THURSDAY THOUGHTS - Update on Grandma

UPDATE: A few hours after this was originally posted I learned that my grandma had passed away. It appears to have been a peaceful transition for her.

It's not a big surprise to me that my Grandma has made it out of the hospital and nursing home and has been taken back to her home. Since her initial trip to the hospital (see January 1 News), we learned that she had a mild heart attack and was suffering from congestive heart failure. When I went to visit her a few days later, the doctor felt she'd need 24-hour care from now on and would no longer be able to go back home. But, I could see the fire in her and told my mom that I wouldn't be surprised if she made it home again. Well, almost a month later and after earlier signs of kidney failure, that's exactly where she is.

This is what Grandma wants and I think that's wonderful. The bad news is that she has no assistance there other than relying on my parents and her other daughter and son-in-law and a few other relatives. She will not have 24-hour care and will likely suffer because of it. I suspect she'll end up passing on at home. I can't say that I blame her for wanting that.

Let's just see if she makes it to 98 first. I won't be surprised if she does.

USE YOUR STASH CHALLENGES

I have made an amazing effort to cut down on my scrap-spending for several months now. It's been so hard with all of the great sales going on. I can't tell you how many virtual carts I have at the ready! :D But I've resisted--so far.

My whole reason for doing this is that I have so much stuff! Seriously, when I look at my scrap room I wonder why on earth I'd possibly think of buying more.

This year my main focus is to SIMPLIFY (my word for 2009). In scrapping that means using up old supplies and doing more scrap project gifting. Since most of us struggle with having too much scrap stuff I want to share my journey with you. So, starting Monday I'm going to post weekly USE YOUR STASH challenges. You can play along with me to use up some of your old stash too. I will award some RAK's for most creative use of your stash, probably one RAK a month to start, but hopefully weekly if I get enough participation. Tell all of your friends to come and take a look at my first challenge on Monday.

I've set up a new USE YOUR STASH label for these posts so you can get ideas on using up your old supplies as I go along.

LAYOUT: She's Totally Feeling It

The kids got out of school early today so I had to take the day off of work. I spent the couple hours they were gone doing some scrapping and I got this one done for Prima's January sketch challenge.
Title: She's Totally Feeling It
Products Used:
Prima Paintables and Patterned Paper
Cricut cartridge (Storybook)
Brads (BasicGrey, Making Memories)
Watercolor Pencils (Stampin Up)
Stickles (Ranger)
Alpha Stickers (Adorn It)
Adhesive (Fiskars, Ad Tech)
Marker (Zig)

This one involved a lot of detailed cut work so I was happy to get it done after about 2 hours. Whew.

Obsessed with: HOUNDSTOOTH!

I blame Scarlet Lime. They had a kit a month or two ago with some exclusive papers which included a few Houndstooth patterns, one was olive green and white and one was two-toned navy. I'm not a Houndstooth fan in clothing but on my scrapbook pages? LOVE. 'EM. I mean, seriously LOVE 'EM!!

I did some browsing on Two Peas in a Bucket today and searched for Houndstooth which brought up several yummy treats including a background stamp from Hero Arts (pictured above). I saw some stuff from Jenni Bowlin, Hambly, Heidi Swapp Street Smarts alpha....HOW COME I AM JUST SEEING THESE NOW???...and KI Memories sheers. I'm just in heaven!!! Unfortunately trying to stick to my SIMPLIFY theme for '09 and did not buy them. Hopefully I can resist my virtual cart for awhile longer. :D

I did spend some time creating over this cold, cold weekend.



I can't wait for tomorrow. I think it's going to be quite a historical day for our country. I'll be busy at work but hopefully can catch a bit of the inauguration.

THURSDAY THOUGHTS - Arctic Chill

It's been bitterly cold here. Yesterday was a high of -7. Yes, that's below zero folks. Today it started at -17 when we woke up and was supposed to reach a whopping 1 degree today. Because of this school's been canceled the last two days. I think nearly every school in the state was canceled, including Milwaukee public which has about 80,000 students. When they close you know it's bad.

I had to walk in it yesterday for work but I dressed warmly with my pink coat and pink scarf, long johns, extra socks and a head scarf beneath my hood.

I'm happy to be staying home today since Hubby has to work. I'm the only one who gets vacation or sick time. Bring on the 4 day weekend!

I was able to get a little scrapping done this morning before Hubby left for work. Inspired by CMK's Friday formula. I have another page almost done, just need about 5 more minutes to finish. Right now the kids and I are going to do some coloring in Daughter's giant tinkerbell coloring book that we got her for Christmas.

I'll write again once I've thawed out.

Supplies:
Patterned Paper, Stickers (BasicGrey)
Stickers (Provo Craft, Creative Imaginations, Making Memories)
Rub Ons (Hambly)
Flower (Petaloo)
Adhesive (Ad Tech)
Other: ric rac

Journaling:
It's one of the little things that makes you happy. No matter what it is, you love wearing it.

Beautiful Life

I created this for Colleen's use your stash challenge at Scrapperie.

Supplies:
Cardstock (Prism)
Patterned Paper (SEI, Making Memories)
Stickers (Creative Imaginations)
Rub Ons (Maya Road)
Buttons (Sassafras Lass)
Ink (ColorBox)
Tag (www.onebrightspot.etsy.com)
Felt Alpha (American Crafts)
Stamp (The Scarlet Lime Kit Club)

THURSDAY THOUGHTS - Rejection With a Side of Whiplash

I'm feeling sorry for myself today. It isn't any one thing, but just the way I'm feeling. This would be a great time to turn my emotions into writing my novel but I haven't been able to harness that yet. In the meantime, I'm working on snapping myself out of it.

My body hurts. We are dealing with treacherous ice conditions here and I fell on it Tuesday. It must have looked quite hilarious as both feet flew out in front of me and I fell flat on my back and head with my glasses flying off. I've never fallen so quickly or without a chance to try to prevent falling. It just happened. I think I fell perfectly as no one area got the brunt of it, but I've been hurting all over since then. I have a bruise on my butt and the front and side of my neck hurts really bad. I think I got some whiplash. You don't realize how much you use your neck until something like this happens. Each day I'm feeling a bit better and hoping the blow to my head didn't make my brain damage worse than it already was. (kidding)

The announcement for Create My Keepsake's design team was announced yesterday and I was not chosen. (Boo hooo!) I'm disappointed, naturally, but it's still a great place to be and I'm looking forward to seeing what the design team comes up with to inspire me! I'm not quite sure what I'll do at this point as far as looking into some other DT's. There are some possibilities I'm interested in but need to decide if it's what I want since CMK is where I really want to design. There is a great sense of freedom not carrying any design obligations but it also one of my greatest sources of inspiration and determination. I work best with goals and a schedule and I think I need to maintain that somehow.

Lastly, each year Ali Edwards challenges us to choose one word to represent your life in the coming year. I had not planned to choose one this year but one kept sneaking into my thoughts over the weekend and I think it totally fits where my heart is right now. My word is: SIMPLIFY. It is a paring down of material goods, as well as getting my home to a place where I love every little bit of it and truly focusing on the things that are important to me. I've been working toward this goal at an inspiring pace so far...I'll just keep going...one step at a time. I'm blessed to have you by my side.

INGENIOUS!!

You must check out this unique 2009 Bubble calendar. Each day you get to pop a bubble!!
Bubble Calendar

I totally ******HEART****** this. It's a bit pricey for me though! But it has given me ideas to incorporate into my scrapbook pages.

Mix It Up Challenge Blog

Here's a little LO I did for the Mix It Up challenge blog. They are just starting. Who couldn't use a little jump start now and then? I will try to follow along with the challenges. Wanna join me?

Welcome to 2009!!!

Happy New Year!!!!
I took this photo last June at a friend's graduation party. I had so much fun trying to capture fireworks with my new camera. Doesn't it look fab?? I could never have done this with my old camera.

So...it was just Hubby, Son and I last night. Daughter spent the night at a girlfriend's house. To make it special for K, we pulled out the sofa sleeper and piled it with blankets and pillows. We ordered pizza and watched movies and played games. Ate way too much and Hubby and I had a couple of mandarin orange martinis using a box of the kids' Juicy Juice, Cointreau and Malibu...yummy!!! We watched the Dick Clark Rockin' New Years and saw him come on later in the night...OMG...what happened to him? Did he have a stroke or something? He was nothing like I'd remembered him but I do greatly admire his courage and dedication to his work. Oh yeah...and Kellie Pickler was doing the Times Square interviews and she totally annoyed the heck out of me. She was like screaming her questions all night and that got totally annoying. (I don't know her from American Idol so this is the first time I'd seen her.)

I was the only one awake to see the New Year come in at our house, but that was long enough and I was off to bed.

I woke up around 9:45 AM...OMG...that's just crazy late around my house. Unfortunately, I woke up to a phone call from my mom telling me that my Grandma was rushed to the hospital early this morning. She's almost 98 years old and one of the strongest women I know, but this may be the end for her. It may be a blessing depending on how the next few days go. It's been hard to see her mobility and independence diminish to a point that we know she can't be happy anymore. She said she's been praying for God to come and take her so I'll send up my own little prayer that if this is her time that she go quickly and peacefully and that her current suffering doesn't linger or worsen.

I've been giving a lot of thought to my goals for 2009. I'll make them but always have a super hard time sticking to them. So this year I want to make sure that I make goals that I can keep. Hopefully this short list will be the start of me walking the path to my long-held dreams. No more excuses. Here they are:

1. Exercise a minimum of twice a week
2. Take at least one picture every day this year. (Preferrably these would end up in a scrapbook, but I'm not commiting to that.)
3. Write my novel on a consistent schedule.

I've been aligning my life to meet these goals so I'm confident that I can achieve them. Here's hoping to an incredible 2009...and perhaps my best year EVER! Happy New Year!!!