Saturday-10:30am

Instead of Dagan and Leah coming over here on Wednesday Dagan picked me up and I went to their place because Leah wanted to continue baking cookies.  No problem.  I was waiting for Dagan to call me to come down--when he showed up at the door with...wait for it...the bookcase shelves!!  TaDa!!  

I can finally get all the books stacked around on the floor of my bedroom back where they belong--whoohoo!  I will never buy a super cheap bookcase again.  The shelves sagged to the point of being dangerous within a week!  

I will be happily cleaning and reorganizing in the bedroom soon.  :)

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Anyways, right as I was getting on my coat--the fire alarm went off.  Karma HATES the fire alarm so I'm so glad we were still here.  I put her in the stroller, just in case, but with Dagan here to help haul her down the stairs...decided to wait and see if there was a real fire or not with it being so awful cold outside (was right around zero, I think).  We've had the fire alarms go off regularly ever since I moved here and only once was there an actual fire (kids started the papers on the bulletin board in the lobby on fire)--so it's actually a really bad thing because only new residents going flying out the door.  The rest of us don't believe it, move very slowly, and will probably go up in flames if there ever is one.  It's like the boy who cried wolf, you know?

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Dagan went scouting--no smoke.  Then we saw people coming back up to third floor with their dogs.  They shouted over the ear-piercing alarm--a kid pulled it.  The fire department hadn't even arrived yet--so the kid either confessed or was caught in the act.  Karma and I didn't have to go out in the cold and sit in the garage until the fire truck left this time.  Nice!  :)  But we waited until the firetruck came (didn't even have their lights on, so they'd been informed and took their time), shut off the alarm, tested it a couple of times like they do, and finally drove away before we headed out...ears ringing.  So glad it was yet another false alarm.

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The other bigger box finally arrived from Amazon yesterday.  Was scheduled to be here last Saturday.  I'd say the mail is backed up a bit, eh?

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Two more winter scenery stamps! 

Here's all four of them together.  Can you tell Leah and I have fallen in love with winter scenes?  LOL! 

I have wanted to try some of the Inka-Gold metallic rub paste. 

I have already seen online that if they are getting dried out you just fold up a baby wipe and close it inside the jar, so it should be okay. 

Here's my fancy Danish whisk for the sour dough starter (and any other heavy doughs).  I just thought it was the coolest looking thing!  Like a piece of kitchen art!  

And, last but not least, I ordered one of the new ArtBin satchels...

...that has inserts to hold all the tiny bottles that prefer to work better if they are stored upside-down. 

You can remove the trays and stand them up at an angle, too, while you're working on something. 

Put all my Stickles and Liquid Pearls in right away.  Added some small paint bottles in the back, too. 

This is just soooo cool!  I have wanted storage for all these little bottles for a long time, but didn't really like the ones that were available...until I saw this!  Keeps the dust out, too.  ;)  I could actually use another one, believe it or not. Love it!

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Anyways, right now I am working on constructing bookcards and then want to make up some more regular cards, too (am very low).  Have thank yous to write.  Letters have been exchanged over the holidays so I now have quite a few newsy letters to respond to, too.  Nice-nice-nice!!  You know how I love making cards...and paper, pens, and inks--ahhh!

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Sunny and five below in Fargo right now.

Just popped in quick to say hi and Happy Holidays!!  

Smiles and hugs!!
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"How did the rose ever open its heart and give to this world all of its beauty? It felt the encouragement of Light against its being; otherwise we all remain too frightened."

Hafiz