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.