Sunday Show and Tell

I was so sad to see the flowers I got from my law firm pals fade but the eucalyptus from the arrangement dried so nicely and I love the way it looks in this vase that Kevin got me many moons ago. It's a nice reminder of good friends. The photo doesn't do the colour justice. The green is actually a beautiful grayed bluish-green. So pretty!

Isn't this a curious photo? A tissue box and a necklace? Well, as you might have guessed upon seeing them together, the necklace is made from beads rolled from strips of this tissue box! I love them! Mom made them. She's been making beads from paper for several years. I'm sure everyone in the community has one! Mostly she has been using the church bulletins and rolling them into beads and then sells them to raise money for the church and charities. One day not long ago I sent her a photo I'd seen online of beads made from cereal boxes. They were bigger, chunkier beads - more to my personal taste. Church bulletins make daintier necklaces. Since I don't have a large investment in real gold and gemstones, what I have is "quite delicate" (haha). With that in mind, I prefer my non-gold and non gem-stone bling to be a little bolder. These chunkier paper beads are my preference. So now I'm saving attractive cardboard pieces for Mom. What a great way to upcycle paper and cardboard! I wonder if Mom has counted how many paper bead necklaces she's made? It would be lots!

After I had admired this particular necklace, Mom gave it to me. And then she hesitated for a moment and thought that perhaps she should remove one bead - the last one on the string. Just by chance, the tiny word "cancer" shows on that bead. It wasn't planned that way but it's interesting that it was the one word from the box, which had a breast cancer foundation promo on it, that actually showed after rolling the beads. I chose to have her leave the bead there.

When Kathy came back from working on the cruise ship this summer, she brought with her a gift from Ricardo! He sent us a few of these beers and some better hot sauce. He said these beers are the kind that you drink on a really HOT day. Since we weren't getting too many hot days this summer, these beers have had to wait. The hot sauce, Ricardo said, is not just hot (like the Tabasco we use) but has flavour, too, as Ricardo describes it. We have been enjoying it! The especially happy news is that Ricardo is going to be visiting Kathy here in Saskatoon again for a couple of weeks in November! Very soon! We'll have to stoke up the fireplace and get the living room nice and hot so we can crack those beer while he's here!

Kevin has been bringing me some gifts from his travels. He brought me Rider loonies from his trip to Foam Lake and he brought me two big bags of frozen wild picked blueberries from La Ronge! I finished up my own frozen blueberries a few weeks ago and was using frozen ones from the store but they were so less appealing than the ones I'd frozen myself. The ones from the store immediately colour my oatmeal and the milk purple. Mine didn't. I was SO HAPPY when Kevin showed up with these ones from La Ronge! They are great. They don't turn my oatmeal purple and it's nice to know they're locally picked. I hope there's some left in the store when Kevin goes back in December because I will need more.

I'm so happy to have this quiet Sunday to recoupe!