Wordless Wednesday

Lazy, sleepy day!

Pay It Forward People!

A favorite blogger and twitter friend, Shauna from Lemon Drop Studio had a Pay It Forward challenge on her blog about a month ago. I was one of several lucky recipients of some Lovely Lemon Drop items. And I've been charged with Paying It Forward.



So here I am FINALLY doing it. (Illness has kept me from being more prompt on this and I apologize to Shauna for my lateness and hope she will forgive me!)

Basically as I understand it the whole thing works like this: you announce your challenge and specifics, interested people comment on your blog, you pick however many people you specified as your winners, those people then set up a challenge on their blog and the goodness is spread throughout the land!



Attention: This is not a comment and win thing. If you win, you have to Pay It Forward! It's not about winning free stuff it's about spreading joy. If you are not a crafty person, that's fine you can bake something, pass along some great books, send something great you don't use but someone else will love, etc.



O.k. so here's how I'm doing mine. I design personalized stationery, sticker, labels etc. My ebay store is closed right now so you won't be able to see the kinds of things I do so I thought I'd just at least give you a heads up on what you might get.



1. The first 3 people to comment are winners and if there are more than 3 I'll pick a 4th winner randomly out of the rest of the comments. Also if there is a really large amount of comments (kind of doubt that but well you never know) I'll pick a 5th person. So tell your friends and spread the word!



2. Once you win please post a Pay It Forward on your blog and let me know your link so I know you are being a wonderful person and then I'll mail your sassy stationery stuff to you. (Don't be all crazy, guilty and late like me!)



3. I'll announce the winners next Monday May 4th so everyone has time to comment. Enjoy!

I know I've been MIA for a while...

I haven't blogged very much or even twittered much lately. I was recently diagnosed with a serious medical condition. As I'm a very private person and still am trying to wrap my head around the whole concept of it all, I'm not going to talk too much about the specifics of it yet.


But I do feel the need to talk a bit about it for my own piece of mind.



Needless to say it will be changing my whole life for a while. Although I've been suffering from symptoms for 2 years now it only started really affecting my everyday life for the last 5 or 6 months. It all came to a head last month when my mom found me curled up in a ball sobbing from the pain and called an ambulance. Even then with all the tests they did, they didn't find anything but were kind enough to finally knock me out with 6 different pain medications. After 9 days of intense pain it was like a miracle. Unfortunately I'm stuck with thousands of dollars in medical bills that I cannot pay.



My previous doctor didn't understand the intense level of pain I was dealing with so I made the smart decision to switch to a new doctor. She was able to diagnose me right away. But (isn't there always a but going on somewhere?) I have some underlying health problems that need to be treated before I can get treatment for my condition. She was kind enough to give me pain meds that unfortunately just take the top sharp edges of the pain off, but something is better than nothing at this point.



Until I get treatment I'm kind of on hold with everything. I've been turning down custom jobs which were becoming a huge portion of my business. I've even closed my ebay store for a while because I just don't know if I'll be in any shape to finish projects. I'm doing one project that I committed to months ago for a special client's wedding and pray I'll get it done.



I feel really bad for my kids and my dog. Although the kids are teens and don't need constant care, they are having a rough time with the lack of routine and stability. We're always out of milk or eggs or toilet paper. Meals are whatever someone throws together. I can't walk the dog and she's such a mirror of my emotions that she's anxious and on edge too. My cat is the only one taking it in stride, he's just happy that I'm laying down and that he can snuggle with me.



With my business practically closed and nothing but my unreliable child support to limp us along I'm having to make some tough financial decisions and am desperately looking for someway to pay for my health care. If you don't know what it's like not to have health care in America you're very, very lucky and believe me it's utter hell.



Wow, I ended up saying so much more than I intended! I think I needed to get at least some of it out before I cracked. Thanks for bearing with me and I hope this wasn't too much of a downer for you. I'll have some happy, fun posts for you all soon!

I was the 100th Sale

I was lucky enough to be the 100th sale for thecupcakery on etsy. This wonderful seller has the cutest variety of fun items. I was so pleased to win and Cindy sent me such cute things!

The sale that won me these items was the pink deer keychain with the buttons at the lower right hand corner. This was made for me as a custom order with a pink deer and my choice of button colors. Right now I have my extra house key on it and I attach it to my dog's leash when we go walking. It's super light and since I have a small dog that's very important.

The items I won are a cute print of a felt cupcake (I love felt food-it's a crazy passion of mine!), yellow sunflower earrings, a polymer clay cupcake charm, a felt owl note card, a felt flower pin, a felt
broken heart with an all better band-aid pin, a little felt tooth and a little felt cupcake ornament.

Cindy's store is on hold right now because she in the early ill months of her pregnancy. But please stop by and sign up for a notice of when her shop will re-open and then later see for yourself all the fun goodies she has!

Happy Easter

I made this little pink bunny from a free pattern I found online. She's missing her tail in this pic but I ended up using a regular cotton ball which worked perfectly. I used some vintage buttons for her eyes. She has eyes only on one side because I didn't have one's that matched. But I think she's pretty sweet!