I Really Need To Stop Playing!

I think I'm losing it!

You see I can't seem to stop playing these Facebook.com games. Last time it was with my Linda avatar on YoVille, and my "Peaches" dog on Super Poke Pets. This time it's Farm Town. What is wrong with me?

Pictured above is what my Farm Town currently looks like. I've been adding trees and animals sent by my friends and then harvesting the crops so I can buy things for my farm.

CLICK HERE or click on the picture above to see what I've managed to do so far.

I really need to stop doing all this and get back to work. It's just that I LOVE shopping and buying things for my YoVille avatar, my "Peaches" Super Poke Pet, and My Farm. Maybe there just isn't any hope for me!

Come join me on Facebook.com and see what I'm talking about.

Have Fun At The Beach - Peaches Habitat!

You're probably going to think that I'm loosing my mind. Either that or I'm just having too much fun with some of the Facebook applications.

Shown above is my "Peaches" doggie avatar on Facebook's SuperPoke Pets. She not only loves the beach, but is quite the spender as you can see from everything she's added to her beach scene.

She wants to buy more, but, personally, I think she's done with spending for awhile. She should concentrate on playing with her friends and giving to others. What do you think?

Have fun at the beach!

Isn't She Adorable?

If you've been a reader of my Linda's Blog for a while now you know that I just LOVE graphics - especially dollie graphics - animated or not. And, I just LOVE blinkies - which is another story for another day.

In any event, I was asked to join YoVille on Facebook by one of my friends and have to tell you that I just LOVE it.

I created my Linda avatar above and I'm in the process of furnishing my apartment which right now consists of a living room, bedroom, and kitchen. I have to work or visit my friends to earn YoVille coins so that I can buy things for my apartment. I'm working on it and hope to have a wonderfully furnished apartment before long.

I LOVE my new avatar so much I decided to add her to the sidebar of my Linda's Blog. She can take her place amongst all the rest of the dollie graphics and blinkies I have there. I'm sure she'll feel right at home.

If you LOVE dolls - especially animated doll graphics and would like to have a little fun come and join me on Facebook and then visit me on YoVille. Hope to see you there.

Have fun.

I Hope You Like My Faceless Beauties Video

I think you all know that I, personally, love faceless dolls. Victorians, primitives, colonial, prairie dolls, rag dolls, or country style dolls. It doesn't matter. I love them all.

In fact, I created a video to reflect my feelings about faceless dolls which is: "Beauty lies not only in what is seen, but what is imagined. I believe the essence of a dolls faceless beauty should determine her personality."

Please CLICK HERE or on the video above if you would like to view my "Linda's Faceless Beauties" video.

My Goddess Doll Adventure So Far!

In February I wrote a post on my Linda's Blog entitled "Why Not Be Adventuresome!" which was about my buying a batch of 10 small goddess art forms from Monica Magness of "Girl Gone Thread Wild" blog that she had for sale on her GirlGoneThreadWild Etsy shop.

I wanted to try something different this year and have been wanting to make some mixed media "goddess dolls" as I haven't made any as of yet. The doll body forms that I bought ranged between 4"-6" tall in size and are of of various colors.

Some of the "goddess dolls" that I have seen are either faceless (which is fine with me) or have cloth faces, clay faces, have sun or moon faces, even beaded faces. Some of the face shapes are round or oval, some are square, and some are triangles. I haven't quite decided what kind of face I want to try as of yet, but I always like to be prepared.

They probably will be clay so I decided to buy some polymer clay to sculpt my own and also buy some polymer clay masks to use in the event my clay ones don't look exactly as I had envisioned them. If these don't work then they may have cloth faces or be faceless. I might even try beaded faces although I think they were be difficult to do. Or, I may just decide to do several of each. I just won't know until I start creating them.

Next I need to decide whether they should have hair or no hair. Headdress or no headdress? Since I was running out of doll hair (well, not really, but you never know what you want to use until you start creating) I also decided to replenish my supply of doll hair. I made a note to look at the yarn sections of my local craft stores and also look on line at some of my favorite doll hair websites to see if there was anything that caught my eye and would help me to decide which way to go with the hair.

I decided to buy some hair from one of my favorite websites for doll hair, Cloth Doll Hair Supplies at http://www.clothdollhair.com as Suzy was offering a discount to all her Twitter followers (which I am one of).

Also, I wanted my "goddess dolls" to have beaded decorations along their bodies or in their clothes (should I decide to add something along these lines) so I decided to visit my local craft stores to see what they had. I was expecting a little section of beads. Au Contraire! Make that ROWS and ROWS of beads. Aisles and aisles of beads. So many so that it was almost impossible to decide.

Should they be round? Should they be flat? Should there be a combination of the two? Should they be large, small, or medium in size? What color? Solid or multi-colored? Shiny or not? And on and on it went!

Obviously, this was not going to be as easy as I had thought. I really hadn't thought this through and should have tried to design what I wanted my goddess dolls to look like before I attempted to by the beads. Should they be traditional mixed media art dolls or should I make them a little different? Maybe they shouldn't even have beads? But, I really want to try beading as the dolls I've seen are just so beautiful. Time consuming to make, but beautiful.

In any event, I bought several different colors and sizes of beads and because I like to be organized I also bought some containers to house my beads. Can't have them falling all over the floor. That would not be good!

So, now I have my doll forms, various ways to make the faces, and lots and lots of beads. Since I just love history next on my agenda is to do a little research on the Internet on "goddess dolls" also known as healing dolls and spirit dolls. I'm not sure what this will tell me - other than I just love research, especially on different doll legends.

What I'm hoping is that it might just help me decide what type of "goddess dolls, healing dolls, or spirit dolls" I want to create. It might even inspire me to create a goddess doll, healing doll, or spirit doll design of my own - which, of course, I'd create an e-pattern for. Oh, what a delightful adventure this is going to be. Wish me luck.

I'll let you know what I find out.

Why Not Be Adventuresome?

Well, I decided that I was going to try something new this year. To try and make a type of doll that I haven't made as of yet.

Since I live with 1,796 dolls of my own creation you might be wondering exactly what kind of doll I haven't made yet.

Well, believe it or not but there are thousands of different types of dolls I haven't made and one of them is a beaded goddess art doll. Either with a clay face or with a cloth face.

I have been wanting to make one for quite some time. The problem is - lack of time. So, I thought that maybe if the bodies were already made then I could just embellish the rest. Maybe?

So, when I saw that Monica Magness of "Girl Gone Thread Wild" blog had a batch of 10 small goddess art forms for beading, painting & altering for sale on her GirlGoneThreadWild Etsy shop I decided to buy them! The doll bodies are between 4"-6" tall in size of various colors.

Now the question is how exactly should I finish them? I'm hoping that I'll be able to finish them all before next Christmas as I think they would make wonderful Christmas presents.

Oh, I can hardly wait!

I'm already thinking of the different beads and embellishments I might try. Hmmm..... Should I try clay faces or not? Hmmmm..... How many beads? Hmmmmm.... What else should I use to embellish them? Hmmmmmm.....

Oh, what a delightful adventure this is going to be. Wish me luck.

I Just Want To Cry!

While I was surfing through some of the posts on blogs I like to visit I saw this picture on Shula's "Poppalina" blog post entitled "Thirsty Koalas" and just wanted to cry!

There has been so much devastation and damage caused by the Victoria bush fires in Australia. So many people have lost their lives and so many people have lost their homes and everything they had. It's just horrible. And, the worst part is - they are reporting the fires may have been intentionally set.

I just want to cry.

If you want to read more this link was provided on Shula's blog - http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,25034233-5018723,00.html

How Lucky Am I?

Yesterday I was singing and blogging about being at "The End Of A Long Odyssey!" and figured that I couldn't be happier and couldn't be luckier.

Well, I couldn't be more wrong. I actually could be luckier and could be happier. How can that be?

Well, this morning I awoke to a snowstorm - which, by the way, doesn't make me happy. At our ages hubby and I just don't like snow anymore. It's beautiful to look at, but requires way tooooooo much work to clean-up. And, this winter is just not cooperating.

In any event, I wasn't happy to see all the "white" this morning and then I decided to check my email.

Not only did I have one wonderful email, but two this morning. Two emails that changed my mood and my perspective.

The first email was from a wonderful woman, who also happens to be an astonishing doll maker, who told me that she had downloaded my "How To Create A Print Pattern and E-Pattern" Free E-Book and wanted to thank me for sharing this information with her and for helping her.

For me, I couldn't be happier to hear this. You see, all my pleasure comes from knowing that I've helped someone else and to hear this just warmed my heart on a cold, snowy day.

I was in a great mood after I sent my email back to her and thought - well, it might just be a good day after all - snow and all!

Then I read another one of my emails. Well, this was a comment left on one of my blogs that said I had won a doll in a blog giveaway contest.

Her name is Hannah and she was created by Shirley of Skellyton Art Originals Designs and was donated by her as part of a Kindred Sisters Gathering Post blog giveaway.

Needless to say I was thrilled. As you can tell from the picture above Hannah is a beautiful doll.

So, I decided to find out more about the wonderful creator of Hannah. Here's what I found out about Shirley from her Skellyton Art Originals Designs blog profile:

Skellyton Art creations are original designs many one of a kind, never to be reproduced works of art. It is a combined effort of Mother and Daughter. Myself I am Wife, Mom, grandma and a survivor of a career in retail management I am making an effort to return to a more creative lifestyle. Excited to learn that there are successful artist who create soley in Halloween motifs, I knew I had finally found what I wanted to do. Halloween has always been a special holiday for me. I spent my childhood with a cemetery for a front yard. [it was across the street] Being the youngest of 4 girls. I shared a bed with my sister, who never failed to terrify me with her scary stories. I was five years younger, of course I believed her when she told me of the people buried under our bed. Why wouldn't I? There were dead people across the street. We spent many hours in the dark watching Dracula, Wolfman,Twilight Zone or any spooky movie we could find. Then I would lay in the bed with the covers up to my neck and a crucifix over our bed watching for Dracula or any monster to creep into the room.

Hannah is a beautiful doll and I can hardly wait to see her. But, Hannah is not the only beautiful doll Shirley and her daughter have made. You really need to go to their blog and watch the slideshows of all their creations. They really are wonderful, wonderful dolls - each a work of art all unto themselves.

I wish I could own them all. But, I'm thrilled just to have Hannah. I hope the rest of my "dollies" love her as much as I do. We'll see - my "dollies" can be very jealous and very temperamental.

Today I received two wonderful emails. Thanks from a customer and the winning of a beautiful handmade doll. It doesn't get much better than this.

Nana - Look At My Hair!

My grandson "Noodles" and I have had this ongoing discussion for several years now about his hair. You see, he was blessed with a full head of thick curly hair. I just LOVE all his curls and think he has the most wonderful head of hair that you ever could imagine. I would LOVE to have his hair.

I, unfortunately was born with fine and straight hair. It doesn't even know the meaning of the word curl. Even if I tried to curl it my hair would revolt and revert back to it's fine, straight nature.

As a result of my love of my grandson's hair I'm always after his Dad not to cut his hair. To just let it grow.

Sometimes "Noodles" wins the "don't cut my hair" battle with his Dad and sometimes he doesn't. This time - he won. He wouldn't let his Dad cut his hair until he had shown Nana how long it had gotten on Christmas Eve.

What he didn't know was that I had cut a picture out of one of my magazines of a famous good looking young man with an incredible head of long, curly hair - who just happens to have the same name as my grandson and sings in a rock band.

When he came in on Christmas Eve he ran over and said, "Nana look at my hair!"

I couldn't believe how long it had gotten and told him that I loved all the curls. I also told him that he was a "good-looking guy" and took out the picture I had cut out and said, "See - he's a famous rock singer. Look at his terrific head of curly hair. Now that's a good looking guy, too!"

Of course, he's no where near as good looking as my grandson who is shown below with his twin cousins. The twins, like their Mom and Dad, were both blessed with full heads of terrific thick straight hair. Lucky guys that they are. Now if I'm going to have straight hair while couldn't I at least have been blessed with a full head of thick straight hair?

I Finally Got A Terrific Picture of My Eldest Grandson!

It seems like teenagers go through a period where they don't want their picture taken and my eldest grandson was in this phase for the last several years. In fact, like most teenage boys if I tried to take his picture he would turn away or cover his face.

The last decent picture I had of him was this:

That was close to 6 years ago and I haven't gotten a really good picture of my grandson since then. That is, until this Christmas Eve when he finally let me take his picture. Here's the results:

Now I may be biased, but I have to say my grandson has grown into quite the looker. The best part is that not only is he handsome, but he's a a nice guy to boot.

In fact, he's everything a grandmother would want in a grandson. Intelligent, handsome, witty, full of life and very talented. I couldn't be prouder of him and couldn't love him more.

For me, however, no matter how grown-up he has become he will always be this guy to me:

Woodcrafts and Wood Furniture My Brother Made Me

My family comes from a long line of crafters. Whether we sew, craft or build furniture we all love to create and work with our hands.

My sister and mother sew - as did my paternal grandmother and aunts. My paternal grandfather was a carpenter and he handed done his knowledge to my Dad who in turn handed it down to his three sons. In fact, my eldest brother has all my grandfather's handmade tools.

One of my brother's has had a keen interest in woodworking since he was a young boy and has become a skilled craftsman who makes wood crafts and furniture and always makes all his Christmas gifts.

So, I thought you might like to see a few of the wood crafts and wood furniture pieces he has given me as gifts over the years or has made for my home from time to time.

Happy Holidays To All!

To all the readers of my Linda's Blog I would like to say:

Have a Wonderful Holiday Season!
Happy Holidays To All!