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Lime Rickey Bath Erin!  :)

Two Year Old Erin and a Basic Grey Sketch

Believe it or not...
I actually have been doing some crafting recently (very little, much to my sadness), but as usual the school year has run me over like a freight train.  Today I put my foot down and declared some scrappy time.  Here's the result of this week's sketch challenge at Basic Grey.  You can see the post here. 
I still have plenty of Lime Rickey left over from a little buying spree when it first came out, and I knew I wanted a playful feel to this layout given the state of Erin's hands!

This is my Erin back in the days when she was still a sweet two year old.  Maybe it's convenient memory lapse, but I really don't remember terrible two's with her.  Five years old, on the other hand, had some bumpy moments when she started kindergarten and tried to copy some of the behaviors she saw there.  :)  But that's another story.  Not much to the journaling here...so I made the title spread into both blocks. 

Supply List:  Papers are: Lime Rickey and Wisteria
                    Embellishments are: Lime Rickey Chipboard and Elements Stickers
                   Alphabets are: Obscure alphas, Eskimo Kisses, Life of the Party and Sugar Rush

Thanks for stopping by!  I'm hoping to upload the 5-6 other layouts I've managed to create this fall but haven't posted yet soon!  :)

Basic Grey Sketch #1

The Basic Grey blog is up and running (yay!!!), and they are giving us an opportunity to play with a new sketch challenge every Monday.  I used this sketch from the first challenge:

to scrap some of the pictures I still had of my girls and hubby from this past Easter. 
I seldom do double page layouts, so this was a great workout for me!  Here is the final result...

With a few detail shots for good measure...just because I can!  :)

I primarily worked with Basic Grey's "Green at Heart" line including the journaling paper, the flowers, the decorative clips, the element stickers and the purple paper called "grass".  I also included chipboards from Sugar Rush and the "candy hearts" paper and a strip of paper from Kioshi--"yuriko".

My summer break is rapidly coming to an end (only ONE day left, ack!)...hopefully these sketch challenges will keep me creating at least one time a week during the school year!  :)

Thanks for stopping by!!!!   ~Wendy

To Honor You

First, I want to thank those of you who commented on my "Fix You" layout about our Alex.  Many promised to pray for him, and we really appreciate it.  Some people won't understand, but Alex truly was a member of our family.  Jon and I adopted him when we had been married for less than a year, so he was deeply woven into the fabric of our lives.  He was our "baby" for the four years before we had Paige, and of course he continued to be our baby up until the end.

We made the decision to put Alex to sleep on Wednesday.  It was and continues to be a gutwrenching, agonizing decision.  There is so much guilt connected to the idea of calling the vet and arranging for your child to be put to sleep.  The grief and anguish comes in waves.  In those times, I try to remind myself of how much pain he really was in.  It would have been selfish to keep him alive just because we didn't want to let him go.  It had gotten to be a terrible struggle for Alex to have to go up and down the stairs to our yard for bathroom breaks.  We had to help him lift his back legs to get up off the floor.  His eyes were sad most of the time.  We had run to the end of all medical options and prescriptions, and he was getting worse.

Thankfully, the girls are taking it much easier than Jon and I are.  Alex wouldn't have wanted them to be sad.  He hated it when any of us were crying or upset.  He's feeling better now, up in heaven...but we keep looking for him here.  We keep thinking we hear the sound of his collars jingling.  It's hard.  So hard.  And so sad.  He is everywhere in our house, in our yard, in our hearts. 

I woke up early this morning working through the idea I'd had last night.  Humans have obituaries when they die.  I wanted our Alex to have one too.  I wanted to preserve those memories and quirky things that made Alex everything he was to us.  It's hard to understand now, but I know there will come a time where seeing this layout framed on our wall will only bring smiles and not more tears.

To read the obituary, click on the layout, and it will be made bigger and easier to see.

Thank you all for taking the time to remember our Alex with us. 

I know there are plenty of other pressing sorrows in this world, but thank you for helping to share ours.

Wendy

My Creative Sketches blog (For Me)

Hi All!  Jillibean Soup and I have made a layout of my Erin's beautiful beaming face.  She had found a small blossom in a park we were hanging out at, and she ran full speed to give it to me.  Aww...cue heartmelting swell of love...

I made this to participate in the first sketch challenge at My Creative Sketches blog. . .
I stayed very true to their sketch, and when I saw all of those circles the first thing that came to my mind was the Jillibean journaling sprouts.  Perfection!

I hope someone gives you wildflowers today, or at least brightens your day with a smile like this!

Cards for Olivia and the My Mind's Eye Challenge

This month for the My Mind's Eye challenge, I did both a layout and a card.  First up, the girls on Sunday, July 3rd in their annual themed dresses.  At church that day, the children sang "God Bless America" and, of course, "Happy Birthday" to America.  Both of my girls had little speaking parts in front of "God Bless America," and they remembered them and did great.  Every single thing on this layout is from My Mind's Eye other than the adhesive (ha!) and the circular brads.  The sketch looked like this...

Then, I read on Stacy Rodriguez' blog about her cousin's daughter, Olivia.  I was planning on trying the card challenge this month, using the adorable playing cards that are geared toward a child.  This seemed like a perfect opportunity to take that 1/2 hour and make a card to brighten Olivia's hospital room.  Read more here: Cards for Olivia drive . 
Here's the card...

Thanks for stopping in...
Wendy

Another Sassafras Challenge!

Hello all!  Long time, no see!  This past month has been very hectic, and now I'm back in my classroom preparing for my 26 angelic second graders who will come to be my students very soon.  In the midst of it all though, I needed a little crafty break for myself so I took up the August Sassafras Lass challenge.  If you remember, I posted about entering the June challenge and told you I'd let you know if I made it into the top ten....   Well, they actually choose a top sixteen that month, but MY layout was the fourth one shown on the page!  YAY!!!  :)  I didn't get the July challenge done, but here's August:

For this challenge, all we had to do was use three different Sassafras Lass alphabets.  Well, that was a snap because I think I have at least 12 different Sass alphabets at my disposal!  :)  These were the first professional pictures we'd had taken of the girls for two years, and I saved a few wallets.  They just forced me to make a griddy layout.  I love grids!  :)
Thanks for stopping by!
Wendy

Thoughtful

Here's a quickie layout of my girl Paige again.  We were at a local park on Tuesday night, and I managed to catch some pretty sweet pictures of the girls there.  This was a nice contemplative picture of Paige looking at some wildflowers she'd found.  Journaling reads:  "Over the course of this summer, I’ve noticed Paige being more thoughtful.. She’s been a bigger help around the house. One night while I was busy doing the “important business” of updating my blog, she even cleaned the whole kitchen for me! When I’ve asked her to do something, her attitude has been better too. What a wonderful change! I’m so proud of her!
July 12, 2011

This collection is Basic Grey's "Out of Print" line.  There are some really great patterns in that line!

 Have a great Thursday!  :)

Fix You. . .

We've gone through a recent health crisis with our beloved 12 1/2 year old German Springer Spaniel, Alex.  It was literally overnight that he went from his usual happy self (albeit stiff, as a 12 1/2 year old with arthritis will be) to a dog we couldn't even recognize as ours.  He couldn't get up off the floor without help.  He completely stopped eating.  He went from drinking 3-4 bowls of water a day to maybe 2/3 of a bowl.  He stopped following us around, and even stopped wagging his tail when we came into the room.  We thought the end had come.  We prepared our daughters, as best we could, to say good-bye, and we took him to the vet. 

What we didn't know, was that our regular vet was on vacation, and we had a guest vet.  This vet didn't seem overally worried at what was catastrophic to us.  Of course, it didn't help that Alex got pumped up with adrenaline over the car ride and the vet office and started acting a little more spunky.  He did blood work and decided to give Alex a joint medication and some pain meds and sent us home.  This was on Thursday.

By Saturday morning, Alex was not improving and was continuing to decline, so we took him to another local veternarian.  This doctor did a chest x-ray, more blood work (another $100 for the same thing done only 2 days before!), and recommended we admit Alex to their hospital over Fourth of July weekend.  The money was really adding up.  We didn't feel like we could leave him there, so they gave him an i.v. of fluids and antibiotics and recommended we do further testing.

Tuesday morning, we called our regular vet who was thankfully back from his vacation, and after looking over all of the results, he recommended we do that same test.  So, Wednesday, we took Alex in for yet more blood work and waited for the results.  Of course, they came back negative.

We are now down a substantial amount of money, and we still have absolutely no idea what is wrong with Alex.  They now want to do a stomach x-ray and more blood work to see if he has a tick disease....

Only a few days before this whole nightmare started, I downloaded Coldplay's song "Fix You" onto my ipod.  Through the tears, this song spoke to me.  The lyrics felt so right for where we are right now.  We honestly do not know how to fix him.  In the meantime, it is so hard to watch him be so different from his normal self.  He's currently on prednisone, which has spunked him up a little bit.  But our fur baby's future just feels so unclear...

If you've stuck with me through this long novel, thank you.  If you're a pet owner, or ever have been, you probably understand what we are going through.  A few days into this, I took this picture of Alex as he laid on our floor, basically unresponsive, one day. 

I had to use this picture to make a layout.  My hope was it would help me process the feelings...

The tag underneath has hidden journaling, and the lyrics are the ones from the song, "Fix You", that really hit me every time I listen to it.  Thanks for reading...
Wendy

A Sassafras Lass Sketch Challenge...and Children With Hair Loss!

Hello all!  I'm thrilled to be able to say my last month entry to the Sassafras Lass sketch contest was selected to be in the Top 20!!  I was so thrilled when I found out, I did a happy dance right there in the parking lot at the Chinese Buffet.  :)  It's really a wonder sometimes that my family takes me anywhere with them.

So...the ante has been upped this month.  There will be only 10 entries featured on the Sass blog, and I loved the sketch for June which looked a little something like this. . .

My Paigey girl (and Erin, but we'll get to her later), has been waiting forEVer to get her hair cut.  In fact, she's waited so long she had enough hair to donate to a Michigan organization called "Children With Hair Loss."  This is much like "Locks of Love", but they are willing to accept fewer inches of hair, and they also offer their wigs and other products to all of the children who need them free of any charge.  Paige was worried she wouldn't have enough hair for the donation, but she definitely had the required 8 inches, so a ponytail was formed.......and then.....chopped off! 
Paige loves her new hair AND the fact that she could help other children.  Here's my layout....

Remember, you can click on the layout to get a larger view of that beautiful new haircut.  The stylist told Paige she thought she made her look at least TWO years older!  lol

And a little sneaky peek at the hidden journaling....

I will certainly let you know if I reach the top ten for this month.  In fact, you might be able to hear my scream of joy right from your living room.  :)

Wendy