Lazy Day

I really don't have anything of great worth or humor to share today. Unlike every other day. But I realized as my lazy self was surfing through my long long long long long long long list of blogs that I have stopped checking some of them very often. The reason? They don't update every day. So this got me thinking...

Oh my goodness this post is so boring already...switching gears. Thinking thinking...ooooh! Got it! I totally went garage sale-ing this morning! Let me tell you what we saw.

First you are not going to believe this. A package of tampons!!! Already opened and in a ziploc with some pads!! Stop!! I am not making that up!!

What else? Oh yeah, about 40 little deodorants. ALL at one place. Why would anyone have that many deodorants (mostly of the same variety) and why would they sell them at a garage sale? That just seems totally weird to me. I didn't check to see if they were previously (ewww) used.

I did get Little d some little girl formal dresses for her to play dress up with. They can be washed, so they fit my garage sale criteria. I got a couple of scrapbooking things...stickers for Little d and some wooden leaf stamps for 50 cents.

I also bought a ribbon curtain for a dollar, so that's lots a yards o ribbon for a buck! Cool huh?

Okay that's all the interesting things I can think of on this lazy day. I may be a little scarce this week as I am preparing for a big workshop.

Talk to you soon!

Christmas Card Challenge #35

Sparkle's challenge this week is to use some element from her card (which is fantastic) to create a Christmas card. I chose to incorporate snowflakes into my card. Well I didn't so much "incorporate" it as make it the entire focus!

This card reminds me of my wedding. We had a little bit of a snowflake theme and my colors were victorian lavender and deep red with touches of silver. Well really the only deep red was in the bridesmaid's bouquets. Anyway, here's the card:

The silver snowflake sticker is left over from my wedding. We would buy them everytime HL would put stickers on sale (the entire stock). I used the small ones in the set for the wedding invitation envelopes, and I used some on the programs and different things like that. I just realized they are nine years old and still sticky--not too bad!

Okay now I'm all nostalgic for wedding pictures. I'm going to dig mine out and see about doing some posting...

Details:

Paper: dark and light purple from stash

Other: sticker (Class A'Peals, a division of Stampendous) white ribbon (HL)

Sunset paper

I bought a DCWV Safari Chic stack the other day when Hobby Lobby had their paper on sale because clearly, I need more paper. Also my four year old wants a 'Cheetah Girls' birthday party next month and we are all about the cheetah prints right now.

When I pried the stack out of her hand long enough to peruse it, I saw a gradient colored paper that looked just like a sunset. Or sunrise I guess. Anyhoo, I searched high and low to find something to stamp a silhouette with and well what do you know? Treasure life? Sure why not?

I used black embossing powder to make the images stand out. Doesn't it almost look like I actually had the skills to brayer that background? Not! Here's a detail of the ep. The only drawback is that the paper was textured so there's some paper showing through the silhouettes.

Details: all CTMH unless noted

Paper: as mentioned above

Ink: Versamark

Stamps: Treasure Life

Other: black ep, black ribbon

A baby girl card

A customer and co-worker of D's recently found out she's having a girl. So last night I sat down to relax and had baby girl on the brain. That's where this card came from:

I really love these Nana's paper stacks. The glitter and patterns are just too cute! The little baby rattle I covered in Prisma glitter, so in real life the image is softer than this picture shows. Okay off to look at my new catalogs that got here a day early! Are you kidding me!?!

Details: all CTMH unless noted

Paper: Blush cs, Colonial White cs, pattern (DCWV Nana's Nursery) light green cs from stash

Ink: Blush

Stamps: Baby Steps, Adorable for sentiment

Other: scallop punch (SU!), Spellbinders, cream ribbon (Hobby Lobby)

I have decided I hate my husband a little bit.

Well I went my whole dairy-intolerant-IBS life not knowing what chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream tasted like. Until.

Until my husband brought a half gallon of Blue Bell Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream into our house. Oh he says it was for Little d, but I think it was just an evil plot to destroy what sanity I have left.

I mean here's the deal. I like ice cream as much as the next person. But because of my issues I can avoid it pretty easily. I'll occasionally take a bite or maybe two of some. We have a little spot here in town called Dairy Treat and they make the incredible real old fashioned milkshakes that are to die for, and I have been known to actually die for some.

Whenever I'm preggo (no I am not right now) I really crave dairy. But other than that I can avoid this little indulgence. I mean it's just not worth the pain.

Sigh. But then two nights ago I was dishing out the kids' cookie dough ice cream and took a little and I mean teeny bite of Little m's.

Stupid *%$#$% dairy farmers and their stupid $%&*)#% dairy products. I think about this ice cream randomly through the day. Is that weird? I steal the dough out of Little m's ice cream before I give it to her. Is that weird?

I told my husband I hate him a little bit for bringing this...thing...into our marriage. Is that weird?

Okay now y'all go dish out a big bowl of whatever frozen goodness you have in your freezer right now and eat it guilt free in honor of me! Good night!

Traveler's Inspiration Challenge #6

This picture from Traveling Mama reminded me a little of the Matagorda Island of my childhood. Well specifically the fence in the water. I will have to devote an entire post to the whole Matagorda Island history and how that likely shaped my political views today, but for now, I will just speak of this challenge.

I can't imagine that there are any man-made colors that come close to that shade of ocean, but I wanted to give a valiant attempt at recreating the teal blue and deep blue in the water. I also thought I would try something a little different and do an abstract card. I can safely say this is far far from any card I would normally do.

But overall I like the look. I really wish I could have blended the "ocean" a little better, but I didn't want the paper to start disintegrating. When choosing the sentiment I almost stamped 'relax', but then I saw 'Love is spoken here' and I realized it needed to go on this card. I think I could use this for a wedding card for a contemporary couple. What do you think?

Details: all CTMH unless noted

Paper: crystal blue cs, textured bamboo cs, garden green cs, medium green (stash) dark green (stash)

Ink: Desert Sand

Stamps: Treasure Life

Other: coluzzle circles, Ocean and Star Spangled Blue water pencils, waterbrush, sanding block, stipple tool.

Curtain Call ACT II

This week at Stacey's Stamping Stage the colors were as warm as the weather around here in South Texas.




This card came together really fast once I had the colors assembled. This stamp set is one of my all time favorites from Close to My Heart called Treasure Life. It was a stamp of the month last year and they are bringing it back in the new Fall/Winter catty. SHHH! Don't tell anyone, that's some insider info for you!

Thanks for stopping by! I did this card last night, so I'm hoping to have another one ready to post today at nap time...we'll see.

Details: all CTMH unless noted

Paper: white daisy cs, garden green cs, and vineyard berry look alike from stash

Ink: Creme Brulee and Vineyard Berry

Stamps: Treasure Life, Thank You

Other: that's it!

August CTMH Workshop Project

I have been stressing and working over this project. I am charging $13 which is more than I have before, but I am adding more embellishments, plus I had to purchase the accordion album. Ahem, so here it is...

This is the complete front of it.

This is a closeup of the front cover.

Page one. I made the scallop lace by punching holes in the my SU! scallop punch.

Page two.

Page three.

Page four. I love this picture of the girls. I used third generation stamp on the journaling area so the ink from the marker would show well.

Full picture of the back. You may not be able to tell, but the first inside page says LOVE and the second has a carousel and the quote "Laughter makes the world go round."

This is the back cover, I made that beaded pin myself. This is the, like, I don't know, 50th try!

Details: All CTMH unless noted

Paper: Desert Sand cs, Grey Wool cs, Colonial White cs

Ink: Desert Sand, Grey Wool (pads and markers)

Stamps: You've Got Flair, Solo "F", Solo "B", Annotations, Baroque Alphabet, Laughter, Adorning Corners

Other: Foundry Bookplates, Pewter brads, Pewter Designer brad, Colonial White edge anchors, (beads, pin and ribbon from Hobby Lobby)

Check this out!!

My wonderfully talented and artistic sister in law has done it again. She started up a new Etsy shop for her floral wedding creations and as usual they are stunning!

HERE's the link to her post. You simply must check out these bouquets! Fantastic! HERE's the link to her new Etsy shop.

I'll be back later with some pictures of my accordion album, I just had to pop on to share those links with you.

A funny thing about bananas...

Did you know that if you leave bananas on your counter long enough they will liquify? Truly.

{{Don't you love it when you log on here and I have a handy dandy public service announcement for you? I mean where else could you get this valuable information...the government??}}

The other day (it's been long enough now I can type about it and even, yes, chuckle about it) as I was tooling around the kitchen fixing the girls breakfast I noticed a plastic spoon on the floor almost under the cabinet, near the fridge. I thought 'I need to pick that up later.' And of course then promptly forgot about it. Later, in the kitchen, I noticed something sticky on my foot. I wiped it off and continued messing around until a few minutes later I noticed sticky again. Well crap this was not random, so now I need to hunt down the source of the mess to clean it up. I found it.

A couple of overly ripe bananas sitting in their plastic bag on the counter had began to liquify and drip out of the bag. It ran down the cabinet and the side of the fridge and landed...wait for it...on the back of the plastic spoon where it splattered in a fine sheen of ewww on the kitchen floor.

Here's the running dialog of my brain during that discovery for your reading pleasure...

uh, more sticky...what the hell...spilled milk probably....where did it come from...have to get on the floor to see...no...no..what the...damn spoon had sticky...hot chocolate?...no....it's on the fridge...it's on the counter...what in the world...bananas...WHAT!?!? OH GROSS!!!!!

See how that worked from the bottom up? Okay so the moral is: If you want ripe bananas for bread, do not put new bananas in front of them to hide them so your pea brain forgets they are there.

In other news...if I overdose on something it turns out it will be these...



Not these...



As previously thought.

Did you miss me?

I just posted ten minutes ago about this stamp set . I told you I would be using it A LOT.

Stacey's Stamping Stage not only got a blog makeover, she's started a new challenge to replace her Jewelry Challenges. The new challenge is titled Curtain Call Color Challenge and here's Act I:

I used CTMH's Moonstruck and Dutch Blue.

I decided to not only use my new fave stamp, but also try to do a square card for the CD envelope idea.

Now looking at it, I don't care for the stamp I used to coordinate on the envelope at all, so I'll probably change that, BUT, you can see how easy it is to incorporate the circle window into the card's design. And I think if I don't want to use a circle I'll just cover the whole front of the envie with a decorated square of cardstock!

Hope you all are having a great day!

Details: all CTMH unless noted

Paper: white daisy cs

Ink: Moonstruck, Dutch Blue

Stamps: You've Got Flair, Adorning Corners

Other: white ribbon (Hobby Lobby), foam squares, CD envelope/sleeve (D's closet)

Here's a story...

of a stamp named You've-Got Fla-air,
and two very different ways to use that stamp,
ba-da ba-da bump.

Now go back and sing that to the Brady Bunch tune. What? It works.

Okay so here's the story. A few months ago when the summer catty came out, I skimmed the Stamps of the Month. {CTMH offers a special limited edition stamp every month that you can get full price or at a discount depending on your purchase.} When I saw the July Stamp of the Month, "You've Got Flair" I thought...um notsomuch.



And here's the reason why... I must warn you, the following picture is not for the faint of heart. Or you know, for anyone with any decorating sense whatsoever.



That. That is what I see everytime I walk into my bathroom. Granted, I am blessed with a large master bathroom. Not that large. I mean it is heinous. It was here when we moved in and we still bought the house. Since the stamp (specifically that one on the top corner) reminded me of the wallpaper, I was not too gung ho. {Is in gun ho or gung ho?} Okay since my mom says it's gung ho, it's probably gun ho. Ha.

Also all the work I saw with this set online had the images colored in different colors. Now I'm not saying I didn't like other people's work. I'm just saying it didn't to anything to dissuade me from the whole wallpaper image thing.

Meanwhile in a town far far away... Really just another compartment of my brain I was wishing and hoping that CTMH would come out with a really cool damask stamp pattern a la Papertrey Ink. And then sha-zam! It hit me...

If I just stamped tone on tone, I could virtually make a damask pattern. It really was like that commercial where the guy with the chocolate bar gets in the the other guy's tub of peanut butter. I had the stamp, Desert Sand ink and Desert Sand cardstock on my desk and BAM! Here's some more of this idea on this month's workshop (an accordian album). I am totally going to be using this stamp all the time now!

I'll post some better pictures of this project when I complete it. It's what I've been working on during Little m's nap for the last few days which is why I haven't been posting any cards.

Disclaimer: If you have that wallpaper or, love someone who does, sorry. Didn't mean to offend. It's just not my taste. {wink}

In all seriousness...

Normally I try to keep things light on here. I mean except for the political posts. And the PMS rants. And the slight hints of MIL drama. You know other than those things.


But I saw a prompt on MamaKat's blog. I check in there occasionally. It was 'Describe what brought you closer to your faith.' I think I might want to write about that now.


I've always been a religious person. When I tell someone I'll keep them in my prayers, I really do pray for them. I pray for my family daily. I believe in God and the afterlife, I believe that every thing happens for a reason. Although rarely do we get to see the reason.


Several years ago, during the time period when D and I were trying to have baby number two, I found a lump in my breast. My grandmother had breast cancer, so I panicked. I mean I thought, I have an 18-month old, and I'm trying to have another, I can't have cancer. I called my OB/GYN's office and spoke to the nurse. She informed me that if I came in, Dr. S would just send me for a mammogram anyway, so I needed to just make an appointment for a mammogram. I did. It was a week away.


I waited. I worried. I prayed.


I went in for the mammogram. It's very surreal to be there as a 32 year old. I mean they don't recommend a baseline mammogram until 40, right? Anyway. The woman was very nice and chatty which helped. I was very worried about being possibly pregnant and having an xray. D went with me of course. We found out nothing that day.



Or the next.


Or the next.


Finally I called my OB's office on a Friday afternoon. I could not go through the weekend not knowing. My nurse looked at the report and called me back. "I'm not supposed to tell you anything until Dr. S looks it over, but everything was fine."


Thank God. I mean all that worry for nothing. We quickly resumed trying for number two.


Monday morning the nurse called back. Now I know why she's not supposed to say anything. She was wrong. The mammogram was too hard to read--all that dense breast tissue HA. It turns out that I need a Scintimammogram. Otherwise known as a nuclear mammogram. Okay. So we're back to square one.


That mammogram was scheduled the next day. D went with me again. I got called back and the nurse said 'does your husband want to stay for the whole time?' I guess I looked really puzzled so she said 'they didn't tell you that it's going to take over two hours?'. No, they didn't. In fact "they" have explained little to nothing about everything thus far.


"Yes," I said. "He'll be staying the entire time."


The radiologist came and injected the nuclear dye/marker/whatthehellever into my veins and I cried. Not because it hurt, but because he was injecting something nuclear into my veins and there was this slight chance that I could be pregnant and, my God, cancer?


Then I had the mammogram. It took several pictures for 10 minutes each on each side. And then again on the side with the lump. Turns out I had much in common with the woman taking the mammogram. We chatted as if I didn't have a boob stuck in a vise while nuclear dye coursed through my system looking for cancer cells to stick to.


Free to go.


Free to you know, worry some more. I didn't need to worry long. The next morning my nurse called me at 8:30 in the morning. They wanted to do a biopsy. To be specific, a needle-directed incisional biopsy. I asked her if this was done often, and she assured me that most of the time there was nothing to worry about. She recommended a surgeon and said he was really good. She thought that I wouldn't need to be put to sleep that it was likely an in office procedure. It's not.


I had to pick up my results from the radiologist and take them to the surgeon. I of course read them. Here's the quote that is permanently etched in my brain:


"high probability of cancer or other similar pathogen."


I'm not really sure what other similar pathogen means, but it sounds serious enough. Apparently there was a high uptake of the dye in a certain area. Not, interestingly enough, in the area of the lump. The lump which was nowhere to be found. The surgeon was amazing. When he saw the results he said, 'well that does sound serious doesn't it?' But he also said, 'we're going to get you some good news.'


My surgery was scheduled for Good Friday. We called and emailed everyone we knew (just about) to pray. I had the nuns praying for me. I had prayer chains. I had a 2am moment alone in the bathroom railing at God to NOT DO THIS TO ME! I mean, 'high probability of cancer' sounds pretty damn real. All day long my brain kept saying 'I can't leave her, I can't leave her...' I made my husband promise to learn how to paint fingernails.


The technician from the radiologist office called to explain some things to me about the 'needle directed' part. (The only person other than the surgeon to explain things to me.) When I asked her how accurate the Scintimammogram was she said 75%. I was actually relieved since everything I had read online said 95% accurate. So you know 20% in my favor? I'll take it.


It's pretty much your standard day surgery. Except with the optional death-sentence outcome. They gave me something to relax me. Not even close. I was wheeled across the street to have the needle inserted by the radiologist so the surgeon knew what to remove. He said, 'you could have a large indention and some dimpling in the area of the scar.' I just nodded. Not really my primary concern right now mister, but thanks for letting me know I'll likely be disfigured no matter what the outcome.


After a few more hours of waiting, I was taken down to surgery. I remember waking up to a cute male nurse asking me to cough and then leaving me behind a curtain to dress myself. I had adhesive stuck to my face and a tight ace bandage around me chest. And I was just so relieved that the surgery was over. I was wheeled out to my vehicle through the waiting area where my husband, mom, Godmother, brother and sister-in-law were waiting for me. We went home. I had no after effects of the anesthesia, just a little pain in my breast. Not enough to warrant a pain pill.


The weekend we spent quietly. Little d hunted for eggs in the backyard on Sunday. My BFF made a card and everyone signed it and sent well wishes from my Grandmother's house. I was incredibly tired all weekend.

I had to wait until Tuesday for my followup with the surgeon to get the results. It was a holiday weekend after all. I sat in the waiting room with D. I watched another couple in there. A woman and her husband and her mother. The mother was praying. I saw a couple of other patients. One woman was having cancer treatments. All very real.

Finally it was our turn. The nurse came in the room with us and asked how the wound was. 'Did you already call this morning to get your results?'

'No.' I didn't know I could.

'It's okay.'

'What do you mean--there's nothing wrong?'

'Yes, everything was normal.' She smiled. It must be nice to be able to give good news like that.

'Are you serious?'

'Yes.' She left to get the doctor. I cried and D called mom on his cell. Just like that. Everything was normal, except that nothing will ever be normal again. When the surgeon came in he gave a little aside to the nurse while looking at my chart...'you know how unusual this is?' 'Yes' she said. I guess you don't go into surgery too often with a high probability of cancer or other similar pathogen and get good results.

On the ride home, D held my hand and summed it all up with this rhetorical question:

"It kind of restores your faith, doesn't it."

Yes it did. I don't know what I was supposed to learn from that journey. I even said that to D. 'Why did we go through this? What am I supposed to learn?' He said, 'Maybe I was the one who was supposed to learn something, like to never take you for granted.'

I think about it often. Every month when I do my monthly self breast exam. When my BFF found a lump (it was nothing thank God). When I think about my miscarriage. (I think the two are related, but I will save that for another post.)

I sometimes think there was something there and that through prayer God performed a miracle. I sometimes think maybe it was an area that would have turned into cancer down the road and now it's gone. I don't know exactly, but I do know that I feel like God touched my life through this incident. Okay I've cried enough typing this post, off to hug my kiddos!! And my husband!!

Buttons, Buttons, Buttons!

This week's Christmas Card Challenge at Sparkle's Creations was to use stickers. I found some dimensional stickers from We R Memory Keepers in my stash. I decided to use the cute little elf and then cut like a million little stamped buttons out to finish it off.

You know for a while now I've put off making 5x5 cards because I like to have envelopes that match my cards. But then I saw all these CTMH people using CD sleeves with the circle windows to make cute little matching envies. LOVE that idea. And we have a huge box (250) of those sitting in the closet. So you will likely be seeing more square cards from me in the future!

Details: all CTMH unless noted

Paper: green and cream from stash

Ink: Creme Brulee, Olive, Cranberry

Stamps: Buttoned Together

Other: We R MemoryKeepers sticker

Traveler's Inspiration Challenge #4

Last week I just couldn't get a card to come together for Tina's challenge. This week though I was so inspired and very anxious to get to the scrap room.



I don't know exactly what jumped out at me first if it was the colors or the texture! I seem to be really inspired by architecture. I knew immediately that I wanted to use this texture plate and to mimic the stones on the corner. Little d helped with the rest by leaving the keyhole stamp on my desk. How appropriate is that for a door? Looking at it again the only thing I would change would be to use Juniper paper for the pop of blue rather than Twilight.


Thanks for stopping by!

Details: all CTMH unless noted
Paper: Twilight cs, Bamboo Textured cs, Colonial White cs, orange textured cs from stash
Ink: Bamboo, Desert Sand
Stamps: Key to My Heart
Other: Sanding block, edge distressor, cuttlebug embossing plate