TP and Ice Cream and a New Member of the Family

Here is another quick card made with an image I had colored previously using colored pencils and Gamsol. The background is another piece of the faux hand-made paper. Very quick and simple to put together.

I also made this card from another image in my pre-colored stash. I love this one from Mo Manning! Really miss our sweet Ice, who was a Siberian Husky. Colored with Copic markers and the border punch is from Martha Stewart.
It's been a crazy summer, so we have put off getting a new fur baby until things settled down. With the new school year breathing down my neck, I found it was getting harder and harder to look at, read, or hear about other people's adorable dogs without having one of our own. A dear friend of mine heard about a dog that completely fit the bill. So here we are; introducing Roxie the Rockstar!!

He is a Rotty/Boxer mix. Loves kids, cats, dogs...well, everyone! He is a neutered male, about 1 1/2 year old. He is so gentle! When we introduced him to my son's dog, a Minpin, she wasn't exactly hospitable. He just ignored her bad behavior and walked away. It was a perfect opportunity for him to display aggression but we saw NONE!! He loves Kyli already and we are so excited about him coming to make our house his forever home!

Sharing....

Those of you who stop in regularly probably know that this sweet pooch is my beloved friend and fur baby, Ice. It has been pretty sad around here for the past couple of days because I came home from work on Thursday afternoon to find that my sweet girl had died rather suddenly and completely unexpectedly while we were at work. She did have occasional seizures and it looks like this may be what happened to her but we will never know for sure. I have to say that the whole ordeal has been easier to bear because I have the most wonderful friends a girl could ask for! At work, in my stamping circle, in cyberspace...ya'll are the best!!! One of the most touching things I had happen was receiving the card below that was made by my dear friend, Bonnie. She had a bunch of the girls from the LSS sign it and had it ready when I arrived Friday afternoon to prep for my class on Sunday. She had also made a sweet little acrylic photo tag using the same picture.

We are missing Ice terribly right now and I am sure there will be another dog in our lives very soon. When the right situation happens, we will know it and I'm sure we will have no choice in the matter as our fur babies have always chosen us, not the other way around. For now, we are trying to carry on and get back to normal, especially for the sake of my granddaughter, Kyli who I worry will be very upset over losing Ice. They had gotten to be quite the pair! Today she was practicing using my Scor Buddy while I was finishing the prep work for the Sunday class. (I didn't have a very productive evening last night)

I was amazed at how well she handles this tool at only four years old!!
Well, thanks for stopping and "listening" to my ramblings. Looking forward to more cheerful posts in the future!

Zentangle and Disney

Today I am adding a couple of pages from my Zentangle calendar that I have been working on. I really need to spend some time stamping, but Zentangle is so portable. I did the page with the tree one day while I was watching Kyli play on her swing set. The second one (still  needs shading) I did while sitting and chatting with a friend. She was doing the same thing, so she wasn't even thinking that I wasn't paying attention to her. It's good to have friends with common interests!
On a personal note, my son and daughter-in-law took Kyli to Disney for her fourth birthday. It was her first visit and she went non-stop for 14 hours without a stroller! Of course, she then slept for about 14 hours straight! Just she collected autographs from so many of the characters. She even got to dance with Goofy at one of the shows. Check out my son's wizard hat! I am sooooo going to snag it for the next hat day at school!!!

No card...just a personal post

 Home at last!! We left Ohio at 4 am and got home at 10:15! It was longest it ever took me to make the run between Ohio and Florida. We had heavy traffic and lots of rain. To add to it all, my stomach got all in knots making driving even more stressful and I had to make a few extra stops along the way. But we are all home safely and for that I am thankful! We had a great time! In case you don't know, my daughter in law and granddaughter went with me on my annual trip north to visit my dad in Ohio. I took this photo at the lake that is on the property that adjoins my dad's, which he owned until about ten years ago. The new owner dug this lake and it was such a pretty place to take a few pictures. Kyli was so interested in the geese and other things going on, that I couldn't get her to do any posing. I think this turned out okay anyway!

And here's my dad!!! I just love this big guy!!! This is my favorite picture of him ever and I have my DIL to thank for it! I didn't even see it until we got home.

 One of the reasons my DIL wanted Kyli to go was so she could meet her cousins (my sister's grandchildren and children). Of course, all of the children are grown, but she had a blast playing with the two grandchildren. This is Kyli and Charity. I couldn't get all three of them still in one photo, so I caught this one of Hayden a little later:

My oldest nephew and his wife are the proud parents of Hayden and Charity and they were expecting the arrival of their third child while we were there.

And so it came to pass that Leah Rae was born while we were there...

She definitely takes after her daddy's dad in the hair department....or maybe it's recessive genes from me considering what Kyli inherited from me! Anyway, I haven't had the chance to ask them about the origin of her name, but since I AM the favorite aunt, it may not be a coincidence that we share the same middle name!!!
We made one extra stop on the way home that had nothing to do with gas, potty breaks, food, or stomach pains. We stopped at New River Gorge. This is a spot that is one my son's favorites and he speaks of it often, so I thought it was a great opportunity to stop and let Linda see it too! Robbie was so glad we did! Just one of the ten zillion pics we took while we were there:

 

 So, that's the trip! I'm so glad to be home even though the time we spent was so enjoyable. A whole week with my granddaughter was unbelievable!! I never seem to get tired of that girl! Thanks for stopping in and sharing my vacation with me. I missed the cyber world more than I imagined (no internet at Daddy's) so I will be back tomorrow with a card to share and to get some comments out on the blogs I follow!! Hugs to all....

Cottage Wall Scrap Card and Kyli's Poodle

Can you stand one more card made with my Cottage Wall scraps? Very simple go-to layout.

The layout is one of my favorite ways of making cards from scraps. The only part of this card not made from scraps is the card base. I think I made this a couple of weeks ago, but it's been sitting on my desk waiting for some attention. I finally got into my stamp room today to do a little cleaning and then creating. I've been so busy this week that I haven't had a lot of stamping time. We spent two days at the farm where my hubby works putting up conk peas....yummy!! Peas are one of the vegetables that we get as a perk of my hubby's job, but we have to help put them up. Corn is next....even bigger yum for that!!! I also hosted a stamping get-together at my house. Just had a bunch of stamping friends over to do some creating together. Some of the girls wanted to make the poodle card I had posted the other day. My granddaughter was staying with me that day and one of the girls decided to help Kyli make her own poodle card. I am amazed at how well Kyli was able to attach the pieces to assemble her poodle. Looks like she has wonderful fine motor skills for a two-year-old. I definitely have a future stamper on my hands!!

Well, that's all for today. Not a long post at all. It's dreary and rainy here again today, so I think I will finish picking up around the house and then go stamp some more! Have a wonderful, stamp-filled day!!

An update on Kyli's surgery

Nothing crafty to show you today. Kenny and I had a most interesting day. It kinda started overnight with a nearly 6 hour power outage. Fortunately, we were asleep for most of it, but as there was no stormy weather last night, we wondered what could have caused such a lengthy outage. Well, as we were leaving to head to the surgical center for Kyli's surgery, we found out what had happened when we were greeted by this:

Obviously, Kenny had been working on this for some time before I thought to take a picture, but this old oak tree had basically split in half and landed across the only access to our property. The power company had come in and replaced the pole the tree took out and ran a new line and left the rest of the mess for us. I realize it isn't their job to clear our road, but gosh!!!! They cut through the neighbors fence and horse pasture to get to their power pole and left their blocked easement completely blocked! If they had cleaned that up, we could have gotten out even if it wasn't the most direct route!
Anyway.....after some really hard work and a second round of showers, we were finally off to be with Kyli! As the surgeries schedule was backed up, we still made it in plenty of time. Don't you just love how things always work out? This is our little sweetie just before they took her back to the OR....she's on a little happy juice to help sedate her.

After several long hours of waiting, she finally made it to recovery where these last two photos were taken. She doesn't look nearly as happy, but they were able to remove all of the birthmark which apparently means it was only fatty tissue left up there. They were afraid they may run into some blood vessels in the mass which is what caused it to be there in the first place. The hair will grow back and she won't have to worry about that "boo boo" any more.

Thanks for all the prayers and well wishes for Kyli during this simple but still scary surgery! Big glittery hugs to  all of you!!!