A Whole Album to Share

With the album now safely in Charlotte's parents hands, I can now share the work that went into making it! I hope the colors come out ok on your monitors for some reason on this one they look a little darker. That is always a problem with scanning things. Have fun, enjoy and don't forget to post your comments on the blog and not on Facebook. This coming week is blog candy week!!!

Fun in Hebron, KY

Last Friday I went to a Beauty Control party at one of my neighbors homes. It really was interesting, though I must say that I put more stuff on my face, hands and feet in that 2 hour period than I had in the previous oh, lets say five years. I did buy a couple of things to firm and fill, unfortunately they didn't seem to have anything for major sag, LOL!

Given how we spent part of the evening (see picture) I guess no one should be upset if we don't recognize each other if we cross paths again! Nor can anyone be truly upset that I posted this picture as it would be hard for anyone to be recognized. On the other hand, I can honestly say that the pores on our faces were more open and cleaner at the end of the evening!

Baby Girl Mini Album

I'm not sure I should share this yet, but odds are that my BIL and SIL will not be reading this tonight and that they will still be surprised when they get them. There are three little books, two with ELI and Charlotte on the cover for his parents and one with Amy and Charlotte on the cover for Amy to give her mom, my MIL GG! I hope they like them. They are nothing big, but a fun keepsake and for the record, I did have fun making them.

With any luck they will let me know that the package arrived in Alaska on time and undamaged and I'll be able to share some of the pages from the baby girl scrapbook I made for Charlotte's first year. There are pages with envelopes for her parents to write how they felt when she was born, pages for each month, pages for her Baptism, and a page for her 1st birthday.

Other than that I do need to get going on the last few pages of the "My Family in Black and White" scrapbook so that I can upload it and get a number of bound books made. Those are intended as
Christmas presents for various members of my family. While I've never managed to get a single picture out of my brother or sister, I've been lucky enough to get some from my cousin Georgette in Canada and my cousin MArie-Jeanne in Belgium. I still have my fingers crossed that I will get some contributions from my siblings to fill my second album which will include pictures taken since colored photographs became available. That would sure help, given that I lost most of the pictures I had first in a flood and most of the remainder in a fire. Other than the pictures that Georgette gave me, I have no pictures of myself between the ages of 5 and 23 or so. I guess that is one reason that I was so happy that I was able to reconstruct some of my MILs photos and scrapbook after KAtrina destroyed most of her home in Gulfport, MS.

See I've been Creative!

In case you haven't noticed, I have tried to be creative. I decided to play with brushes in photoshop elements and see what I could come up with! As you might have noticed there is a new image behind my blog title, just a little tryout for the fun of it.

In addition, today if Hubby's b-day. Not the most quiet b-day since he had to go into work way early so he could finish something before his two classes this afternoon. I felt for him so I went and got fixins for a dark chocolate cake with dark chocolate icing and made him cupcakes. It occured to me that he seems to prefer the ease of just grabbing a cupcake rather than having to cut a slice from a cake. I put two side by side and put candles on them and voila, instant welcome home and happy birthday!

Other than that I didn't do much today given that I was woken up by the garage doors at 2:30am. You would think if would be easy to fall asleep again, but given that I am still sleeping sitting up on a bunch of pillows because of my shoulder, sleeping isn't all that easy in the first place. I know, I know, poor me, sniff. NOT the point here! I'm not feeling sorry for myself, just thinking there was a bunch more I should have been doing!

Other than that I still have to figure out what to do for my next recipe swap. Amongst my DMIL's recipes there is one for bourbon pralines that seems like just the thing to share! Just haven't figured out if I want to do that one thins month or not. Hmm... maybe something from Belgium this time. I do have my grandfather's recipe for belgian cookies, made in the waffle iron that people might enjoy!, We'll see!

Recipe Swap Contribution

I recently joined a recipe swap made up of a number of my Florida friends that belong to the Hilltop Memories Group run by a wonderful lady named Linda Jenkins. Linda is one of those super women I was speaking of yesterday. She has a family of her own, runs a daycare, owns a successful scrapbook business, and is present on Facebook, runs a Yahoo group, updates her Hilltopmemories.com shopping website and also keeps 2 blogs up-to-date. I honestly don't know how she does it all and does it all so well!

In the spirit of sharing more of my work, I thought I'd share my recipe, so you can see that I honestly do still scrap!

Catching Up Again!

It seems like I'm always trying to catch up with things. It's not that I don't think about my blog, just that sometimes it's just difficult to take the time to post and get other things done. I'm sure you all know what I mean. You've got to admire those ladies that manage a job, kids, a hobby, Facebook and posting to one or more blogs. Yet those superwomen do exist and I do envy them. Well maybe I was even one of them a long time ago, though Facebook and blogs didn't exist then, you had to take the time to call or write everyone to let them know what was going on. You have to admire just how handy blogs and social networks on keeping people updated.

As for me, life has consisted of physio, doctor appointments, finishing the 1 year baby scrapbook for my new niece Charlotte (isn't she cute!) born on September 2nd, as well as 3 mini-scrapbooks I thought her parents might like to have to send to her grandparents. I finally got all that out in the mail priority post yesterday. combined with a special surprise which I hope will elicit a huge smile from both her parents and a birthday present for her dad, Eli. I just hope that the package makes it to Alaska by Wednesday as promised. I must say that it was nice of the UPS store owner to let me know that priority mail would be about 1/3 the price of UPS which was not cheap at over $90 in shipping charges!

Today I met this nice lady who started a meetup group for Empty Nesters between 50 and 60. We had a great time and found quite a few things in common, some of them, I must say rather bizarre! After some time at the Boone County main library, I ran another couple of errands, mainly I went to Hobby Lobby where they were having a 50% off sale on wall hangings. With all the extra walls in our new house, I did want to grab a couple of things! After spending a little time talking with my neighbor about this and that, I came on home to try and update my blog before going out again, this time to a Relaxation party at one of my new neighbor's home.

I think I am finally coming to grips with the idea that this may be my forever home. I honestly don't think I've felt this way since 1992 or 3 when I lived in a beautiful town in Quebec, south of Montreal called Mont Saint-Hillaire (see picture). BTW my guest room is 90% ready, so people, it's time to invite yourselves up or down here, as the case may be, for a visit!

Surgery Details for Posterity

OK in this blog entry, for those of you who are detailed oriented and have asked questions about what exactly was done to my shoulder, here is what Dr C and his team did:
The procedures that were completed include the following; just click on the link if you really want to see more:

• Arthroscopic Subacronial Decompression
• Distal Clavicle Resection
• Labral Debridement

All things considered, the current outcome is pretty good. I'm 5 days post op and off the pain meds during the day. The pain that was present between my elbow and shoulder along my bicep is mostly gone. Sure there is pain where the three arthroscopic ports were placed and a certain tightness in all the muscles, but nothing compared to what I'd been led to expect!

Today was my first physio appointment and they were truly impressed with the progress I've already made. That isn't to say that they didn't find ways to torture me. My first few attempts at pulling my arm all the way up using the pulleys comes to mind far too easily here. However, I do have complete range of motion already, though for now, mostly passive (meaning when the therapist moves my arm for me). My single biggest issue is convincing all the muscles and ligaments that were pushed and pulled apart during the surgery, that they do work and will pull my arm through all its positions the way "I" want them to!

I was reminded by my therapist, Sharon, that they did do extensive work in my shoulder, shaving and cutting bone away and that does mean that it is "supposed" to hurt! OK, I give in, it hurts; you've convinced me, LOL! But not as bad as I'd been told and had read. Nana, nana, na!

I've used my arm as normally as possible today and combined with physio it is rather sore right now. I took one ibuprofen a few minutes ago and that is my first pain pill since my "go to sleep, little girl pill at 11pm last night. As soon as I finish watering the yard, I'll go and install myself in my room and ice everything again!

Well I'm still checking email continuously in the hope of seeing that my niece has finally made an appearance. My thoughts are all about my SIL who, I know, is even more anxious than I am! Love you Amy!

Post Op Update

Greetings,

First let me say that I am now typing with my two hands! Who would have thunk it, three days post surgery!

My post op visit went really well. I start physio right away and can start driving as soon as I'm off the pain meds! Unless physio is really bad that should be soon since I did without pain meds most of the day today. I took one pill about an hour before getting into the car with Hubby to go to the appointment. And no it wasn't about Hubby's driving, but about the bumps and holes in the roads between home and the Dr's office.

Hubby will tell you there was one point during the visit when I near turned green. The Doctor moved my arm away from my torso and up, and while I don't usually swear and didn't then, let me say it now, it hurt like hell!!!

So I'm on my way to a full recovery, though I am sure that I'll need to be careful for a while and not lift heavy objects for a considerable amount of time. I know I'll hear more about the do's and dont's when I go in to physio. I thought I'd include a picture of an exercise item, the pulley, which I hear will be used by yours truly quite a lot over the next few days and weeks! I do have a few which are scheduled to come out in another couple of weeks. Meanwhile, I do have to be careful not to snag the little treads on anything. Thankfully I can shower as long as I don't deliberately let the wter flow on the three holes and I just need to pat the area dry once I'm done. No big deal!

Hopefully if I do what I'm told and don't try to do the things I'm told not to, it will be harder for Dr. C to turn me into a leprechaun with a single movement of my arm on my next visit, two weeks from now! And yes, hard as it is to believe, I do plan to do everything they say, even if it means having to be good when I don't want to be. I have read enough about shoulder surgeries over the last six months to last a lifetime. Then again my research has shown that the surgical techniques for repairing shoulders have come a very long way in the last couple of years. If you ever have a shoulder problem, read slaptear.com. It is a forum that allows you to see shoulder surgery and recovery from the perspective of the patient and it helped me a great deal to figure out how to move my arm/shoulder post surgery, given that my post op appointment was scheduled for two days later than the normal next day. Slaptear.com also great ideas on how to prepare for surgery, what to do, bring and prepare, which also helped me a great deal!

Right there at the front of my mind today is my little sister-in-law Amy. Amy, my thoughts are with you! I can't wait for you to be holding your baby in your arms. Hopefully once they induce you tomorrow, everything will go quickly! Meanwhile enjoy your last truly peaceful night on earth! Every mother worthy of that name, will tell you that life is never the same once your 1st child is born.

Now, back to icing my shoulder. My life is so exciting!

Shoulder Surgery Tomorrow

So it's finally here, surgery day. Well more specifically it will be here tomorrow at 11:30am. I would have avoided it, especially after my DMIL told me what she did, but the Dr(s) and physio therapists all agreed that my arm would not heal without surgical help. After months of being in pain and getting absolutely nowhere with physio, what is a girl to do!

My first clue that the surgery had finally been approved was an 8:15 call from the surgical equipment guy telling me that we needed to meet so that I could get my sling, pillow, immobilizer do-hickey today, so I did that. I thought I'd share a picture of what the sling with pillow looks like. I could be in this thing for 4 or more weeks, yikes! My doctor, Dr Colosimo, is a good guy! He is funny and very driven. Apparently he is not a talker on surgery day. I am told that he goes from one surgery to the next and doesn't stop to speak with either the patient or their family post-op. Actually that makes sense to me as I can tell you that I have never remembered a thing that a Doctor has told me immediately post op. So unless you have someone in the room with you that can do an excellent job of recounting everything to me word for word, I'd rather wait. The only thing that sucks though is that in this case, since the surgery is on Monday, I won't see Dr C until until very late Monday. That's cause Hubby is teaching Monday until 4:30 so I had to take the last appointment at 5:30. I was assured that Dr C would still be there waiting for us when we got there even if we were a little late, but you know how it is, the Dr is probably running 3 hours late himself by the end of the day! I'll have to make sure that I'm well narcked when I go see him!

So that's it. I'll do my best to come and let you all know that I'm alive both here and on Facebook. Until next time friends when I'll be one hand typing under the influence...

A Glimpse at My Craftroom

With less than one week until my shoulder surgery and all that entails, I have been working rather hard on getting the craft room to a place where I can use it and get creative. I thought I'd share this video with you. The room is not finished, but it is definitely far enough along to share with a few of my closest friends! The video is not great as I took it with my digital camera, but hopefully it will help you imagine what my time will like working in there and also see that there is room for you, yes you to come over and do some fun crafting with me!

I'm not very good at this and so it gets cut off in the middle of a sentence, but please forgive this novice for the poor lighting and narration!

Have a great one, everyone!

I Noticed Something Today

I was looking at some of the pictures on my cell phone and came across a picture that I took on or around January 21st. At that time, my odometer read 16,353 or so miles. It just happened that I was in my car, so I looked at my current odometer reading and realized that I was at over 29,783 miles! Would you believe that I've driven all those miles in the last 6 months! Wow is all I've got to say!

As I settle slowly into my beautiful new home, I do realize that I am blessed in so many ways. My son and I are close. My husband loves me and I have the best friends! Sure I miss everyone that isn't here with me; and while that won't change anytime soon, as some have said, it will get better as I get more settled in and make plans to see as many as I can over time! Meanwhile I need to focus on everything that I do have, and the fact that I could have ended up in a place that I didn't like rather than here in northern Kentucky with it's hills, river and charm.

You know you aren't in Tampa when...

You know you are no longer in the Tampa Bay area when you have wild turkeys and deers in your back yard! Yup, that was actually taken from our family room window! There are 4 turkeys. Last time they were out with their poults (baby turkeys) but this time they must have left them in the nest or something! They are getting plumper from week to week. Hubby tells me that is what they are supposed to do during the summer, which makes me want to ask the obvious. What happens to them in err...November? You know, that's turkey time in the USA and well these are turkeys. Well, I'll keep an eye out through the months and report back. By the way, I did think to give them names, but, well I can't seem to tell them apart, so what good would that do?

I put in a new order for those Ranger pens this week, I wanted 6 more for myself. If you placed an order, you should get your pens sometime next week! I ordered extras so email me if you want some, the price is definitely interesting as it is my special of the month! Now back to my craft room... I wants to play!

Too Much Moving Talk Spoils a Blog, LOL

I was playing around with the different widgets and things you can put on a blog and turned on AdSense, just to see. Well one thing became resoundingly clear, I've been speaking about moving way too much and scrapbooking and cardmaking way too little as all the ads were for moving companies! So I thought I'd share other things here for today! No talk of physio, which I went to this afternoon (haha, snuck that in) and no talk of moving, despite the fact that I spent 6 hours today and even more yesterday emptying boxes, putting up blinds and trying to get my lawn properly watered.

So let me tell you that I've made a new friend named Charlene and that we meet at Archivers, about 35 miles from here once a week. That is way fun as it gets me completely away from the house and does allow me to work on the new baby book for Lil'U the little niece expected next month! As soon as I get the whole book done, I'll scan it, send it off to Hubby's sister, and her handsome, sweet and hugable husband and once they have it in hand, I'll upload it to my webshots gallery and let you all know. I will also be sharing the scrapbook I made for the first expected Lil'U which we thought would be a boy! I'm not sure what to do with that one, now that we know it's a girl rather than the shy boy we were expecting at first!

This week I signed up for 2 card making stamping classes at a stamping store in the area. The store is moving to Florence, KY and they will be in the new store when I go for the classes, August 12th. I've also signed up for a 3 part series of classes based on Tim Holtz style of work. I hope that these classes will stimulate me to use all those stamps I've been collecting for the last dozen or so years.

I did put in and received an order for the latest Slice cards, some of which I have to pack up and ship off to my friend Janie in Fl. I also ordered 12 of the Tim Holtz Ranger fillable pens for each of us. I filled and tried one yesterday afternoon, and it is awesome! The only things to remember are that they only need 3-5 drops on each side of the pen and that they must be stored horizontally for them to work well, not uncommon for markers! Here is another video with Tim showing us how to use the pens. The rage right now is for the Copic pens, but I already had the Ranger alcohol inks and after seeing Tim's video I realized that the Ranger fillable pens would be a much more economical option.

In the same vein of using my alcohol inks and also using my perfect pearl/mica powders, I also got some mini-misters. You can see what Tim is doing with his misters here. I got the mini mister holder, which will allow me to have them stored upright and close by. I can't wait to try this as I suspect that it will mimic the Tattered Anger mists at a much lower price since all I needed were the misters and the holder. As soon as I can sit down, I'll share my own projects with you! I can't wait to be all settled into my craft studio! There are so many ideas in my head!

Physio

I thought I would update my blog while sitting here in physio with the big ice pack on my shoulder! Physio is normally a 2 hour appointment 2 times a week. I have seen some progress with the tennis elbow but so far not so much with the rotator cuff. Still hurts like the blazes and makes unpacking and putting curtains up a bear.

Physio is done with me so that's it for now! Mote later!