Still keeping up with Olivia Herricks #hollyjollydesignchallenge and today its designing holiday cards. So another gift to you, a set of printable holiday cards, my only wish is that you print them out and use them to cheer those around you. Just click download and print!
****FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY!****
I am following along with Olivia Herricks #hollyjollydesignchallenge over on Instagram and today’s challenge was gift tags. If you know anything about me, let it be, that I have an absolute vendetta against the tiny ass tags that you find in stores everywhere. I have spent to many years scrunched up, trying not to smear the ink on those itty bitty tags. This year I even resorted to just using a big old sharpie and writing right on the paper ( this is my favorite method of tagging packages). If you're a traditionalist though and NEED your tags, I’ve got a treat for you! Here are some BIG ass christmas tags. Go a step further, print this right out on sticker paper and use that little extra decorative print off the side for some pretty washi tape. Just go ahead, click, download, print and cut and you are off to wrapping bliss!
****FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY!****
This year I have gotten the privilege to work part-time along side our kids schools paras. Honestly, never new such a group of hardworking and fun people! It takes a certain type of person to go, hey, let me go and keep other peoples kids in line. I don’t mind being yelled at, wiping noses, zipping jackets, breaking up fights and getting the occasional hug. It has honestly been one of the most rewarding jobs I’ve ever had, but tomorrow is my last day as ( with gratitude) my art work has taken off and I need to put more time towards it.
Made this quick gift for my ladies as our playground is getting cold and thought I would share in case anyone else is looking for an easy gift!
Click here to download the printable and cut out and wrap around a pair of hand warmers, thats it! Or you can add a little decoration like a candy cane or such. I added my new Find Your Folk Buttons to each one (Soon to be added to my Etsy Store!) Hope you enjoy and share the Holiday Cheer.
I gearing up to work on the Book of Delight project and put together this list of prompts if your struggling and wondering where this feeling of delight might appear at. if you haven’t yet please sign up and join us while we each make a Book of Delight.
Anyone who knows me ( + my boys) that seed starting is a THING in our house. We love it, look forward to it, spend a whole weekend ( and all the subsequent ones afterwards) babying the newest additions. Seeds always give me such hope and I really look forward to it!
Some dirt, some seeds and some luck and you’ve got magic! I do like to keep track of how the babies are doing. Made this chart up years ago but gave it a face lift and wanted to share.
It has only been a little over a week and it looks like 2021 is going to be as exciting as 2020. As we head into the new year, I am reminded of the things 2020 brought me. That there is beauty, along with sadness. Joy, along with hardships. Going forward let's not lose sight of the lessons that we learned and realize life is a balance that we all struggle with. In that spirit, I created an old-school fortuneteller with the perfect amount of balance between good and evil and the realization it's all about your interpretation of things and the lessons you take away. Let’s all do our best, be kind and move forward.
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It’s flown by right? Thanks so much for hanging out with me this month. I hope you have enjoyed the projects. Hopefully you’ve got everything managed and are ready for what I think is one of the funnest kid holidays. Eat a few more candy bars than you let your kids eat, laugh, and enjoy the day! Happy Halloween
Here we are, Week 3. This week is heavier on activities, so only one download this week! There is a leaf activity so I have included some inspiration for your own leaf decoration below:
Fun with leaves! Permanent Marker works Great!!
Here it is! Week 2! How are you surviving??
Can you believe it! It’s finally here! OCTOBER! To carry the celebration through the whole month I created an October Countdown.
Then gather materials, these are all suggestions but its what’s been working for us. I used some twine, post -its, washi tape, an assortment of tiny binder clips and paper clips and something to cut with( I love my rotary cutter!).
The first thing you are gonna want to do is download the countdown and and print it out. I prefer to print it on white card stock so it is sturdy enough for all the hands in our house. Then go ahead it cut it out on the thin black lines.
Next is my favorite part. Cover the front of each card with a little overhang. Fold the over hang around the back and tape. The post-it comes of nicely, but the washi keeps it in place.
Lastly, display!
I like to hang mine,, however you can keep these in a bowl, or hide around the house and make it a game to find every day, choice is up to you!
Please be aware that the following printables will be emailed and posted on Thursday/Friday of previous week. There are also 3 Treat Days. Treats can be up to you, it can be a little candy, a fun activity or maybe a fun new family board game. Just a heads up!! Hate for you to be empty handed.
Okay, while not strictly an explorer, I so admire this woman’s spirit and tenacity, I couldn’t help myself! Also it was fun to do someone who is still walking the earth with us. So on to Gladys.
Gladys has been interested in wildlife since childhood, she organized wildlife trips for her school. She pursued her interest graduating from the University of London Royal Veterinary College and then continuing her education at North Carolina University with a Masters of Veterinary Medicine. She went on to receive and certificate from Duke University for management of non-profit organizations.
At the age of 25, she was appointed to be the veterinary officer for the Ugandan Wildlife Service that later changed became part of the Uganda Wildlife Authority. She was the first person to hold this position. During this time she pioneered the first wildlife translocation to restock Uganda’s national parks that were devestated after years of of poaching during the civil wars.
She found during her work that humans posed more than ecological risks to the mountain gorillas, she found that humans were transmitting parasites to the gorillas, making them even more vulnerable.
Following this, she helped found the Conservation Through Public Health to improve both human and ecological health in Africa. This foundation helps protect gorillas and other wildlife from humans and livestock. They use Information/Communication Technology to help educate and develop resources that help both the community and environment.
Maybe one reason I love her so much, the reason she loves gorillas so much, is because they are good mothers. If there is anything the world needs now its people helping to support mothers who are raising the next generation.
To find out more about the non-profit Conservation Through Public Health, check them out here, and maybe buy a bag of coffee in support!.
Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka • 1970 - • Ugandan Veterinarian
As being witness to the race relations currently going on in my current country and also the child of a missionary family, I have immense admiration for Mary, and her early stance of European interference with Africa.
Mary Kingsley was born into a family who’s father thought a girl did not need an education. Thankfully Mary’s father also was easily overwhelmed by being part of the family and would leave them. During those periods, Mary educated herself in his very library. Despite this very grim outlook, Mary inherited her father’s love of adventure and interest in foreign people and cultures.
Her parents died within 6 weeks of each other, and taking the inheritance she set off to the Canary Islands for a break. While she was there she learned about white men making their living through slave trade. She felt compelled to go and see what was going on for herself as she felt of little use to anyone else in her family as a single woman.
She traveled to what was made infamous area Africa, the very part that Joseph Conrad wrote about in the Heart of Darkness. The Congo. She was warned about the murderous people, killer insects, and to make friends with the missionaries so that she could at least have a christian burial.
Mary soon picked up on the fact that traders were the links in this wild world. Bartering was a language everyone could understand, and she was convinced that the English should be working with Africa as trading partners instead of overlords. Through the use of trade, Mary was able to collect fish, insects and reptiles all for the British Museum. Her greatest contribution was her collection of West African River fish for which some where named after her.
Although unorthodox in her thoughts toward English/African relations, Mary was completely conventional in her mode of dressing. She wore her heavy black wool dress, stating “ you have no right to go about African in things you would be ashamed to be seen in at home.” She tramped through swamps and mangroves.
Mary Henrietta Kingsley • English Explorer • 1862-1900
Lady Anne Blunt was a woman who knew her passion and it was Arabian horses. She set out, along with her husband, to trace the homeland of these horses. Together they traveled through Spain, Algeria, Asia Minor and then into unvisited (by Westerners) regions of Central Arabia.
She documented the travels, with great detail towards the people and geography that they came across. She adapted the Bedouin way of life, speaking Arabic, dressing like Bedouins, eating, sleeping on the ground and eating local food such at grasshopper and hyena. She invented a tent that was easy to take down and yet hold up the the desert winds. Their new lifestyle left Anne very ill at ease whenever they ran into European lifestyle preferring life in the desert over the more “domesticated” life. She would diffuse attacks and raids, as the men were shocked when a European woman would stand up and talk Arabic to them.
After these journeys they split their time between Cairo and Egypt. Anne eventually split with her husband and lived out her remaining days in Cairo until her death in 1917.
Lady Anne Blunt • English Explorer of Arabia • 1837-1917
If ever there was a way to deal with heartache this lady has it figured out. After having her engagement broken off, Alexandrine’s mother suggested that they go on a trip. And what a trip! Three years before, her mother and her had traveled across Scandinavia on horseback, so her mother knew she would be up for it and that it would take her mind off her heartache.
They started in Venice, where they learned they could sail to Egypt. She became enthralled with Egypt. Alexandrine began learning Arabic, riding camels across the desert, visiting the Holy Land and traveling the Nile. It was the Nile that stole her heart.
She went on numerous trips up and down and around the Nile trying to map it and find its source. Often freeing slaves, especially women, as she came across dangerous slavers . She would sent reports back to the Royal Geographic Society, though the male members would often belittle her contributions, the president supported her efforts. She was a serious collector and had camels carry her immense collection of plants and supplies, which contributed greatly to the knowledge of the plants in the Sudan region. Her life was cut short at the age of 34 when she got unwittingly caught between two waring tribes, and lost her life in the raid.
Alexandrine Petronella Francina Tinne • Ditch Explorer • 1835-1869
In 1742 at the age of 13, Isabel, daughter of the governer of the Guayaquil province of Peru, was married to the than 5 year house guest, Jean Godin des Odanais who was in Peru with the rest of his crew to make sure the earth wasnt flat. On learning that his father death in 1739 he and Isabel decided to set sail back to France to see what his inheritance was. He and his young (19) wife decided to travel down the Amazon to reach the Atlantic. You can imagine the danger, poisonus frogs and snakes, deadly fish, hostile indigenouis people, mosquitos, ALL the other insects, the fact its just huge and unmapped at this point! He decided the safest thing was he go ahead and make sure it was safe for her to travel after him. Once he got to the other end and applied for permission to go back up the Amazon to bring his wife, the authorities, clearly thinking he was crazy or a spy, denied him. He and Isabel sat at opposite sides of the Amazonfor 20 YEARS! They did exchange letters and after the death of her remaining child( I can’t imagine, how many could she have she was only 19 when they seperated!) She set off with 10 people, including her brother, young nephew and 3 maids, to join her husband. After 2 years of prepping she left in 1769 with 31 Indian porters, ladden with her home goods. Unfortunately smallpox had arrived ahead of them and the key town where they had planned to purchase canoes was uninhabited, with survivors taking any boats with them. Isabel somehow found two men in the jungle to make a canoe for them, and although she had to leave much behind she made room for her jewelry, silver plates, bowls and taffeta and velvet dresses. One disaster after another befell the party. Their supplies were lost adter a raft hit a submurged trubk, splitting it. An Indian guide drowned, after which the rest of the guides ran away. They had to abandoned the canoes with no guides and take to the jungle. They wandered the forest in fits of desperation, starvation, thirst and despair. Isabel awoke one day to find the rest of her companions dead already decomposing in the heat. She cut the shoes off her own brothers feet to replace the pair she had lost, and wandered till reacued by some Indians who fed and clothed her. In gratitude she gave them her last possesuon a golden necklace. She was able to continue down river till she came Loreto, where her father met her. Together they continued farther downriver to Oyapock where she was reunited after 20 years apart from her husband. Three years later they set sail for France where she lived out the rest of her life.
Isabel Grandmaison Y Bruno Godin • Peruvian Voyager • 1729-1792
Well when it comes to people sterotyping I guess this is one good case of it. Philibert Commerson, a botanist, along with his assistant, set sail with the French Admiral Louis-Antoine de Bougainville in 1768. They set out to discover the riches of the South Pacific.
They made it to the island of Tahiti and it seems that the minute Commerson’s assistant set foot on the shore, the island inhabitants knew he was a she. How had she sailed across the ocean under the disguise of being a he, she wore pants of course! I mean girls wear dresses, boys wore pants, how was the crew to know!! :)
She was a great botanist in her own right, lugging all the materials up and down the hills, earning her the nickname “Beast of Burden” . After her reveal, Commerson and her asked to leave the ship to stay on Mauritius island. They spent the next five years exploring that island and Madagascar until Commerson’s untimely death five years later. She went home with the collections and appears to have lived the rest of her life in obscurity.
Said assistant, was Jeanne Baret / Jean Bare. She came into Commerson’s household as his wife’s maid. After his wife’s passing, Commerson grew reliant on Baret, not only with household matter, but also with his collecting, preserving and cataloguing of plants. She was a great naturalist in her own right, although no one is very clear where she picked it up from. It seems at one point Baret did become pregnant with Commerson’s child, the child was given up. Baret seemed as invested in Commerson’s collection as he was, so mich so that his will was drawn up for her to inherit and carry on his work and keep his collection safe. She was one of the first of her sex to circumnavigate the globe, and her and Commerson’s collection was seen as one of the greastest contributions to botany.
Jeanne Baret / Jean Baret. • French Naturalist • 1740? - 1803?
In case you were wondering, age holds no barriers to cool ass women. This woman who was both the daughter of the Viking Chieftan, Ketill Flatnose and Grandmother of Thorstein the Red. Now, Thorstein the Red ruled over part of Scotland and was involved in constant warfare, in fact so bad that he was eventually murdered and his rule did not hold. So his wise granmother Unn, realized there was no safety for the family in Scotland anymore. She had a boat made in secret, than set off with her chokdren, grandchildren, servent and followers to Faeroe Islands. On realizing once landing that they would not be granted refuge there, they continued on. Onward so far as Iceland, sailing up a fjord they found a suitable place to start colonization, soon afterwards Unn died but is recognized as the matriach of the first colony of Iceland and a heroine of the Viking saga.A
Egeria. What a nun!
She was a Spanish Pilgrim around the Fourth Century. In a time when travel was ill advised and often thought unlucky with women, Egeria somehow managed to talk her “sisters” into bank rolling her pilgramage to see the holy lands for herself and than to send descriptions back to the sisters so they themselves could better understand their religion.
Her descriptions of her travels are candid, with stories of tourism traps ( Lot’s Wife the Pillar of Salt- we swear it was there yesterday!) and details of traveling life. Her diary however ends abruptly and nothing more is known of her.
