Christmas cards

I realized that I had talked about them but hadn't posted pics yet. I wanted to make sure that I had them mailed off before I spoiled it and posted what they looked like. They were a case from a SCS person, Genie 1314. I really liked the blue this season. I used the Snowflake Serenade stamp set from Papertrey Ink.

The questions!

Because we had our friends lose their daughter I felt the need to go to services this evening. We were ridiculously late but it didn't matter. We told our kid what happened to our friends, we had taken her to their son's 6th birthday so she knew who they were. They were also there when we went to Chanukah services so she wanted to know if they would be there tonight to but we explained to her that even though they flew back into town today that they had been in an accident and would not be ready to got out and about and visit for awhile yet. She then followed up with all the morbid questions that kids have about accidents and death (because we, as people, are nosey, and children have no reason to not ask). We then had to go into what we don't ask people that have had something bad happen to them because it is too upsetting and of course then she asks why. Tack and social grace is such a fun thing to teach a 6 yr old but I don't want her asking details of how our friend's daughter died when she sees our friend. Such morbid questions from such a young mind, too much Cartoon Network you think?

Hug your loved ones tightly

This holiday season seems to be one of sadness in my small little world of people. I started this blog mostly for paper crafting stuff but it's turned into the front page of CNN. My mom just called, our good friend and co-worker Ruben was driving his family to Colorado today for a trip to the snow. Him, his beautiful wife Irma, their 2 teen age (18&19) daughters and 6 y/o son. Mom just got off the phone with Irma, they were in Amarillo and got into a nasty accident. One of their daughters is dead and the rest of them have serious injuries. And since Ruben owns his own construction company they have no health insurance. They were waiting for Life Flight to get there when my mom was talking to Irma. I saw my bills for the ambulance and brain surgery on Thanksgiving and we have insurance (80/20 but still, it covered a good chunk) and I don't want to even know how much this is going to cost them in the long run. Having a child die is not something any parent should be expected to live through. It's just so awful, I know Ruben will probably blame himself for everything so the recovery for him will be just that much worse. It's going to be really rough. They we're so supportive when I was in the hospital a month ago, we're going to do our best to be there for them too. Of course they will be in hospitals up in Amarillo but we'll do our best regardless. Keep them in your prayers, they're going to need it.

The evening screamfest

We have one every night over dinner. The kid complains about everything in her dinner, from what it consists of to the texture to needing a different fork to why can't I have (insert other food of choice here). It takes her well over an hour to finish and by then we've been yelling at her for at least 30 minutes. She tries to get in long conversations about other things and the like, what she's having for dessert (not getting dessert babe). We've been over indulgent parents for way too long and are now reaping the benefits. Christmas Eve and we're telling her we have Santa's cell phone number. It's really bad tonight. Really bad. The hubby's going to need therapy soon. The kid already does so that's a given. She's been consistently bad lately, she doesn't listen. At all. I think she's traumatized from watching me get sick. Like everything she's heard from adults lately has freaked her out so bad she's just going to stop listening. Can you blame her?

Girls Night Out and Poker Night

Both happened last night. We girls (Kate and Candace) got home relatively early from going out to dinner so that the boys could go out to poker night and every one had a nice evening. It's been awhile since I've seen Kate and she's moving to Panama in February. The kid was over at their house playing with Kaia before it all started so the hubby at some point went over to bring McDonalds for the girls to have for dinner and probably lessen the stress on poor Fred who was stuck with the 2 girls. The hubby then hung out with Fred for awhile which was again, nice, since we love both of them but never get to hang out and now they're leaving the country! Trudy was supposed to go too but she has some sort of odd viral thing (note to self, must call her!) and is in the 2nd trimester of a pregnancy from hell so she's less than happy this holiday season.
I sent the hubby out for poker after I got home, sometime I really need to go in his stead so we can get our cash back from all of his less than fruitful games.
At some point our neighbors called (they left for the holiday and we are picking up their mail) to make sure their xmas tree light timer was working. It was the funniest 2 answering messages I've heard in awhile. You can almost hear Joe (the husband) in the background telling Angela that she's rambling and no one's going to be able to understand what she's talking about. I got her, I totally understood what she was saying. Later that night Joe called just to re-explain and I told him I knew what she was saying but I don't think he believed me at all. Their xmas tree is fine and it turns on just as planned.
Ah the holidays......

Last day at school before the holiday

So fortunately the kid was still well and able to go to school for the last day before the holiday. Her party was today and since B was a room parent he had to be there since the room parents are the ones who organize these things. So the kids got all jacked up on cookies and candy and were let go early as long as their parents signed them out. So we got the kidlet a bit early today which was nice, she was still well behaved even with all the sugar in her. The room parents also got a gift basket together and one of the things one of the room parents wanted to do for it was get the parents to give a picture of their kid to us so we could put an album together. B brought the pics to me yesterday and we got a little pic album to put them in and I did that this morning. The hardest part was using rub on letters to make a little thing that said what it was on the window in the front of the album. Not all the pics were the same size so some had to have backs put on them to fit. It worked and there are plenty more pages for more pictures of later in the school year. It was nice and the kids liked it. I would have preferred to do a scrapbook type thing but there was not enough time or pics. Only about half the parents got the pics to us.

Back at it

We sent the kidlet back to school today, she was pretty darn tired tonight but was very happy to get back to school. I can't believe how resilient children are when it comes to illnesses, as adults we are total wimps when it comes to having colds/flus. Ah, age....
Anyway, I got the same cold she had (no fever though) and this does not surprise anyone seeing as how the surgery and steroids probably did a number on my immune system. Or rather, lack thereof immune system.
I managed to mail off 99% of our x-mas cards today. I have 2 more to send out tomorrow and I have to mail Morgan's x-mas prezzie tomorrow (and my dad's) anyway so we have to go to the post office regardless. Will that help those last 2 cards get to their destinations faster? Meybe, we'll see.

Almost done!

I have like 14 more x-mas cards to make. I can't believe I've gotten this far actually. There are only 2 addresses that I can't find, fortunately they are parents of good friends so I just emailed them to have them send me those addresses. They'd better get back to me! I tried addressing the ones that have the farthest to travel first (seeing as how these things are going out damn late!) so we'll see how it goes. At least this year I have a good excuse, and hey, I hand made all of these suckers after having being released from the hospital. My OT therapist will probably be thrilled. Did you know that Occupational Therapy is from the waist up and Physical Therapy is the waist down? I learned that in therapy since I was getting both. One day for OT they sat me down with a 14 piece puzzle. Yeah, we do nothing less than 1000 here at the house. Well except for the kid but she's at like 100 pieces so she's no slacker either. At least we do something productive with the dining room table. Lord knows we never use it for eating.
Speaking of PT/OT btw, I start again this Thursday. They've been busy and hadn't had a chance to call me to schedule times for me. Good thing I'm pretty much functional....

Double ear infection

Because why just do one when you can do both? The dd has cold and a fever she's got the regular gunk that has been going around. We've kept her home for the past 2 days (because we don't believe in torturing other kids and parents) so that we can give her the ibuprofin she needs when her fever goes up. She's been driving us insane (the down side of meds, they make her feel fine enough to be obnoxious). So when I gave her the q-tips to clean out her ears afeter her shower last night she was working on a way to pull out gray matter with them. Then she tells me she has an ear infection and I think "yeah, no big surprise there". She's had 3 or 4, almost always a double. Her first was the evening before her 4th birthday so like many other kids, she's experienced in the pain. I am very glad we caught this one early!!

I spoke too soon

First of all, I still haven't finished the cards. They are close but I think I need more ink (I hate it when I run out of supplies in the middle of a project, it's so frustrating!). Plus the dh has decided to write a little ditty to go in the x-mas cards being made. Really it's a ditty (check out his blog, he posted it there). The really funny part is that he did it to 'Twas the night before Christmas' and it's simple rhyming but in 11 syllables. The man is much more into iambic pentameter so the 11 syllables was driving him insane. You would not believe the amount of frustration it caused him. Too funny! He can do Elizabethan Sonnet rhyming too but 11 syllables, not so happy. He's an English major type, me, I'm the science math type. While he was complaining on the computer and tapping out the syllables I was laying on the spare bed laughing at him. Cruel wifey, but dang it was amusing! If I'm frustrated with something academic it's probably not something I can solve by myself. I'm not saying I'm super intelligent just that the math/science stuff that would stump me is not something I could tap out on a table. I should have been an English major, I'd probably be a less cranky person...

I am almost done with the x-mas cards

Which is a miracle since I only just started today. Lets face it though, as long as you have an idea of what you're going to do it doesn't take all that long. I'm only making like 35 too so that helps. I know there are those that make in the hundreds. Oh hell no. My family is lucky to get one, every one else is just because I love them. Really, if you get an x-mas card from me you must have done something special. I don't do x-mas cards, they aren't really my thing. And I have yet to do one of those 'updates' that some over achievers do with their cards. You know, the print out with the whole year summarized. I figure the dh has been sending updates on my brain blowout to everyone just about every other day for the last 3 weeks. If you wanted to know anything else feel free to email us. I know I, at least, always respond with in a day. If I don't then something bad has happened, email the dh to make sure he's still sane. Wives are here to stress their dh's out so bad that they'll never make it to their 60th b-day...

Working Boxer

I love this picture, and they say it's a bulldog. Um no. Boxer dog! If mine had to work for their food they'd have died decades ago.

We have the most wonderful friends in the whole world

We will never ever regret moving to this state if not just for the fact that the friends we have here are just amazing. Throughout this whole medical disaster they have gone above and beyond like I've never seen before. The neighbor wives have been feeding my family while I've been gone (and my mil too!) and I've got cards and flowers while in the hospital like you would not believe. While I was sitting here on the computer this evening with the dogs snoring on top of me the doorbell rang. The hubby gathered the dogs and sent them outside and then went to the door. It was carolers, or more specifically, all of our neighborhood friends with their children came bearing gifts and song. It was the sweetest thing ever. You would not believe the gift cards!! As I understand it Candace organized it (she came to visit me in the hospital and complained that the hubby was not asking for her help and it was driving her nuts) and that doesn't surprise me at all, she's just amazing. We got to see a bunch of friends that we (or at least I) haven't seen for awhile and it was great. Really an amazing out pouring of love and generosity from everyone! And it's cold out tonight, they must have all been freezing their butts off.
I must also mention the kitten, you know the one who had thought she was going to move in when I was in the hospital and basically made it into the garage 3 doors down? She showed up during the caroling (dang smart cat). Anyway one of the girls decided to take her home. About an hour later CeCe (Jack's mom) came back and was like, Uh I think my daughter took your kitten. We then explained how the kitten came to be so I think CeCe is keeping it in her garage now. Yeah, that's one smart cat. Anyway, if you're with in a 30 minute driving radius of San Antonio and want a very smart brown tabby girl kitten drop me a line. I can get it to you in no time flat. Anyway, just wanted you all to know that our friends here are AMAZING people that go way above and beyond. You know I'm from So Cal and you're much more on your own there. You get shot on the side of the road and you'd better hope someone from Georgia drives by because anyone else is just going to think you're stupid for getting yourself shot and will keep on going.

The dogs are going to be killed very soon

They are outside b/c the dh, mil, and dd are playing memory on the floor. They are clambering up the door and up the window. MONSTERS! I'm going to clobber them over the head with the x-mas tree. Damn dogs. It's close to their dinner time so their even more obnoxious. Like really bad doggies...

Home Again!

Cross your fingers that all goes well, they let me out!! Yesterday morning B came to spring me from rehab. It's sooo nice to be home again, my own bed, my own shower, ahhh the little things in life! Waking up with little to no feeling in ones limbs because there are just that many snoring dog bodies on you. My neurologist would probably have a fit.
Roxy had a drs appt yesterday for a lump we found on her toe. Unfortunately she is a boxer and if you didn't know, boxers are cancer factories. Yes, it's probably cancer but we aren't doing the insane stuff that we do on people for her. Surgery maybe, no chemo. If she needs medicinal pot I'm game, there are worse things in life. Plus, prior to being in our home she had a rough life so she deserves what ever good stuff she can get.

She did fine

My rooomate is still live and hasn't seemed to have tortured any nurses. We went out and bought her an outfit yesterday so she has something to wear. I think it made her feel better. We also got he toiletries and a hairbrush. Her therapist this morning was able to do adls with her this morning (you need clothing and toiletries to do these evaluations so that's why it hadn't been done yet). The therapist was very grateful to us for getting her things, she brushed her hair and put it up in a pony tail. There are so many old people here that apparently just get dumped. It's sooo sad! This woman has apparently been to this facility before, the nurses recognize her face. I will be going home tomorrow for good but still coming in for outpatient therapy so I'll be in to visit her often. I'll probably get her more clothes too. If we're lucky the nurses will have her clothes washed here (not normally done but she has no one to take care of her so exceptions are made).
So I'll be back at 8am every day and probably stay for 4 hours of out patient therapy. Basically scheduled gym time. Very good for me, it's not like I've ever been into gym time, ew.

I got day passes for this weekend!

I get to go home during the day on Saturday and Sunday! It makes me soooo happy. It's way too hard to relax in a hospital setting. I love my pt people and all but it's damn loud here and sooo bustling that it's hard to nap/sleep/heal. I'm worried about my roomie though. I try to take care of her while I'm here. She has no family or visitors and the nurses are going to drive her insane. They come in to start torturing her at like 5 am. Turning on all the lights and yelling "Good Morning how are you this morning?". I want to beat their heads in, I don't think she has any warmer feelings towards them either. She has diabetes so they are constantly pokeing her. They pulled her Foley catheter this morning and decided to replace it this evening. How cruel was that? She also has no use of her left side, apparently it also hurts like hell. The nurses will go over to get her bp and I'll tell them that her left arm is bruised all to hell and hurts her, don't touch it. Then I hear them talking to her about her arm and start touching it. She starts moaning in pain then and I just want to reach over and smack them. I mean WTF, what part of don't touch, major pain didn't you get? She's taken to the hospital everyday for dialysis too so her body is not doing so great in general. And her family has just abandoned her. I'm going to worry about her this weekend. At least I'll be here at night.

I got a roomate, it was bound to happen

And of course she's totally incontinent. Must suck, it sure does smell. She had a right side brain bleed, same as me, only she doesn't have use of her left side. Just goes to show where I'd be without fast surgery. Very scary.

I really must train the fuzzy uglies

Therapy dogs have been around for awhile. I've always owned a dog that would do well as a therapy dog, it takes a certain personality and my lab had that personality as does my Jaynie (the nut jobber). The dog needs to enjoy training, a lot. Jaynie loves the feed back. Actually he needs the feedback. The fact that I haven't kept up with it is totally my bad and I will remedy the situation, especially in light of my present condition. Roxy hates training, I won't bother her. I haven't even started with Corb, poor thing has a huge shock coming. I am absolutely sure I can make he and Jaynie more productive souls in our household and it'll make them happy. Lets face it, I don't need to retrofit the shower so I don't slip and fall in it, I'll just put Jaynie in there and I'll be fine. He's a friggin' moose, you can't fall on the floor with him around. Damn oaf. I can enroll him in Paws for a Cause though and probably make him an official therapy dog. Corbie would probably do too since he's so small. Jayne is a bit big and can be intimidating, especially with his psycho pit bull eyes. And his mental instabilities. Jaynie: Card carrying member of the Prozac nation!

The kid LOVES hospital food

And I mean LOVES it. Her eyes light up when she sees my food tray come in. It's so weird. The food is good, it's not like nasty hospital food or anything. So far she's loved the chicken parmesian and swedish meatballs. You'd think we never fed the kid. She has as much enthusiasm for it as she does chicken mcnuggets. Her daddy keeps telling her that she needs to let her momma eat but she just loves the food so much she'll keep chowing it down. It's sooo funny to watch, I mean it's hospital food!

It's been awhile

Why? Because on Thanksgiving day my brain exploded. Like literally. Had a nice little stroke (AVM) on the right side of my brain. Came downstairs with the worst headache in the whole world ever, really. Made me puke. The nausia was overwhelming. I collapsed trying to make it to the sink. The kid was there with me asking if I was ok an wanting to know of I wanted her to get daddy (yes please) and so she went up and got him. I could not get up by myself, the left half of my body did not respond. The hubby proceeded to call our neighbor Dr. Jay (ER doc) who came over and called the paramedics and sent me on the Methodist Hospital (great hospital) were they cut my head open and drained off all the extra blood ands stopped the bleeding that was filling my brain and making my life really bad. My mom was there, the kid stayed at the Dr. Jay's house (we have such great friends) and the hubby and my mom had a fall apart OMG moment of what were they going to do with me if I didn't make it. At that point the doctor was still talking about how he was going to try and save my left side. It was a bit touch and go. My dad was called and he flew out as did the hubby's mom. The outpouring of love from all of our friends has been incredible. The neighbors have been cooking and feeding my family for a week now. My friends and coworkers have been visiting the hospital and sending cards and flowers, apparently streams of ministers came through to visit with B while I was under the knife. He let a catholic nun pray over me at one point. This is big for him...he must have been sure I was gone. I am taking he and the kid to services with some people I like this weekend (if I can hack it) so that if anything else happens he has someone he can call. Right now I'm at a rehab clinic in San Antonio (RIOSA, very nice place). I'm apparently doing well and have screwed the age curve here, most people are well into their 70's. On a side note friends and family, this is a freak thing that can happen to anyone. Those with high blood pressure and/or bad eating habits should be very paranoid, it's damn scary and kills right quick. RIGHT QUICK. I should be dead. Take note and learn people. I have big seams in my scalp/skull. I'll post pics when I get home.

Weather in Texas

I looked down at the little weather window while on the CNN website and this is what it showed:

Today
HI 80°F | LO 43°F

Tomorrow
HI 52°F | LO 37°F

Now take a good look at that. Today 80, Tomorrow 52
That's 30 friggin degrees difference! We've done this a few times this month and let me tell you it's just funky. Today is a gorgeous day. Beautiful blue skies, slight breeze, just beyond lovely. I should be out there digging holes to plant my potted roses. Why? Because tomorrow they could be frozen to death. It just seems wrong. I'm so used to living next to the pacific ocean. When you live next to a large body of water the temperature just doesn't fluctuate like that, the water keeps it stable. Boy nothing says 'landlocked' like a 30 degree temperature sway overnight. This is Texas though and I suspect that it'll be back to 80 again in another week.

Another birthday

This one is dual purpose, SCS Bella challenge located here and I needed a card quickly. My old boss has turned 40 and I wanted to send out a card right quick since I heard about it last minute. It took me about 8 minutes from digging out the paper and stamps to finish. The coloring is using Prisma pencils, the paper is MME and HL cardstock, the stamp is CosmoBella and The Cat's Pajama's for the words. Tres facile.
On another note we have a doctor friend (AirForce flight surgeon/er doc) that brought home extra flu vaccines for us. The intranasal kind so the kid didn't have a hissy fit over taking it. Anyway I never get the flu vaccine, why? Because it always gives me a mild case of the flu. I hate it, the kid and hubby are fine but me, 3 days out I feel icky. Does it mean I won't be tagged as hard later in the season? Maybe. Who knows. The pros and cons of the flu vaccine are, like most vaccines, debatable.

Evil little dogs...

..and slakin' husbands. So today we went to go pick up the kid from school and then ran some errands. So we put the dogs in their respective crates while we were gone.

Now mind you, all dogs in our house are crated when we are gone for various reasons. Roxy has this pissy little female bitchy thing. Literally. She waits until you leave and then finds a piece of carpet to pee on. We have only hardwood and tile downstairs and then baby gate the top of the stairs so it's easily avoidable but she also used to be a stray so if you're gone she'll also try and dig her way into a cabinet just in case it has food in it. She won't pee on the floors downstairs at all, once we baby gated the upstairs we didn't have any problems. Let her lose in the whole house and you're playing Russian Roulette with the carpets. So when we're gone she's crated.

Jaynie has a bad case of separation anxiety, he can kill many pillows if left to his own devices. He'll also sit in the window and freak out anytime anyone or anything goes by outside. He thinks trash cans are the devil's spawn, don't even get me started on what he thinks the people pushing them are. If a dog goes by his innards flip and become his outards and all hell breaks lose. So when we're gone he's crated.

The little man, Corbie, well he turns 1 yr old this month and since we sprang him from the kennel he had lived in for the first 9 months of his life he's been living the life of the destructive puppy that he never had a chance to do in his younger years. I mean months. He's not as bad as a labrador puppy but he does get into things and destroys them eventually. Not quickly, there's time if you notice him walking by with a sock, a kid toy, a writing utensil, a pair of boxers, a shoe, a shoe insert, paper, or other non-doggie chew toy object, to remove it from his mouth and it only get slobbied on. If he was a labrador the object would be instantly destroyed as soon as it hit the pup's mouth. Then there was that window moulding fetish. All of our windows are 5 ft windows with sills 1 ft above the floor. Perfect Frenchie chewing height. He also took a bit of training with the potty issue when we first got him in August. He had not been a house dog, he was to be a breeding/show dog so he was kept in a kennel which is not really potty training friendly. So when we're gone he's crated.

Add to all that if any thing toxic or bad is ingested by any of the dogs when they aren't being supervised I am not thrilled about having to spend oodles of money in vet bills due to Darwinism (lets face it, I own 3 of the stupidest dogs in the whole world, love them to death but not for their brains) I'd be pissed. At myself not them, they rely on their owners to be responsible, god did not give them more than 5 brain cells to share between the lot.


Anyway back to the point, it has happened on occasion that we have put all of their dogs in their respective crates only to forget to latch the door after putting them in. OK, I'm using the 'we' here when I really mean 'he'. For what ever reason the dh forgets sometimes. So far it's only happened with the big dogs, where we'd only have to deal with inanimate objects being destroyed. The big dogs won't eat things that'll hurt them, they are like 5 or 6 years old and way past the stupid puppy stage in their lives. Really what they do is annoying and not suicidal. Corbie will eat things that'll kill him and not think twice about it, puppies just do that. So today the dh forgot to latch the little guys cage. We come home after being gone for no less than 2 hours, plenty of time for Corbie to kill himself and when we open the door he's there to greet us. I'm like "Oh my god, quick someone check to see if the gate at the top of the stairs is closed." Thankfully it was and we checked around to see what kind of nightmare destruction/surgery-to-remove-foreign-object or at least major potty disaster we had to face and low and behold there was nothing. He got into nothing. And didn't have a single accident. It was nothing shy of a miracle. Now that doesn't mean we're going to ever try that again, the little turd gets into trouble while we're sitting there watching him so we are just chalking this one up to luck. We were lucky this time, I doubt we'll be able to get away with this again, but dang am I proud of my little man! He's such a little disaster waiting to happen and he was so good today I can't believe it. Now I'm sure tomorrow he'll go and take a crap on the carpet or something totally atrocious but that's the price you pay for a good 2 hours alone and angelic!

And a Bella too!

Yeah, told ya I had a Bella ...
Stamp: PresentaBella
Ink: StazOn black
Prisma pencils
Paper: My Minds Eye

Pratice, Pratice, Practice

So I need to practice coloring and that's just all there is to it. So last night I took some of the images I stamped and while lounging in from of the tv (yeah, horrible lighting I'm sure) and did just that. This time I used my Prismas and while everyone is all about the gamsol and/or baby oil I've decided I'm waaay too lazy to be using this technique. The blender pencil works just fine for me. Since I now had a few images stamped and colored I figured I could at least gather enough motivation to stick one onto a card for SCS challenge purposes. It's the challenge in the Bella section and it's not a Bella but I colored one of those in too so if my ever so limited mojo continues to flow I may just pop one of those out too, one never knows...
Paper: MME wild asparagus for the green, BG Blitzen collection Poinsettia for the patterned paper
Ink: StazOn black and Prisma pencils
Stamp: Hanna Stamps 'tis the season

Copics and Stampin Up pens

A friend of mine and I have this thing, we're now into Copic markers but don't have the burning need to purchase them for $5.89 each. So we use the Hobby Lobby 40% off coupons and buy them one by one. No lie, we actually buy them individually. Do you know how much self control that takes? I think she took all 4 of her kids to HL today since it was half day and had them each by one. I haven't called her yet but that was the plan. I got 4 today and that's just because I figured out that if I put both pens down, wait for the cashier to ring it up as 2 x $5.89 and then hand her my coupon she's not going through the effort of getting a manger to delete it back out, she'll just ring the whole total up at 40% off. Yeah, the fine art of coupons. Anyway, for the sake of figuring out whether or not I prefer the Copics (left Hanna) to the Stampin Up pens (right Hanna) I colored in 2 of the Hanna's I stamped previously. Now mind you SU pens are water based and Copics are alcohol based so it's almost like an apple and orange comparison but this is just for the sake of filling in images completely. I really like the effect I get when using SU pens as water color pens and moving the color around as you've seen in my previous posts. So it's not like I regret buying those suckers at all. That being said, after using them side by side for the exact same fill in project Copics win, hands down. You can't tell by my awful (as I've said before) coloring technique (must use kid's coloring books more) but it took me twice as long to do the SU coloring in as the Copics. The Copics have 2 nibs, both are fat. One is a square nib for big fill in stuff that I'll probably never do (I don't draw and all of my stamped images are card sized) and the other is just like the brush end of the SU markers only muuuch higher quality. You can use it to fill in little tiny spaces and it's soooo smooth. The SU pens I had to fill in the large spaces with the brush end but the tip of the brush is not stiff enough to get to the edges without going outside the lines. So I had to go back and use the fine tip end to do that part but the fine tip doesn't write as smooth so it kind of leaves lines. Not a big deal but kinda annoying. No one is going to be scrutinizing it close enough to make a difference so it's really neither here nor there but I'm still getting more Copics. They are sooo nice to color with!

SU colors used (Hanna on the right):
Chocolate Chip, Blush Blossom, Real Red, Green Galore, Gable Green

Copic Colors used (Hanna on the left):
YG06 Yellowish Green, YG09 Lettuce Green, E00 Skin White, E37 Sepia, R29 Lipstick Red

The paper used is Georgia Pacific cardstock, 110lb and the black ink is StazOn. I'll need to get a different black to stamp with because Copics make the StazOn bleed.

Because a friend asked...

If you look at the stamp pictures on the Hanna stamp website the images are blurry. Her official store front is not up yet so I'm hoping that she'll have better images but I had a friend mention that the stamps were fuzzy and that would drive her nuts. Yeah, I totally agree. Krissy needs to take higher resolution photos because these stamps are very crisp. So I have taken photos of some images that I stamped as proof, keep in mind 1) these stamps need the film removed from the manufacturing process by either taking an eraser to the stamping surface, cleaning them, or stamping them a bunch, and 2) My black StazOn is running low. You can especially tell on the top of the Christmas tree. Yeah, I'll get around to it. Like I need an excuse to go shopping. If you click on the image it'll expand to insanely large size so you can get a good look at the edges of the stamping. Scrutinize to you hearts content.

Just a quick note...

The kid reminded me after her bath tonight that I had promised her we'd play with the Hanna Stamps. I didn't get her in bed until just after 9pm. I'm such a bad mom. On an up note these are really very nice quality acrylic stamps. Right up there with Technique Tuesday stuff. And I LOVE the images!

Hanna Stamps and Bella Band

Two totally unrelated things but since I'm lazy it'll be one post. This evening my Hanna Stamps came in, yeah!! I also found out that she's going to be releasing new sets every 3 weeks until she gets a good amount in her line, then she'll release new ones every 4 weeks. Sooo wrong. I need to start my own stamp company damnit. I just need to learn how to draw... Until then I'll continue to hone my coloring skills up to that of a 6 year old and cross that start up business hurdle when I get to it. Tonight I'll stamp some Hanna images and tomorrow maybe I'll get time to color!! Give me a week and I may even assemble a whole card. I'm obviously on the short bus of the card making world.

As for the Bella Band lets start off with I'm not preggers, I'm not even planning on being so in the near or not so near future. So why did I have to hunt one of these things down? Well when I moved out to San Antonio last fall I started noticing this rash on my tummy. It started to get out of control irritated and icky. I went to the doctor, he took one look at it and said I was allergic to my metal belt buckle. Damn. Now metal allergies are not a new one in my life. I can't wear earrings, like, at all. Some people can only wear gold or platinum or stainless steel even. I can't wear any metal at all. Even clip ons. Within 5 minutes the skin starts to itch, 10 minutes bleed, by 30 minutes there's puss oozing from the skin. It. is. Gross. So the fact that I was allergic to the metal belt buckle was bothersome, now I had to buy a plastic belt buckled belt, but no biggie. Now phase II of the allergy has hit. All summer long I didn't worry about it, it's too hot in Texas to wear jeans. Come this fall a few days (not a lot, just a few) have been cool enough to get back in them. Well you know how the back of the button comes through to the inside of the pants? Yeah, now I'm sensitive enough to get a vile reaction from that wee bit of metal. So what do you do? I tried a camisole but that's just too much clothing to be adding to cover up a 1/4" piece of metal and sometimes they ride up, defeating the whole purpose. A girlfriend of mine suggested I sew a bit of fabric on the back of all the buttons but I love jeans, I own like 10 pairs, and I hate sewing through denim. It's a bitch to sew through and I break a needle every time. So I was at a friends house like 8 months ago and she had just had a baby. She shows me her bella band and says "I love this thing". Now I was looking for something like this to solve my problem. Let's get one thing straight right now, I'm not wearing a girdle. Nope, not gonna happen, I'm just not there yet. Tube tops don't stay in the right place and they're even harder to find than these suckers. Anyway I drove out to the foo foo maternity store, explained my use of this thing and was promptly asked if I had kids and if I was going to have more. Boy, not at those clothes prices let me tell you! Cute clothes but dang....

Sweet & Sassy

This is a project I did awhile back at a class done by Rusty Pickle. We used RP paper and stamps (back when they used EZ mounted rubber rather than the new acrylic) with gold and green Lumiere paints. I loved the stamps and the paint, unfortunately now that I look back at the pics they don't do justice to either. It was a cute project but I don't have any use for brag books so I die cut a bunch of doggie words with the scrap pieces of paper and donated it to French Bulldog Rescue Network for a fund raiser.

Double Header

So this afternoon was a busy one but we still managed to squeeze in a Hobby Lobby trip and survive. Today was the 2 birthday parties in one afternoon day, Kaia's 5th b-day at Pump it Up from 2:30-4:30 and Armani's (yeah, thats right Armani) 6th b-day at his house from 5- whenever. Of course both of them were far off from the house and in the same direction so we had to go to Kaia's, come home to feed the dogs, then turn around and go back to where we were before only father to get to Armani's. Fun was had by all though and the kid has had her fill of sugar ten times over. Both the dh and I have heads that hurt. Nothing like having to be pleasant for more than 2 hours in a row to stress my brain out and the dh has this lovely cough for over a week that I think is bursting all his brain vessels. Last week I asked him if he wanted to go to the doctor to have them check him over, today he decided that it may be a good idea. Men.

Had to do one more

Found out it was a friend's b-day yesterday and since the table hadn't been cleaned yet and the images were already stamped well.... laziness is the mother of invention. I need to add a bit more bling in the upper right hand corner but it's for a guy so I don't want to girlify it out too much. The only things I changed were the images (obviously) this is CosmoBella and her accompanying martini stamped on the inside and then the sentiment here's to you is also Bella. The Belated Happy Birthday stamp was one of the ones I ordered from PrickleyPear Stamps when they had the 50% off unmounted stamps (see previous post from like a month ago, don't worry, this is a new blog).

Java Bellas

This marks my first challenge. As in I've never gotten around to doing one before. Ever. Now the average reader may think sooo what's your point? but for the card maker that's not so common. I'm pathetically laggin', what can I say? Now on to the details, there were 3 requirements, colors this time actually. Old Olive, Purely Pumpkin, and Chocolate Chip. The cardstock was SU Old Olive, the background patterned paper was My Mind's Eye Wild Asparagus, the pens were SU in all 3 colors and a little Bashful Blue for the vase. I used the aquapainter for the color blending and the white paper was cheapie water color paper from Michael's. I've never worked with it before so I figured why pay for the good stuff if I'm only practicing. The 2 flower embellies are actually the same color blue as bashful blue but they reflected light something awful when I took the picture. I found those in the dollar section at Target. 2 stamps were used JavaBellas and Many Thanks from All Year Cheer I. It was a reeeaallly simple card to make except for the learning curve on water color painting. Not the fine art form I was expecting it to be....

Watercoloring & Stampin Up pens, Baby Oil and Prismas

Alright, I had to try my hand at it. And it was interesting. I'm not an artist and it's been awhile since I've even used a coloring book but it was fun. Bottom line, it's going to take some practice. This is the one Bella that I added to my order for my friend, SweetieBellas. I like the idea, I can't stand the background of the wood bench. It makes it too busy for my taste but it's still cute. A bitch to color but cute.





This is one of the Stampin' Up stamps I love and have no idea what I'm going to do with. No big, it's not like I let that stop me from buying the set. Like I need an excuse to spend money, pfft. She colored up with the Prismas a lot better than the SweetieBellas did. You're supposed to use odorless mineral spirits to move the color though and I used baby oil instead. I used to be a chemist, I really don't want to be sucking in fumes anymore. Really. So I'm going with the baby oil. BTW, I have a thing for the Ochre color Prisma has (the hat and the sand). I don't know why, it just does it for me.

And last but not least my first tries with the watercolor paper, SU pens, and the aquapainter. The one on the left was my first, had some issues but I got over it. The one on the right was actually started by my 6 yr old. Sadly it looks much better than mine. She did the pants, copying mine, and used too much water so it ran all over the paper. I cleaned it up some with the aquapainter and then she did the shirt too. I did the cats and her hair. Someday I hope to be as talented at coloring as my 6 yr old. Hey, a girl has gotta have goals.

Chemistry, it's everywhere

So the dh is teaching swim lessons for the dd's swim school right now (long story, I won't bore you with the details). Anyway it's a big competition pool and one of the ways to get to the bathrooms is outside through a breezeway and you're not supposed to go bare foot but of course, the dh does. He came home the other night saying that he had a piece of glass in his foot and would I get it out. Sure yeah I say and then we both promptly forgot about it. He comes home the next night after swim lessons and says 'My foot hurts' so we stop futzing about and go upstairs to my craft room (aka room of all things surgical and now used for paper crafting) and I bust out the materials. The dd is now asking, 'Will it hurt?' 'Are you going to make daddy cry?' and all sorts of questions I had great answers for but really couldn't say in front of the kid. Ah, such is life. So I've got the exacto knife, 3 sets of tweezers, the Ott lite centered on the foot and the dd is bouncing back and forth worriedly from a chair to the side, very anxious and nervous that I'm going to hurt daddy. We had to take a splinter out of her foot once, it was HILARIOUS and will probably result in many many therapy sessions but that's a whole other story. So it was deep but he had already sliced his foot open there trying to remove it himself so barring any serious digging I really couldn't do much more. So I squeeze. And this wee slice of glass comes sliding out. It had been in for 2 days so there was probably a lovely pus capsule that helped it slime out. Anyway I tell him to go and put some peroxide on it. And he, being a guy, is sloppy with it and gets some on his hand. He's wondering why it's burning his hand. His hand now looks like the skin is a dry and sanded off. Now look, he doesn't usually shower after getting out of the pool. So lets do some basic chemistry here. Chlorine. Peroxide. H2O2 and Cl makes something...hmmm....HCl sound familiar? Ouch. Knew I got that degree in chemistry for some reason...

My old home is burning

It's very sad to watch. We always knew it would happen again, the Cedar fire of 2003 was not a one time wonder. Historically there were always wildfires in east San Diego, that's why no one ever built there. Of course now it's only 4 years later and this new burst of wildfires is going like gangbusters. Faster moving and completely out of control. They don't expect it to stop moving west until it hits the ocean and then they fully expect it to move up and down the coast. I wonder how long it'll take to contain it once it does reach the water. The MIL has her best friend staying at her place since she was already evacuated. From Solana Beach. Let's think about that now, Solana Beach. There are mandatory evacuations for a beach community and this has only just begun. So not good. My dad lives very close to downtown, near Petco Park so if he's evacuated the city is, for all intents and purposes, gone. There are friends of mine that have already evacuated, 2 in Escondido and 2 in Ramona. Of course they evacuated the entire city of Ramona basically straight off the bat. It doesn't look good and all of San Diego is holed up in their homes just waiting to be evacuated...

A/C to Heat to A/C

So this weather in Texas thing, it's just plain odd. First off it's hot here during the summer. Not nearly as bad as I thought it would be mind you, we never hit 100 all summer, but still it's hot. We just hovered in the 90's for a good long time and then today we woke to 54 degrees, rain, and an insane amount of wind. Tomorrow of course it's supposed to be in the low 70's and then we go back to low 80's for the rest of the month. Alright that means we go from a/c to heat to a/c. Like there's no in between and the 50 degree thing only lasts for one day, as does the low 70's thing. One day! Then straight back to the 80's! Where's the in between?? And don't even try and tell me that's why everyone lives in San Diego. Watch the news lately? Apparently the horrid fire of 2003 was only a prelude. Now the whole city from the border and then up to Malibu is just going to be one big stretch of burnt landscape. It's bad, really really bad. I worry about my family and friends there. Already there are 2 families that I'm very close to that have been evacuated and those are just the few I've called. There are most likely more and that is very disturbing.

It's DONE!

And we are sooo finished. We had a great time and could not believe how many people fit into the house and back yard. Really, it was INSANE. We didn't invite the whole classroom, maybe 12 or 13 plus our close neighbor friends. Oh and the 2 pinoy families we've met since we've been out here (love them!), I can't really call them neighbors when they aren't in our county but we go visit them whenever they have b-day parties for their kids! When the hubby was helping me set the food out and move the chairs he was like "Wow honey, now I know why you are so dead set on moving into a larger house with an 'open' floor plan". Every house we look at, every floor plan we see I look at evaluate the how the flow of traffic would move. There's a restaurant that we went to, Scenic Loop Bar and Grill, that has the perfect floor plan. He thought I was nuts when I got all excited sitting there, now I'm not so nuts. So back to the story, we had an insane amount of kids here, like 25 or so? I dunno, it was LOUD. They loved the jumpy (once I figured out that the back end tube wasn't tied off all the way and was making the thing collapse on the kids (freaked me out!!) and we didn't have any collisions until the last half hour or so. Not bad! I know several of the parents we had over live in homes that are at least twice the size of ours and they were undoubtedly thinking that they appreciate the size of their homes all the more after experiencing this mayhem. Wow, there were a lot of kids here. I'm sooo glad we didn't invite the whole class. The hubby's mom is a party thrower, 50, 100+ guests is common in her household so B is used to hosting these things (she has an open layout in her house). Still, he's not used to having them in his own home. He loves it because he was born and raised to but he's still totally blown. I think the main thing that makes it all worth it is that all of these people, even the parents we just met tonight, are really cool people. We found out one of the kid's good friend's family just moved here from Temecula (wow, small world) and another of her friends has a dad (and consequently the rest of the family) that has his heart set on getting a frenchie. He totally knew about FBRN! Very small world. Oh and since we invited whole families we even had some of the 'older' kids meet and have fun together, I think Will and R.J. ended up trading phone #'s. How cute is that?

I tried the water color thing

So the new thing lately with the card makers is using Copic markers or prisma colored pencils Gamsol (odorless mineral spirit) and stumps to color in images. There is a tutorial here on how to do this, really not all that terribly complicated but shiiit those pens are expensive! We're talking $5-7 each (and if you were ever wondering what to get me for Christmas here's your chance to get me exactly what I want for many years to come, there are a bazllion colors...). What, am I going to be selling my cards at a 500% mark up? Wait, I'm not selling my cards.... so where's the logic in that? Here's the thing, Copics are an alcohol based marker, Stampin Up markers are water based. So some brilliant woman came up with a tutorial using the aquapainter and SU pens to mimic the Copics. I call her brilliant because she's thinking outside the box and as we've discussed before, I like my box. You really need to use water color paper which I don't have yet but the picture is me trying it on regular paper. The SU markers were a big enough investment as it is and since I am not, nor will I ever be, artist material I see no reason to jump on this "I gotta buy a whole new set of super expensive markers" bandwagon. Not that wouldn't love to own it all but damn, $6 a pen? Not until I buy my husband one of these. Ha ha, ha ha ha. Not.

The 2 day marathon begins

So this weekend is the weekend we are celebrating the dd's 6th b-day (it's technically next week remember?). Today was round one, we began by waiting for the delivery of the jumpy thing which was supposed to be between 10 and 12. We then needed to drive the 20 minutes to the only So Cal Mexican food place in San Antonio (Los Robertos) to order the food. By 12:30 we still hadn't heard from them so we called, they managed to get here around 1. So we booked out after that, had lunch and ordered the food, left to come back to pick up the kid and managed to get here in time for school to let out. Of course we then had planned the Libby Lou adventure with 2 of her friends at school. Did you know you can fit 2 full sized and one compact booster seat in the back of a 4Runner? They were packed in like sardines but those seats weren't going anywhere, let me tell you! They had a grand time, makeup was done, as were the nails. Dressed up, and then added Hannah Montana wigs, damn they were cute. Then we drove to the Micky D's drive thru and packed them with french fries and chicken McNuggets. We got home and tossed them out back in the jumpy and let them burn themselves out. Niiice. By 6:30 I had the two girls dropped off at their respective homes and they are now hyped for the at home adventure tomorrow. Tomorrow we need to go to HEB and get the cake, Costco for the ice cream, ice , water, and what not, then Los Robertos to get the food. By the time the party starts at 5 I'm gonna be dead and probably not give a hoot about who shows up or whether or not we have enough food. Doesn't bother me a bit!
Oh and as to how the dogs reacted to the Jumpy in their backyard, Jayne is totally enamored with it. Now dogs are, of course, not allowed anywhere near the thing so hush up but damn that dog loves that thing! 70 odd pounds of boxer bouncing around and ploughing through little children with glee. Just too funny to not try at least once! He's not allowed in anymore but he does go to the front of it now and 'ask' to go in. So cute, so wrong.

PS

The bunny has nothing to do with the funniness of the link below. You must go read the link, the bunny is just for your viewing pleasure....

Oh God this is funny

I don't know who this person is but they are fuck off funny and obviously watch Firefly.
Miss Doxie blog
Read their adventures in Colorado (Day 6 : lol crap)

And so that there's a pic for you today, enjoy the vengeful bunny.

Chaos Reigns

But that's to be expected. The MIL is still here and we are having a good time but the almost 6 yr old dd and the almost 11 yr old nephew have become antagonistical. They are so much like bother and sister, which makes sense, my mil took care of them for many years while their parents worked and they were treated as such. They miss each other terribly when apart but a 5 day visit hits its max at day 4. They are going to go back missing each other terribly in about 2 days. Such is life when one family moves away. We loved San Diego but the family drama is something we soooo do not miss! This visit has been very nice but I still love San Antonio and neither I nor my dh have any intention of going back.

The other drama? Ah that would be the dd's 6th b-day party scheduled for this Saturday, 5pm. On the schedule food catered by our favorite So Cal mex taqueria, a pinata, and a jumpy thing. On Friday after school we plan on taking the dd and 3 of her good friends to Libby Lu to get dolled up and do High School musical song and dance.

William Tell Ovature

I found this on the message boards. It's for all the moms out there or even though who have had to listen to those moms out there. It's pretty darn accurate. William Tell Overture

Visitors

So the MIL has come to visit and has brought the 10 yr old nephew to visit. The dd is thrilled! She loves her cousin to death, she even brought him to school with her for show and tell (this week was the letter B and, conveniently he' a boy...). Today the dh took them both to Fiesta Texas and they had a ball. The temp was perfect, 85, a bit cloudy, and a bit breezy. I took the mil to the outlet mall and the quilt store so fun was had by all. Tonight we're going to put the kids to bed, watch Bones, drink wine and eat chocolate. Perfection.

I forgot to mention

That full set of SU markers and Color Caddy finally made it to my house. The color caddy was perfect, brand new and it came with the extender kit. The pens are only a little used which is perfectly fine. Hey $80 is a helluva bargain when new it's $140+tax and shipping. So the little bit of risk in buying online from fellow stampers has worked really well for me. Maybe if I get burned I'll stop spending so much but so far I've had really great luck. Knock on wood!

My box

Yeah yeah it's been like 2 whole days since I've posted, whatever. I figure after that last monologue you'd probably not come back anyway. I am obviously not for the faint of heart. So on a lighter note I've found another stamp place to toss my money at. Now don't get all wrapped up in the grammatical mistake here, she's fixing it. Papertrey stamps has a new set coming out on the 15th and she's posting samples on her blog for the next 5 days. I just love what she did with her aquapainter, so simple yet so pretty! So simple it makes one wonder "Why didn't I think of that?" Of course I've never really been one to think outside the box either, not much of an artistic mind going on here. Give me an example and I can reproduce it perfectly. Come up with it on my own? Not really my strong point. I like my box, it's nice in here.

Adventures in feeding raw....

So when we adopted our first dog together (that would be Roxy) we noticed that she had allergies. I could go on for awhile with the details but suffice to say the it culminated in the switch to a raw food diet for her and the consequent dogs we acquired. I could also wax on about the benefits of such a diet but I'm not going to bore everyone with detail plus that's not the point of this post, just the back story. For those who are interested though I'll add some links here, here, and here. And if you are still nosey please, feel free to ask. Don't bother criticizing though, I'm not by any means saying it's for everyone's life style, plus like I said, it's just back story.
So when we lived in San Diego we were members of SoCal BARF, yeah BARF for biologically appropriate raw feeders which is what they call us raw feeders. It is the largest raw feeding co-op in the world. They cover all of So Cal and order food every month by the TONS, literally not figuratively. So when we moved out to San Antonio we were pretty much sol, not much other than grocery store stuff out here, slight variety but not much. We were having problems anyway, our boxers (being boxers and having notoriously unstable tummies) hadn't really stabilized on the food, gastronomically speaking of course. Their coats were BEAUTIFUL and their teeth shiny clean but their butts had issues. So we switched them to high quality kibble for almost a year. Their coats and teeth went to hell in a hand basket. And if that wasn't bad enough their tummies didn't like it either! Now mind you I was a vet tech for 5 years, there's not much I don't know how to work though but the mooshie poo is just damned annoying. About 3 months ago I got an email from a woman, they were starting a raw feeding co-op in San Antonio. Ahhh the possibilities. Apparently there is one co-op in Texas and it's in Austin (ARF). Now I find this odd because there's an awful lot of people who feed raw and geez, this is Texas, raw meat should be a gimmie out here. Regardless, this is what I have to work with so now here's the new adventure.
SARF (all co-ops use Yahoo groups, it works best this way) is just starting out, we presently have like 35 members and most of them order from Buddy's, the chicken supplier for the local grocery stores out here. The woman in charge of the group is Jacque, a chow breeder, and she has been making Buddy's orders for awhile so all we are really doing is adding more onto her order. It's great because one of the main problems with ordering is the shipping and or delivery. Bravo's charges $350 to get an order to us. UGH! This is where poundage is a make or break kinda deal. So Cal BARF got great deals, they made enough money they could actually rent cold storage space and everything and most chicken products came in at under $1/lb. I feed about 90lbs per month so obviously price makes a difference. None of these people feeding raw are rich, in fact most of them are your average blue collar animal freaks. You know, the crazy cat lady? Yeah, exactly. So the fact that the account and shipment already existed is great. At So Cal we had to drive up to the cold storage facility once a month. In inland LA. I think it was a 3 hour drive. Yuck! Jacque's house is about 15-20 minutes away from me. Any way back to the point. We are in the process of gathering new vendors, one of them is Omas. This was the product that got me back into raw feeding. See I was feeding prey model, no veggies. I think the variation in meat plus the lack of fiber (which I still think is unnecessary for all dogs except boxer butts) made for the smooshie poos. The first Omas order we made was an adventure. Skipping all of the drama we came to find out that the woman Jackie had helping her out with the Yahoo group (who was moving down here from Austin and was a member of ARF) had taken all of ARF's documents and posted them on our Yahoo group with out ARF's permission. Also she had never responded to ARF's offers of help and she was much to busy to communicate anything with anyone. She was, of course, the one in charge of the Omas order. Me being the evil dominant person that I was, could not handle the level of incompetence that was being exhibited and contacted ARF resulting in flushing out all of the bad blood between ARF and SARF that poor Jacque didn't know existed. And all I wanted was to make an order, trust me, the drama was totally uncalled for.
Now mind you we were ordering the Omas through the ARF distributer which, unbeknownst to us, was located in Pflugarsville. Now the adventure was a long one to get that first order but we managed it, got home at about 11 pm but we got the food to everyone. This time around we are setting up our own account here in San Antonio. Why didn't we do this the last time around? Well for one we didn't know the order was coming out of Pflugarsville and two, the woman with the Omas account told us that Omas didn't work with co-ops anymore but she was grandfathered in. I think it took Jacque 1 phone call to set up the account. Can I even begin to tell you how much easier my life has just become? Pflugarsville is about an hour north of Austin and the food always comes on a weekday around 5pm. Rush hour. Through San Antonio and Austin. Not so fun. All I want to do is get food for the 3 fuzzy butts and let me tell you the adventures we've been through! All of the drama to not step on peoples toes and blah blah blah. Growing pains I suppose but right now I feed Omas exclusively and if I can't get a hold of it somehow I'll become a distributer myself! Fortunately it looks as though I won't have to do it, nor will I have to drive 3 hours to Pflugarsvlle. Yay for Jacque!

I finally caved

I have a link to a blog here for Bella Stamps, a Canadian stamp maker named Emily. Her stamps are all of this skinny woman she calls Bella. Mind you I'm not usually into stamps that can really only be used for cards. I'm really all about multipurpose stamps. I also really don't like tall skinny models either, bad for the self image you know. Regardless, I still love these stamps. I have refrained from buying them but in the end, she offered free shipping. It's horrible, I fall for it every time. Just. Can't. Resist. I got CosmoBella (by far the most popular), JavaBellas, KittyCattaBella, PresentahBella, WinoBella, and a few sentiments. So I got on the Bellaholics Yahoo group and went to the photos section. Went though all 174 picture files to make sure I liked the examples of the ones I ordered. Obsessive much? Yeah, just a bit.

Andy Rooney* on women over 40

This is an oldie but goodie, I had forgotten about it until it came up again in my flit through cyber world. I'm not 40 yet but I find that I totally agree with the old coot. Which is probably saying I'm old for my age, or maybe just too mature?

A woman over 40 will never wake you in the middle of the night and ask "What are you thinking? She doesn't care what you think. If a woman over 40 doesn't want to watch the game, she doesn't sit around whining about it. She does something she wants to do, and it's usually more interesting. Women over 40 are dignified. They seldom have a screaming match with you at the opera or in the middle of an expensive restaurant. Of course, if you deserve it, they won't hesitate to shoot you if they think they can get away with it. Older women are generous with praise, often undeserved. They know what it's like to be unappreciated. Women get psychic as they age. You never have to confess your sins to a woman over 40. Once you get past a wrinkle or two, a woman over 40 is far sexier than her younger counterpart. Older women are forthright and honest. They'll tell you right off that you are a jerk if you are acting like one. You don't ever have to wonder where you stand with her. Yes, we praise women over 40 for a multitude of reasons. Unfortunately, it's not reciprocal. For every stunning, smart, well-coiffed, hot woman over 40, there is a bald, paunchy relic in yellow pants making a fool of himself with some 22 year-old waitress. Ladies, I apologize. For all those men who say "Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free"? , here's an update for you. Nowadays 80% of women are against marriage. Why? Because women realize it's not worth buying an entire pig just to get a little sausage"

*side note, after doing a bit of research Andy may not have been the original author of this, it may actually have been Frank Kaiser. Mr. Rooney is a bigger name though so he stays on as the headliner. Hey man , welcome to the real world where sex sells.

You know it's bad when...

So the husband said to me today "Look what Trish (our neighbor) sent us a link to!" and showed me a website with the cutest Frenchie blouse and socks set. Alright, I can't believe first of all that one exists. Secondly (and most sad) is that we're known by the neighbors as the frenchie loving freaks. I mean how many other neighborhood moms know to send us these links? Sadly, almost all of them.

The 3 hour kindergarten project...

So why is it the things they send home for parents to do take all night? I mean really do they think we're going to do some half ass job on them? Lets get real here people, you send a poster board home for the scrapbooking mom to make a poster of her 5 year old child and what do you expect? Alright so I was given a bit of fair warning. A few weeks ago we were given a list of all the kids and what week they were assigned to be a "Super Star". The teacher sends home a poster the Friday before and we work on it that weekend. Yeah, so she forgot (and I didn't remember until Sunday night but of course, had no poster) and we got it on Monday to be returned on Tuesday. Yup, 8-11pm Monday night there I am paper punching and adhesiving and Cricuting. The damn Cricut didn't want to cut out the full name completely so I had to hand cut out most of it following the cuts and that took at least 45 minutes. I used wee little pop dots to attach her name, it only took 47 friggin' dots...
I used pictures that I didn't want to cut because they are eventually going into scrapbooks, that made it a bit harder too. When I was almost done the dh came over and complimented me, I told him since he was the at home dad he needed to learn how to scrap because he needed to be doing this project. He was totally cool with it, I was impressed. Not sure I want him in my stuff but I suppose I can share if it means that I don't have to do these damn projects...

It's a highly contageous sickness

I stamped today and no, I haven't taken pics of the results yet, I lag. I also finally went to Stamp Antonio which I've been meaning to get around to. It was nice, nothing stellar but then again I'm very difficult to impress when it comes to the art of scrappin and stampin. The kid came in with me and she was just a doll through the whole thing, she's a very serious shopper. Her purchases were gem stickers that were used with in 10 minutes of sitting down to scrap at home. Mind you though, they were used very well, just in serious concentration. I'll post pics tomorrow, promise. I bought 2 more Stickles, I really must make an order some place online and just invest in getting a boat load of colors for cheap. I also tried my hand again at heat embossing and have decided I must be doing something wrong. I can't get it to work. It gets cloudy and dusty looking but never glosses up. I can go so far as to burn the paper but not get it glossy. Maybe it's the powder? I tried different pigment inks but not a different powder. I dunno. Tomorrow I'll try a different brand of powder and give you the verdict. I did, however, make more birthday cards for my stock since I am running low. When Carrie (SU rep) sold a bunch of stamp sets from the last catalog that were retired my kid chose one called Girlfriends that I never thought I'd use. I've been wrong before, this is not new, really! Anyway I made a cute b-day card using it and a few stamps from other sets (Birthday Best) and some watercolor crayons (more on that in a sec). The daughter noticed what I was doing and had to make one just like it. So I stamped it out for her and we proceeded to color them in, mine I did with water color crayons, hers she did with pens. I didn't want her trying to use the Aqua Painter and getting frustrated. Anyway I'll post the pics together and you can get a feel with how far she's come with her coloring expertise. And on that pen note...I have been wanting the Stampin' Write Markers from SU for awhile but it's gone up in price (and it was already expensive!), 48 pens for $132.95 plus tax and shipping. Gack, urk! I don't think so. Anyway I found (on one of the forums I float on) a woman selling the set for $80. She's had them since January so they are not that old. Well I had to get it. We'll see how it turns out, you never know...
Then there was that other SU spur of the had to do it shopping moment with the Color Caddy. I have my inks stacked precariously on my work table, they aren't all the same brand much less the same size nor the same shape, it's a mess. Drives me nuts! Still, $59.95? Plus $14.95 for the extender? Add tax and shipping? Gah!! So on another forum...a woman was selling hers, new, with the extender, including shipping, for...(insert drum roll here please)...$50. Had to do it. Couldn't stop myself. It's a sickness. Sadly, I think I've also passed it onto my daughter. Poor thing...

Polycarbonate sheets for clear stamp storage

There are a multitude of different ways to store clear stamps. Many people use cd cases, others use tins. The EZ mount people make some sheets that may even work. This woman made a cute little cardboard book too and another used picture frames. My solution was to purchase clear polycarbonate sheets, cut them in 8 1/2 x 11 sheets and punch 3 holes in them so that I can keep them in a 3 ring binder. Why polycarb and not acrylic? Acrylic is too brittle, it tends to shatter ever time I go to put a hole in it or turn the page. Polycarb is soft enough to punch a hole into using a crop-a-dile or similar tool. I then place the stamps on the back of the sheet and put a white sheet of paper behind it, ink up the stamps and stamp them on the white sheet. That way I know where to put them back!

UpdateOmatic

Alright I haven't updated my blog in DAYS! It's been since Tuesday, that's just awful! I must have a bad case of the lazies. Not much has gone on though. One thing of note, the little girl made it though her entire swimming program at Swim Masters. We started her last November at the local competition pool (new and very impressive). There were so few students then she practically had a private instructor. She's continued on with classes with only a few weeks break over the summer because the classes were booked (it gets really busy during the summer) and we were in San Diego then anyway. She started out not knowing how to swim at all. She can now do the butterfly. I mean WTF, she's 5 yrs old. I was on the swim team in high school, I never even came close to doing that hellish stroke. She's not mastered it mind you but you can easily recognize the stroke when she's doing it. I just end up sinking myself....
Anyway she's now moving up to the big kids levels, the 6-18 yr old levels. Her father was not only on swim team in high school he was able to do all the strokes and compete. Like really compete on a state level. I suspect not only is her body style like his (she's long and lanky, I'm more of the short stocky type) but that she's going to go farther in the swimming field than she did in ballet. She doesn't groove on team sports, her friends do soccer and when we asked her if she was interested it was an immediate "No". I think her face probably had something more like "Are you smokin crack?" written on it but she's not quite that worldly yet. She is interested in martial arts though and the hubby refuses to send her to Karate classes like all her friends. No, he's a martial arts SNOB. She'll be going to Krav Maga, Isreali street fighting. Yeah, go ahead, fuck with my family. Did I tell you how excited B was when his ccw license came in the mail? Like a kid on Christmas, he was bouncing. What ever.
On that note there was an email going around to local San Antonio moms because there's some predator dude that's been going to homes during the day and knocking on the door pretending to be a contractor or something to get the woman to open the door. Then if they don't open the door he starts getting aggressive and beating on windows yelling threats, making the kids cry, etc. I read it and was disgusted, could you imagine what would happen if someone like that would try that at my house? First they'd have to get through the dogs. Not the easiest trick. Then there's one of the things we love about Texas (and are just waiting for an excuse to exercise), you can shoot people. Ah yes, people tell you to go and hide with a phone and call the police if someone is breaking in. Yeah, no. Sorry ain't gonna happen here. Threaten me and your life is forfeit and that's after I feed you to the dogs. But that's only if they managed to get through the door. I have no problem shooting some dumb ass through the door. And it's legal. I love Texas.