Guest Post at Craft Goodies

Edit- This Guest Blogging gig was set up a month ago.  Clearly life has been a little crazy since then. :)  For a Cad update scroll down.

Hi Folks!  Well, I am back from the Papertrey Convention in Cinci and all I can say is WOW!!!!  While I come back down from the stratosphere I have a couple fun field trips for you...

The first one is my Guest Blogger Tutorial over at Craft Goodies!  Wendy is on vacation with her family and while she is relaxing lots of us bloggy friends are doing our best to fill in for her. :)  After you (hopefully) hop over to my tut, give this project a girly twist and enter it over at Top Tip Tuesday!!!  We are hosting a "Make It Girly" challenge, so get out your pink, froo-froo, flowery goods and make it work people. :)

So do you have your walking shoes on?  Got a water bottle so you stay hydrated?  Ready to go?  Great!  I'll see you back here tomorrow. :) 
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Cad is home and I will admit that his recovery is tricky.  I am a little overwhelmed and emotional about the whole event, but I know it will get better.  We both saw some tail movement today and he was able to roll himself a little to a kinda sitting up position to see me.  There are so many amazing folks at Tufts!  We are going back to get out his stitches next week and I know there is a crew looking forward to seeing his progress.  I'll be so excited if we have some to show!

Hugs to all,

Cad on Sunday

Well Cad has made it to Ward A which is for less intense needs, so that is great.  He has a cage big enough to fit all of us, but we took turns since he still has lots of tube attached to him.  It took Tom a couple tries before he could get this shot 'cause Cad kept moving his head so much.  :)  The other vets in Ward A said he caused a fuss with a husky today.  Cad and the husky were talking trash to each other across the cages.  That's my mouthy pup.  He must be feeling better to be so fresh already.

Cad still can't walk, but he is beginning to move his legs more and we even got a tail wag just before we left!  That was a pretty big deal to both of us.  He has also acquired a red harness for carting him to and fro.  Doc says with the steady progress Cad is making he should be up and walking in a month.  He will likely be coming home before he is on all fours, maybe on Tuesday.  We are so grateful to be in a position to be able to have gotten Cad treatment like this. 

Maybe tomorrow I will even be crafty and post something more than a Cad update! :)  Hugs to all of you from Cad, Amy, Tom and Me!

Cad Update, 2 Bloggers & Thanks

We got to see Cad last night and he was AWAKE! :)  This was the best shot I took using my iPhone.  Poor guy, his tongue is swollen from the ventilator.  It hangs out of the side of his mouth and he ends up looking like a Chinese Crested competing for the Ugly Dog Contest.  Doc says that it will go away and in spite of the swelling he managed to get down a little wet kibble- man he doesn't miss a meal for nuttin'! That's the corgi we know and love. :)  He is breathing on his own now and can move his head a bit.  They tested his legs for feeling and he has feeling, he just needs to remember how to use his legs. 

We know he's him.  He got the excited shakes when he saw us and we used his important words like "dinner" "treat" "beach" and "walk" mixed in with other nonsense words.  He perked his ears as best he could each time he heard a word he knew. :)  He also wanted to bark at a vet who walked by wearing *gasp* something that jingled.  He HATES jingles.  The student vet who was with us even noticed Cad perk up and we told her why.  These seem to be good signs and we are keeping our fingers crossed for continued progress.

I was supposed to be at the PTI Stamp-a-Faire in Cincy today.  When I posted I couldn't go and asked for prayers for Cad two lovely ladies offered to get my goodie bag for me.  Folks who were strangers to me before Thursday night!  They are so sweet and I want to ask you all to stop by their blogs and give them some love.  Melissa and Suzanne are amazing ladies to do this mitzvah and as a bonus they are both uber talented too!

Tom and I cannot begin to tell everyone how much all the well wishes for Cad mean to us.  I've posted about this on various boards and FB and the outpouring of support continues to be a source of strength for us both.  May all this kindness be returned to all of you tenfold!!!! 

Asking for prayers

I'm not usually a sad news posting gal, but I need help.  We had to rush our corgi Cad to Tufts Emergency Hospital last night.  He had a ruptured cervical disc in his spine and lost all motor function in his legs.  Very early this morning he had to be put on a ventilator to help him breathe.  He has made it through the surgery and now we are waiting to see if he will be able to breathe on his own again.  If he can, he should be able to pull through all of this and regain the use of his legs.

Cad was my mom's dog for 6 years until her unexpected passing from a brain aneurysm and we have had the pleasure of his companionship for these past 6 years.  Needless to say, he means so much to us and we are a wreck.  I am begging for prayers, thoughts, good vibes, whatever you are comfortable sending our way.  I truly believe in the power of prayer/good vibes/positive thinking for others, any of these you could send our way will be so greatly appreciated.  I'll keep y'all posted on how Cad progresses...

How Does Your Garden Grow?

Ever find you have been so busy you don't have a chance t stop and smell the roses?  My DH and I have been so crazed these last couple of weeks that just this weekend we noticed that the back gardens look AMAZING!

We both thought "take pictures"!  All of the day-lilies are from my mother's house.  My DH and his dad helped me dig them all up when we sold her house.  It was quite an ordeal.  We had to tranlplant all my mom's plants at my in-laws until the following year because we knew we were going to move in November and the plants would never take if they went in the ground that late.

Our backyard gets sun the entire day, so in the few years we've lived in this house we've already split the day-liles once and will need to do it again next year.  It is lovely to have a bit of my mom here at our place.  The entire backyard was a blank slate when we moved and she would have loved what we did with it. :)

These lucky little gals were rescued from the bulldozer and have gone to town!  Looks like the bugs think they are tasty. :)  They were a little upset the first year they were planted, but geesh- they will need splitting next year too.

Hope these pics brought some cheer to you.  If you have some pics of your flowers, please let me know!  I adore "walking" through the gardens of the blogosphere. :)

No Squares Allowed

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Remember I mentioned that I wanted to use this palette for inspiration?  Well, I finally finished something and here it is!

It's Tuesday and at Top Tip Tuesday this week we've issued the challenge "No Squares".  As you know, I was in a games class all last week, so I made myself a banner-in-a-card to celebrate finishing the class. :)

While I was getting supplies for making some games, I came across a huge package of oval coasters that were just begging me to take them home. :)  They were so sweet, I just couldn't say no!

The papers are from October Afternoon Seaside set, the yellow polka dots are Amuse, kraft paper from who knows and PTI dies. 

It's not quite as big as the banner I made for Thanksgiving, but it is so summery I adore it anyway.  I also like the idea that this banner can have a cover that can be used as a card from too. :)  There are enough goods left to make another banner that says "celebrate" so it'll be a bit bigger. 

So come on over and join us at Top Tip Tuesday!

I've hung this banner at these fab parties:

Fussy and Fancy- Summer Theme

Dream Valley- Summer Theme

Kraft  Outlet- My Favorite Things (coaster projects are my newest fav!)

Games

I thought I'd share a couple fun games from my class last week.  I took a bunch of pictures at the show-and-tell, but I forgot to take any pictures of what I made!!  Oh well, that is a post for another time.

This one is a fun way to see how many words you can make using the word family in the star and the consonant cheat sheet.

A couple fun upper- and lower-case matching game.  It's amazing how many kids don't have this skill and how much they enjoy playing this game!

An easy to make and play rhyming game.  This is a very tricky skill for many kids these days.  We all had nursery rhymes as kids, but they just aren't as popular as they used to be.  Playing around with words and their sounds is such an important foundational skill for reading, well maybe it'll get popular again. :)  At any rate, I thought these might be fun to show and easy to make.  If I remember, I'll take pics of my games ( I made 12 finished ones and another 13 that need to be finished later).

Have a great Monday!  I'm off to visit my friends at The Cape, but no worries I have posts scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday while I am gone. :)

Sorry I have been AWOL

Where does the summer go?!?  I had all these plans to get some much crafty work done!!!  I have yet to set foot in my studio to clean the mess from the end of June (I just grab a couple things and walk out) and have posted exactly 3 things since the beginning of July.  Alas, I did get to travel to Quebec, my disgusting basement is significantly less disgusting after the massive clean out, and this week I finished the most awesome games making class.  Really I can't complain.

It was the most inspiring teacher class I have taken in quite a long time. :)  About 20 of us spent the entire week making educational games to use with our students and the instructor is the most creative gal!   Each day she gave one or two presentations (~1 1/2 hours) focusing in on games that could be created.  It was amazing and so overwhelming that the last two nights I had lots of dreams about making games.  LOL!  We had a giant show and tell at the end of class today so we could all see each other's creations.  My classmates are so talented!!!  I took so many pictures in hopes of lifting their ideas for my students too. :)

Here's a quick little mini notepad.  I'm also hoping to create a set of note cards to coordinate with this notepad.  I'm so exhausted after this class though, who knows. :)  We'll see how long it takes! LOL!

All Aboard!

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All aboard the Top Tip Tuesday Express!  Whoo-whoo!  This week we have "deck-the-sketch" kinda challenge, so you'll want to head over to see your choices, but don't go yet you haven't seen the whole card! :)

I went little boy birthday with my theme and used paper from BG on the new(ish) Memory Box card bases.  This August I'm (eeeek!!!) going to get to take another class from Dave at Memory Box and can't wait to tell him how much I'm crushing on these new card bases.  Ya know 'cause he created them just for me- as if!!!  LOL!

It's a double team tip week at TTT, so my team (Go Team Red!) got together with Team Blue to provide lots of inspiration and tips for ya'll.

I mentioned that I used BG and MB for my papers, here are the copics I used and the image is Choo Choo Charlie from Robin's Fetish (disclosure time-she gave everyone on the DT an image).  Charlie was my Grandpa Ah-boo's name and he loved trains, so this one really spoke to me!

Hope you find a sketch that speaks to you, ut the only way that can happen is if you chugga-chugga your way over to TTT and join the fun!  Let me know if you do!

Sentimental Sunday Studio Revisit

This post originally appeared at Top Tip Tuesday for our Spring Cleaning challenge and I added a follow-up post with more pictures later.  I thought it would be fun to revisit this post for Sunday Favorites over at Happy to Design and because my studio looks nothing like this right now.  Clearly some gremlin came in and tossed things about so that there are no clean surfaces. LOL!

Greetings Tippers! It's Moriah here (aka Fuzzy Slippers) and I've done some spring cleaning in my "crafty studio". My thinking is that I'll give you a tour and briefly show you how I organize my goodies. By no means do I think this is the only way to plan your space, but it seems to (mostly) work for me. :)

Welcome to my space! (Before we go any further, yes that is a Christmas tree in my studio. I put it up for the first time this year and I adore holiday lights so much I refuse to take it down. LOL!) I'm someone who needs to see what she has. Outta sight, outta mind for me, so I put all my embellies out in the open on those wooden bookshelves last spring. My hubby calls those shelves "The Store" because he says it looks like a display from my favorite shoppe.

Here's a slightly closer view of "The Store". I think in terms of color, so I organized everything in rainbow fashion. The top shelf is pink & red, then orange & yellow, 'n so on. The bottom boxes hold all my card bases and envies (yup they are rainbow sorted too! hee-hee). The tote is my "go bag" for classes. I got tired of packing and unpacking the tote, so now it's always packed and I use my tote to store my most used supplies. It sits at my feet right within hand reach for easy use.

This is a close up view of the "green section". It holds all the flowers, ribbons, glitter, dew drops, buttons, & some punched stuff (I'll come back to more storage for punched stuff in a bit.)

Don't feel like you have to go out a buy "stuff" to hold your "stuff". The bookshelves that everything is stored on I got at garage sales when I was in college. The basement was raided for old jars & vases to hold my flowers and ribbons. Then I looked at all the fun packages that products I buy come in and re-purposed what I could to hold smaller embellies like brads & rhinestones. My DSIL gave me a TON of Gerber baby food plastic containers and I usually use them for buttons, although I have soooo much pink stuff I had to use an old Mason jar for the pink buttons. :) I spent A LOT of time with my Gram as a kid. She was a big I-lived-through-the-Depression-I-don't toss-what-can-be-reused kinda gal and it rubbed off on me. LOL! Note: I don't stress to much about storing by company, but that can lead to trouble when I want to get more of something. Eeek!

This is the left side of my area. The ribbon board holds both the great cards friends have made as fun inspiration and horrid creations of mine to remind me what not to do. ;) The not so pretty cardboard boxes hold my chalk inks on the far side and my dye inks on the near side. (Any tips out there for a prettier version of these boxes???). The table was a $10 thrift store find and I use it to layout stuff and to cut using my Cuttlebug. My paper is in the 12X12 boxes below the tree and inks. I'm kinda a lazy crafter, so if I can't "wheel" or "pivot" from my chair to the product, I probably won't use what I have, so it's key to have it handy!

This is a quick peek at the shelving. It's designed to be cubes, but my husband I rigged them to hold these boxes with some cable ties.

The boxes are (say it with me) sorted by rainbow, so one box per color. I'm not good at remembering what I have, but when I put together a creation I think in color. If I have all the "pink paper" in the "pink box" then it's easier for me to find just the right pink paper to finish off the project at hand. Oh remember when I mentioned punches earlier? The zippy bag you see in this box holds punches made from die cutting or hand punches- occasionally I actually put my scraps away and the baggies keep the punched items from getting lost or ripped when I dig through for paper. LOL!

Bless your heart you are still reading my overly long post! My goodness I hope you are finding it helpful! This is my "cutting station". The hand punches are stored on towel rods and these are simple wooden ones that were on uber sale at a discount place nearby. So these were purchased, but not for much I promise. The cabinet was a "trash to treasure" find at the church Country Fair a couple years ago. It's a nice counter height for me AND it holds my rubba'.

Here's the inside of the "cutting station". I started buying Thickers to store my rubber stamps. They are easy to move around and you can see what you have in them. There are lots of preferences on how to store stamps category-wise. I tend to go by theme, like "flowers" or "baby". The baskets hold some cards that are "in progress", the green bin holds my various sized zippy bags, and the photo boxes hold my MFT and PTI clear stamp sets.

Holy cow you made it to the end of this post!!! I should have put some tricky bit of trivia in there and offered a prize for folks who made it all the way through. hee-hee! :)

I have way more pictures and idea, but goodness we could be here all day and you have a challenge to join! Like I mentioned at the start of this uber long post, my organizing is by no means the only way to go. I've blown and amazing amount of money on organizing books and magazines in the hopes of finding The Best way and have yet to do more than lose money. ;) The best advise I have gotten is this, -quoting Star Wars here- "use the force". What does that mean? Sit in your space and think about what would make it easier for you to use and then think about the cheapest way you can make whatever "it" is happen. It probably won't happen overnight. Trust me, my space is always a work in progress, so chip away a section at a time. If you try something and it isn't the right fit, it's okay to chuck that idea and start over. :)

So you ready to share your organizing tips and/or your Spring Has Sprung creations? Goody, goody! I can't wait to see what you've got!!!

A Royal Visit and Happy Birthday

Well I am finally back from Quebec City and I can say it is the most beautiful city I have seen in North America.  You hear folks say that it is like going to Europe and I am here to say THEY SPEAK TRUTH! :)

It is an amazingly beautiful place and I hope to get some pics posted soon.  In the meantime, I got to see the Royal Couple.  Woo-woo!  We didn't plan it or anything (we totally pulled a Savannah on that one). We waited for about an hour in ridiculous heat (it really is the humidity that gets ya') and were rewarded with this...

This picture doesn't really do the experience (or my true view) justice.  Tom was assigned picture taker 'cause he was taller than everyone, but objects in photo are smaller than they appear.  We actually got to see their hands and arms and they were way closer to us.  :)  The whole experience was truly fun.  The crowd was chatty and we exchanged info about Quebec City and lots of other places since nobody in the group was even from Quebec!  PA, ME, VT and various other places in Canada.

July is a big birthday month in my family, so I'm just going to shout out Happy B-day to all right now. :)  I know me, I'm gonna be belated with some of them and well I was in the mood for a birthday card post.  LOL!

I've got my card and am blowing out candles here:
Penny's Paper Challenge- Happy Birthday
Crafts and Me Challenges- Favorites
Oldie But Goodie- Anything Goes

Hope you have a royally relaxing and enjoyable Friday!

You Lean & I'll Lean

Quick little post today, as I should be packing for our Anniversary trip! :D  We're headed to Quebec City tomorow for our first visit to New Paris.  Maybe we'll get to see Wills and Kate too. :)  Happy Canada Day to all my Canadian friends!!!

My DH and I are celebrating 10 married years together this July 4th (17 if you count the dating years)!  This sentiment seems apropos of our observance. :)

The black 'n white striped paper was an old one I had that I stamped some orange butterflies and green leafy vines to spice it up and make my own DP.  I got the idea from my uber creative friend Angela.  She taught a bunch of us how to make better use of all our paper that we're "just not that into" anymore a wee bit ago.  The striped-with-more paper is my creative version from when I experimented at home. :)

I've planted the seeds for this card here:
Shabby Tea Room- My Favorite Things (my version of the DP)
My Mum's Craft Shop- Something Old, Something New (the paper was old, but I made it new)
Stampin' for the Weekend- My Favorite Things (my version of the DP)
Truly Scrumptious- Things with wings (the butterfly stick pin)