DarsCreativeCave

Hello, my name is Dar; that's short for Darlene. The reason I go by Dar is because as I was growing up, I had 3 siblings, whose names' all began with a D also. So when my Mom wanted me for something, she'd call out Da Do Da, DAR_LENE!!!! By the time she finally got the correct name, is sounded like she was so pissed at me....right? I'm sure you 've had a similar story or heard of that happening to someone before....

I was born in Canada and raised mostly in beautiful Northern Ontario in Huntsville that is. I was born in the Newmarket hospital, back in the day when it was called exactly that. And oh my that hospital has grown! Its now called South Lake Regional somehthing something something. I can't remember now but it is all so different to what is was before.

Anyway; moving forward. I have always called Huntsville my home town. Even though half way through my last year of high school was a nightmare because my parents moved us from Huntsvill back to the Newmarket area.

So I hung out in the GTA for many of my young adult years. The above acronym stands for the Greater Toronto Area. And I literally hung out, lived, went to CDI College to get Office Admin Certificate, which at the time was on the cusp of big time changes in the secretary and office admin world, this was before Y2K when everyone was so scared that the information highway and all computers were going to crash and blow up in our faces!!!!

Anyway as time went on I decided to get into going to singles dances. I wanted to dance so badly but since I wasn't and still arn't model material, I so rarely was asked to dance. So at the time got into Line Dancing. I learned so many line dances including Achy Breaky Heart Which I could do it all the way through from start to finish and LOVED it. I even was a dancer in the worlds LONGEST line dance! It was so much fun!

I'd had a few lengthy relationships. But V was a drunk, S was just an asshole because of the way it ended, and M was an asshole too! M was an American living Canada, we met through an ad in the paper, I even lived with him in Florida for at least six months, and that ended as horribly as the 3 previous. So in the end I decided I was finished with boyfriends. And I began to become more curious about attending adult parties. Which in the end was where I found my true love and calling. I met the most amazing person I'd ever met who was going through a sex change. She was always just so interesting to talk to. I could not wait for her next call to me. At the time she was a trucker so she wasn't really around all that much at the time. I could tell you a few interesting stories that would make you go hmmmm? But they are all great stories and maybe some day if you ask me, I might tell you. LMAO

Well Abidel & i met in 2005 at a very unique and special adult party! We were thoroughly enjoying ourselves. Anyway, I ended up moving with her from living with my folks, and that was the year Mom & Dad sold their house and they were moving out to Stratford area, Happy Hills to be exact. It was a senior living camp ground. They were very concerned about what I was going to do, but my next move shocked my parents, but we were gentle with them because my parents are very relgious. Anyway they had no choice in the matter I lived with Abby for 2 a year and a half and we got married in 2007. We lived in Toronto for several years in a townhouse complex in a very bad part of Toronto. Anyway after a while, we moved out, and moved to Brampton. The major thing that happened was that we met Alan. He became our "house boy" and moved in to take care of us. He eventually became more like a brother than any of my own real brothers at the time. And one day he was told he has a fatal kidney cancer. And after many clincal trials and drugs and drives to Toronto to hospital that was taking care of him, He eventually slowed right down, stopped eating, stopped drinking, and eventually went into a coma. He died a few weeks later. At the time, I worked as a crossing guard, and when he passed away I could not work for at least three weeks. It broke my heart when he passed away. Anyway, he ended up leaving us his final Canadian estate which in the end after all of the bills were paid and the house was sold so we could move up to beautiful Northern Ontario

In fact, on January 22nd, 2013 we said good bye to city living forever, and moved up to Emsdale Ontario. Not to be confused with Elmsdale or Embro. LOL And the day we moved in it was -47 degrees outside....can you say brrrrr. So now we have been living here for 11 years and loving living in the bush!

My career never truly developed into much of anything. After hearing so many horrible stories of people being mistreated, and losing their job and not having anything to show for it, I decided that if I was ever being taken advantage of or being mistreated, I swore that I was not going to stay on anywhere. I mostly worked in offices doing B to B telemarketing. I'd created many jobs because of that.

In the year 2012, I attended triOs college and made an attempt to begin a career as a Medical Office Administrator where I learned and passed all of the requirements for that certificate. When I finished we went on a big road trip. And once we were back we sold the house and moved up to Emsdale, and then once we settled in, I got a call from the place I did my internship offering me a job, but I'd have to be there within 30 minutes of being called in, and I could not accept it. Big sigh, but that told me one thing, and that is that we were meant to be living in the north..

But living up here i t was very difficult to get an office job of any kind, so I gave up on that

I have a lot of likes. I LOVE Moose, they so majestic and awesome! I LOVE rainbows which also happen to be my favourite colour. Two of my other favourite colour are glitter and autumn. I love the simple things in life. I have an eclectic collection of Halloween dies, and embellishments. Halloween is also my favourite time of year, season, holiday. even more than Christmas. I love alphabet/letter stickers, Artist Trading Cards (ATCs) Birds, Butterflies, birthdays, angels, cats, dogs, dragons, elephants, ephemera of any kind. faces, flowers Frogs, flamingos,,fireflies, giraffes, Halloween, whimsical houses, whimsical anything. images of pretty much anything 3.5x2.5 in size, jar stickers/die cuts. kites, keys, koala bears, LOL's, Leaves, lighthouses, ladybugs, mermaids, Memorydex MDX money, owls, palm trees, pigs, post cards, Queen images, Rolodex, rings, sticker; seahorses, snail, suns, trains, turtles, trees, umbrellas, Tags, Tickets, umbrella's, violins, x-tra's LOL, words stickers, die cuts, dies, zentangles zetti's.

I am not a fan of sticker slapped ATCs, especially kid stickers that have shiny edges, I do not appreiciate kids stickers that teachers use to mark their grades, there is a time and a place for those. But there are certain that you can get even at the dollar tree that do not even look like kids that can make a card, ATC or even a memorydex card look fabulous. So many paper crafters look down on stickers, period. But in my opinion it should not be the focal point but it can be a very particular type of sticker that matches the theme of the art piece your creating its all good with me. I also dislike any kind of smelly stickers, plastic puffy stickers.

I like to keep my ATCs, memorydex's and post cards as non dimensional as possible to keep the cost down and also to minimize damages to the packages while they are travelling.

I am no stranger to Swap Bot, when I was on it before from about 2010 to about 2020 I even reached almost 1500 swaps; Then cvd happened and I decided to completely delete my account. Its unfortunate that I did that but at the time I did not ever see me coming back again....so here I am.