The Greenest Gift Of All – Memories


I can’t sleep – ever have that happen to you?

In my awakeness I was drafting stories.

I actually do that typically to help me fall asleep.

My mind was not going to rest tonight.

This sharing kept coming to me for further drafting.  

It was if it wanted to tell itself!

~~~

Many years ago – Sue, a truly great friend and I exchanged holiday gifts. 

She gave me something wonderful ( she always does! ) with this absolutely adorable tag.  

A little card made with buttons crafted into a snowman.

I so could not get over the gift tag.


sue’s gift tag made with buttons

Seeing how much I fancied the tag, she gave me some already crafted the following year.  All of which  disappeared very quickly.
 
I could hardly wait to share them! I love how she thoughtfully made them for me.

She makes many of her own gift tags and gifts.  I have to say that I admire that.

The above little card is something I pull out each and every year and set somewhere to view.  It just makes me happy.  It has brought me years of simple whimsical joy 

I am creative in different ways.   I could positively swim in buttons, they make me smile ever so, and yet I seriously wondered if I would ever actually sit down and produce something like this.

I thought maybe I could make one with baby blue buttons on a navy card stock, it’s end dipped in silver glitter – a nightime snowman scene.

Never got around to doing it

This year Sue gave me an absolutely lovely jar FILLED with buttons. She gave me assorted card stock and glue. 

Best of all we spent an entire afternoon drinking tea, eating cookies and making button snowman cards! 

In Sue’s home she has a dresser with all these nifty little drawers. She keeps all that she needs for making tags in each of the drawers.  How simple is that! 

The buttons she gave me were absolutely fantastic!   

Below is my interpretation of the button snowman card.

 
assembly at sue’s

 
beige “pair” with yellow ribbon


pink and layered


sassy blue

This gift completely touched my heart.  It spoke to my greenness – The reusing of old buttons and scrap card stock. 

AND she offered the gift of time, making, giggling and sharing.

The Greenest Gift Of  All :: Memories!

Merry Christmas!!

Merry Christmas!!  From Just Us Girls! 


( Karen, Marble and Kate )

This year I strayed from my typical collage style holiday card and served this one up instead.  I did it in black and white on a super glossy black postcard. 

I love this picture because it was taken the day we had our very own baby shower for our Michelle. She was deliciously pregnant. She really captured us!  Thank you Michelle!

Simply The Best Post of 2008

Pick a post from 2008, any one post and describe why it was the best.  Do it in 30 words.

This post is a participating entry of  Joanna Young’s year end writing project titled Simply The Best

My 1996 McDonalds Hamburger post is simply the best because it went completely and absolutely wild on the internet. People found it amusing, newsworthy and some didn’t agree with it.


Here are the details:

Septemberever have a post go completely viral ? The details are just too wild not to share:

My share today has to be the burger post. Not because I was brilliant to post it, but because of the way it showed me how VIRAL the internet can be…even if it was about a McD’s burger

This post on it’s first day was stumbled, dugg and landed in reddit’s WTF section ending as the #4 post of the day. The other top posts that day were about Obama – yup me, my old hamburger and Obama! 

Commenters had an absolute field day with it – much of it was negative -  the devotion to a burger astounds me.

102,000 hits that day, a month later it reached over a half million hits in 195 countries.  Currently there are over 1000 comments on that post blog, mostly icky and mostly pro-burger. Someone said that is called trolling? Troll comments still come in daily

Wired, boing-boing, nat’l post, men’s health  and a whole host of others picked up on it; a portugese news magazine Visoa did an interview published in November.  

I am told that a mcdonalds rep declared me as nothing but an urban legend

I rec’d calls from Berlin, the UK, Spain, and all over the US, and Canada. Thank goodness that the folks who called were much more kind than the ones who left comments.

My daily traffichas quadrupled. How’s that for an organic non-monetized blog author ?

Men’s Health Magazine has purchased the mcdonalds burger pic for their best and worst of 2008 issue( jan/feb)


do not replicate w/o permission — photo taken by karen hanrahan

karen hanrahan | wellness educator and consultant | writer
nutrition ~ green clean ~ inch loss  ~ anti-aging

Contact me:  708.482.0678