Willie Update

Don't ya wonder exactly why things just can't be cut and dry?  The pain meds Willie has been on has taken away the 'flee' urge.  THAT's good.  He was tested for Addison's Disease yesterday because he has been drinking way too much water. So.....negative on Addison's Disease.  Now, we take him in to have his hips X-rayed.  Sheesh!  I don't think they have a clue yet.  It is a mystery.  This mystery better not cost too much though.............

My loss, your gain!

THE SET HAS BEEN SOLD!  THANKS FOR YOUR INTEREST!!

Here is a nice way to end the year for you!! 

When I ordered some stamps from Our Craft Lounge, I mistakenly ordered two of Granny's Support Team.  The retail price is $14.99.  You can have it for only $12.50 AND I'll pay for the postage to get it to you.  I can do PayPal but you'll have to pay for the fees if you aren't doing a balance transfer or e-check.  The free shipping offer is for US addys only.  International will have to pay their own shipping.  The stamp set would be $11 for internationals and shipping and any fees would be added to that amount.

Do I have any takers?  You can see it on their site here.

On a side note......took Willie into the vet today to have an ATCH (or some order of those letters) blood test done.  Seems they think he may have Addison's Disease which doesn't let the pancreas do it's thing for the kidneys to concentrate the pee.  I'll know the results of the test tomorrow.  He has been drinking just gallons of water every day and it isn't diabetes.

I've been working on my submissions for my Design Team work for Technique Junkies this week so not much posting of other artwork!

Sweet Stop Sketch Challenge #36 and Willie Update

This is the last challenge for the year!  My three months as a Design team member is up BUT I was asked to stay on for another three.  I said yes......it has been so much fun.  We will be missing three of our designers and I will miss them so.  It has been fun designing with them and getting to know them!  Here is this week's card.  The design is one of the digital designs from Sweet N Sassy stamps.  My husband like this one so much that I think I'll make it for my Christmas card for next year.  I could even start early and get them done early.....THAT would be different!!  The candle is color with a Krylon gold leaf pen and doesn't show well in the picture at all.  After taking a picture of my card it became VERY obvious that I could really use a photography light box.  So, with the help of Bev Gerard (one of the designers that is leaving...;-( )  I think I'll be hunting down a good one for the future DT term!

We had a wonderful Christmas time.  All the clan was here opening presents after Church Thursday night.  The families do their own thing that their own homes on Christmas morning.  Ray and I, Jim and his wife, Ahtia, Angie and her daughter, Breauna, and Leah all sang together for the prelude of the Christmas Eve service.  We sang "I heard the bells on Christmas day/Dona Nobis Pacem"  We had piano accompanying and Leah and Ahtia used some of the bells from our bell choir.....thank you Cindy for letting us use them!  I really love singing together with my family.  It is such a special time.  I wish we would do it more often!!  Ray and Jim sang the solo parts for the song.  It happened to be a song that the Singing Christmas Tree did in last year's performance.  I know we weren't as good as the singing Christmas Tree but I hope that we did justice to the song!  I felt that we did......

I pray that all of you had a blessed Christmas.......a time of year to remember the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ.  May all of you realize the blessing that his birth brings.

Willie update:  He is on Prednizone (sp?), and pain meds and also some for loose stool.  He actually is acting a little better.  He didn't act like he wanted to run away today.  Yeah!!   Ray said that he didn't yelp as much today too.  I hope the meds are helping and getting him back on the road to recovery.  He is such a sweet dog, I really hated to see him sick......I also hated having him shut up in the garage to keep him from running away.........three times he peed in the garage even though is was only 4 hours of waiting.  He has been drinking soo much water that he pees gallons......   I hope that the meds help in that area too.  Thanks guys for your prayers even though he is only a dog and not a human!  ;-)

Doggie Jail

It was a real game of Monopoly today.  Our Dog, Willie, landed on the first corner and had to go directly to Jail and could not pass Go.  Something has been wrong with him for about a week.  Yelping in pain at strange unpredictable times and running away when he yelps like we jabbed him with a cattle prod.  We had to retrieve him from neighbors three different times this past week.  He's never done this before and we are baffled.  Nothing has changed around here......no new dogs or cats.  Same food, bed, household humans.  One big thing that changed was his appetite.  It diminished and the past month or so he has been drinking a lot of water.  We only really started to notice that it was too much water recently.  THEN......today......when I had soooo much to do, he is gone again.  I spent lots of time calling neighbors seeing if they have seen him.  Look on the dog pound site as a last resort and lo and behold there he was...in doggie jail.  I went to get him right away.  It was quite a ways away too.......about 15 miles one way.  Used to be only 4 miles away but they moved a year ago.  A nice family WAY down the road had found him and couldn't find us so off to doggie jail.  Since he was a first offender and they had only had him in the pound for 1/2 day there was no charge.....thank goodness!! A Get Out of Jail Free card!!

A trip to the vet on the way home.....blood tests to see what is going on with the kidneys.  Nothing seems to be broken so it must just be his hips.  He got pain meds and some pepsin to see if that will help his appetite.  As you can see he is a big dog......120 - 130 pounds.  Vet went to take his temp and he pooped all over the floor with the thermometer's urging.  How embarrasimg but I guess they get that all the time.  Still.......

So, Willie is on house arrest.  Instead of being able to run around like he wants on our unfenced 5 acres, he is held in the garage and let out with a lease to potty until we can figure out what is going on.  Blood results come back tomorrow.  Still need to get a urine sample..........the gravey ladle sounded like a good option.  "ewwwwwww'.........

An exhausting day and a late challenge (SSS35)

It is 3:30 am and I am bushed.  It was a hectic LONG day!  Our car club provided food baskets to the families of deployed soldiers.  I worked in the morning calling some of the families and making shopping lists.  Started shopping at 2:30 pm and finished shopping at 10:30 pm.  Two different trips to two different stores with unloading and some planning between runs.  Packing the boxes with the right stuff for the right family and we were finally done at 1:30 am.   THEN.......freak......my sketch challenge card was not done.  Korin (the design team owner) is going to disown me any day now.  I decided that I just couldn't flake out and went down to the stamp hole to create this week's card.  The darling mouse in the Christmas cup is one of Korin's digital designs.  It is sooooo stinkin' cute.....  I love this one even more than the mittens one.  Colored with copics.  This challenge (SSS35) was to include a pocket and the candy cane was the perfect match for the image, don't you think?    Below is the inside of the card.

Make sure you chick on the badge to the right to see what the other design team ladies did this week!

I'm off to bed for a few hours sleep before the men come to pick up the boxes to deliver the food baskets.  Nighty, night.

Sweet Stop Sketch Challenge #34

It is the wonderful season of Christmas where there are always so many things to do that it makes my mind swim at times.  We had our car club here for the annual Christmas party last Sunday.  38 people crammed into the house.  We all had a place to sit down to eat wonderful BBQ meat prepared by our master BBQ chef of the club, Tim.  That meat comes out soooooo tender.  He has homemade drum grills and makes his own homemade BBQ sauce.  Award winning in my opinion!  Well.......on to this week's challenge.  The image for this card is sooooo darling.  It is one of the digital images from Sweet N Sassy Stamps.  It is colored with copic markers.  To make the mittens look a little more woven type, I used a rag with a little bit of blending solution on it to texture that area.  I really didn't want to dig out the sewing machine so I just punched the border of the bottom layer and drew in stitch lines.

You'll want to head over to the Sweet Stop Challenge Blog to see what the other design team members created.  They are all splended!!

This week I've been working like mad to try to finish up my Christmas cards!  I'm close but still not done.  Today will be my push to finish! 

We watched Julie and Julia last night.......cute movie.

Sweet Stop Sketch Challenge #33!

Hard to believe that it is December, don't you agree?!!  Being December, I felt that I just had to do a Christmas card for the Sweet Stop Sketch Challenge this week.  The angel stamp is from Stampendous and is colored with copics.  The 'joy' is from PSX.  I sure miss that company.  Their stamps were always such wonderful quality.  The striped background is a Technique Junkie technique called Herringbone.  Herringbone is quite similar to a technique I had submitted called Corded Pieces.  The lightest paper actually has some metallic gold on it and is beautiful in person.  Make sure you click on the link to the right to see the other cards that the Sweet Stop Design Team came up with!!