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Where’s Bob?


Image of a handmade miniature couch that is actually a tissue box cover. It's black with white polka dots, black and white miniature pillows, and a white lace doily over the back. One tissue is popped up and ready for retrieval. The background has been replaced by wood grain with an artistic white frame.
Handmade Tissue Couch — Pic by Crystal A Murray (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

Years ago, my aunt in Arizona bought me some adorable handmade tissue box covers. They are the kind of sewing art that makes you want one of every design, so you can have a different one in each room in the house. They are some of the most unique pieces of sewing art I’ve ever seen, and my aunt offered to get me as many as I wanted, but I settled for only two of them. Growing up, it was crocheted covers that adorned everything in the house—from the spare roll on the back of the toilet to the winter doorknob covers to eliminate some of the static. While crafting isn’t my own personal strength, I truly appreciate the artistic abilities of others.

Plus, a beautiful cover gives some dignity to an object that goes through a lot of workplace drama in our house. If you’ve ever reached for a tissue only for the chain to break, you know the drama; the frustration of having to dig blindly into the cardboard to fish the next one out. In our family, we blame “Bob”—the imaginary little guy we picture living inside the box. Bob runs things like a one-man machine with a crank that pops the next tissue up each time you grab one. It can be a thankless job, but we try to tell Bob thank you when we think about it. Whenever the chain breaks, we just say Bob is taking his fifteen-minute scheduled break. Even if it’s not on our schedule, we understand. 😁

So, today, I asked hubby for a tissue, and he reached in to get one, but…

It wasn’t just a broken chain; the box was empty. My husband reached in to dig one out and said, without any fanfare or forced humor, “I guess Bob moved to another box.” It caught me by such surprise that I lost it and just laughed (out loud for real) for a long time. 🤣 Now I’m wondering if Bob moved into the Christmas box to take a nap—or a vacation since it’ll be a while before that one comes out again. We may have to offer him a raise to come back to the polka dot box. Teehee.

I did find an active Etsy seller who’s got 180+ designs of these couches, and the store says they’ll make them to-order as well. I’ve never ordered anything from Etsy, or even set up an account there, but it said it was last active on May 26th, so I hope that’s a good sign that it’s a good store. It’s called Royal Makings, and this link goes straight to the couches.

I hope this brought you a smile. Never forget the value of a joyful heart.

Proverbs 15:13a BSB
[13] A joyful heart makes a cheerful countenance.

https://bible.com/bible/3034/pro.15.13.BSB

Proverbs 17:22a BSB
[22] A joyful heart is good medicine.

https://bible.com/bible/3034/pro.17.22.BSB

And with that, I’ll close with a picture that may possibly be Bob’s new job site…

Image of a handmade miniature couch that is actually a tissue box cover. This one is a cream design with green, red, and gold Christmas designs in the material. It has miniature pillows in red and in matching material to the couch. There is one tissue popped up for retrieval.
Christmas Tissue Box Cover — Pic by Crystal A Murray (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

June 2, 2026 Posted by | Humor, Nonfiction, Photo Editing & Manipulation, Photo Studio Pro app, Photography, Slice of Life | , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

I Love 🥰 Emojis


Two cute and large emoji smilies animated with legs and arms, and they are juggling a bunch of smaller emojis over their heads. Their mostly enough audience laughs heartily at their performance. Digital image created by Wombo Dream AI.
AI (Wombo) Emojis Juggling by Crystal A Murray (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

What are your favorite emojis?

Ask anyone who gets messages from me. I love emojis! 💝 There’s something about being able to say a lot with a tiny form. A picture speaks a thousand words, right? And when I downloaded Google’s Gboard keyboard and got access to their “emoji kitchen” to create my own, that was the whipped cream and cherry on top.

I’m not sure why “Day One” chose this for their 1921st prompt, because so many emojis only show up as little boxes here on WordPress, but I still love the idea, so I’m experimenting. I’ve downloaded a lot of the mixed ones I created to share in a collage, and they’ll show fine since they’re pictures. Like this set of train emojis from messages I sent to my sister while she was on the train last year.

Emoji “Recipes” in Gboard Emoji Kitchen—Trains Plus

I really love the train that’s slipping on a banana peel. That was from combining a train emoji with a banana emoji. You should be able to tell what was combined to get each image. I highly recommend the Gboard app for the personal dictionary and the Glide Typing abilities as well. I don’t know if it’s available anywhere but the Google Play Store, but if you can get it, I’m relatively certain you’ll have fun with it. Go to https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.inputmethod.latin

And here are some new ones I just made tonight. As you can tell, I like combining the cactus with different things. Oh, and sparkles. I love adding sparkles to other emojis.

Emoji “Recipes” in Gboard Emoji Kitchen—Mixed Set

Most of these should be obvious, but the wooden globe may not give away that it’s a combo of the earth and a wooden stump. The frying pan is the combo of a dinner plate and an egg. But I cannot do a train and a cactus, so here’s what you get when you choose to do the two types of cactus 🌵 and 🏜️ (I hope these show) inline with a text…

Emoji “Recipes” in Gboard Emoji Kitchen—Cactus and Desert Cactus

So, yes, I think you can clearly see that I really like using emojis as a communications tool. I hope this inspires someone to have some fun with these great compact emotions.

Now, since April 27th is also “National Tell A Story Day,” I have one more treat for you. It’s a very old story, some sites say a song, that I learned when I was a teenager. I never sang it until I taught it to my nephews and had them sing it like a military marching cadence for their uncle. As I searched, it seemed all the sites had slightly different words, so I’m using the ones I recall from my years of repeating this tongue tangler of backward, inside-out, and upside-down words..

I started with the introduction of...

Ladies and gentlemen, hobos and tramps,
Cross-eyed mosquitos and bowlegged ants.
I stand before you, not behind you,
To address you, not undress you.
Admission is free, pay at the door.
Pull up a chair and sit on the floor.
I come to this end, not to this out,
To tell you a story--I know nothing about.

~~~~~~~~and then the story~~~~~~~~

One bright day in the middle of the night
Two dead boys got up to fight.
Back to back they faced each other
Pulled out their swords and shot each other.
A deaf policeman heard the noise
And came to kill the two dead boys.
If you don't believe my story is true,
Ask the blind man... He saw it too!

One day, I’ll tell you the story of Petey the Snake. But it’s best to hear it, so I’ll need to get over myself and be willing to record it. But wait, there’s more. I just had to make my juggling emojis with the knit filter. Too cute!

AI (Wombo) Knitted Juggling Emojis by Crystal A Murray (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

April 27, 2026 Posted by | About Writing, AI Image Creations, by Day One, Collaged, Creative Writing, Creativity, Current Events, Humor, Photo Studio Pro app, Prompts, special days, Wombo Dream | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

   

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