able to judge how good this cloak would be at keeping me warm. It was getting hot wearing it to snap some photos.

It would definitely be more appropriate for cooler weather. I don’t think it would last in long in a Canadian winter against the temperatures. In the above photo I’m holding in closed, but it still stays open around the neck and chest. I used a tie closure made from the cloak fabric. I’m sure a different closure would help with that immensely.

I lined it with taupe coloured satin. I’ve been told satin is really hard to work with, and they are correct. The middle seam of the lining bunched during the sewing process and therefore ended up being short. I should have ripped the seams out and resewed it, but I didn’t, which in turn ended up messing up the drape at the bottom of the cloak.

If I want to fix the problem I would have to either rip out the entire lining and make it again, make the cloak shorter, or add some extra fabric to the lining which would make some strange lines on the inside. You wouldn’t see the inside lining, so that could be done. I’d still have to rip out a lot of the work I did. The cloak is pretty long, it wouldn’t probably be okay to make it a little shorter.

I’m going to leave it the way it is for now. I’m never going to wear the hood up. I like the way it looks down much more. It looked funny on, but the cloak would look incomplete without it. I do like the cloak, but not to wear it casually around. I will wear the crap out of it every Halloween season though.

I can’t wait!

Lobster Shorts card making, crafting, Food, sewing

Sunday Breakfast, Cloak Update, and Cards

This week’s Sunday breakfast, I made scrambled eggs, homemade scones (recipe here), and homemade clotted cream, in the Instant Pot (recipe here). I’ve made clotted cream in the oven before, but I’ll always be making in the Instant Pot now. It was super easy and turned out exactly the same.

I love clotted cream, but I haven’t seen it around since the pandemic started. In a province full of dairy farmer’s you wouldn’t think it would be hard to get, but we import it from England. It’s super easy to make, I’ll make my own from now on.

I found fabric for the cloak at FabricLand. Just my luck they were having a huge sale! It was still over $70.00 with the thread, cloak fabric, and lining. I am going to cut the tissue paper pattern out, possibly the fabric today. I’ll start sewing it during the week.

It’s been so sunny and beautiful lately. It’s still cold, but being outside is wonderful with all this extra sunshine. I’ve been loving Winter walks.

I made more cards this weekend. These two were my favourite. I’ll post a video of the rest and the supplies I used to make them, below.