Jill's Sunset Journal

Jill is such a great friend and her journal is STUNNING. All the spreads are serious eye candy; I decided to do something simple because every spread in her journal is over the top gorgeous! It needed something tranquil. Her colors are the colors of the SUNSET. What a joy to work in this color scheme...my favorite colors!!!

Happy Memorial Day...

I had time to work in a RR journal today. Megan's book colors are orange and pink; the other pages are just beautiful!!! It's kind of hard to read the words, but it says, "In the world from which they came their beauty went unmatched."

Two More Fabric Pages

Sweet Barb honored me!!!

I am always so touched by her sweetness! According to Barb I am to pass this award on to five (?) people. So, here I go...

Beth

Jill

Tamara C.

Elizabeth

Carol S.

Ladies...it's well deserved!!!

Fabric RR

Poor Missy...I owed her these fabric pages last month. But between the move, unpacking and getting bronchitis, my fabric Muse just wasn't working for me. I felt terribly about it. She was so sweet about it!.

Her theme was Fairy Babies and her colors were pink and turquoise. I really enjoyed making these pages, I think because I was finally ready to make them. I love the way the came out. What I did notice, though, is that I can't sew a straight line!!! And to think that I make quilts!!! Scary.....

Nothing a little art can't cure!

I want to thank everyone who sent or posted a message to me about my brother and the AIDS epidemic. I really felt a need to remind everyone that AIDS does not discriminate; it will take us just as easily as it did my brother and all our loved ones. Please give to your local AIDS foundation.

I did get inspired yesterday to do some creating. My brother was an amazing artist and musician, and sometimes I just feel him near me and everything just flows. These 2 pages are for Dorothy. Her journal colors are blue and brown and she likes birds, flowers and children. She wanted us to try to write a haiku. Mine is there, but it probably should have been placed on the other page. The pages do go side by side; however, I think I missed the boat on this one. Live and learn...

In Loving Memory

Three years ago today, my brother Larry passed away after an 18 year battle with AIDS. The pain of losing a loved one to this devastating disease is painful beyond belief. But actually watching someone you love waste away from this disease is a pain that is too difficult to put into words. It isn't a quick death; it is a long drawn out death that kills little by little as vital organs in the body stop functioning.



Right before Larry died, he asked me to do him a huge favor. He asked that I do everything that I can to educate people about HIV/AIDS and help find a cure for this disease. So much of our research dollars go to Heart Disease and Cancer research (and rightly deserved). However, here are some heart wrenching HIV/AIDS statistics:



The correct provisional global estimates for 2007 are:


Number of children living with HIV in 2007: 2.1 million [1.9-2.4 million];
Number of children who died of AIDS in 2007: 290,000 [270 000-320 000].



Number of people living with HIV/AIDS in 2006
Total: 39.5 million
Adults: 37.2 million
Women: 17.7 million
Children under 15: 2.3 million


Misc. facts and figures:


Number of AIDS Deaths in 2006: 2.9 million. (2.6 million adults and 380,000 children under 15)
Number of Orphaned Children by AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa at the End of 2003: 12 million


By December 2003 women accounted for nearly 50 percent of all people living with HIV worldwide, and for 57 percent in Sub-Saharan Africa.



Young people (15-24 years old) account for half of all new HIV infections worldwide; more than 6000 become infected with HIV every day.



An estimated 5 million people in low income countries do not have the AIDS drugs which could save their lives.



There you have it, and it is sobering. I have many friends who have siblings that have passed from this disease. There are people in our ART groups who have family and friends that have passed from this.



So today, on the anniversary of Larry's death, I am asking you to please open up your hearts and give a donation to San Francisco AIDS Foundation http://www.sfaf.org/donate or to amFAR http://www.amfar.org/cgi-bin/iowa/index.html

It can be a $5 dollar donation if that's all you can do. But please...give. And feel free to give the link to my blog to your family and friends. The message needs to get out.


Rest in peace, dear brother. I miss you...

Just You and Me...

I finished the flip side of Abby's Alphabetica tip-in page. This is on the back side of Isn't Life Strange? that was posted a few days ago. It was kind of tough coming up with a song that began with J. I chose Just You and Me by Chicago.

Isn't Life Strange???

This piece is for Abby in my Alphabetica group. I have to do her letters "I" and "J". Abby's theme is music of any genre. So, I did Isn'tLife Strange by the Moody Blues.

Finally...pictures of the new home!

I'll admit, I should have done this a while back, but I was just too busy! So after much prodding and poking, I went outside this morning with my camera and took some pictures. Here is the front of the house...

This is the view from my backyard deck. I live in a rural area of CT, but then again, CT is very rural outside of it's cities. I have my very own woods complete with wild turkey, opossum, owls, field mice and a crap load of deer. Unfortunately, with the deer come the ticks and Lyme disease. Can NEVER be too careful out there!

My squirrel resistant bird feeder and it really does work! I get goldfinch, cardinals, chickadees, robins and a whole bunch of others that I haven't identified yet.
Tah-dah!!! My illustrious studio! My own little corner of Nirvana. It ain't much but it's better than what I used to have...a place in the garage! I'm moving up in the world! (Actually moving down in the world since this is in my basement!)
And this is sandee organized! Take a really good look at it because it probably won't look this way in a week!
The studio is larger than this but the other half isn't finished yet and the lighting there is very poor, or more realistically speaking, there isn't any lighting! Soon...........

Gothic Arch Tip-in

I'm in a Gothic Arch tip-in in one of my yahoo groups. These arches are for Cindy; her theme is RED and ? and Artist's Choice. How fun is that!!! These are the 1st 2 pages to come out of my new STUDIO!!!!! OK...so the studio is in the basement and doesn't have a window, but it's a real studio and it's MY SPACE!!! No reason for the sons or husband to go in there. Finally, a place to call my very own.

For Sweet Peggy

I had so much fun working in peggy's RR journal. Her journal began as a photo album with preprinted flowers and photo cut outs. It was a challenge to see what would work. I really liked the way the pages turned out; I hope she likes them too!!!