Breathing a huge sigh of relief!

I just spoke to Rhonda's dh on the phone. She has turned the corner! The kidney's are functioning properly. The pneumonia in her lungs is lessening. They are still treating her with the Coumadin for the blood clots. He says she will be in the hospital until at least Monday and the Dr's will re-evaluate then. He said she is still in quite a bit of pain, but they are staying on top of it and treating as needed.

The prayers are helping. So thank you!

Grrr!

Blogger wouldn't let me post all the pics in one post. Here's the rest

How Do I Love Thee...

I've been working on a special Christmas gift for John. It's a word bloom and the word is LOVE. I decided to use Elizabeth Barret Browning's "How Do I Love Thee" poem and Close To My Heart's new Heart of Winter campaign paper pack and stamp set Serendipity. This paper pack is just gorgeous, blues, creams, browns and comes with textured cardstock and die cuts. It's been great fun coming up with the ideas of this project. I just hope he loves it at much as I do!

Rhonda

So I posted the other day about my friend Rhonda. Yesterday morning I got a most disturbing call from her dh. He had to rush her to the ER Tue night. She could not get a good, deep breath. She has blood clots that have formed, so they admitted her to the hospital and started her on Coumadin to thin her blood and take care of the blood clots. They also ran some other tests to be sure there was nothing else going on. Her dh called me again late Wed afternoon and she is a very sick girl. She has the beginnings of pneumonia and her kidneys are starting to shut down. They have her on a saline drip to try and keep her kidney's flushed out. She's also in quite a bit of pain and on a morphine drip as well. But she can't use the morphine as much because it slows her breathing down too much. So she's enduring a lot of pain before she allows herself to use the morphine.The Doctors don't have a reasson as to why this happened to her. They said sometimes it just does.

If you are the praying type, please say a prayer for Rhonda and her family. I know they would appreciate it.

beer research

I promised last week we'd be doing some more beer research and we have! And the final results are :::insert drumroll here::: we aren't crazy about the Lime Cactus. It's good. But we like the Pomegranate Raspberry better. We will be conduting further studies to insure that we are still liking the Raspberry Pomegranate. Look for it on your beer shelves now!

And I also want to give a shout out to my friend Rhonda in TN! She had some jaw surgery last week and is currently unable to talk. Betcha her dh and boys are loving that! She sent me some pics of her face post surgery and her jaw is currently a loverly shade of yellowish-green. She's on a completely liquid diet and is hoping to be able to skoosh some pasta up and liquidize it so she can "eat" that next week. You're in my thoughts and prayers girlfriend! Love ya!!

Love me some Tim...

...Holtz that is!

My favorite Scrapbook supply store, Ruban Rouge, Ruban Rouge Paper Arts, is having a fabulous sale for Dec. If you buy any Tim Holtz storage case at full price, any Tonic, Ranger, or Inksentials product you can put inside that case, you get for 1/2 price! So John let me go a little crazy yesterday. He enabled, adding even more stuff to my case. And this is what I ended up with! And they had just recieved the new Tim distressing hammer. A hammer with 4 interchangeable heads to distress your GrungeBoard, cardstock, or whatever. AND the fabulous new Fragments! Little clear pieces of plexi-like material that you can glue coordinating or contrasting papers or cardstock to and highlight an area of a layout or card. We got to use these during the Tim classes at RR in Oct, but they were not on the market yet. I'll be using the alcohol inks to decorate my case and will post pics when that is completed!

Scenes from a Craft Show

So it didn't go as well as I'd hoped. I don't think people "got" the whole coaster hanging concept. They'd ask if it wouldn't ruin the coaster if they put their drink on it. Yes, it's made to be a decoration. To hang on your wall. The shakers were a huge hit. People would walk by, shake them over their friends or hubbys or kids heads and generally buy one. I had a couple of these stolen as well, so they must have been liked. The calendars I had a few office workers buy them to use in gift exchanges. The one thing I was going to do and never got around to doing was ornaments for the Christmas tree. I really thought the hangings would go like gang-busters so was concentrating my efforts on them. I had people all day long both days asking about the coasters with kids names on them for ornaments. Oh well, hindsight's always 20/20! It was a good learning experience for me if nothing else.