It's our first Show and Tell Saturday of the year! I hope you've had a good holiday if it's a holiday where you are - I'm just back from traveling and sorely jetlagged :) Regardless, I assume we have many new things to show off: what's new in your world this week?

Little horse ornaments I made this year. I just (mostly) finished the last one (I need to put the tassels on her).

The body shape and the wing and saddle shapes are traced from childhood cookie cutters, and the rest of the pattern, such as it is, I drew.

I really don't know what I'm doing, my stitches are hardly straight but that doesn't matter as long as I'm having fun!

You can see by the saddle on the peacock horse that I got more experimental and complex as I went on. Really enjoyed her.

Cookie cutters for felt shapes! That's genius!

Do them up to look like iced cookies or gingerbread!

Trace around the cookie cutters and make a cardboard template, or make 2 and cut 1 down by a little bit if you want frosting.

These ones aren't super fancy but they are a nice way of sharing cookies with family, especially family who used the same cookie cutters when you were kids together, etc.

I use two pieces of felt for the bodies, stacked, with no stuffing. I sewed around the edges of these ones with a blanket stitch, which is an incredibly easy stitch to learn.

You can easily do this without a needle and thread, just get some glue that works on felt. You can decorate them with beads or sequins or anything you like. Great fun to do with kids!

I'm currently working on a set of felt ornaments for my daughter, her half-siblings, their dad, and myself.

But the next set is going to be for my dad and aunts. I might do a something like this, using one of the cookie cutters I inherited from Gramma as the template.

it doesn’t have to be good it just has to be done

The phrase "They don't want it perfect, they want it Friday" does wonders for my productivity.

I tell this story all the time but I'll tell it again! When I taught kindergarten full time, we had a working bee one weekend where we did a bunch of gardening/landscaping in the outdoor area. One of the dads put up a bit of fencing, then stood back and had a look, kind of frowning like he wasn't sure. His wife then came along, and the following conversation ensued:

Wife: GETMO? Husband: (after a moment, with a sigh) Yeah, GETMO. Me: GETMO? Wife and husband, in perfect unison: Good Enough To Move On

Absolutely LIFE CHANGING acronym, friends and enemies.

And there's nothing saying that you can't come back and make something perfect after everything has reached GETMO

It's our first Show and Tell Saturday of the year! I hope you've had a good holiday if it's a holiday where you are - I'm just back from traveling and sorely jetlagged :) Regardless, I assume we have many new things to show off: what's new in your world this week?

Little horse ornaments I made this year. I just (mostly) finished the last one (I need to put the tassels on her).

The body shape and the wing and saddle shapes are traced from childhood cookie cutters, and the rest of the pattern, such as it is, I drew.

I really don't know what I'm doing, my stitches are hardly straight but that doesn't matter as long as I'm having fun!

You can see by the saddle on the peacock horse that I got more experimental and complex as I went on. Really enjoyed her.

Cookie cutters for felt shapes! That's genius!

always good to have friends who are at least 5 years older than you and friends who are at least 5 years younger than you. being the youngest person you know will make you feel like an inexperienced child who knows nothing of the world. being the oldest person you know will make you feel like the joker.

every time i see a 19 year old friend do something successful i can be comforted by the fact i also know people who are 35 and unemployed. nobody has to run on the same time and the world is beautiful.......

And the older you get the wider this gap needs to be. At my age, someone within 5 years of me is basically my same age.

Maybe the rule should be: have at least one friend who is no more than 75% of your age, and be that younger friend for at least one person.

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let's be safely embraced by mama

I should probably define what falls under the umbrella of generative AI here but I kinda don't feel like it, but like. using an image generator to make references. brainstorming by talking with chatgpt. generating images of characters as inspiration. all that kinda jazz counts. as of course does full-on using genAI to make your stuff.

remember that your vote is anonymous, so you don't have to out yourself on one side or the other when you share. I'm just curious what the spread is actually like when there's some anonymity. if you're wondering my own opinion it's in my original tags, but I'm attempting not to be judgemental in this accompanying text.

just remember that if y'all want to see how bad the genAI users get ratioed, you need to reblog it...

I hated the book so much after reading it in American Lit that you could not have paid me to see the movie.

I gave the book a second chance as an adult, and while I didn't hate it as much, I still have no interest in the movie.

Something nobody told me about caffeine is that you can get withdrawal symptoms when you stop taking it

Like

I went from consuming NO caffeine, to slowly escalating to around 150-300mg of caffeine a day to keep up with sleep issues, to suddenly stopping cold turkey when I flew out to the middle of nowhere and couldn’t get more and it was straight up a solid 5-6 days of thinking I had the flu

Nausea, spins, major fatigue, and some seriously heinous headaches

It was so bad that after two weeks without I swore I’d never pick up an energy drink again and made an appointment with a doctor to fix my sleep issues

Like. Not to be all “oooooh your body is a temple” but if I knew quitting CAFFEINE had similar effects as running out of my prescription meds I might have been a bit more careful drinking it in the first place

I'm honestly shocked that someone made it to adulthood without knowing that caffeine is addictive.

It was one of the reasons my parents gave for not letting my brothers and I have coffee or too much soda when we were little.

It's not exactly like this idea, but Caroline Graham did write a novel about real murders happening at a 1930's murder mystery weekend. They could definitely mine Murder at Madingley Grange for ideas.

Depends on the weather. I can fall anywhere from t-shirt & panties to sweatshirt & sweatpants. Usually I'm in a t-shirt & light pants or shorts.

I usually buy bottoms for the purpose of sleeping in them, but my sleep tops are mostly ordinary shirts that are too worn out for public.