I saw a die that would cut out a onesie and thought, geez, that is so easy, why couldn’t you just cut one out?  I had a viewer request a video for a baby card. I made the template and then I made a card.   It was so simple to make a template that I started thinking about my niece’s upcoming wedding and the shower card I’ll need to make for her.  Why couldn’t I just make a template of a wedding dress?  I think the next time I am in Joann’s, I’m going to look for some sheer white lacy material and buy 4″ of it to make a layer of material to at least cover the bottom of the dress/card I’m going to make.  It might be a horrible fail, but I’ve got a lot of time to experiment.  I’d like her card to really stand out and be different from everyone else’s (in a good way).  She’s my husband’s goddaughter and deserves something special.  I’m also making a recipe box for her, covering an existing recipe box (made to be covered) with Graphic 45 paper.  She’s asking every person who attends her shower to bring their favorite recipe with them.  I really don’t want to disappoint her.  Since she was a teenager, she’s looked to me to handle special projects for her.  For her shower, she really wanted a family recipe book as well, so I asked all of her aunts, her mother and grandmother and her new mother-in-law for their favorite recipes. Jennifer really wanted recipes from her deceased grandmother in her handwriting, so I figured out a way to copy the old recipe cards directly onto the new cards so she would have them.  They came out better than I expected and I think she’ll be really happy with the results.  Of course we also bought her a present and I’m pretty sure I don’t have a clue when it comes to shower gifts.  I always see ladies bringing their cute little packages and I bought her this huge gift that I can’t even lift, let alone carry into a shower. Geez, I should have bought towels.

I hope this is my last rant about poor Honey.  Today, she went outside to go to the restroom and Rich came back in with her and said I needed to call the vet again.  He said she had a lot of blood in her stool.  Geez oh man, this poor puppy can’t catch a break.  We thought that it might be from her antibiotics, so I called the vet.  They checked things out and gave Rich a prescription for her.  It seems she has some kind of parasite caused from drinking contaminated water.  I’m so mad I could scream.  On top of everything else she got from the breeder, now she has a problem from the water she drank there.  Unbelievable.  I can only imagine what they did.  I would bet they never cleaned a big bowl that all of the puppies ate, drank and did whatever else in.  Apparently the parasites take so many days to cause problems which is why we only started seeing the side effects now.  I can’t believe that this breeder hasn’t been shut down.   Obviously not AKC, since they don’t care what goes on with animals with the name AKC attached to them. I feel so helpless that there isn’t an advocate for dogs and these horrible breeders.  They should stopped from breeding dogs.  I haven’t given up on finding someone who will help me with this breeder. I know for every one you shut down, another two or three pop up, but I just can’t sit back and do nothing.  We’ve had her to the vet FOUR times in three weeks and only one of those was scheduled.  There’s something wrong when a three month old puppy has this many health problems.  I just hope she’ll be healthy once the side effects caused by this dirty breeding environment is finally behind us..

There’s nothing as cute as a puppy.  I’ve always thought Noel, our yellow lab, was the most beautiful puppy we have ever seen.  It only makes sense that when we chose Honey, she looks very similar to Noel.  The biggest difference is that poor Honey has had health problems since we got her.  I saw an ad in the paper for AKC English Retrievers and called to ask them to email us photos of the puppies plus mom and dad.  The woman on the telephone said they were raising puppies to help pay for their daughter’s medical expenses from cancer.  I was a little surprised that they talked about it like I really needed to know in order to make a decision about buying a dog from them.  They did send  the photos and we immediately knew which dog we wanted.  They were about an hour from us and the weather was not good, but there was a break in the snow and we called them and went to see the puppy.  When we were on their driveway, there were golden retrievers in dog houses on chains almost everywhere you looked.  There were probably seven or eight in front of their home alone.  They told us that we need to go to a small building that looked like a small bus shelter with a door on it.  We went in and they had these poor freezing puppies in hay and they were all shaking like crazy.  Rich and I both pointed to Honey and then I looked up. There was a window that looked into their backyard where they had Newfoundland dogs, Black Labrador retrievers, Coonhounds and other dogs that they apparently were breeding.  They just had a litter of Newfoundlands she said.  I told her I wasn’t happy how cold the puppies were and she said they didn’t keep them there, but wherever they did keep them, it wasn’t warm.  Honey smelled like rotten hay.  We wrapped her in a big blanket and I went to the car while Rich handled the finances.  We realized we had bought a dog from a puppy mill.  We were sick about the conditions as well as the fact that they advertised the dogs as AKC, but when we got there, they wanted more money for their papers.  When we got home, we immediately bathed Honey and she was covered in fleas.  She loved the bath though.  She was terrified of people and that was another indicator that she had very little human interaction.  When we took her to the vet a day later, the vet said she had mites which was uncommon in dogs, and she felt that she had been in a very unclean environment.  I called the breeder who said they never had heard from another buyer about anything like fleas or mites and their vet checked the puppies thoroughly.  Sure. I started fretting about the situation and contacted AKC about the false advertising. I felt if they said the dogs were AKC, that’s what you should get. AKC didn’t care.  I guess there isn’t anyone looking out for these poor dogs.  Anyway, a few days later, we couldn’t understand why Honey would pee in the house, we’d take her outside and she would pee and then she’d come back in and pee again.  Back to the vet.  She has a UTI.  I’ve never had a dog with a UTI before.  Geez.  Oh, and she has a heart murmur that should be ok by sixteen weeks and if not, we need to go to a cardiologist.  Crap!  The antibiotics have given her horrible diarrhea that is everywhere and the poor things is miserable.  She’s now on a diet of chicken and rice to help with that.

I guess the reason I’m writing this is because we feel bad that we fell for the “paying for our daughter’s medical expenses” story.  They definitely are just breeding dogs for profit under terrible conditions for the dogs.  We are happy that we took Honey out of that environment, but hate that we put more money into their pockets so they will continue breeding dogs.  We pray that Honey’s health concerns will be behind her soon and that she lives a very long and happy life like our other dogs. If fretting was an Olympic event, I would definitely be a gold medalist.

I made the video of different types of paper trimmers and my recommendations on them.  I think I covered the gamut of non-electric versions and that was my intent.  If someone starts to craft and needs to know what tool to use, I feel pretty strongly that I gave them a good variety of options. If they are physically limited, I am 100% sure that I gave good advice.  There’s always a fine line to walk when I discuss products.  Obviously, I’m primarily speaking to persons with limitations, but I’d never want to exclude persons without limitations from my observations.  I bought a rotary paper trimmer specifically for demonstration purposes in the video. I’d tried one before, but I thought it might have been too heavy, thus harder to move the lever. If I was without limitations,  I’d own one of those in a second.  They cut through multiple pages at a time and are inexpensive.  I don’t think I would use it as my primary trimmer because of the lack of 100% field of vision, but it would easily be my secondary trimmer.  I’m not sure why I have an obsession about seeing the entire page I’m cutting, but it makes me crazy if I can’t seen an inch of the page.  When you look at the average size card 4 1/4″ x 5 1/2″, that inch could be one-fourth of the card surface.  I’ve seen other YouTubers use a similar trimmer and they made it look really easy.  Regardless, because of my limitations, my elbow didn’t like the trimmer, so it’s going back.  Darn.

Today I’m going to tackle the card with the keyhole on it.  It just occurred to me that I have the perfect stamp for looking outside the door as well.  It might require my jumbo keyhole, maybe not.  I’m so excited to make these cards because they are so different and quirky.  I do believe they will call for some googly eyes as well.  I can’t wait!

I had a great (ok, I think it’s great) card idea.  It started when I cut out the stencil of the large key hole.  I began with the idea that you can look outside or indoors when using this stencil.  I also remembered a commercial from a while ago where a dog got into all kinds of trouble when its owners were gone and blamed it on the cat.  I was given a set of “Party Dog” stamps from Elicia, and thought they’d be perfect for this idea.  I’ve been wanting to use them and this will work great.  I also wanted to try printing my own sentiment on the computer directly onto the cardstock so this can accomplish both ideas.  I thought about “what happens in the house, stays in the house” or “when the cats away, the mice will play” but wasn’t sure how that correlates to my dog idea.  Regardless, I’m excited to try it out.  I’m also working on a product comparison video for paper trimmers.  I definitely wish I’d had someone who knew what was what, guiding me when I bought my first one.  I really love that trimmer but it wasn’t large enough for 12 x 12 paper.  I bought a really nice rotary trimmer from “My Binding.com” and had to send it back because I couldn’t push hard enough to cut a consistent line.  I bought it over the phone and explained my issues and the woman assured me if I had any problems I could send it back.  What she didn’t tell me was they charge a 20% restocking fee.  When I called to explain it didn’t work and needed to send it back, she did all kinds of math before telling me it almost wasn’t worth it because of the fees I’d have to pay.  She told me the restocking fee was clearly explained on their webpage.  When I told her I didn’t use the webpage and spoke to one of their representatives, she graciously lowered the restocking fee to 10%.  The odd part of the story was that everytime I spoke with someone there, it sounded like the same person.  Maybe she knows she never discloses the 20% fee and that’s why she reduced it to 10%.  I did love the math calculations she did.  It was almost like how you stand in line at the airport while they type who knows what into their computers for seemingly hours.  I’m pretty sure they are playing an online game or emailing their mothers instead of doing what I’m requesting.  The same thing here.  How hard is it to calculate a 20% fee and subtract it from the cost of the trimmer?  Actually, she also charged me shipping, so that probably accounted for five more minutes of typing.  Long story short, I’d never buy anything from them again.

So that’s my plan and I’m hoping to stick to it.  Hoping.

The picture for my blog and YouTube are with Noel, the first dog who truly loved me.  We’ve always had dogs, but they were always more drawn to Rich than to me.  When we put our last dog to sleep, it was an awful experience for Rich, (I worked that day) and he never wanted another pet.  He said he couldn’t do that again.  It took the vet three tries to put our dog to sleep.  Rich had a friend that said his biggest regret was not being there when they put his dog to sleep.  He told Rich that he was his best friend and in his last moments, he wasn’t there for him.  That really struck home with Rich so when they our dog went in, Rich was holding him tightly.  He couldn’t get past those last few minutes and it took us six months before he would consider a dog.  It was Christmas and I really wanted a puppy and I was very specific about what I wanted.  I wanted a female yellow lab and I was going to call her Noel.  When we went to see her, they had photos of the father to Noel.  He was dressed up for Halloween and he was the most handsome yellow lab we had ever seen.  When they brought Noel to us, we knew she was ours.  She was so sweet natured and had the longest eyelashes I’ve ever seen on a dog.  She had horrible separation anxiety so when we went to work, she barked.  By the time she was two, we knew we needed to make a change and found Aggie, our first golden retriever.  She also had the most handsome father we had ever seen.  Noel and Aggie were inseparable.  If we took one to the vet, the other fretted until we got home.  They were together for thirteen years.  Noel passed the day after these photographs were taken.  She was 15 1/2 years old when she died.  That was in 2014, but sometimes a dog leaves such a hole in your heart that you want her with you always.  I put the photos up so my best friend could be a part of my YouTube experience.  She left a big hole for Aggie as well.  About three years before Noel passed, the vet told us that our dogs were very connected (which we already knew) and that Aggie might not make it through Noel’s passing.  She said we should consider getting another dog for her, which is why we got Bella.  We’re not referencing the Twilight series, her AKC name is Parker’s Bella Mia, which is Italian for “my beautiful.”  She’s been a great companion for Aggie who really struggled when we lost Noel.   About two weeks after Noel passed, in the middle of the night, Aggie let out a howl like her heart had broken.  I’ve never heard anything like it and hope I never do again.  I cried the rest of the night.  Aggie is now 15, and we’ve started to worry about Bella being alone, thus the reason we bought Honey.  Isn’t it strange that the only dog we bought for ourselves was Noel and every dog after has been for our dogs?  We must be abnormal.  We never had children so our dogs have filled that void for us.  We still miss Noel and her weird quirky ways.  She was very routine oriented and every morning went to the refrigerator, waited for me to open the bottom drawer and retrieved her apple (that drawer only housed their apples and we never used it for anything else) .  She and Aggie ate an apple every day of their lives.  When Noel died, Aggie stopped eating apples.  Noel loved tomatoes so we planted grape tomato plants for her.  She’d wait until the tomatoes turned red and then she’d “shop” for them, going from plant to plant, until she found tomatoes that were ready to eat.  She’d come back into the house and her whole face would be yellow from the pollen on the plants.  When she was a puppy, she’d lay on my lap with her face pointed toward my face and her tail by my knees.  Until her death, she would  lie on me in the same way as she did when she was a puppy.   And she loved to lay beside me on the bed if I held her foot, and she’d lay like that for hours.  She was a sweet dog and I wanted to take a few minutes to remember her with you so you’d understand the photos and my love for this wonderful dog.

Every once in a while, YouTube completely stymies me.  I’m not sure what is happening or why and have no idea how to fix whatever happens.  It happened today.  Rich uploaded a video as “private” so I would be able to add the information about the video, and add icons that will take you to other videos, and notes that explain things I feel might be unclear.  Once I am done with that, I change the “private” to “public.”  Once I do that, the video is the first one to appear when I click on my page.  For some reason, it’s not there, but if you click on videos, it does appear.  Since I couldn’t figure out what else to do, I changed it to “private” again, and then changed it back to “public” thinking that could be the answer. It wasn’t.  I’m not sure how most people get to my most recent videos, but if they do it the way I do, they won’t know there is a new video.  Geez, this is frustrating.  It’s a really great video because Rich did a really cool  introduction for it.  What to do, who to ask?  The last time I had a YouTube question, their site lead me to a video on, wait for it, YouTube.  It didn’t give me the answer there so I was left scratching my head.  So I decided to give it another try.  I typed in “missing video on YouTube” and it gave me several video games and several  songs from Puff Daddy to Justin Bieber.  Well, those aren’t going to answer my question.  Maybe I should sing something like “Where oh where did my video go, oh where oh where could it be?”  Sadly, it gave me “Oh Where can my baby be” and weirdly enough, “Last Kiss.”  I guess I’ll wait until tomorrow to see if the problem has been resolved and if it hasn’t, I’ll try again.  Or give up and hope viewers find it another way.  Maybe they can read my blog to find it.