Comeback kids!

Our Tampa Bay Rays are the comeback kids! First time in MLB history for a team to come from 9 games back at the beginning of Sept to catch and then surpass the choking Red Sox for the AL Wild Card championship. Bring on the Rangers on Friday!

Walk with me...

Down Memory Lane. It won't be far. To the 1980's or so!

John is cleaning out the secretary that we inherited when his Grandmother passed away. We bought me a new stamp storage system (more on that another day!) and we need to make some room in my (s)crap room for it, so we are moving the secretary back to the living room where it used to reside. But first we wanted to clean out the 17+ years of accumulated crap...junk...important stuff that we're gonna need someday... out of it.

Here are a few "treasures" he found.

The glasses I wore when we got married. In 1989. Sexay! NOT!!

Some .20 stamps. Ahhh...the good old days!

And probably the BEST of all. A pack of my old cigarettes that I put in a drawer "in case of emergency!" You know, if I ran out in the middle of the night and needed a smoke! So glad those days are behind me!

Of course he had a cone-head helper! She's gotta be where the action is!

Love how she's on her red crinkle bag, partly inside her box and still surrounded by the ephemera of the secretary!

And last but not least, she's making sure we're not throwing anything of importance or value away! Every job has to have a Supervisor. Savannah is ours!

:::and an update on Savannah. The vet called the other day with the results of the Pathology tests they did when they removed her toe. It was Hemangiosarcoma, a very rare but aggressive blood vessel tumor. It moves very fast in a localized area but does not spread to other areas rapidly. The margins came back clear, so the Doc was feeling very good that she got it all. But because this is so aggressive, we are going to have to keep careful watch on her paws from now on and if anything looks out of the ordinary, they will want to see her so she can be tested. She's in the cone for at least the rest of this week and we'll see how she's doing when we take her back to the vet for her recheck next Monday.   

Halloween Configurations

This is the smallest of t!m Holtz's Configurations box that is now discontinued. Like so many things, it's been sitting in my "to do" pile for a while now. Waiting for the CTMH Mischief paper pack to come along! It's got a little of a lot of different companies and manufacturers in/on it! All of the paper is from CTMH MIschief. There's t!m's bottles with corks that I used Glossy Accents and CTMH Reinkers in Black and Orchid Bouquet and mixed together and poured in and let set up to look like some concoction or another. The labels on the bottles are 7Gypsies. The witches hat I found at Michael's along with the spider, web and candy pieces that I used some Stickles on for shine. The big pumpkin was also a Michael's find and it has a bell in it. The number 25 (and YES, I know Halloween is the 31st. There was no number 31, so I used what I had!) and the "opal" are also from t!m's collection. I used Distress Crackle Paint in Frayed Burlap and Scattered Straw on the front cover of the box, then after it dried, went over it with Vintage Photo Distress Ink. The stamp set for the sides is the set that comes in the Mischief Workshop On The Go and I added Stickles to the candles for some brightness.

So...is it Oct 1 yet? I can't wait to put my Halloween decorations out!

Birthday card

Sister-in-law JoAnn's got a birthday coming up. I decided to think outside the box for the paper pack and used the CTMH Wonderland Christmas paper for this card! I love how I can just flip the paper over now and it's got a completely different color and textured pattern on the reverse side. This is actually the same piece of paper, but I used what I think is the more "Christmassy" pattern for the small strip down the side.  The stamp is from the Pair-A-Phrase set. The butterflies are from the Just Blooms Flutter collection.

Canvas Boo

One of the companies I was most excited about seeing their products after the CHA reveal party at Whim So Doodle was Canvas Corp http://canvascorp.com/home/ All sorts of alterable things that are right up my alley! Last week, Whim So Doodle posted on their blog that they had gotten their first shipment in, so I ran (OK...DROVE!) down to St Pete to get me some! I picked up a couple of different stretched products. One is burlap and the other is canvas. Wasn't real sure what I was gonna do with them, but I knew inspiration would hit at some point! Canvas Corp posted a cute canvas project the other day and it gave me the inspiration I needed to break out my burlap piece and go to work. I used , in addition to the Stretched Burlap, CTMH Mischief paper pack and Typewriter Keys stamp set, Staz On Pumpkin Ink, Maya Road Canvas Banner, Canvas Corp mini clothespins,  Claudine Hellmuth Studio  Purple Palette Acrylic Paint and various  Halloween ephemera and jute from my stash. Now I have to wait til Oct 1 to put it out on display!

I can see me buying more of these burlap and canvas stretched products for every season!

The nine-toed cat

Savannah now has only nine toes. She ended up having a tumor on one of the toes on her right foot and we decided to just take the toe off. She's a little on the woozy side yet, but just as I figured is doing remarkably well. She's been on and off the bed all by herself since we brought her home and is now enjoying her dinner and laying on her favorite red crinkly bag! She's on the antibiotic for another 4 days and she's got double the pain meds she had earlier in the week and she'll be on them for 5 days. She will have to be in the cone for 10 days to 2 weeks until the stitches in the paw completely dissolve. But she is doing great!

Better than...

CANDY!!! Hahhhh...not what you were thinking I was gonna say, huh?! I read somewhere the other day about roasting tomatoes and I LOVE Campari tomatoes. They are as close as any I've found to tasting like tomatoes did when I was little. So I got some last week when we were at Sam's. And their flavor only intensifies as they roast. I lined a cookie sheet with aluminum foil and once I had them all sliced, poured some Extra Virgin Olive Oil on them, salt, pepper, Ac'cent and some garlic powder and roasted them real slow in a 200 degree oven for about 4 1/2 hrs. I kid you not, they were sweeter than candy. (And a whole lot healthier too!) I fixed BLT's one night and had them on Ciabatta rolls and as an added extra, sliced up and avocado and put on the BLT to make it a BLAT!!! John said he will never eat another BLT unless I roast the tomatoes. We went out this morning to run a few errands and stopped at Sam's and got two containers of Campari's. I saved a few to use in salad but this is the end result. John likes the "extra crispy" ones around the outside edges! And the extra oil left on the aluminium foil? Makes for great bread sopping!!  

Oh! And the "holes" where there are some missing? There was a mouse in the kitchen. Yeah, that's it. A mouse. :::that's my story and I'm sticking to it!:::

Cone Head

My new name for Savannah! I know, I know...bad mamma...makin fun of her baby!

She's got something up with her right front paw. Not sure exactly what yet, but it's not been fun around her the last couple of weeks. She's been chewing at it and making it bleed, then bleeding allllll over the house. I got up the other morning and it looked like a murder had taken place in my kitchen. Blood on the floor, on the walls, in the dining room, in the hall. Nothing better than having to drag the Swiffer out before I can even have my cuppa tea. So we took them both to the vet a month early for their yearly checkup yesterday. The vet took some blood samples from her foot and is sending them off for tests. Hopefully we'll have results back Fri at the latest and then we'll know how to proceed. Until then, she's in a cone so she leaves the paw alone. And he gave me some pre-filled syringes with pain meds in them to give her 2x daily. He said since she can't tell us if she's in pain, better to err on the side of caution.

And she is NOT a happy camper. Hates the cone. Keeps trying to figure how to get the dad-blasted thing off. I take it off for her to eat and then it goes right back on. She keeps bumping into things, which makes me laugh. I know...I'ma a sick woman!!

On the good news front. Our two year quest to get them to lose weight has finally come to pass! Savannah is at a svetle 8+ lbs...though not a lot over 8. She was 14 lbs I believe when we started. And Orleans who was at almost 20 lbs 2 years ago is now at a tad over 11 lbs, with FIVE of those pounds lost in the past year. The vet was extremely pleased with both. He said now we just have to maintain.

Bind It All

I have a Zutter Bind It All and about a half dozen or so wires I'd like to sell. I'd like $30 for the whole thing and if I have to ship it, you pay for shipping. I will take a personal check and if I don't know you personally I will wait for the check to clear before I ship. Lemme know if interested.

She's a Winner!

Aunt Sue's scrappin again! Not before it's time though! This is Joy's school pic from LAST year. Kinda like with the Halloween houses, I guess I was waiting for Typeset paper to come out! That's my story and I'm stickin' to it!

I used Bottom Border-Portrait layout from Reflections. Stamp set is Vintage Type. The scalloped circle was cut using my Nestabilities. I used Twinking H2O's on the "J" for a little bit of shimmery goodness. And the canvas "You're Smart" is from the Compliments Typeset add-ons. There's a Foundry Pin holding the tag a.

Hen fruit

As dad used to call them! ( and what a coinkadink that I posted the dad layouts earlier! Things that make you go hmmmmm.)

Imagine my surprise when I walked out to the chicken coop this morning to find an egg. A single solitary egg. But hey, it's a start! I think this is out of either Penguin or Joker. It doesn't look dark enough to me to be from one of the chocolate egg layers. But I don't know if they start out light and go darker since I've never had them before. It's a small egg. They generally are when they start laying. Gotta let the hoo-hah's stretch out a bit! I put a store boughten white egg next to it for comparison.

Here's to more eggs in the days to come!

Remembering

Favorite Weird Unkle Grumpz sent me a couple of pics from slides he had. When we were growing up, we'd go to Olin Mills twice a year for family pictures. These were from 1969.  I'm gonna let the pictures tell the story. If you've got questions about what I used, email me and I'll fill you in.

Halloween Houses

I found these Halloween houses last year at Michael's. They were 75% off. So I basically stole them! I brought them home and put them in my "to do" pile. And there they've sat. I guess waiting for CTMH to come out with Mischief paper! They were both supposd to be covered in the paper. But the two tall skinny houses together were giving me ulcers because I could. not. cut. the. paper. right. The wonky angles got the better of me and after I ruined one whole sheet of my Mischief paper, I decided I'd just paint the darn things. And because I get these pictures in my head, they were not turning out like the pictures in my mind. And I couldn't make them look "right" to me. I kept futzing with them and this is what I ended up with. Nothing like the picture in my mind, but good enough! Now the little short, squat one I L.O.V.E! The shingles on the roof turned out just like the picture in my mind. I cut Desert Sand cardstock and used my distress tool on three sides then inked the shingles with black ink. LOVE them! I think it's the best part of the house! And yes, the ghostie came with the house! How cute is he?