Hello and Housewarming card

Hi!!!

I'm not ready to mothball my blog quite yet.  I did promise to post occasionally, so this is one of those moments...

For a winemaker in the northern hemisphere, the months of September and October are the hardest, because of the grape harvest.  There are vineyards to visit, picking decisions to be made, fermentations to monitor...  Apart from all these duties, life back at the winery goes on: the last quarter of the year (what we call OND) is when most of the wine sales are made.  So on top of everything I had bottling blends to coordinate, assemble, test and refine, and it was insane.  The good news is, if you like California wine, vintage 2013 will be one to seek.  The wines are going to be spectacular, but yours truly earned a few white hairs in the process!

So now life has finally slowed down, and I can decompress by playing with paper, glue, corks and brushes.  It is amazing how much I relax when I have the opportunity to create.  This happens to all of us, don't you agree?

One of the things in my embarrassingly long to-do list was to send wine to our dear friends Ashley and Brian.  They recently purchased a new home, and with the holidays coming near, we thought they could use some wine for the many parties they will surely have.  Why, oh why did you have to move to Texas?!?!?!  We miss you so!!!

Some time ago I pinned this cute image, made with coffee sleeves.  I thought it would make a good housewarming card to go with the wine.  Check out my version.

I still like the original better.  There's something Picassian about it.

I defrayed the cost of one or two Starbucks mochas by not having to buy a Hallmark card.  True savings!

Thank you for reading, and if you're in the US, Happy Halloween!

Valentine Exchange 2013

I am making it a tradition to participate in Aunt Peaches' Annual Valentine Exchange.  This is the second year in a row that I have joined, so that's all I need for a tradition, I guess!

Since I was a little girl I have loved exchanging mail.  It perhaps started with my mother's postcard collection.  All those beautiful images from far away locations, the beaches, the monuments, the "I wish you were here" sentiments...  I was a girl with a vivid imagination and a notorious daydreamer.  These postcards were windows into possible dreams.

One year while in junior high, our entire class got pen-pals, and oh boy, I embraced that with such energy that rare was the week I didn't get a letter.  Somewhere I have a huge box of postcards from all over the world.  I really should unearth it one of these days.

So when I come across things like this fabulous handmade Valentine card exchange, it is impossible for me to resist.

I love to use recycled materials in my crafts, and for this year's Valentines I grabbed my old financial statements and turned them into colorful hearts with the help of watercolors.

Inside, I wrote a fitting quote

The Valentines are on their way, and I really hope they make someone happy.

The Green Christmas of El Granado - 2012

A year ago I wrote about a small town in the south of Spain, El Granado, and their recycled Christmas tree tradition.  They are at it again, and for the fourth year in a row, El Granado citizens have decorated their town for Christmas in a very original and eco-friendly manner. In the center square, this year's 26-ft tall Christmas tree was made with 1,200 flowers made from plastic bottles

 The main flower chosen for the tree was the brown-eyed rockrose (Cistus ladanifer), a native species of the region. These flowers were made from the bottoms of 5-L water bottles

Among the rock roses you can also find other colorful flowers, made from plastic soda bottles

This project has been a true collective effort. The citizens of El Granado helped with the gathering, cutting, painting and installation of the flowers.

I am looking forward to seeing what they come up for Christmas 2013! I wish more towns and cities had the initiative to do something similar. With a little bit of ingenuity, it is amazing the beauty that can be created. Projects like these bring people together, and raise the collective awareness of how precious and how finite our resources are.

My sincere thanks to Maite Barroso, spokesperson for the town of El Granado, for her help and her wonderful photographs.

The Green Christmas of El Granado

My sister posted a link on her Facebook page about a small town in Andalucía that goes green for Christmas. Because anything that has to do with recycled art interests me, I decided to learn more.

El Granado is just near the border with Portugal. To say that it is a small town is quite the understatement. Last year’s census has it at less than 600 people. There may not be many, but they are certainly conscientious about our planet.

For the third year in a row, El Granado citizens have decorated their town for Christmas in a very original and eco-friendly manner. In the center square, the 30-ft tall Christmas tree was made with more than 25,000 bottle caps.

If that wasn't enough, they also created this whimsical nativity scene

This project has been a true collective effort. The citizens of El Granado helped with the gathering, drilling and installation of the caps.

In these days of global financial crisis, this town has given everyone a great example on how to save money while doing it in an environmentally and financially sustainable manner.

In 2009 the Christmas tree chosen was a dead oak. The tree was decorated with old shoes, worn out circular saw blades, empty containers wrapped in aluminum foil, painted pine cones, and many other items. Perhaps because this was the first year the town didn’t choose a conventional Christmas tree, the citizens were very divided. Some loved it, some didn’t.

The nativity scene in 2009 was created out of rebar left over from the construction of the town hall. The rebar was welded into different silhouettes, which were then wrapped with lights.

Even though opinions were very divided, that didn’t stop El Granado, and in 2010 the Christmas tree was made with 580 empty wine bottles. The tree topper was a very large whiskey bottle. It stood over 25 feet high. This tree was so popular that a neighboring town, Villanueva de los Castillejos, asked to borrow it to display in its main square this very Christmas season! A tree made of recycled materials gets recycled itself. Could this be any more perfect?

I am looking forward to seeing what they come up for Christmas 2012! I wish more towns and cities had the initiative to do something similar. With a little bit of ingenuity, it is amazing the beauty that can be created.

My sincere thanks to Maite Barroso, spokesperson for the town of El Granado, for her help and her wonderful photographs.

¡Feliz Navidad!

ps: these guys throw a mean crafts fair! Nicely done!

Toilet Paper Tubes Christmas Wreath

As some of you may know, I love to craft, and I especially love to reuse and repurpose things that were otherwise destined to the garbage. This is why, when I ran into this tutorial, I got very excited.

Speaking of garbage, I have a confession to make. Every time I go to a Michaels store, I walk the silk flower aisles and pick up whatever flowers and leaves are on the ground. I always ask if it is OK to take them home, and the answer is invariably, "Sure, go ahead, they get swept up at the end of the day anyway". Thank you, Michaels, for letting me rescue these perfectly good flowers!

In the last few weeks, with the holidays approaching, many of the flowers I have gathered were poinsettias. I have also found glittery pine cones, red berries, holly, and the usual holiday suspects.

I followed the directions of the tutorial, and made a whole bunch of tp flowers. With glue gun in hand, I assembled them into a wreath shape, and embellished the resulting wreath with my Michaels finds.

My front door is white on the inside, and the red looks great against the white background. I'm very happy with the results. The hardest part was cutting the tubes. I did not listen to the tutorial, and used a pair of scissors instead of the craft knife. It is hard to cut cardboard with scissors, so I only did one tube at a time. But once all the flowers were ready, it took just a few minutes to assemble the whole thing.

It makes me happy to know that pretty much all this was destined for the landfill, and instead it is gracing a corner of my home. I had fun making this wreath, and it may not be the last one I make. I sure have enough tp tubes and flowers to keep going!

Thanksgiving weekend is usually when we start decorating the house for Christmas. On your marks, get set, go!