updates and some new scrappy stuff!

Hope you all had a lovely Thanksgiving. We did. LOTS OF YUMMMY FOOD! lots of left overs lol. It was so good to get to see everyone. My blood pressue was off the charts so I didnt really get to do alot plus I had shot night the night before Thanksgiving so, The Thanksgiving eating didn't go to well for me. I got about 8 bites into and ugh oh. Ya. didn't work too good.
BUT man when I DID FINALLY get to eat it was good. Later that night I did get to eat rolls and a little dressing. YUM! SO now I have been enjoying the leftovers. I did the cooking that John wanted me to do (some things that he just wanted me to make that are my sepcialty) on Wed. the day before. I knew after the shot that night I would be pretty worthless. Glad I got it done ahead of time! That is one thing I have learned! Make no plans for after shot. Never know if I will be sick or not. lovely rebif! YOU KNOW WHAT THEY SAY.. if the cure don't kill ya. I have looked into taking the other meds that are out their. BUT, My dr says because of the fact I have shingles and where my lesions are.. I NEEED to take an interferon. so This is the best one that will help me. WE got a second opinion and he agreed (UAB in BIRMINGHAM) I have to say it is alot better than it was though. I really wanted to take the IV once a week but he said it wasn't for me because I had shingles (on top of the M.S.) :( grrrr.
ALSO:
Our 10 year wedding anniversary was Friday.(yaaaaaaaaaaaY!) WE didnt really do anything for it this year. We were so thankful I was alive and able to be "UP" and not laying in bed Thanksgiving we didnt even focus on our anniversary this year. We were sooooooo exhausted. Even Bella I think was tired and ready for it to be over. Everyone left by Saturday lunch and the house is soooo quiet. We have had people here since Tuesday. I enjoy having company but man IM tired.
WORN SLAM OUT! My blood pressure is actually better today. First time in weeks! IT is actually at normal! HURRAY!!!! Thank you for those prayers. Keep em comin! No clue why it is going up so much except for pain and being tired. It has been around 140 to 150 over anywhere from 101 - 115 so ya my dr was kinda freakin. Told me I was a stroke waiting to happen.

They took me off the Topamax and added inderal.But now we think it wasnt the topamax doing it. It was still really high even off topamax and the topamax DID help the headache :( Was having major headaches like i have never had in my life. ANd so dizzy. Ya kinda hard to cook and stuff Better yet scrap when yout head is pounding and the world is tryin to throw you off.
Today I feel more like myself. SO MUCH SO THAT...

I actually got 2 things made with the December Kit from Scrapbook Obsessions.
I still ahve alot to do. Im sooo behind. I tell ya I will be so glad when they get my medicine situated and LEAVE IT ALONE figure out what works and then let me get used to it. Every time they mess with my medicine I get behind (always makes me end up sick)
I did these today actually I had started on the layout before Thanksgiving so I finished it up today.


Sorry it is kinda blurry my camera is acting strange...

I used lots of Stickles on this to make it glittery. I used the GIN X coaster alpha letters that you can get at Scrapbook obsessions. DONT THEY LOOK LIKE DECORATED SUGAR COOKIES??? I thought they were tooo precious.
I had to bling up the little christmas trees I cut out of the Patterned paper and pop dotted on their too.


Here is a close up of that:



I also made this ornament frame:

The little frame itself came from Hobby lobby. My mom had them in some of her stuff and brought them to me. I painted it and added stickles and cut the snowman out of the patterned paper. That is Love elsie ribbon I had in my stash. It matched perfectly with the little snowflakes. I may be making some of these as gifts for Bellas sunday school teachers.

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving. If I can figure out what the deal is with my camera I will get all my Thanksgiving photos loaded and show yall some out takes from our holiday.

Bella's Thanksgiving program

Bella had her Thanksgiving program at school this morning. Here is ONE of the 3 videos of it that John taped for me since I didnt get to go. HE did this with my camera (WHO KNEW YOU COULD DO THAT!!! well we just learned not to long ago)

 

BELLA IS THE INDIAN IN THE MIDDLE ON BACK ROW. the three indians right their together. That is Bella in the middle. That is Mandalyn on her left and Brayden beside Mandalyn in the pilgrim hat. Ethan is the Indian on her right. This is the entire K classes doing this.


IF you cant get the video to work.. you can click HERE to see it also.


Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Birthday to my honey!

Yesterday was My honey's birthday. The day was all about him. Bella and I made him a card. We made him dinner and he wanted brownies instead of a cake. SO, that is what we did.
Here are some photos of my little scrapper. She did such a good job making this card for him. she wanted to show you all the sides of it. She did so good. She is becoming quite the crafty one. You may remember the scarecrow from the earlier post? well She won 3rd place. she was sooo happy. I was so proud of and for her! SHE DID SOOO GOOD!



SO she was tickled to get out of school early yesterday and get to make this for her daddy. She was sitting on edge waiting for him to come home.

She met him in the driveway all excited wanting to give him his card she made. Was so adorable.

Today she is gone to Eva Caroline's Birthday party. THey are doing one of those glamour girl things. I cant wait to hear all about it. We are cleaning and getting geared up for Thanksgiving. Not having a big crowd I can't do that with the meds I am on. But still got to get this house clean.
Hope you have a Happy Saturday.
I noticed the family channel has Christmas movies on already. AAAAAAHHHHHHCK! I can't think about it yet!

OHHHH BEFORE I FORGET! HERE you can totally indulge yourself and get all your holiday cards and gift ideas, and gifts made.
Treasures to Scrap sells her product at a discount EVERY DAY. So you don't have to wait for a sale. Just go look at the prices on these NEW ARRIVALS! (YA I CANT WAIT FOR THE NEW FAIREST OF THEM ALL I HAVE TO HAVE IT! well ALL OF THIS REALLY YOU KNOW How I LOVE Basic GREY!)

Daisy Bucket

Basic Grey granola

Basic Grey Urban Prairie


Stamps

Imaginisce stamps

Imaginisce Fairest of them all collection

KI Sheer Delights

Bazzill clear craft plastic

or maybe just hit this one to see it all at once...

New Products

I have created a monster Bella said she wants ALLL THOSE little stamps. AT 64 cents each IM thinking GREAT CHRISTMAS IDEA!! wouldnt that be cute to tie onto the bows of the packages? the princess ones for a little girl? how cute would that be?

Ok I have to go finish cleaning. Enjoy!

ITs beginning to look a lot like.....

OK OK I KNOW Its not even THANKSGIVING YET! BUT. I GOT THIS ADORABLE kit from SCRAPBOOK OBSESSIONS this month I have been playing. So I have Christmas on the brain. How cute is this?
I love this little acryllic album. I am having so much fun with it.
Here is one thing I have made already.

I used the clear Prima bucket that the flowers come in. I altered it to hold candy but you could put whatever you want in it. I thought it would be a cute gift idea for like Sunday School teacher or teacher gifts or neighbors or whom ever you wanted to give a little happy to. With money being so tight with everyone this year I know people are wanting to streth their dollars, but make the thought count. I thought this would be a cute way to incorporate this idea. You could personalize it and put their names on it... add additional snow people for family members (unless you have like that big huge family thats on tv with the 17 kids.. then you might wanna bigger bucket HA!) OK OK.. sorry my lame attempt at humor today.


Their are endless ideas of what you could put in these little buckets. You could use a paint can that you could pick up from home depot (YES they do sale the empty ones just be sure they give you the lid and also the handle) you can put together a goodie bucket with most anything from cookie making things, movie night, date night, feel better, stay warm with hot coa coa. I could go on for a while.

I hope I sparked your imagination today. This paper really made me smile.
I am off to go scrap some more. Hope you have a lovely day.

MY STAR STUDENT!!

Bella came BOUNCING in from school yesterday with this:

She is star student this week I asked her what does that mean? She said "It meansssssss I GET TO BE THE LINEEEEEEEE LEADERRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!" (that is very important when your in k-5)

She is very excited about it. She said it lasts allllll week. So she is very thrilled about school this week.


I started off this post with that since that was good happy news and with that cute post of Bella, because we didn't really get any good news yesterday at my neurology visit. I kinda needed a day to soak all this in. I tried all day yesterday to call my mother and SHE STILLLLL hasn't called me back yet. (#$%^) If your not a friend or family you can skip this part you will just be bored... BUT, This will be easier than making 35 phone calls to family and explaining why we may or may not get to do as much with the holidays this year. I KNOW, and don't start. IM NOT happy about it. BUT, I can't do anything about it. IT IS UP IN THE AIR RIGHT NOW. we don't know. IT IS ALL depending on these next few weeks and how things go. They are switching my medications around. My blood pressure was at an OMG level. I wasn't sure if they were even gonna let me come home.
They took me off of one medication and as soon as I get off of it I will start on the new med. My MRI from February vs the recent one... showed no change with the MS meds. no progression... no improvement. which can be interpreted two ways THE POSITIVE, that means it isn't any worse!!!! which is good. Because it can get worse. The negative part and this is the part he kinda was really frowning is.. it wasnt really reacting yet on the interferon. I AM getting more used to the interferon WHICH IS GOOD (Interferon is REBIF) I asked him about some of these other medications. HE SAID NOT NO BUT NO WAY. NOT with me having shingles and the other problems I have he will not let me go there. so that ended that discussion. HE is concerned about the blood pressure being so high and said worse case scenario right now is shingle outbreak and or flu. Holidays are coming up... (you can see where he was going and the tears started rolling) HE STOPPED said well lets just see what happens with the blood pressure when we stop the medication. so that's where we are right now.
HE said that I am leaning towards not being in the RRMS which is a Relapsing Remitting Multiple Sclerosis diagnosis which is what most people have. THAT IS what when you see these people that have a normal life work jobs, do normal things go on their merry way, that is what they have. They have flare ups every so many years and less problems not that I am making light of the disease for them I AM NOT. IT is still serious. He is moving me to Secondary Progressive Multiple Sclerosis which is where what symptoms I have... this is it. Im stuck. THey wont go away. It pretty much isnt going to get better. You just have to learn to live with it and learn to cope. Kinda makes you wonder if I was diagnosed correctly 12 years ago... anyway. You can read more about that by clicking on the link. Maybe it can help you understand and see what we are talking about.
SO it was alot to swallow. ALOT. And Im really soaking it all in still.

We started the decent on this medicine yesterday so hopefully the dizziness and bp will start to go down and that will fix it. (please?)
Thats what Im praying for anyway.

Ok so enough of all that boring medical crapp.

THE OTHER FUNNNNNNN COOL THING IS. I DID get my kit yesterday so I have been playing with that. and ughmm I have a tip for you...
IF your ughmmm gonna make an acryllic album.... and your gonna heat emboss.. remember that acryllic is plastic and it will melt (ya I had a REAL EINSTEIN MOMENT THEIR DIDN'T I?!) geesh!
IT's still cute though. I fixed it thats all Im gonna say about that!

I got the cutest RAK (randon act of kindness) in the mail today. I had won a blog Rak from Scrapbook and Cards today magazine's Blog a while back for some awesome BO BUNNY dotted cardstock. WELLL to my surprise they had some of THEIR CHRISTMAS PAPERS IN THEIR TOOOO OMGOSH> they are sooooo awesome. I cannot wait to play with them.
They ARE SOOOO PRETTY I almost dont want to cut them. THey are so dreamy and magical (to quote Bella) she said Mama "Those need glitter!" She is sooooooo my kid!!!

This ones my punkin!

(THE ONE IN THE HAT!)


While watching the Alabama game(s) yesterday (and cleaning up off and on) ok more off than on... I decided I would rather get my scrap going than organize scrap stuff anyway. (hey If use it I don't have to put it up right?)

This page went together quickly. I distressed the edges with my Making memories edge distresser.
Inked all of the edges and made hidden Journaling. I used the Basic Grey Ambrosia line from this months kit from SCRAPBOOK OBSESSIONS. I added some rope that I un twined for the pull string and made a small pull tag. (behind the photo)
I love this Picture of Bella. It is when she was not quite 3. We were at the Nicholas-Boyd Pumpkin Patch back in Mississippi. We had so much fun that day.


It turned off cold down here. We are not used to it being this cold. We are used to the tropical weather. NOW it is starting to finally feel like November.

A big congrats and "ROLL TIDE" to Bama yesterday. We enjoyed watching the games yesterday. Really wished Auburn could have pulled it off. MAN that last 6 seconds ughhhhh. Talk about making my heart switch sides GEEEEEEEESH! Think they are tryin to get my blood pressure up. Yall Make a fat girl sweat! That's dangerous people!

I found this today interesting. New research and information found out by the MS foundation of America. I pray in my lifetime a cure is found for this awful stuff!
Well I am off here to finish the errr ughmm Cleaning (scrapping) yeah thats it the cleaning I was doing yesterday. Yall have a good one.

SWOOOON S,E,I, SIGH

MORE SEI GOODIES to show you. TO say that I Like SEI is to say Bella kinda likes Hannah Montana (just A little bit.) yah kinda an understatement dont ya think?
I could fill up this blog a FEW TIMES with pages of layouts through the last 5 years of Bella's life that I have done with SEI. I don't thing there has been many lines I have not used. I LOVE IT. EVEN The boy lines I have used with my Daughters photos. ya I do not joke! Everyone talks about their 3 favorite go to company's well my most definite all time favorite line ever is SEI. My scrap room is done after SEI Winnies Walls. NEED I SAY MORE?

SO when Tracey said that they were the sponser this month for Treasures to Scrap you can Imagine my Excitement! (YIPEEE) That is one company ID loveeee to work for!
I THOUGHT I would show you another project I did with the AWESOME BLACK ORCHID provided by SEI. (THIS PAPER IS SO YUMMMY)

This is a band-aid tin I altered. And what better to go in a band-aid tin than some words of wisdom to help when you need some guidance.



I cut chipboard into tag shapes and covered it with the patterened paper.



I used my ellison tag along die cutt machine and various dies to make accents out of the patterned paper. As well as cutting elements from the patterned paper.





There is a contest this month at Treasures to Scrap I hope you will check it out. THERE ARE SOME AWESOME PRIZES TO BE GIVEN AWAY lots of SEI YUMMMIES. COME HAVE FUN and join in on your chance to win some awesome SEI PRODUCTS! (JUST IN TIME FOR CHRISTMAS!!) FOR MORE INFORMATION ON THE CONTEST CHECK IT OUT RIGHT HEREE!

WE need your help and some scrappy goodness

Like many Lupus patients it took a long time to get a diagnosis. My journey for finding out what in the world was making all these weird symptoms was long.
For 12 years I was treated for lupus SLE. They have not long ago decided that I don't (thankfully) have lupus but in fact it was the entire time Multiple Sclerosis. SO many patients go through this. Being passed around to many dr's trying to figure out whats wrong. I guess that is why I am still a strong advocate and want to fight for research for these auto immune disease research fundings. THere is so much to be learned on how these things happen and what causes it. So many things to know on what to look for in the cause and treatment. DID YOU KNOW that there has not been a new drug for lupus in the last 50 years? Yeah I was astonished. Read more about that HERE and what can be done to help. If you have lupus, we need your help. Tell your story. You can find more information by clicking that link. I have alot of friends that suffer from many different forms of autoimmune disease family members as well. Take a moment if you would to read what you can do. Knowledge is power.

I got a package in the mail the other day. It was beautiful Tinsel Town and Cupcake Pink Paislee Papers. Stacey From All Moments Remembered Asked me to make her some samples with these lines to hang in her store. These will be mailed out next week. I thought I would give you a peek at them here though, Are these papers not just delicious???





The cupcake line was the other line she sent. Here is a page I made with that.





The photo doesn't do it justice. The cupcake has stickles for the icing and is just so sparkly glittery cute.

where have I been?

ya, That says it all huh?

IT stinks that these medications I take end up the side effects cause sometimes more problems than what ya got in the first place wrong with ya! Guess it goes back to the old sayin' "if the cure don't kill ya?"
SO I have been on some pretty powerful stuffs. Finally got them out and feel so much better.

Bella bug is out of school for Veterans day. I told her about her papa being in the service and she kinda looked at me really strange. later on she asked me if he ate alot of soup. I couldn't figure out what she meant. I told her I was not sure if he ate alot of soup or not, I kinda wondered where that came from but didn't think much of it. The day rocked on she was stamping and coloring I was getting some things done when just randomly while singing she pauses very complacently looks at me at me with this seriousness.

She furrows her brow and you could just see those wheels turning that this is something that has just been buggin her. She was looking for the words and in her cute little five year old voice says: "SooooooOOOOOOOOOooooooo, if todayyyyyyy, Is veggieableturns day for papa, Den When are we gonna have a fruit day for nana?" and then just looks at me like what cha gonna do about it ma?

I just looked at her



.speechless....

Trying really hard to hold my composure and not laugh because she was every bit just sooooooooo serious. and I KNEW she would be so so angry with me if I just started laughing. so I thought and thought and said well lets seee errr ughhhh
uuuuuuuuughmmm



"Well,I'm thinkin you have this confused How about this?, How about lets start over. So I explained VETERANS DAY and what it was (how it wasn't one of the four basic food groups) and pulled up some things on the computer. (She is my child ya know so visuals help!) Nothing TOO detailed but, told her about how we say the pledge you know the one she says every day at school. (and also at the top of her lungs in the bathtub every night)I told her about how these VETERANS, helped keep our country the way it is and our freedom possible. That her papa worked with those people.Of course she took that literally and wanted to know if he knowed dat man and dat man and dat one. so I had to get really specific. (this is why IM NOT a school teacher and I don't home school also dont flame me folks I admire you people that do it totally it just aint for me)

SO ANYWHO Her papa was in the service and he is a veteran. SO now I THINK SHE GETS IT. she doesn't think papa is a veggie (and nana needs a day of fruit). Im sure Thanksgiving I woulda had lots of splainin' involved if we had not clarified that one! SO amazing how their little brains work.





SEI is sponsoring the design team at TREASURES TO SCRAP this month. They are also sponsoring a contest where you can win some free SEI product! for more information check it out here.
also to see more cool SEI goodness check out the Gallery and leave em some lovin!
That's it for me today. I feel still halfway decent so Im gonna go clean something.(and then scrap)
Hope you have a wonderful day.

Bella gets crafty...

So Bella's teacher sends home a scarecrow picture and a note last week, wants the entire family to work on this. She gives us creative license to work on it. hehehe.
Bella was soooo excited. She knew just what she wanted to do. John said she pounced into the car talking 90 mph saying what she wanted to do. He had no idea what she was talking about. She ran in the house straight to my deak and pointed to my paper pieced scare crow I had that is about 3 inches tall that looks kinda like a puppet. Im thinking OH yeah right. A little much for K5. SHe insisted. We kinda scaled it down but did it similar. She was soooooo excited.
I think she is probably the only kid there that has Basic Grey buttons and Stickles on their scare crow but she didn't care. She said hers WAS "FANCY!"

Hope you had fun last night too!

I gave up trying to rescue the Hannah Montana wig Bella has yesterday. I dont think there is enough conditioner in the world to get the knots out of that thing. SO I just Beauty Queened Bella up and Put her Hannah Hair Band one of the gramma's got her or maybe Aunt Liz I can't remember. (its cute anyway) she looked adorable. Her hair didnt stay fixed long It was kinda humid. (lots of fog machines going too)

You know I can't take photos of Bella without her monkey shining for at least one!

We went To Greg and Tara's. This is Bella's Boy (Yall are familiar with Brayden from my blog Posts) without his mask on.
She went and made the rounds with him.
There is his mask. Bella said WHAT ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO BE?????? hahaha.


I will probly get beat for this but here is GREG Im not real sure what he is sup to be except RED.hehehe, I think maybe his true colors coming out a little. It was halloween ya know.

I was gonna say something really clever like Tara was gonna wear a costume but she she misplaced it at the last second so she didn't but it was just too easy. and well SHE just looked so darn cute! SO I will give her a break. The eyelashes were too funny! I wished I could have stayed longer last night.



I was going to just hand there let the kids go trick or treating Gregg was harrassing kids, I mean passing out candy, Tara's mom and her husband were hanging out with him on the porch so we were just gonna hang till time to go home and take my shot. Well ughmm, WRONG. Stupid medicine or MS or some of all of it who knows. No warning. probably mix of flashing lights kids sounds and meds but the porceline Gods called. So The soup that was so good earlier wasnt so good and we had to make a quick exit. Bella had already been trick or treating so She didnt miss out. I just hate we had to cut it short.
We got home and John took her to the couple few houses of People we knew here. Actually the street here was packed you could hardly drive so many people.
about 30 minutes later we heard this LOUD LOUD BANG that was almost like a gun shot firework slam sound. John came back to see if I fell or something. He looked out and all kinda lights were popping on and he heard tires squealing.
SOME dude. In an S -10 turned around in our neighbor across the streets driveway and BACKED OVER our bricked in concreted in the ground mailbox. THIS THING IS 3 feet tall HOW DO YOU MISS IT (it has reflectors on it too) I AM SOOOO happy no kids were hurt I just keep thinking omgosh if it had been 30 minutes earlier. when all those kids were there. We are in a 300 home subdivision you can barely drive down our street halloween. so you can imagine. THEY didnt stop. They didn't even slack up THey sped away. SO, The neighbor Mr. Tuck helped John get the bricks up out of the road and most of it though was still in one big piece THANK GOD. and they moved it over into the grass. So no one would damage a vehicle or themselves. GEESH. Suposedly some others were done so we wonder if it was an accident. I have to think it was. why woudl someone intentionally dent up the back of their vehicle?
Today John went out to see what could be done. A guy stopped that was just driving by said the same thing had happened to theirs. (CRAZY PEOPLE OUT LAST NIGHT I TELL YOU) Their was a haunted houses on our street so lots of kids, so maybe that was it? so anyway, HE KNEW kinda how to fix it So he HELPED HIM put it back. IT is not that stable and if someone hits it again will fall again but... HEY ITS NOT IN 5 Pieces all over the road now!! IM sure that dude's truck is IN MUCH WORSE SHAPE! I just am so happy no children were hurt!!!! That terrifies me!

So anyway we are watching AUBURN PLAY BALL TODAY. Bella is playing and counting through her halloween candy. We are trying to make her ration it!
SO now we start getting ready for Thanks
giving. The whole next month will be about house cleaning for us haha.
Hope everyone had a safe and fun time last night.