I think I’m losing track of time.  Not that the time change had anything to do with it.  I really didn’t think Easter was two weeks away.  I was thinking I had a month.  Geez, where does the time go?

I’m not sure if this happens to anyone else, but when we “spring forward,” I really feel the need for a nap.  I’ve never had any trouble with jet lag, but for some reason, this one hour time change just exhausts me.  Maybe I just need an excuse for a nap.

I also lack ambition this time of year.  I feel like a bear whose just come out of hibernation and am only interested in sleeping and eating.  I have some great video ideas, but am too tired to put them into action.  Maybe tomorrow.  Or not.  Maybe I’ll just sleep on it.

I went to Joann’s and bought some coral sheer glittery material as well as coral material without glitter. I bought the same in light green.  My niece is having a shower with those colors so I’m thinking I can make a dress card with her shower colors in it.  I might even figure out a way to put three dresses together, the bride and two bridesmaids in the colors she’s chosen.  I’m not sure if that is feasible or not, but why not give it a try.  I never expected the onesies to come out as cute as they did, so maybe I’m onto something.  Maybe my paper crafting skills are more of the paper doll variety.  The kind where you already have the paper doll and all you need to do is attach the garments.  I can clearly do that.  I also found a Graphic 45 special edition paper pack of Baby 2 Bride and thought I might make our niece an album as well.  I’d like to get my father-in-laws photos and put them in the album as well.  I’ve always tried to make occasions special for her and this is no exception.

She deserves to be treated like a princess on her special day.  Doesn’t every bride?

 

 

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.