a not so pleasant discovery...

We have poison ivy growing in our front yard. It is attached to a tree that is dead, that was supposed to have been removed last fall (we rent this house). I run a day care out of my home, and my daughter and another of the children were messing with the plant growing on the tree last week. I was repeatedly assured that this was not poison ivy and that the tree would be taken care of because of the safety risk with having an extremely tall, skinny, dead tree in the front of the house that could break and fall on the house (which would damage one of my children's bedrooms) OR the driveway smashing either of our vehicles or both of them. Anyway, after playing that evening I am giving Cait a bath and notice she has a brown spot on her face that would not come off no matter how hard I scrubbed it. Eventually I just gave up thinking it was tree sapp or something just being stubborn. A couple days later, I sprout this horrendous rash on my neck and arms and get a phone call from the other girl's mother asking about Caitlynn because her daughter has a rash. So i start treating myself by taking benadryll and putting cortizone cream and zinc oxide on the rash. Now, almost a week later, the rash is not only on my neck and arms, but my chest, stomach, back, and legs as well. And I did not even have direct contact with the plant!! So my oh so NOT pleasant discovery is that I am extremely allergic to Poison Ivy as an adult, when as a child I could literally roll in it and not have it affect me at all. Thankfully Caitlynn has not had a reaction. As a result of all this madness, I have gotten zero sleep, and zero accomplished from my to-do list, AND I had to cancel being able to attend my big shoe box swap event this weekend. Not to mention a lack of blogging and anything recreational. Grrr.....

Hopefully I will make a full recovery and come back to scrapping and stamping soon. I am craving some creative time, but am too miserable to actually sit and do it!

Feelin' Rusty

Wow, so I feel like I haven't done anything really creative in AGES. I sat down to make a card this morning to send to Will...the last one before he comes home. AHHH! Did I say that? Here let me say it again, the LAST card before he comes H-O-M-E. Home!!! We have 18 days left til he's back. Can I just say that I am so so so glad that April is flying by?

My parents came into town and helped me to get some "house stuff" done. I took my kittens (well, they're a year old, I suppose they aren't really babies anymore) to the vet to get booster shots and to be tested for feline leukemia because of the conditions they were living in before we rescued them. Both tested negative, YAY! And they are getting 'fixed' this week as well. Good times.

SO, needless to say, life has been a bit hectic. My parents were here for a full week, and I was also working that week, so I had very little time to just sit still and relax let alone get anything really crafty done. Back to what I was saying, I sat down to make this card this morning for Beate's sketch #43 and I was feeling very very rusty. I enjoyed my little creative release, though. Hopefully I'll keep being able to squeeze time in around everything else I'm trying to accomplish before Will comes home.

Here is the card I did today.

Ingredients:

Stamps: SU! Boho Backgrounds

Paper: Whisper White, Tempting Turquoise, Gable Green

Ink: Tempting Turquoise, Gable Green

Accessories: SU White Grosgrain ribbon, Scallop Punch, Slit Punch (for scallop border), silver brad, and photo corner

Yep I'm Braggin' mini-album

I had some extra time last night after doing some crazy house cleaning and laundry while the girls watched Alvin and the Chipmunks. I wanted to make a "brag book" mini album to carry around in my purse. I have pictures of my kids on my zune and a couple other places, but nothing really crafty and cute to share on the spur of the moment. So I sat down with one sheet of 12x12 cardstock and worked out this little album. Now this wasn't rocket science, so I'm sure there are other people out there who have come up with something extremely similar to this, but I am really happy with the way it turned out. I'm planning on making a few more of these as gifts, but obviously the gift ones will be blank on the inside. If anyone is interested in a tutorial on how I made it, let me know and I'll try to get one together to post later! Here are some of the inside pages...

Have a great weekend everybody!

Absentee blogger

I may be an absentee blogger for the next few weeks. I have a lot of stuff going on this month to prepare for Will coming home. We have 29 days before he gets back. My parents will be in town all of next week. I have carpet cleaning people coming to clean our downstairs carpet, I have some painting to do to finish up our downstairs bathroom, I need to completely reorganize the garage because my parents are bringing all of my stuff that was left in Indiana for lack of room on the moving truck. I'm taking the cats to the vet to have shots and some tests done, and then to the spay and neuter clinic to have them both fixed. Not to mention all the normal every day stuff like work and feeding and bathing my children and laundry...blah blah blah. You get the idea!! So I'm going to be stretched pretty thin time-wise already. I will post when I can and create when I can and thanks in advance for your patience!!

It's Monday

Caitlynn is back to school today after her Spring break vacation. We had a very active week. And to end it all with a bang, I took the girls to see Horton Hears a Who at the Summerville 8 theater on Ladson road last night. Their matinee tix are only $2.75 for children and adults. Gotta love that. Maybe that's the norm around here for movies but in Indy it's about $8/ea. So I was excited. The girls really liked the movie. Hayley got a little squirmy in the middle but ended up doing fine. And it's a super cute movie if you haven't seen it yet. Here is a picture of my girls by the movie poster at the theater. It's a little blurry. The girls wouldn't hold still and I just took my small point and shoot camera that's not very great with taking pics in motion :-)

I did also find a little time to stamp yesterday, but just a very little. This is my take on the CPS sketch for last week. I'm not entirely happy with it, but that happens sometimes. I love this stamp set and this is the first card I've made with it. I'm hoping to get to play with it a little more today.

Oh, and did I mention that Will's coming home day was changed to May 3. A whole 2 days earlier than what he originally was told, so that was a little bit of good news! And it falls on a Saturday, which is also very good news. 32 days to go until he's home!

Have a great Monday everyone!

Go to child

Here it is Sunday, supposedly the day of rest...right? Not so much for me :-). I was so proud of myself this morning, I was able to get up and get the girls ready and in the car to church on time. I got them checked in to their children's ministry classes and found myself a seat in the sanctuary. I thought we were in the clear. I dropped Hayley off without any major outburst from her, and though Caitlynn was a little unusually sluggish this morning during her drop off, that was uneventful as well. Just as I started to let myself relax and loosen my grip on the pager that the church assigns you if you have a small child, it goes off. "Go to child" is the message flashing on the screen. So I go. And I am greeted in the hall way by a woman who tells me that my child is having a tantrum. Lovely. So I go in and Hayley is bawling, tears streaming down her face, yelling. Her face is bright red, and her nose has run so she has "stuff" covering her mouth. SO gross. Anyway, I had to sit in there with her the whole rest of the service to get her calm. So much for a soothing religious experience this morning. So we will try again next week. I'm sure the poor 2-year old teacher is going to groan in agony when she sees me and my tantrum throwing toddler headed for her classroom again. So instead of feeling refreshed and rejuvenated this morning, I'm feeling stressed out and a tad bit on the lost side as to how to fix the problem that Hayley is having with other people. Granted, she is probably the youngest 2 year old in there, she's only been 2 for a couple weeks and she spends every waking second with me. But I have never seen her that upset before, which in turn upsets me. Any advice out there?

Ok, in other news I was finally able to do a little creating last night. Here is the result of my play time.

Yet another busy day

We had another busy Saturday today. We started off the day by going to the Pink House's MAKE 'N TAKE PLAYSTATION SATURDAY! It was a lot of fun. I got to play with the new crop'o dile big bite, the new Tonic tools, some acrylic paint, a fun corrugator, the Accucut, some Marvy nesting punches, and make this cute little shadow box tin and a tag using a wishblade cut title. So much fun. I now have a wish list about a mile long for new tools that I want!
Then we made a quick pitstop off at Patti's house to deliver some SU goodies that came in my huge shipment last week (that I still unfortunately have not had time to play with). And then our final stop was the Isle of Palms beach. It was gorgeous. The weather, however, was not. It was extremely windy and cloudy and not so warm. Caitlynn still insisted on getting in the water, but Hayley and I didn't even bother stripping down to our bathing suits. It was just too cold. Still a fun day, though.
I am glad to be home, and hoping that I'll have some extra time to play tonight before I crash because I know being outside for a lot of the day is going to make me fall asleep super early! Hope everyone is having a good weekend!!