Waiting for Mojo

I'm getting better, but not feeling very creative right now, so I have nothing new to post. Sorry! Hopefully I'll be back to my normal self soon and my stamping mojo will return as well.

Merry Christmas Eve!

I was too busy with the pre-holiday rush today to stamp, so I just want to say Merry Christmas! I hope all of you and your families have a happy and healthy holiday and that all your wishes come true!

Merry SISers

Tonight was the Stampers in Stitches Christmas party, which means that I actually stamped (woo hoo!). Glenda prepared a bunch of cute Make and Takes for us with the valentine's bundle special that will be available to customers on December 23. Just like last year, we can turn around and use the make and takes as a ready-to-go class, which is really neat!

Unfortunately, though, I'm really just too tired to take pictures and edit them and upload them tonight, so they will have to wait until tomorrow. Sorry! But the projects are really cute and it will be worth the wait!

All party and no stamping

sorry -- no time to upload anything today. We shopped, cooked, prepped, carved and entertained all day and night long. I'll try to do better tomorrow.

It's not Ike yet, but it's not pretty, either

Well, we didn't get any hurricane or even tropical storm strength winds, but the Chicagoland area sure got our share of water this weekend, and nature's not quite done yet.


It rained here pretty much non-stop since yesterday afternoon for about 24 hours, with some areas getting as much as 7 inches of rain. While we're finally getting a little break, tomorrow's forecast calls for more rain as the remnants of hurricane Ike make their way into our area. We're told we could get another 3-6 inches and, as you can see from these photos, there's just nowhere for this water to go!

These are photos my husband took as we drove around our neighborhood at about 1:00 p.m. this afternoon. By this time, many roads in our village were impassible, and the rain had not let up yet. A couple of hours later we received a recorded call from the county, letting us know that sandbags were available for pickup at the local 7-11 store.

Since we live on one of the highest points in the whole village, thankfully we didn't need the sandbags, but obviously many of our neighbors were not so lucky. Now we just have to wait and hope that the water recedes overnight before the next storm arrives.

Obviously this is nothing compared to the harrowing experience people in Texas and Louisiana have been going through this weekend, but it just goes to show that nature can strike anywhere and with little or no warning.

Lunchbag Album and Stewie Update

I know I said that today I would show you the clear envelope album that we're going to make at the Mommy and Me Father's day Class, but I didn't have time to finish my prototype, so instead I want to show you this lunch bag album. I made it with white lunch bags and since the sides of the bags are naturally a bit crooked, I didn't even try to measure my card stock to cover the pages edge to edge. Instead I cut all pieces (except the covers) just a little smaller so that the white edges would be exposed. It looks just as good with a heck of a lot less hassle.

For this album I used 2 white lunch bags. This creates 6 pages inside the album plus 3 pull out pages which can be scrapped on both sides (so 12 pages total). That's actually a lot of scrapping space, considering the amount of materials used. And you can make bigger albums by adding more lunch bags -- Cool!

I used the Taffy alphabet and Year after Year to stamp the title and - how embarrassing - because I'm not used to the taffy alphabet yet I made a mistake. can you tell what it is? Well, I won;t make you guess. I used an upside down exclamation point instead of the I. Understandable, but silly nevertheless.

I haven't had a chance to decorate the inside pages yet, so this is the only photo so far. but more will definitely appear down the road.

In the meantime, I thought I would give you all an update on Stewie. Somehow the little bun managed to get all better and is now totally back to his old self! And here are a couple of pictures to prove it.

In the first one he's "devouring" his favorite book (I think it's John Grisham's The Client). I know some of you will think this is what made him sick, but he's been eating books all his life (this particular one for oever a year) and he's alwasy been fine with it. Bunnies needa lot of fiber and their digestive system is completely different from our, so paper and cardboard are actually good for him.

In thi ssecond photo you can see him snacking on something more nutricious -- parsley. What you see on the ground here is about 1/5 of what he eats in fresh greens in a day. At his last vet visit he weighed 6 lbs, and that's just about what he consumes in lettuce every week (that's not counting the paper, cardboard and hay). Can you imagine? I don't even want to think of what I'd look like if I ate my weight in food every week, even if it was all salad. For those of you who are interested, Stewie typically eats Romaine, Red Leaf, Green Leaf, Endive and either Escarole, Parsley, Cilantro or Kale every day (2 different types of lettuce for breakfast, one for dinner and then 2 right before bed). He also gets a baby carrot at bedtime and 1 or 2 pellets (bunny kibble) at dinner. On occasion he'll get a strawberry, a small piece of apple, plain cheerios or a yogurt treat, but not too often because his digestive system doesn't handle too much of that very well.

Anyway, tha's probably way more than you ever wanted to know about bunnies, but if you have any questions feel free to as and I'll try to answer as best as I can. I'm certainly no expert on bunnies' medical ailments, but I can tell you more about Stewie!

Thursday morning update

Well, the emotional roller coaster that is called Stewie continues at our house this morning. Yesterday was like Monday all over again. No eating or pooping the entire day. When Bill came home from work we gave him another syringe full of baby food and one full of water. It seems like that ook effect afgew hours later and by the time we let him out to run around upstairs at night (we ususally let him run around at least 1 hour every night) he ate up the parsley Bill brought up for him plus another batch. He also ate some of his books and boxes (I know tis sounds weird, but the fiber from the paper and cardboard is actually good for him) and even some hay. This morning we found about 1/2 of his nighttime lettuce eatedn and there were actually new "deposits" in the litter box. So clearly this is all positive stuff. But we've seen him get better before (Tuesday) and then relapse (yesterday) so I'm not sure what to think this time. We'll let him have a morning without the baby food and see what happens.

The highs and lows of all this are really wearing me out, but I think we've decided that we'll keeop him going through the weekend one way or another. Tomorrow is Bill's Good Friday and Sunday is his Easter, and it just doesn't seem right to make any major life or death decisions during that holiday. So we'll see what happens over the next four days. I'll be talking with the vet today to see if there's anything else we can do for Stew in the meantime.

I am ready to go back to stamping. Today we don't have any outside appointments so ther than dyeing Easter eggs the day is clear and I'll see if I can produce something new. I saw a new Coldwater Creek catalog in the mail so maybe that will help if I'm stuck.

Thank you all again for your encouragement. I especially want to thank Loretta for her suggestions on how to get Stewie "moving" again. He seems to be OK in that respect right now, but I'll keep your suggestion in mind because we never know what will be happening in a couple of hours. I really appreciate you all thinking about us!

Hopefully I'll be back tonight with something new for you to look at. Oh, and before I forget, if you're in the Itasca area, this weekend is the Friends of the Itasca Communty Library used book sale. The book sale is in the librayr at 500 West Irving Park Road, Itasca (corner of Irving Park and Catalpa, next to the fire station.) Tonight, 5:30-8:00 is the preview night -- free for friends and $5.00 admission charge for everyone else. Tomorrow through Sunday there is no admission fee. Friday and Saturday the hours are 9-4:30 and Sunday 1-5. I'll be there tomorrow and some time Friday afternoon. Hope those of you who live in the area can stop by -- you can't get a better deal on used books!

two steps forward, one step back

A mixed report for this morning. Stewie ate some of the lettuce we left for him overnight, but no litter box "deposits". So we're back to baby food and seeing what happens today. Obvioulsy I'm thrilled that he's still with us and eating some on his own, but being disappointed each morning with lack of progress is really hard. Dspite trying to not get too excited and hopeful, each night that I've gone to bed since Sunday I couldn't help but hope tha tthe next morning things would be back to normal or at least that we'd have evidence of going back to normal. But no such luck.

To top it all off we're having a really slow internet connection, so I can;t even upload anything for you to look at. Not that I have anything new, but I was goign to show you the birthday card I stamped for my mom, just so you'd have something other than the bunny drama to look at while you're here. So now tomorrow I get to entertain Comcast (again!) amidst all the other issues.

The slow connection is keeping me from logging into my comcast e-mail, so some of you may be getting messages from me today from my yahoo account. Sorry!

I guess they do say when it rains it pours, right? Hopefully these April showers will, indeed, bring May flowers for us.

Thank you so much!

I just wanted to send a huge thank you to everyone who posted a commet or wrote me an e-mail or both yesterday and today! Last night I was so distraught. I spent nearly an hour with my friend Jen (who recently lost a fur baby of her own) just bawling my eyes out, convinced that we were going to lose Stew. This mornign there was a little ray of hope when he started eating on his own and all of your messages really helped too -- knowing that I had so many freinds out there who were puling for us was huge! I believe in the power of positive thoughts and enery and prayer and I think Stewie definitely benefitted fromall of that today. So thank you, thank you, thank you!

Now, for the update. We fed Stewie 2.5 more syringes full of squash baby food diluted with water. In addition, he started eating some greens and hay by himself and, best of all, he started pooping! Without getting into details that you all probably do not want to know, in order to stay alive a bunny needs to keep his very fast metabolism going, which means that he has to eat and he has to poop. Bunnies cannot regergitate, so the only way they can get rid of waste products is by pooping, and if they are blocked they can die as quickly as in 24 hours. Last night Stewie was going on 36 hours of nearly total blockage and almost no eating, so we had little hope that he would pull out of it. But tonight he's in better spirits and his metabolism seems to be returning to normal. He's not quite all there yet, so we're being very cautious in our optimism, but at least tonight recovery seems like a possibility.

The next big test will be what we'll find in his cage tomorrow morning. If his nightime lettuce is gone and is replaced by "deposits" in his litter box, then we're probably on the road to recovery. On the other hand if, as for the past two mornings, all of the greens are still there and the litter box is empty, then it will be another day of baby food and prayers. So please, just keep thinking those positive thoughts and cross your fingers! I'll post an update tomorrow!

Also, lets you think we're ignoring my Mom-in-law to concentrate on the bunny, her doctor's visit went fine today -- no hidden injuries other than the ones we already knew about! She is looking much better and is in good spirits, except for worryingabout her fur grandchild. For the past few years she has been our designated bunny sitter, staying with Stewie here pretty much every time we're on vacation, so she's pretty fond of him and he of her. While I wish the circumstances were a bit different (i.e. no accident for her) I am glad that she has been here with us this week! As sad and distraught as I was yesterday and today, it would have been twice as bad if I was home alone.

Update

Thanks everyone for your kind thoughts! I just wanted to give you an update. Stewie is still with us. He's a fighter. Yesterday he was so weak he even turned down a strawberry and cheerios -- usually his favorite treats -- so we thought for sure he was "ready to go." But this morning he started eating the lettuce I gave him for breakfast, so we decided that if he is still fighting we'll help him as much as we can. I fed him a syringe-full of squash baby food mixed with pineapple juice (our vet's recommendation), both for the nutrients and the liquid, which he has not been getting enough of. It wasn't his favorite thing, but he accepted it. So now we wait again to see what happens. (ETA -- feeding a bunny by syringe is the equivalent of bottle feeding -- we didn't inject him with baby food, just in case that's what my original phrasing sounded like.)

In the meantime, I have doctors' appointments with my MIL, so at least he will have some time when people aren't looking in on him every few minutes and bothering him. Maybe the time alone will do him good.

And my MIL is doing well. We have some follow up appointments with various doctors but she is feeling OK, so it's just routine follow-ups at this point. It's just that she has her right hand in a cast and can't drive or a lot of the normal stuff with just her left hand, so we feel better having her stay with us.

I'll try to post another update tonight. Thanks for keeping us in your thoughts.

Sad

No stamping today. I mentioned yesterday that we had some family stuff going on. Saturday my MIL had to spend a night in the emergency room due to an accidental fall and is now staying with us until she feels well enough to go back to her own house, and Sunday our bunny got very sick and today, after we took him to the vet, things are not looking too good. Basically, unless we have a miracle, I don't expect him to make it through the night. He's almost 8 years old and he's lived a good life, so we knew that this day would be coming sooner or later, but it stil hurts to lose a member of the family, even if it's only a furry little one.

So it's been a rough weekend and week so far and, needless to say, stamping has not been anywhere near the top of the things to do. If you have some spare positive thoughts or energy as you're reading this, perhaps you might consider directing them our way -- seems like just about now we could use them.

Party pics

For those of my readers who might be interested in my life out of the stamp room, you can check out the party pics from last week's ornament exchange at this totally not stamp related post.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I know it's too late for the Canadian Thanksgiving and too early for the US one, but in my family we always celebrate Thanksgiving with a brunch on the Sunday before the actual US holiday. We arrived at this tradition in kind of a roundabout way.

When Bill and I first got married we tried spend Thanksgiving with both families. That year the hostess for my family was my cousin, who lives 1 hour's drive south of us. The host for Bill's family was his uncle, who lived 1 hour north of us. So that year we drove for 4 hours (more than some people I knew who went out of town for the holiday), ate two full dinners, and vowed never to do such a silly thing again.

The following year we through we'd be smart and eat dinner with Bill's family and brunch with my more immediate family -- my parents and step-sister - and skip my larger family get together. So I got busy and found some great Thanksgiving themed brunch dishes. Pumpkin pancakes, turkey sausage links, cranberry bread, etc. Well, we eliminated part of the drive, but having a huge brunch on Thanksgiving day did nothing to resolve the two meal dilemma.

So from then on my parents and stepsister come over for Thanksgiving brunch on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, and everyone is happy. Yes, we stuff ourselves like piglets at both meals, but at least the two meals are 4 days apart and on both days we hardly eat anything else. Is it the healthiest plan in the world? Not quite. But is has to be healthier than eating all that stuff in one day!

Anyway, this year we have a couple of new recipes to try. Stuffing sausage and egg casserole and cranberry cheese danish. Yum Yum. I can't wait!

So in honor of our Thanksgiving Brunch tomorrow, I'm sharing a card I made a while ago for a Stampin' up! contest. It wasn't good enough to win, but I still like it.

Recipe:

card stock: glossy white, naturals ivory, more mustard, ruby red, chocolate chip, river rock
Ink: chocolate chip craft, really red, pumpkin pie, summer sun, more mustard, old olive, river rock
stamps: autumn harvest, holidays and wishes
accessories: brayer, dimensionals, clear embossing powder, wide chocolate chip grosgrain, aquapainter, handheld rectangle punch.

Build-A-Flower

Today started off just hideously! Somehow yesterday I manged to set my wristwatch alarm for 4:15 a.m. and the stupid thing went off in the middle of the night! Adding insult to injury, every time I thought I turned it off apparently I only activated the snooze function, because 10 minutes later it went off again, and then again 10 minutes after that, each time just as I was falling asleep! I finally got up and put the watch in another room where I wouldn't be able to hear it. GRRRR.

Fortunately things did get better after that! This morning I picked up Eileen from the airport and before we even came home we stopped at a local Greek store to pick up some home-made Greek yogurt, fresh-baked Greek bread (it was still piping hot!) and Greek honey with mixed nuts! Then we went home to meet up with Bill where we added some freshly ground Mackinaw Island Fudge coffee and chocolate covered strawberries and had ourselves a super little feast for breakfast! Yum!

After breakfast we sat around a bit while I told Eileen all about stamping and what's been happening in the year since I last saw her. And she is such a good friend that not only did she listen patiently while I rambled on and looked at all of the stuff i showed her, but she actually asked me more questions after I offered to stop talking! WOW!

It was a simply gorgeous fall day, so we decided to spend the afternoon at the Morton Arboretum. We had a blast! We walked through the hedge maze and the children's garden, watched a drum concert (I think the drummers were Chinese and the whole thing was as much of a dance as it as a concert -- really fun to listen to and watch!) and participated in an Autumn Equinox walk. Eileen even got to play the part of the North star in the part of the walk where the arboretum docent explained what the equinox was all about. She had to wear the sillies head gear and sunglasses -- if only I hadn't left the camera at home!

In the evening we went to Tree Guys Pizza (continuing with the arboretum theme!) and had an awesome Chicago-Style deep dish pie for dinner! MMMMM. . . it was delish!

After dinner I drove Eileen to her hotel downtown so that she can get some rest before her meeting starts tomorrow (unlike me, she actually woke up at 3:30 a.m. central time in order to catch her early morning flight to Chicago). As usual, the visit was too short, but it was so great to see her. Of course, we are now way overdue for a visit to NYC, so maybe you'll be hearing about that in the coming months!

Because Eileen was in town I did not spend a lot of time in the stamp room, but since I wanted to show you something new tonight I actually took out my Build-a-Flower Accents and Elements tin and put together these two cards. Neither of them are particularly difficult and obviously the only thing stamped on each card is the sentiment, but I have to admit that nothing beats these fun adhesive die cards for making a super fast and cute cards.

In fact, I liked making these cards so much that I decided to offer a stamps by mail class that will incorporate this accents and elements tin. Watch this blog in the next few days for more details!

After the storm

Yesterday the mother of all storm systems passed though our area. We had wave after wave of thunderstorms, extremely high winds and tornado warnings. Many areas lost power (including us but, thankfully, only for a little while). I wouldn't know how to explain it all in meteorological terms, but Tom Skilling, our WGN and Chicago Tribune Weather Guru, says it had something about all the warm moist air being sucked up into thunderheads that were 60 miles high (Is that even possible?Maybe I remember it wrong?) and then dragging the air from the upper levels of the atmosphere down through a funnel. I'm probably misrepresenting what really happened, but whatever it was, it was bad. Lost of damage from the downed trees and flooding. All around not good. I thought I would show you pictures of our neighborhood today, though these really do not do the storm justice.

This is a photo of our local creek. Normally it is pretty shallow, especially in the summer, and not quite as wide as the two openings you see on the bridge in the picture. What you're seeing here is the creek overflowing the banks so that it's about 4 times as wide as normal and about 10 times as deep. Believe it or not, since we didn't have any rain today, the water level actually went down a bit. Yesterday you almost could not see the top of the holes under the bridge.


This is a view of the other side of the road. Again, normally all of this is grassland. Now the park has turned into a lake.

This is what happened to one of our neighbor's trees. Lucky for everyone it fell into the yard, and not on the house or a car or a person! I've seen trees that were split down the middle vertically by lightening or uprooted by the wind, but I've never seen this mature of a tree just snapped in half! It is truly stunning!

And here is a close up, so that you can get a different perspective on the size of this tree. It was huge, and it snapped in half like a twig. Granted, looking inside the trunk it does look like it may not have been the healthiest of old trees, but still! WOW!

Thankfully, we managed to weather the worst of it OK. No water in the basement and no downed limbs. So far we also haven't seen the next wave of storms that are supposed to be passing through. Maybe we'll get lucky and this system will pass us by altogether. I hope so -- we've had quite enough rain this month, thanks!

Meet my Fur child

This is my fur child, Stewart Pappas. Isn't he handsome? Stewie has been living with us for the last 6.5 years and he's a great pet. He's litter box trained, so he doesn't have to be confined to his cage (though he actually spends a lot of time in there anyway because it's his home and he feels comfortable in there). That green thing in the background is one if his toys -- a liquid detergent bottle cap. He sometimes likes to toss it about. I'm glad it's in the picture because it gives you an idea of Stewie's size. When we got him we were told that he's a mini lop. Well, let me tell you, there's nothing mini about this bun!

I took Stewie to the vet this morning for a check up and he weighed in at a healthy 7 Lbs. He's also about 2 feet long when he's fully stretched out. So all in all about the size of a newborn, except that Stewie does not like to be held, so today was not one of his favorite days. Fortunately, except for a little conjunctivitis which needs to be treated with special medicine, Stewie passed his check up with flying colors. He got his nails clipped today too. Boy, was he ever happy to come home! So much so that he forgot to wish his human mom and dad happy anniversary! Yup, Bill and I have been married for 10 years, and dated for 5 years before that (we got married 2 days after the anniversary of our first date). Time sure flies when you're having fun!

And speaking of flying, because it's been such a busy week we elected to stay home tonight and tried to plan our next European vacation over going out to dinner. Our Colorado trip was sort of our celebratory vacation, and we figured we could go our to diner to celebrate some time next week. Unfortunately, our plans were foiled, probably because we had only a very sketchy idea of where it was we wanted to go and when at the start. But even though we didn't book anything, we do have an idea of where we're going. And the winner is? Benelux! Huh? I know, there's no such country in Europe. But Benelux is actually a bona fide destination -- a trip through Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. We'll probably fly into Amsterdam and then get a Eurail pass and travel all over the region. We already spent a day in Brussels a couple of years ago, so now we'll concentrate on seeing the rest of the region. MMMMM - I can't wait. I can taste the Belgian Waffles already!

Saved by the Geek

Well, it's been over 24 hours and the wireless network at my house is still going strong -- no frustrating unexplained crashes or in terruptions! Woo Hoo! It really was a fantastic birthday present. Big thanks go out to my DH and also to everyone who posted or e-mailed me their birthday wishes! Thank you for making my birthday even more fabulous!

Happy Birthday To Me!

It's Monday and it's my birthday! Apparently it's also the day that marked the end of the Holy Roman Empire and the birthday of Alexander Fleming, the man who discovered pennicillin (see sidebar). In fact, a lot of interesting things happened on my birthday through the ages -- click here for a partial list. And here is another list of fun facts, including a list of more people who share my birthday.

So what am I doing on my birthday? Well, I took a day off work and I will be stamping and awaiting the visit of the Best Buy Geek Squad to finally get my wireless network hooked up properly. I can't wait to be able to surf the net in my stamp studio or my living room or anywhere else in the house! That will be a really cool birthday present! Then, in the evening, we're going out to dinner with friends, so it will be a really fun night! Woo Hoo!