Party Weekend!

As I mentioned in my last post, Sienna had a party weekend last weekend! Saturday was her party, the first official party we ever paid for! I figured 5 was a mini milestone so why not? The place we booked was very reasonable so I decided to invite her whole class. It was easier than covertly trying to invite just the people Sienna wanted. Then I crossed my fingers that not everyone in her class would be able to come. We ended up having 18 kids, some from her class and some of her buddies outside of school. Everyone had a great time!
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Party Bags ready to go!
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She took a disco nap about an hour before the party!
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Playing “air hockey”
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Caius told me to take a picture of him!
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A blur in the ball pit
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Leah gets a tattoo
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Party Table
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Dancing
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Vinny spun her around so much, she got so dizzy and fell!
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Blowing out the candles on the ice cream cake!
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The loot! And this isn’t even all of it! She had already opened a Rapunzel and Flynn doll, a Barbie Ballerina doll and an X-men figurine! And this doesn’t show some clothes that she got. She made out very well!
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This cake is from my parents. I had them come over on Sunday instead of her actual birthday since I was making cupcakes for her class. Might as well spread out all this cake she’s getting!
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This picture is so adorable!
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When my dad asked her what she wanted for her birthday, she told him Beyblade. My father asked me for confirmation since there were only boys on the box. She loved this game when she was at Nico’s and Sylvie’s house.
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And this was Sienna at her school party on her actual birthday! I made the cupcakes and also bought munchkins. She threw up shortly after this photo! She said it was the white munchkin and not the chocolate one that made her throw up. I suspect it was from all these sweets she’s had the last few days. I don’t usually give her so much cake days in a row!
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Sienna and her teacher! This photo is so cute too! My baby is growing up! Sniff sniff!
Here’s a video from the birthday party!

January and February Crafts

Let’s get right to the crafts I haven’t posted yet, those that weren’t heart related.

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I hosted a swap called Anything But My Heart in the hand carved stamps group. Carve something love related that isn’t a heart. These are the ones I made my partner. Only 1 other person joined so it was like a private swap. My partner sent me 2 bunnies kissing. Super cute! I’ll need to post a photo of that one!
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These 3 photos were not for swaps but for one of Sienna’s best buds from school. It was Emma’s birthday on Jan. 31st so I made the front of her card while Sienna decorated the envelope and wrote on the inside. I made the shirt too. I always forget how easy the glitter heat vinyl can mess up especially when I use the newer (and hotter) iron. If you look closely enough, perhaps you can see the mess up?
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Another birthday card, this one is for Daniel. As you can see, he turned 2 and he likes trains. The pop up is from the Silhouette store.
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Before getting back to swap crafts, I made the top shirt for Daniel also. I gave it to Shirley at her baby shower brunch in January and didn’t give her the onesie until she gave birth to Lucila in February (they opted to be surprised!)
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I crocheted this rose and made it into a pin for the How Do I Love Thee swap I hosted.
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A huge 4 inch wide stamp I carved of a coffee cup for a Wacky Holiday swap. My partner was in search of a rubber stamp of this size so I thought I would carve her one. Forgot what holiday I made this for!
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January 23rd was Asian New Year and it was Year of the Dragon. I joined a card swap for that. The dragon pop up was free online and I traced it in my Silhouette program so I wouldn’t have to cut it by hand. The Cameo spoiled me! I also had the Cameo write the sentiment on the front of the card.
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I was excited that I won the My Friendship Bracelet Maker on a blog so I joined a friendship bracelet swap! It was really fun to make and I’ll have to make some more.
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Another chalkboard pin!
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I can’t remember the swap I made this for but this is so cute, I have to make a set for myself!
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I made this one for a pendant swap. The star is a bezel and I embedded some gems inside with diamond glaze colored with some pearl ex.
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oop! A Valentine card that I guess did not make it into the heart post. I crocheted the heart although it doesn’t really look like a heart, does it?

Samy & Sabine!

Yves’ cousin, Samy, and his wife Sabine came for a visit last week from France. They live in Brittany, by the sea. This was Sabine’s first time in New York and they did all the usual touristy things. I met them for the first time on Wednesday. My dad came over to watch Sienna and I met everyone at the restaurant, Da Andrea. It was a wonderful time! The food was delicious and the 2 bottles of wine were devine! Sorry I don’t have any photos of the food but I do remember that I got the tower of grilled vegetables with goat cheese for appetizer, the squid ink taglioni with fresh clams for entreé and chocolate gelato for dessert. Samy and Sabine are such good people and it was very easy to talk with them. They sent us off with loads of crepés for Yves and a huge box of macarons for me! And a cute outfit for Sienna. So generous! They were leaving Saturday night so we invited them over our place so they could meet Sienna. We took them to Brooklyn Bridge Park. It was a super windy day, up to 60 mph! But sunny! We had lunch at Bubby’s, where I had one of the best sandwiches I had in a long time (THE PILGRIM – roasted turkey, cranberries, stuffing and cream cheese on housemade sourdough bread)! We walked around a bit but probably not as much as we could have because of the wind. Then, before heading back to the house, we swung by Coney Island just to show them. I felt it was colder by then so it was a super quick trip. Back at the house, we had coffee and cocoa and the banana bread I made that morning. Yves drove them to the airport with promises of visiting them in France soon. They will be back in August with their son and entourage so we will be seeing them again in no time. Sienna enjoyed their company as well and said to me that it was very nice that they came.
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MMMMM macarons! NOM NOM NOM. They are all gone now.
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Group shot!
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By my favorite bridge
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Sienna’s point of view! (I should have given her a camera for the day!)
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Sienna and Sabine running
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On the wall
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Squinty by Coney Island

We sent them off with some gifts of our own. We bought a Brooklyn t-shirt for Simon and a notepad with a colorful Manhattan skyline on the cover as well as a couple of handmade items. I made Sabine an S pendant and a set of NY coasters from my photos.
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I {heart} you!

Ever the procrastinator, Sienna and I worked on her class Valentines today. We also worked on special treats just for her best buds, Vinny and Emma, pink chocolate covered sandwich cookies.
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I loved this idea when I saw it last year and finally did it. These are for her classmates.
siennavalcookies.jpgSienna had a lot of fun making these with me. She was a great sprinkle adder.

I joined a bunch of Valentine themed swaps. This one was for A Piece of My Heart swap. I pulled out my Melting Pot and Ultra Thick Embossing Powder (UTEE) and some rubber stamps and started playing. I got the idea from this video on youtube.
uteeheartearrings.jpguteeheartpin.jpguteeheartpendant.jpguteeheart.jpgThis one was for a handmade heart swap. The birds and small heart were die cut using my Sizzix. I hand cut the big heart and free handed the love. I added fabric stiffener to the back of the heart, which is why it’s curved on the edges.

lovebirdsheartemb.jpgheartfoampaperclips.jpgSome simple heart embellished paper clips.
initialheartpendants.jpgInitial heart pendants. Initials cut by my Cameo using vinyl.

And here are a bunch of cards I did for card swaps:
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Some Autumn crafts!

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For the Monster Brooch swap, my partner justingrid. Based off a cute monster I saw in the Silhouette store!
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These bracelets are for the Happy Crafters USA Favorite Craft swap and my partner ncsue. I’ve just started learning macramé and I love it! The first one is from the book Micro Macramé Jewellery that I have renewed from the library like 3 times already! The bottom one is kumihimo, something else I just started learning as well.
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These 2 are not for swaps but for 2 friends that had babies recently. A former coworker of mine had a baby girl in August and another friend actually had her baby boy back in April so that one was a little late! I made the Brooklyn onesie, the Texas state and the “live with my parents” items with the Silhouette (as well as the bibs) and the month/date onesie is an iron on.
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Bookmark for my swap partner whose name is Catherine!
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Some Halloween cards I made at a Rubber, Paper, Ink meetup I went to in September!
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A Pumpkin and Jack O Lantern stamp carve for my partner LavendarLizard.
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A Birthday card for Sienna’s friend Leah!
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For the Round 15 Craft Your Partner A Craft. Patterns from the same book I mentioned above!
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For the Handmade Halloween/Spooky Charm swap. Even though the swap didn’t require the necklace, I wanted to macramé one anyway! Pattern from the same book mentioned above! For the pendant, I stamped a spider onto Halloween themed scrapbook paper and then embossed the whole thing with sparkly embossing powder and then coated with UV resin.
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This pendant was made the same way as mentioned above. It was included with other goodies in the coffin shown below for the Halloween in a Trick-or-Treat baggie swap.
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My partner likes skulls, as do I, so I made this for her the same way as the other pendants. Another Halloween swap, Halloween in a treat bag!
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I made 3 of these adorable bats (from the new Super Cute Felt book by Laura Howard, I really love the book, BTW!)
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And here’s that coffin I told you about. I used Martha Stewart’s template and traced it in my Silhouette program.

Happy Halloween!

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Just a quick post to wish everyone a happy and safe Halloween! More to come later! We’re off to go fight crime! (photo by Shirley!)

10 years

On Friday, Yves and I celebrated our 10 year wedding anniversary! 10 years ago on Friday, we went to Vegas to get married and a handful of our friends and family joined us. We had planned it earlier that year as October is my favorite month. It was nice to get so many well wishes on my Facebook page. Our friend, Rob, who went to Vegas with us, reminded us of how his room in the Tropicana hotel had mirrors on the ceiling! LOL! He also wanted to make note that he did not request the mirrors! HA! Yeah, ok! 🙂 Anyway, we celebrated on Friday by going to Morton’s Steakhouse. I knew of the place, having bought a gift card for friends Bill and Laura, who were moving from New York to Chicago a few years ago (all the cdmomers chipped in!). Our friend, Jana, highly recommended the place so we said, why not?

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Here’s the photo they took of us. The service was wonderful and everyone wished us a happy anniversary. The food was so good! I am still full from the dinner on Friday! We opted for the steak and seafood special. They started us off with warm onion bread. I could have easily eaten the whole thing! But I only cut off 2 pieces! I ordered the chopped salad and Yves got the caesar. I love that salad! It was so delicious! I’m going to have to attempt to make that at home. I got the Shrimp Alexander with my filet mignon. The shrimp was jumbo, lightly breaded with a butter wine sauce. MMMM. I also ordered the brussel sprouts sauteed in bacon and shallots! Yves got the lump crab cake with his filet and the grilled asparagus with balsamic glaze. I was already half way full when our entrees came! I was only able to eat half of my warm chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream! It was so good but I felt like I was going to burst! Yves got carrot cake. It was very light and fresh but it had cloves in it, something that Yves doesn’t like. If it wasn’t for that, it would be the perfect carrot cake! He ended up taking home the carrot cake. It’s too bad I couldn’t take the warm chocolate cake home!
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My chopped salad, you can see the onion bread in the back!
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Sorry for the bad vegetable photos but I just wanted to make sure I document them. We ended up taking them home too.
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Afterwards we had originally thought of going to check out a movie. Going to the movies is not something we do often since Yves has unofficially banned going to movies. He ALWAYS seems to get stuck sitting by the noise makers! But since it was a special occasion, we were thinking of giving it a go. Well, we were so stuffed from dinner that sitting down for a movie did not appeal to us. We had to walk it off! So we decided to walk down to the Brooklyn Promenade. It was very nice! We haven’t been down there in awhile. We also took a few night shots, which we used to love doing!
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All in all, a very nice evening! Oh, here is the card I made for Yves too! Very simple.
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Summer Crafts 2

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I joined a superheroine swap and found out my partner likes She-Ra. I thought it was quite convenient as Sienna is really into She-Ra too (yay for Netflix streaming!) I suppose I should also link this photo too!
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Made for a swap and sent to a Gone With The Wind fan. I guess I should watch that movie one day!
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Cut the elephant with my Silhouette. I really like how this came out!
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This is one of my favorites! It was for an Etsy inspiration swap where you check out your partner’s Etsy favorites list and make something inspired by something on their list. Being a fan of zombies, I really wanted to make this or something similiar. Of course, the original item is laser cut from stainless steel! I made mine with paper, vinyl and UV resin! I’ve done something similar a couple of times before, see here, here and here. And at first, I attempted to do the same way, cut several pieces out with paper and layer them together with glue. It wasn’t working out. Too many details and the Silhouette could not cut cleanly on the paper. I almost gave up. Then I though of vinyl! Or course, that would mean I couldn’t make the middle see through as I had to lay the vinyl on something! So I used red glitter paper to cut a frame, put the vinyl on top (which cut perfectly!) and then decided to coat it with Magic Glos. I’m not totally happy with how the hole for the jump ring got messed up and that is definitely something I will be extra careful with for the next one! My partner loved it!
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I decided to use vinyl again for these hummingbirds since the beak is so small and delicate. I used dimensional fabric paint to make the flowers. I really like how they came out. By the way, this is 2 pendants that I made into one double sided one.
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This was also for the Etsy inspire swap for the same person that got the zombie pendant. I am also a big fan of anatomical hearts so I carved one for myself as well!
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Wall vinyl for the last item for the Etsy inspire swap. Just in time for Halloween!
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Bookmarks! The one with beads is strung onto elastic cord. The top right is ribbon and the bottom right is scrapbook paper.
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I saw this idea on pinterest (btw, totally love pinterest!) but on a bracelet so I adjusted it for these old earrings I had. Well, after this, I am totally addicted to doing macramé! More projects with macramé this to come!
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When I saw this tutorial on Honestly…WTF (love that blog name too!), I couldn’t wait to give it a try! I plan on making more!

Summer Crafts 1

The weather is starting to get cooler and I couldn’t be more happier! Autumn is my favorite time of year! Comfort food cooking, light jackets, getting cuddly and cozy and having more time for crafting! The summer days went by so fast with keeping Sienna occupied, road trips and just being worn out from the humidity. I didn’t feel like I did a lot of crafts over these past few months but when I compiled all my photos, there were a lot more than I thought. So I decided to just break it up into 2 posts.
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I attempted shrinky dinks again with some rubber stamps. I colored them in with pencils and put glitter paper in the back and made them pins. Sorry for the bad photo!
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Raven stamp carve
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This was for my niece, Elianna, who lives in Thailand. Apparently Our World is big with the 10 year olds and it’s hard to get stuff so I made this with t-shirt vinyl. I heard she likes the shirt!
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I bought this princess fabric from This and That from Japan. I love their shop! I love the fabric as it is a little thicker than quilting cotton. I made this pouch for Sienna to hold her little tiny princess dolls, it has since turned into the snack pouch.
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I also made this Superman/Batman pouch to hold her Batman and villians dolls (see a couple here). The reason it is half and half is because I used remnants I had after making her these pillowcases:
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I made this pouch for a Hello Kitty/skull fan on swap-bot.
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This was for a bird brooch swap
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I made these lighthouse notecards with my Silhouette. I’m not really happy with how poorly it cut the tiny details like the windows but it’s still better than hand cutting!
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I made these photo notecards using my photos. The flower and tree frames were cut with the Silhouette.
And to round off this post, Thank you cards, also cut with the Silhouette:
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Sienna’s goofy face is a little extra bonus for you! HA! Anyway, I totally cased this card from another Silhouette user. I really loved it so I made 2! One is for Yves’ cousin in Tunisia, who sent Sienna these cute outfits (see here) and yummy Tunisian pastries for us (I can’t believe I forgot to take a photo of them! I was really impressed with how intricate some of the designs were!) The other card was for the Olson’s, whose house we stayed at during our Chicago trip.

Summer Crafts 2 to follow!

June crafts!

Let’s get right to it!
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Kliban cat rubber stamps and shrinky dinks. Still haven’t mastered the art of shrinky dinking.
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This set was made for a Mail Art inside and out swap. You had to create 3 Mail Art related things so I made postal stickers, notecards (cards were made using a postal theme digital graphics, envelopes from old maps!) and a set of 3 postcards I stamped and colored.
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I hosted a swap to make fabric luggage tags.
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Bottle cap charms
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Embroidered a set of 4 napkins using patterns from Wild Olive
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View Master stamp carving for myself. Inspired by some view master fabric I saw online. Need to carve the viewer next!
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For 2 carving swaps, beach themed that I hosted (inspired by our Myrtle Beach vacation) and a sun theme.
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Hedge hog! Made these 2 for 2 different swaps, woodland brooch and woodland theme in a ziplock.
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Jumped at the chance to join a july birthday card swap so I could get some in the mail!
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Another birthday party for a former classmates of Sienna’s so I made the same card as I did for the twins in May! His party was at the Party Gym.
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My partner loves the Monkees in this swap for Wacky Holidays June.

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