Hello and welcome to another edition of T Stands for Tuesday.

Over the past week or so I’ve been pulling together papers from my stash to begin the process of creating my December Daily journal.

I also dug out a set of book covers I’d been saving for just the right project. I wish that I hadn’t discarded the spine…although it may have been in bad shape. Oh well…I’ll find a way to make it work for me.

Originally I was thinking that I’d use crisp bright colors for my journal, however I discovered that the vast majority of my papers were one sided prints. This is fine in some ways but left A LOT of blank white pages. Yes, I know…journal…but I like having color and pattern to break things up a bit. Besides…plain white pages are intimidating.

I decided while cleaning the coffee pot (because I can’t seem to do just one thing at a time lately) that it would be a good time to do a bit of tea dyeing of some paper. I really wanted to tone down that white and give a more cohesive look to the journal.

After soaking the papers in the tea solution I baked them in the oven. Yep…Mr. G came in from the garage…asked me what I was doing. “I’m baking paper.” He shook his head and told me that he was going to pretend he didn’t hear me. I chuckled to myself thinking about the fact that I’d be ironing them too.

I wasn’t happy with the level of aging from just the tea staining. I added some instant coffee to the mix which definitely did the trick. My papers where a lovely shade of brown…perfectly aged.

Would you like to know the most important thing I learned through this process? Caffeine absorbs through the skin. I spent about an hour with my hands in and out of the tea/coffee water. I didn’t think a thing about it until I realized about 100 pages into the book I was reading in bed that I wasn’t a bit tired.

Not….one….tiny….bit.

Typically I can get through about 10 pages before my eyes start to slam shut and I read the same paragraph over and over. Nope not Saturday night. I read the entire book. Seriously…the whole dang book. Finally I got up and took some Benadryl to make me sleepy…even though I knew I’d have the dreaded brain fog the next morning.

So let this be a public service announcement to all of you…wear water proof gloves of some sort!!

Sticking with my caffeine induced post…Mr. G bought me some coffee beer. 

It was pretty good. Just one though. Definitely not one I could drink more than one in an evening…or even in a week. That 4 pack will last a while.