Whew! Where did March go?

I have been crazy busy around here. Let me just give a few of the highlights; the fuel pump went out on my truck (yuk!), had to get new tires for my truck (ouch!), we are having to demolish and remodel our main bathroom (down to the studs) in our house, got a new client at work and Tanner had shoulder surgery. Oh and of course I have been trying to re-package some of my scrap kits to get them into the store at Plain Digital Wrapper…it was a crazy month!

Here’s to hoping that April is a little less dramatic and a lot more fun! If you’re up for some fun, come join me for some digital scrap challenges at PDW! I am hosting 2 and sponsoring 1!

The Variety Pack challenge runs from April 1^st to April 15^th. I chose to do a scraplift of this beautiful layout: just BE by Mother Bear!

Here is the posting gift for the Variety Pack challenge:

Then you have all month for the Wrapping in Color challenge! For participating in this challenge I have this posting gift for you:

 

I am sponsoring the monthly Template challenge that is hosted by Kate of Optic Illusions. She has a fantastic template for you to download and use for the challenge and I supplied the posting gift.

I managed to get quite a few Easter and Spring scrap kits into my PDW store.

For stopping by my blog today, I have a little gift for you!

Thank you for your continued support!

Expired

{available until 4/9/15}

New Releases + Freebie for YOU!

It sure has been busy around here with a ton of things going on and not all good things. :(

I'll try to bring you up to date quickly (lol)

My son, Tanner, had a slight concussion on Sunday, November 7th while riding motoX practice. The following weekend, he was racing motoX and had a pretty bad wreck, one that his Dad even said "He (Tanner) was lucky that he's able to walk after that one. It was nasty!" Well, long story short, he had a screaming head ache, memory loss, blurry vision in his left eye, dizziness and balance issues. He's seen 3 doctors, had an MRI (we should be getting the results anytime now!) He is getting better slowly. The blurry vision is gone. It appears that most of the dizziness and maybe the balance issues have been resolved, as well as most of the head aches. At least the head ache is not constant. Tanner is sick of my asking him how he's doing! LOL

Before you ask, yes, he wears full protective gear when riding his dirt bike. No, I can not/have not been able to, legally, stop him from riding or stop his Dad from letting him ride. We are divorced (have been for 14 years happily) and it will probably end up taking several doctors and court orders to get it stopped! Trust me, I have always preferred and voiced my opinion tht I do not want Tanner riding motoX. The doctors are starting to discuss the number of concussions that Tanner has already had in his short 14 years. He has had 6 concussions, that I can count/remember clearly, within the last 2 year alone, (with this last one being #6) Not to mention his two hospital stays (pancrease, spleen and broken should blade) I will keep you posted if anything changes!

Let's see, I also have my email/inernet pc down.... a 500gig hard drive, that was not even 1/4th full, went bad!!! ACK! :( I have been without it now for just about a 1 1/2 weeks! Eric worked on it yesterday. I have a new hard drive but now I have to load thigns back on! I juat don't like doing that part! LOL I am hoping that he will be able to recover at least my emails and my Favorites folders!




Oh my goodness, I alsmost forgot to tell you about this! A friend of mine and I decided to get our crafty on and have opened our own little ArtFire shop, MK Crafts & Such! So far, we have about 25+ Mini Domino Pendants uploaded to the store but don't fret, there are more items coming! I just wish I had more time in the day! I'm having trouble with my camera, so I am working on that!

Much more has been going on but it's just regular life stuff and it appears that I am writing a novel here and I don't want to do that! LOL



Now onto the good stuff! LOL Since I have fallen behind with posting here on my blog, here is a preview of all of the items that I have placed into my store since my last post.





This darling gift was created by our very own Royal Muse, Bon, using my new Harvest Blessings Kit.
Please leave her some love and be sure to stop by again as I have a couple more goodies for you this week!



Download here & enjoy!

a Fantastic Word Art freebie for YOU!

Can you believe that it is the last day of August?! Wow! The summer sure has flown by! The boys start back to school Wednesday! Tanner will be in the 8th grade... geesh, that means next year is high school for him! ACK! Nick is going to be a senior this year! My daughter is super elated that she doesn't have to, now that she graduated from high school this last spring.

Wow! Not just the summer, but where has the time gone!? My Mom always said it goes faster as you get older and then speeds up once you have kids! She wasn't kidding! I'm happy but then sad at the same time. I sure miss those chubby cheeks, good night kisses and holding hands whenever we would go somewhere! Oh the special moments!

Speaking of moments, this charming word art was created by Royal Muse, Bon using my Coffee Bears Kit and both the Black and White Simple Beads Alphabet Sets.

Download here & enjoy!

New Releases - 6/27/10 - Trying to play Catch Up!

Well, it has been super busy around here! How about I bring you up to speed with just a few of the dandy little highlights, ok?!

To start things off, Tanner had a motocross accident May 15th, which required a hospital stay and of course multiple follow-up appointments, which are still occurring weekly. To make this long story short, he broke his left shoulder blade and had a few internal issues, most of which have healed except for his pancreas. He is still going in on a weekly basis for lab work until the blood levels return to normal. His shoulder blade is on the mend but not quick enough for him! LOL

Kaytelynn graduated from high school on June 8th! I'm so proud of her! She is working, is pretty healthy and is now considering creating fonts and maybe even doodles. I can't wait to see what she does with the Wacom tablet and font software that I got for her. She is quite the artist, whether it's painting or even doodling and she's very talented with a digital camera! Kaytelynn lives with her Grandmother, not far from us. I think she is enjoying her independence and finding out what real world responsibilities are like, without the help of Mom. Of course, I am called upon on occasion... I like that I am still needed! Oh, she has even admitted to me that living at home wasn't all that bad! LOL

School for the year finally ended and Nick passed 5 out of 6 classes! I kmew he could do it but to wait until the last week to pull it off, darn near drove us nuts! We flew Justin up from California to visit for the summer. And it's been nothing but busy, chaotic testosterone in this house ever since! I messed up my schedule/routine of taking my medications during all of this hoopla (hospital visits in April - Kaytelynn & May - Tanner)...well, I did what most people do, I figured it was time to just keep on trying to make a go of it without the meds. Now, I know better, I really do! I know that you shouldn't take yourself off of medications! Well, I did it anyways! Yep, you guessed it...panic attacks! A few pretty good ones while out shopping, even with Eric. I had to leave several stores pretty darn quick. I dang near didn't make it to Kaytelynn's graduation, but managed to somewhat hold it together long enough. Soooooo, I'm getting back into my routine of taking my meds again. It's just not the right time to go it alone yet.

Well, even during all of this stuff, I managed to create a 'few' new items for my store. Instead of posting all of the previews individually, I have 1 big preview of all of the items that were released between May 23rd and June 20th. It includes 2011 calendars, printables, date markers, create your own items, and of course a few kits and alphabet sets.

Now that we're all caught up, here are the new items that were just released today!

New Releases - 7/13/09 & a FREEBIE for YOU!

Wow!

This month has just run away from me! We have been quite busy this last two months! Tanner turned 13 on June 6th and Nick had his "Half" birthday on June 25th (he's a Christmas baby), school let out for summer vacation, we flew Justin, Eric's youngest son, up to visit for a while, visited with some dear friends from high school, went camping (took the dogs too!), took the kids to Bullwinkle Family Fun Center where Tanner and I pretty much rode go-carts ALL DAY LONG (LOL he was too short to ride by himself last year so he made up for it this time and needed someone to race with, why not me?!), received news that a family member of mine in Florida was having heart surgery (quad by-pass no less! All is good so far!), Tanner had another ER visit thanks to moto-x but luckily no broken bones, attended a funeral, made a few digital kits, finally finshed the July Blog Wear and of course the normal and no-so-exciting, everyday living and working. I hope that your summer is moving right along for you and that you are enjoying every minute!

I have had good days and a few not so good days with the panic attacks. I haven’t been able to notice if they are getting better or worse. Eric tells me the truth, so when I think that they seem to be less; he lets me know that they haven't! LOL But he does so ever so gently, most of the time! LOL I really hate it when he has to tell me "Go out to the truck now!" It really ticks me off at the time because I always seem to think that I just must be embarrassing him but once I get outside into the cool air, I realize why he sent me out. His normal response once he gets out to the truck, because 8 out of 10 times this happens while we are out shopping, he will apologize and say something like "I thought you were either going to either hyperventilate or pass out or vomit." He will usually add some kind of smart-alecky comment to it like "and you don't want the firemen to see that, now do you?" or "Mom always said to wear clean underwear in case of emergency! Not sure if firemen check for that?! You ARE wear clean underwear?" See, he teases me about firemen because for as long as I can remember, I've had a "thing" about/for firemen, especially our Vancouver Fire Department! OH-MY-GOODNESS, not one ugly or mean one in the bunch! I swear! I absolutely admire a brave man that can get dirty and sweaty and be that good looking and nice to boot while doing it! LOL Soooo, that is why Eric teases me; it makes me laugh too!

Well! LOL I wasn't planning on telling all of that but oh well it has been typed out, so there it is! LOL

How about taking a peek at my two new kits that have

been released this week in my store at Scrapbook-Elements?!

Eat Your Veggies

The Ark


***************************************************

Finally!

I was able to sit long enough to get this months Blog Wear finished!

I hope that you like it and as always,

I'd love to see it if you decorate your blog with it,

so link me up!! :)

If you would like to see what it looks like on a blogger blog, click here.

I did make the headers 1000 px wide this time...

no particular reason other than I just felt like it! LOL

Download here & enjoy!

ER visit AGAIN & a Freebie for you!

Well I'm a bit behind this week.

I spent the evening in the emergency room, again, with Tanner last night.

Nothing was broken this time but he did sprain his right wrist pretty good, so it is now in a splent.

He hurt himself while skateboarding at (DOS) Dept. of Skateboarding (LOL love the name!)

over in Portland while with Nick, Eric and their friend, Joseph.

Oh the joys of having boys! I swear this kid has no fear of anything.
Before you all ask, yes, they were all wearing helmets. LOL

Ok enough of that!

Sometime this week, I hope to be posting my June Blog Wear.

I'm still not sure which kit of mine to use yet.....

I might be using one of my new ones that isn't even out yet!

Guess we will just have to wait and see!

Our very own Royal Muse, Bon,

has created a quick page using a few of the freebies

that I gave out last weekened.

See if you can figure out which ones? LOL



Download here & enjoy!

2 fractured wrists, 1 fractured elbow and some freebies!

Well, Friday the 13th isn’t even here yet, so we were a week early with bad luck!


To start things off, on Saturday, January 31st, Tanner was at his Dad’s for the weekend and they went to practice for a motox race. He crashed pretty good and went head over handle bars (several times, I later found out and then crashed a few more times because he couldn’t hold onto the handle bars)… but the arse (my ex) made it sound like it wasn’t a big deal. We took Tanner to urgent care for what the docs thought was a stress fracture in his left wrist/arm. They put a partial/splint cast on it and wrapped it with ace bandages so that he could take it off to shower and then we were to go back on Thursday to have is re-checked once the swelling went down. Tanner was instructed to take it easy for the whole week by the doctor. (Yeah right, this doctor doesn't know my kid! LOL)

Before anyone asks, YES, Tanner was wearing full protective gear while riding his dirt bike! Helmet, chest protector etc, etc.

When Tanner came home from his Dad’s on Sunday, he said that his stomach hurt and he felt nauseous. He was that way on Monday too but Tuesday and Wednesday seemed to be getting better.

On Wednesday, February 4th, while I was at work, Tanner decided to go skateboarding, which he was NOT supposed to be doing because of the wreck on Saturday. Well, he fell and wrecked on the skateboard and hurt his arm at about 3:45pm. I got home about 5:10pm and he finally tells me about 5:40pm because the pain was so bad. Into Urgent care we go again. This time the right arm/wrist hurt and they think that it is broken just above the elbow so they put a partial/splint cast on it and schedule us for Orthopedic Fracture Clinic for the following Tuesday. They also informed us that the results of the first arm x-rays from Saturday is most likely just a very bad sprain but for him to keep the splint on until Tuesday. So both arms are in splints/casts and all that he can do for himself is stand, sit and walk! LOL They went ahead and cancled the appointment for Thursday since he was going to be seen at the fracture clinic the following week.

He wasn’t feeling all that great when we got home Wednesday night which I expected since he hurt his other arm. We kept him home from school on Thursday and Friday. Both days he kept saying he wasn’t feeling good, his stomach hurt and that he felt sick but it seemed to come and go. Friday, he kept getting worse, he was even starting to whine and cry a bit, laying and sleeping a lot on the couch, which is very UNCOMMON for Tanner! He wouldn’t eat either.

On Friday at about 2:30pm, I had Kaytelynn go to the Wendy’s, he wanted fries and a pop…. Even after I tried bribing him to eat ice cream, a frosty or anything that he want and none of that worked so I knew his was seriously not feeling well. He took only a couple of bites of the fries and a drink of the coke and then vomited it all back up. (Oh I was able t get him to eat a banana earlier in the day but that was it.) I took his temp several times throughout the day, which was normal. I called Eric to talk to him about it and then called Kaiser. They said to bring him into Urgent Care that opened at 5:30pm for sign in because there weren't any appointments available.

We go to the Urgent Care, I requested x-rays of his chest and abdomen which they did. They also did a urine sample to see if there was blood in his urine. The doctor stated that she had consulted with several doctors and doctors at Kaiser Sunnyside Hospital in Clackamas, Oregon. They wanted him to have CT scans at Sunnyside for possible internal bleeding/organ injury. That way, if there needed to be any intervention (surgery or whatever) they were more equipped to do it than an Urgent Care.

I drove as calmly as possible from Vancouver, Washington to Clackamas, Oregon, for the 30 minute drive to that hospital. Tanner and I both were just trying to stay calm! We chatted about why we had to go there. He had a lot of questions that I tried to answer as best that I could without scaring him and me! LOL But just tried to reassure him that going to this hospital was just to make sure that he was ok.

We went to the ER as instructed and went directly back to the CT scan are because they were waiting for us. He had to drink a couple of cups of nasty tasting dye that looked like lemon aide and each cup had to be 40 minutes apart. He didn’t like it at all and kept begging me to not make him drink it, that he was going to vomit. I let the doctors know that he was saying that might throw up and they told him to do the best that he could.

He was able to get 2 cups of that nastiness swallowed and then they gave him an IV in his left arm (we had to take off one of the splints so that they could.) They took him back to the CT scan and gave him more dye through the IV. After the CT scan they removed the IV and sent us to the waiting room just outside of the ER check in. They called us to the desk and asked us to check in and I thought I was going to faint! They had taken out the IV so I figured things were going to be ok.

After the CT scan, they sent us back to an ER room, where they eventually told us that an ambulance was going to transport Tanner to OHSU/Dorenbecher’s Children’s Hospital and that they needed to get an IV started. Tanner and I both started to cry a bit. That worried us both. Both splints were back on his arms and the doctor and nurses were just peeved that the CT scan people had take out the first IV, so they had to put the IV into his left shoulder because he was becoming dehydrated and his veins were collapsing! While waiting for the ambulance, Eric had shown up which really helped to ease both of us.

Tanner rode in the ambulance (no lights/sirens) with the EMTs by himself, which he was ok with. They weren’t really waiting for us so Eric and I both drove our own vehicles following the ambulance to the children’s hospital. I had no idea that it was going to be such a long drive…. At least it felt that way. My ex-husband, Troy was there waiting for us to arrive (he is a story all unto himself through this whole ordeal and dang near drove me, Tanner, the doctors and nurses nuts!) After being seen in the OHSU ER, the doctors and surgical team reviewed his CT scans and admitted Tanner to Doernbecher’s for a possible spleen laceration/internal bleeding. He was given a room where he was not allowed to eat or drink in case they had to do surgery, but they did put in an IV solution to keep him from getting dehydrated.

They did several blood count tests and measuring of urine output throughout the night and into Saturday. Saturday, February 7th, mid day, they did an ultra sound on his abdomen area. Long story short, they do think that he injured his spleen but didn’t think that there was continuous bleeding. Tanner was actually quite calm and patient through all of this. Later that night, they let him get up and walk around and he was saying he was hungry… so they finally let him eat. After a while, they finally discharged him. LOL We were all wanting to go home.

By Sunday, even though we, the adults were all trashed due to lack of sleep and just a bit of stress, Tanner was already bored and not happy about having to "take it extremely easy." We decided to keep him home for the week for several reasons; he couldn't do much for himself and he was not to do any kind of strenuous activity at all for the first week and then to take it very easy for the following 3 weeks.

Tuesday, February 10th, I took Tanner to the Orthopedic Fracture Clinic, were they found both wrists and the right elbow to have fractures in the growth plates, so that meant 2 full casts!

Now the hard part will be to keep this 12 year old boy from running, jumping and anything else that could cause any further spleen damage while he is supposed to be healing over the next 4 weeks. God helps us all!

I dont know what I would have done without Eric being there for us. He surely helped to keep us all calm! I also don't know what we would have done without my Mom, Diana. She came over to our house, took Kaytelynn shopping for the items to make lasagna and helped her get ready for her high school dance. She made the lasagna for her boyfriend, Gary, before the dance.

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Now that I have written a novel about our little escapades over the last week, how about a freebie or two for you?! Two of our fabulous Royal Muses, Kabra and Bonnie, have put together some wonderful goodies for you all! Kabra created 2 - 4x6 Valentine Cards and Bonnie created some Vaentine word art.

Download here and be sure to leave the gals some love! (No password needed)

Don't forget to subscribe to my blog, there will be a few more goodies for you as the week goes on, since I was unable to get them posted last week and over the weekend!!

Tanner made the Honor Roll & Freebies for YOU!

I just realized that I forgot to post these freebies last night! I do apologize!

But before I do, I have some absolutely wonderful news!!! I received a letter from my son, Tanner’s school. Now, honestly, the first thing I thought is “Ut oh, what did he do?!” The reason for that thought…. Tanner is a 12 year old, in the sixth grade this year and has ADHD and ODD (not OCD). We have really worked hard with him and the schools and teachers the last several years to get to a place where he was learning and the teachers understood how he learns, what to look for when things are building up for him and so on. He has come a long way!! Well the letter stated that Tanner made the Honor Roll for last semester!!! I knew that he had all A’s and B’ but not that he had made the honor roll! Sooooo, this Friday I am going to walk to school with him, camera in hand, and attend the honor roll ceremony! I am so very proud of him! He has really worked hard through all of these struggles and is doing oh so well right now! I will be sure to post a photo or two!!!

Ok, now onto the freebies!!! These fantastic freebies were crafted by our Royal Court Muses, Laurie and Bonnie. Laurie created the bea-U-ti-ful Desk top calendars and Bon created the wonder quick pages!

Download here (no password is needed)
Thank you so very much for taking the time to leave the gals some love when you download! We appreciate all of the feeback, comments and suggestions or even questions that you leave for us!

*Free* Classic Elegance September Desktop

I was decorating my desktop with my newest creation Classic Elegance and thought that I would share this with all of you! This is a photo of my daughter Kaytelynn (16 years old), my sons Nick (15 years old) and Tanner (12 years old) that I took at The Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm in April of this year.

There are 2 sizes included in the download: 1024x768 px and 1280x800 px

- minus the darling photo of my gang.

Both were created at 300 ppi and are in png format so that you can slip your favorite photo behind it and be done lickity split!

Download here
Password: summer ends

Mama’s Little Man Freebie QP

This is a photo of my son, Tanner, taken in March 2005.

Now in 2008, I am really missing those chubby little cheeks he once had!

Boy, how time flies and they change so very darn fast!

Kit used: Mama’s Little Man Font: Typewriter

I decided to make it into a quick page freebie for all of you!!

Download: here