CHILD of the pure unclouded brow And dreaming eyes of wonder! Though time be fleet, and I and thou Are half a life asunder, Thy loving smile will surely hail The love-gift of a fairy-tale.   I have not seen thy sunny face, Nor heard thy silver laughter; No thought of me shall find a place In thy young life's hereafter — Enough that now thou wilt not fail To listen to my fairy-tale.   A tale begun in other days, When summer suns were glowing — A simple chime, that served to time The rhythm of our rowing — Whose echoes live in memory yet, Though envious years would say 'forget'   Come, hearken then, ere voice of dread, With bitter tidings laden, Shall summon to unwelcome bed A melancholy maiden! We are but older children, dear, Who fret to find our bedtime near.   Without, the frost, the blinding snow, The storm-wind's moody madness — Within, the firelight's ruddy glow And childhood's nest of gladness. The magic words shall hold thee fast: Thou shalt not heed the raving blast.   And though the shadow of a sigh May tremble through the story, For 'happy summer days' gone by, And vanish'd summer glory — It shall not touch with breath of bale The pleasance of our fairy-tale.   Lewis Carroll Aren't the illustrations fabulous?  I love all things

I love alphabets…big ones, little ones, cursive, typewriter, bold, epoxy, chipboard, stickers…I love the element that stickers add to paper projects.  Unfortunately, I am always running out of certain letters.  It just happens.  This is my solution.  Anyone can do their own, but I like working on them in Adobe Illustrator because I can adjust size and change the fonts easily.  You can make them in any basic word processing program, but if you'd like it to be easy, you can download them and print them.  Try one, and if you like them, print them on different colors of cardstock.  It makes for a cheap filler for missing letters, or just use them all by themselves. For storage, I cut them vertically in half, eyeballing where the best middle is.  Then I cut them, with scissors, in between the different rows.  This way you can easily cut off the letters you need when you need them.  Don't worry about keeping the sides totally straight.  I like them random!  Here is a card that I made with the letters. Sometimes I like to mix up the upper and lower case letters in other than the grammatically correct pattern!  Have fun and if you like them, let me know and maybe I'll make more for you to download and use!  Download alphabet.pdf (1738.1K)

 All my Thanksgiving food shopping is done…I hope!  Thank heavens for Costco and the yummy cheese trays, cheap olives and artichoke dip.  I got a box in the mail from Pinecone Press and when I was going through the Options booklet from the Domestic Goddess kit, I noticed that on the page that has the recipe cards, there is a blurb about going to download the recipe card blanks at justhelen.typepad.com and I realized that I hadn't figured out how to get a PDF on the website yet!  But this is what drives me to figure things out…a hard deadline - it should have been done YESTERDAY!!!  I have other downloads I want to do that will just be easy to use and fun to share, so now is as good a time as ever to "get 'er done"!  And if I can't figure it out, I have a web-savvy son that LOVES to help his aged mother! In my box I got from Pinecone today, I received an extra kit that I would be happy to share with someone.  With all the expense for Christmas coming up, it's a hard time to be buying things for yourself, so leave me a comment and on BLACK FRIDAY I will randomly pick someone to send it off to as a BLACK FRIDAY give-away!  But sorry, this time it will only be one lucky winner!  HOWEVER…I want to