Update on our sweet Chili

We went back to NCSU vet school on Friday for a follow up visit and had a much better visit I think.  We saw one of the neurologists there whereas last time we saw an intern and a resident.  The nuerologist has decided that the cerebellum problem is just something she's always had and is not related to her current problem. We go back next week for a spinal tap, joint taps and muscle/nerve electrodiagnostic study. They are thinking it is most likely polyarthritis which is different from osteoarthritis. More like RA I think. Anyway, onset can be quick (it was), often doesn't show up on Xray or MRI - it didn't, Can be autoimmune or infectious. Treatment will be either steroids or antibiotics. I'm betting its auto immune as she has allergies which are autoimmune. If it is polyarthritis, it is manageable and she should have quality life again. Could also be some other itis, meningomyelitis, or polymyositis/polyneuritis, although the doc is guessing polyarthritis.  So I guess things are looking up if this is what the diagnosis turns out to be. I think they got side tracked initially by the weird brain scan that they were all amazed to see.

I feel so badly for my sweet Chili as I know she is in pain.  The vet described it as just generally feeling very miserable.  I can relate somewhat when I remember the summer I went through before I had my back surgery-I was in pain most of the time and quite miserable. 

Do pray that we have found the cause so we can work on the cure now!

Bark!

Of course I can't go very many days without scrapping the dogs!  So here's one of Chena to go with a page I did earlier of Chili.  It is really hard to get a decent picture of a black dog and I have  gotten several good ones of Chena lately so you know what tht means?  LOL, more Chena layouts!!

The papers are BasicGrey Sugar Rush and I do love them!  I especially love those glimmer glass wings from Tattered Angels.  Thanks for stopping by!!

More vintage scrapping

I'm on a roll!  Did these 2 pages using the fabulous Feb kit from Pages in Time! 

Papers used include 7 gypsies - Walk and Pandora, Graphics 45 (blue from On the Boardwalk collection), BasicGrey Lucky, Prima Firefly, Adornit tags. 

This is my mother's side of the family.  The journal is long, but here it is if you want to read it:
I have so many fond memories of times spent at my Grandparents house. We were a big family and it was so fun having so many aunts, uncles, and cousins. Aunt Elsie didn’t have any children and so she, in particular, really doted on us. Her husband, who we called either Uncle Alex or Uncle Everett, would bring us silver dollars or 2-dollar bills and of course, we loved that!
Papa Greene had a country store and in the summers, we would play kick-the-can or hide and seek down by the store with the other children who came to the store with their folks. The store was a meeting place and you’d always find someone there sitting on the bench dipping snuff and talking about their crops.
Papa Greene was such a fun grandpa, he really loved his grandchildren. When we’d leave from a visit, he’d give each of us a small brown paper sack filled with penny candies. He was never too busy for us.
Mama Greene loved us too but she was always busy. In the summers, she cooked all the time as she made dinner (which is lunch to most of us) for the tobacco hands. I remember the help coming in from the fields so well. There was a big dipper out by the well; they’d all go there and have a big drink of water. Then on the porch, she had several wash pans set out, one to wash the tobacco gum off their hands and another for rinsing. Now they were ready for dinner! Dinner was usually lots of fresh vegetables from the garden and cornbread. She always had snaps – those are green beans that she always cross cut after cooking so that they pieces were about a half inch in size. My favorite dish was Grandma’s potatoes, which were chunks of potato in a cream sauce that she made from the cooking broth and butter. They were so good and I make them now but they aren’t as good as Mama Greene’s. There might have been a little pork but usually there wasn’t much meat. Of course, no meal is complete without dessert and she always had one.
Before we ate, she always announced what was for dinner. I can still hear her in my head, “Now there’s Irish potatoes, snaps…”. For years, I thought she was saying ash potatoes! She was distinguishing between Irish potatoes and sweet potatoes.

When she wasn’t cooking, she was working in the garden or canning and freezing for the rest of the year. There was always something from the garden that needed to be shelled. Sometimes we’d sit outside under a big shade tree and shell field peas and butter beans.

Vintage

Several years ago I got into a pile of photos of my family that dated back to when my parents were teenagers.  Ah - ha, I thought, let's do these photos in a vintage style.  Well the market was seriously lacking in vintage type materials so I didn't get too far....
Fast forward several years and wow, vintage is the absolute rage.  I was ahead of my time, LOL!!  Graphics 45 does some awesome vintage papers and so I've done these two pages using G45 collections:  A Proper Gentleman, Domestic Goddess, Le Romantique and Fashionistas.  I loved doing these two pages, its so fun trying to imagine my parents as young adults!!

journal says:

This man grew up to serve proudly his country in the US Army. His service began during WW II where he went to the European theater. He spent 28 years traveling the globe, sometimes with his family and sometimes not. He served in South Korea, Nepal, and in Vietnam twice.
This man married a beautiful woman and together they had three children who are so grateful that their parents have such an enduring love for each other. They dote on their children and have given them the most important gift of all, unconditional love.
This man is my father and I am very proud to call him my Dad.

Journal on this one just says that Mom and Dad were married in WWII and then Dad left for England to prepare for D-Day.

I had some fun making the title for both of these pages.  First I painted grungeboard circles with copper alcohol ink, then dabbed a bit of mushroom alcohol ink to age the copper.  Added the letters and then  painted the whole thing with Ranger Crackle Accents.  I thought it made for a nice finished looking embellished title.  Thanks for visiting my blog!

ATCs - Artists Trading Cards

These are so fun to make and I 've done a couple  vintage ones.

This first one is using Graphics 45 Romantique papers, I just laove the old fashioned ladies.  I just layered several pieces that I cut out.  Then I added some Frosted Lace Stickles to the bodices and gold Stickles to the butterfly, the button is Dress it Up.  And of course, lots of inking.  Hmm, just looking at it, I might add some crackle finish to the rose picture in the background, what do you think?

The Ladies

This one was for a challenge at SOS to do a spring ATC.  Its been so cold and rainy around here I just felt dark and vintagy!  LOL, is that a word?  Anyway here is:

Vintage Spring

This is real simple, the bird is a stamped image that I covered with a Tim Holtz fragment, embossed the scallop which is a Martha Stewart punch, added the Prima flower, K & Co paper image and MM flet rick rack.

Thanks for visiting my blog!!  Appreciate it!

Now I must go do something creative, like dye my hair, LOL!!

Chili - my princess

I was at the vet school yesterday until 2 pm and I guess things look a little better, at least for the short term.  Seems Chili has some fluid on the brain from a condition that may have been present from birth.  There is no way of knowing if the fluid is forming now or if its been an ongoing slow process throughout her life.  They think this is what is causing the weakness in her hind quarters.  she also is having some neck pain and they think that is unrelated.  She has a new pain med to take for 2 weeks and we'll see how that works for her.  One day at the time, who knows what tomorrow will bring. 

With all my worries of my sweet Chili, I was compelled to scrap a picture of her.  She is so pretty and girly looking so I thought she'd look good in pinks and laces!

This is the BasicGrey Sugar Rush line and I do love it!!  The scan is a little wonky 'cause that flower is so bulky....sorry.

I'm a Southern Gal

I issued a challenge to all the gals at Pages in Time to step out of their comfort zones and do a LO that was not in their customary style.  And I gave that challenge to myself as well.  I had a tough time with this, I just have a hard time keeping in simple!  After messing up several sheets of paper and wasting a lot of time, I finally met the challenge and came up with this.  I really like the simplicity of this.  I have a wide carriage printer so I was able to print my journaling directly on my cardstock.

The background CS is BasicGrey, the embellies are K& Co Tim Coffey and the rose colored mat is also K & Co.

We moved back to Nc in 2008 and I just love being here and I'm a little suprised by that.  The journal expresses my feelings about that.

The journal says:

I’m a Southern Gal
I don’t think I realized how much I love red clay dirt under my fingernails until we moved back to North Carolina. I’ve always claimed the world as my home since Dad was in the Army and we lived on 3 different continents while I was growing up. However, I recently realized how much southern blood runs through these world-traveled veins of mine.
I wondered if I would like being back here in the south where the pace is just a bit slower and people are just a little different. However, the decision was based on a need to be close to my parents in their final years so the decision was really a no-brainer. This is where I belong right now, I reasoned with myself, because my parents need me.
From the moment we moved into our home, I fell in love with my south all over again It has been more than 30 years since I called this place home and yet it felt so right from the very beginning. How I loved it when the FedEx man delivered a package to me and called me Shug. Now you may think that silly or disrespectful, but it’s not, it’s the south. It’s how we love each other, just because we are friends and neighbors. How I love going to “town” and I still marvel at the gentle smiles from strangers who say good morning to me.
And I love that age-old southern question, who are your people? I’ve been asked that so many times when I mention the name of the small southern town near here where my parents grew up. Do you know so and so? Yes, I know them, I went to school with them or my brother did. We are bound by tobacco fields and pig pickins. Our grandparents dipped snuff, we all know what real barbeque is, and they don’t make it in Texas! Basketball is a religion second only to being a Baptist or Methodist.
When I think of the south, I see rafts of azaleas seeming to float around the ancient live oaks and tall pines that they surround. I see white and pink lacey dogwoods dressing up the understory of the tall trees. The first fall I set about turning our house into a southern oasis by planting 30 some azalea bushes. I was rewarded the following spring with beautiful pink, white and red blooms. When the first azaleas bloomed, it brought a smile to my heart and I knew I had found my forever home after 30 years of wandering. Those bright flowers just wrapped their blooms around my soul and vested it with a calming peace.

Thanks for visiting my blog!!

Paper bag album

Oh this was a fun project and I can me definitely doing another one!  Its a mini book made from lunch sacks!  Now I didn't put together my own lunchbags, I got this one from Karen at Pages in Time.  Its easier to use as its already been sprayed protection and stitched together.

This is a mini photo album and recipe collection that I will take with us in the RV.  It has all my favorite travelling recipes in it.  The book has lots of openings where you can tuck recipes away.

I used my DT kit  from Pages in Time to do this.  Most of the papers are Bo Bunny's Kitchen Spice collection with a bit of Bazzill cardstock thrown in, Prima and Fancy Pants flowers.  Most of the laces are stuff I had laying around, who know how old they are!  Also used some MM trims.  Thanks for taking a look.  Go to the gallery at Pages in Time to see more great paper bag albums.

Update on life

Gosh, I have been remiss in not posting in a long time! February was not a good month.  Chili, our white poodle, has been having undiagnosed  problems with pain and mobility as well as two really bad UTIs.   We've tried different meds and they seem to help for awhile but then the symptoms  come back.  Most noticeable is that she has a difficult time rising to a standing position.  Once she is on all four feet, she moves around well other than she is a bit unstable going down stairs.  She also only lays on her side if she is not standing, she does not sit any longer.   A week ago we decided to bite the bullet and take her for an MRI.  Our vet suspected a brain problem because she has had seizures and because she was holding her head to the side just a tad.  Anyway the MRI is showing a vascular problem of some sort that is affecting the cerebellum. (no idea if I spelled that right!)  It is an uncommon thing and now we are going to see a neuro specialist at NCSU vet school March 8th.  Mostly I want to find out what the problem is, what the prognosis is, and what, if anything, we can do to control it and make her more comfortable.  We will not prolong her life if she is in pain.  It is sad and it hurts our hearts, but it is the reality of having a pet and a responsiblity that every pet owner should face and accept.

Dick will be retiring mid May and he is getting excited about that.  We had planned  to go to Alaska just after he retires but now we will have to wait and see if Chili is able to travel.

Better days ahead, putting one foot in front of the other, life goes on.