Creative Avoidance (Major) and Some Food

I am supposed to be occupied with my Clean Sweep, but once again, I am instead immersed in some major Creative Avoidance. Creative Avoidance is something at which I excel, and if it were an Olympic sport, there'd be no contest.

First, I took all my new ribbon from RABOM (yes, I needed more), wound it on my few remaining wooden clothes pins and put it away in my Every Color But The One I Need boxes of ribbon. This accomplished the clearing-off of about 6 square inches of table. However, while putting away this ribbon, I spied several other spools that I'd not wound on clothes pins, because I intended to use it right away. You know, you buy it and you can just see it on a card, and then it never happens? Yeah, that 'right away'.

Meanwhile, in the Kitchen, I was working on my belated Care Packages for my childs. First I needed to clear out all the shipping boxes from my last set of purchases, then assemble some of my cache of Flat Rate boxes, then start to see how things fit. I had only baked one batch of brownies (I ran out of eggs because of the Great Corn Bread Fiasco of two weeks ago, but I got more this week), so I washed the bowl and made a batch of brownies.

Then I took one of the not-yet-used spools of ribbon (b & w), then I decided since I was near the computer that was connected to the printer, I'd see about printing some of PaperTreyInks' free download paper swatches. You know how it goes - you want to do something, and you keep remembering you want to do it, but it is never the right time, then finally it is the right time (but not really, but the opportunity DID present itself), so you do it. So I printed off the b & w patterns onto Whisper White card stock with the idea to use the squares to make some cards (not for sale, because that would be wrong) to include in my boys' boxes. See? There is some sort of connection here, albeit sketchy.

THEN, with the whole place smelling like brownies, I sat down and made these:

I punched out four of the patterns with my 1 1/4" punch, then punched out some white 1 3/8" squares, mounted them all on a black square, then onto some color. One red ...

... and one blue, all scraps. The bases are Whisper White that I cut 4 1/4" x 8 1/2" to make the 4 1/4" square cards. See how nicely that ribbon goes with the square patterns? Mission Accomplished.

Then I remembered that Monday evening is the beginning of Purim, one of the more festive Jewish holidays. You can read all about the history of the holiday here, but now-a-days I mostly only observe the eating-of-the-Hamantaschen part of the holiday. For those of you not in-the-know, this is what hamantaschen (plural) look like:

(I put a quarter there so you can see the approximate size.) I do remember the story, and that the three-cornered cookie represents the three-cornered hat of Haman (Hamen ... Hamentaschen ... it literally means Haman's Pockets)...Haman was the Bad Guy in the story.

So because it had to be done, I put on shoes and left the house to stock up on baked goods (Hey, I'm bringing them to work on Monday, k?!). Conveniently for me, as I left Whole Foods, I remembered Mike's is right across the parking lot, so I walked over just to look again at the new EK Success flat punches that I saw last weekend and managed to NOT buy. Just to look! Okay, I got two of them this trip. I'll report back some time next week on how I like them. I also (since I was already there), checked out the MS punches, since I covet the Arched Lattice punch, but it was, of course, sold out, but I had a coupon burning a hole in my pocket, so I got a different one. I am weak. THEN, because I was there, I wandered around looking for things on clearance, and I got lucky. I shall share the abundant goodness of my purchases next week after my workshops. Yes, I must restrict myself now so I can reward myself later.

Now here it is 1 pm, and I have yet to cut up card stock or clean anything. I tell ya, we're talking Gold Medal material here in the Creative Avoidance world. I am a PRO!