Update on Hubby

We saw hubby's oncologist today and he went over the CAT scan with us again. It was much worse than we realized and we thought it was pretty bad the first time on the phone! But then he gave us some different options. One being the option that hubby wanted and that is to go down to Baltimore to Johns Hopkins to see a colon cancer specialist. We go on Monday!! The staff and nurses in at hubby's oncologist are so awesome. They came out to hug us, to pray with us and to just give moral support and to let us know that they weren't giving up. It was so emotional for me and I think even for hubby. The little girl that does the appointment set ups and medical records gathering was awesome as well. I can't believe she got us in on Monday. But Monday afternoon it is. Hubby and I are excited about meeting the new doctor. We have already looked at her picture on the hospital's site and read about her. She sounds amazing. The next thing, which we are taking as a sign from God, is that it was raining this afternoon and just a bit ago a bright rainbow came out right in front of our house, it was like it was for us! Like God didn't want us to miss it and we didn't! So we are both renewed with hope in this next journey. We will see how it all plays out and I will be taking you guys along with us whatever the outcome. So until next the next update....Have a Happy Blessed Easter Everyone!! And thanks so much for all your support, cards and prayers, they have really helped keep our spirits up through all this!!! Crafty hugs, Brenda

NUBUS and Rudy Day Challenges

Hello and yes I'm back again. lol I had some cards made for Rudolph Day and for Darnell's NBUS challenge and I have just been sitting on them for about a week now. Don't ask me why,  just not been in the groove at all. Anyway, I made 2 each of the skate's and mitten's cards. I used My Creative Stitched Oval dies, the skates and mittens are also from MCT and the poinsettia's are a die from Simon Says. Sentiments and pine is from MCT stamps. I like how cute and simple these cards are and I love that I added 4 more cards to my Christmas card stash. Yay for me! The NBUS was the oval dies as well as the mittens, skates and poinsettia dies. 

These two cards I made last month, but because the month was short I didn't get them in to play along with Rudy day, so I'm showing them here.  I think I used the Cricut cart Simple Holiday Cards to make this one. I kept my pieces and made another card just like it only in reverse. I think it made such pretty, simple cards for my Christmas stash. 

Since I used some snippets on my first two cards (for the skates, mittens and poinsettia) I'm going to go over the pond to play at the Playground.  I haven't been there in quiet a while so I'm looking forward to playing along. Of course I will also link up with Darnell's NBUS challenge to use your never been used schtuff, which I'm so sad to say I have a lot of! And last but not least I'm playing along with Rudolph Day. Thanks everyone and thanks for taking time from your day to visit me. Your comments always make my day brighter! Crafty hugs, Brenda

It's all about the Bunnies

Hello my crafty friends! So last night I was going to play along with my design team sister's for the BBTB2 challenge where we were supposed to use a bunny on our project. Well I got my card done, but never got it loaded up before the time frame. So I'm just sharing it here. I used Simple Holiday Cards to cut my card, I sized it in Cricut Design Space and then cut it on my Cricut Explore. I used some flower punches to make some flowers for on the card and I used homemade enamel dots and liquid pearls for the centers. The bow was cut from the Cricut cartridge, Something to Celebrate and the butterfly was die cut and stamped using My Creative butterfly dies and stamps. I added some pearls and a gem on the bow and called it done. Simple, but love the way it came out. I hope you all will go over to BBTB2 and check out the inspiration my design team sisters have for you and then join in on the challenge. Crafty hugs, Brenda

What's Up Doc?

Hello crafty friends, I hope you are having an awesome hump day. Can you believe Easter is right around the corner? So I decided I needed to get with it and make some little bunny containers for family. This one is a cute one! I got the file from SVG Cuts which has a lot of files in this one kit to make (with 3 containers and a couple of cards) and I'm looking forward to making the rest. But for now we will focus on this cute bunny container. It is a good size and will hold a lot of candy. I cut it out on my Explore and once I had it together I made a tag using the scallop tag punch from SU. I stamped my sentiments using Mary's Cardz TV stamp sets Mixed Messages, which is a new stamp set and Easter Punnies. I love how this turned out, it was easy to put together and didn't take long either. I will be putting candy in it to give out to our family members. Mary's Cardz TV Stamps made it so easy to make a cute tag for this cute bunny to give as an Easter gift. I will simply sign the back of the tag before giving the bunny out. I hope you get a chance to make something cute to give out for Easter! Make sure to visit Cardz TV Stamps to get your stamps, they are always perfect for that project on your list.

 the bunny's head comes off 

 spacious interior-will hold a lot of candy

Die Class Projects

Hello crafty friends. Happy 1st day of spring to you all. Mother nature has decided to pull a bad joke on us by giving us about 4 inches of snow. Good thing is that it isn't laying on the roads and the sun is strong so it will melt quickly this time of year. Hubby and I are looking into other options for treatments for him. I hope whatever we find works well for him.

So in order to keep my mind a little busy I took the online class called Stretch Your Dies. This is the first time I've ever took an online class before and I am enjoying it. Of course I'm behind in all my homework. Some days it is just hard to get my mood up for getting crafty. But I did do day 1's homework. My first card is using your dies to do an inlaid design. The second card is done using craft foam to die cut out your word dies and images, then you heat the foam with your heat gun to shrink the foam. I never knew you could shrink craft foam! This fascinated me. I used the original size of the die in white to make my background look like it was embossed. Then I cut my flowers, leaves and word die again out of white craft foam. I used my Spectrum Noir markers to color the flowers, leaves and word die. Then I took my heat gun to it shrinking them. The heat make the flowers curl some, so they have some great dimension to them. And look at how much the "thanks" shrunk, amazing to me! And my last card I tried the smooshing watercolor technique by placing distress ink on my stamping block and spritzing it with water, then stamping it on the paper. I dried it with my heat gun and then took my word die and cut it out of the paper with part of it on the watercolor and part off the watercolor. Then I popped it up using more foam so that it stand up from the base layer, but still matches perfectly to the space. Hopefully I will get to day 2's class homework soon. I hope you have enjoyed seeing my simple cards today. As always want to thank you for your sweet comments. I also want to thank everyone for keep us in your prayers. Your support is amazing and even though I won't be here as much as I have been, I will be back from time to time. Thanks for not forgetting about me. And thank you for all your support and prayers, it is amazing how tight knit of a community it is in the crafty world and what amazing friends you all have been to me!! Thank you doesn't seem like it pays the bill....but please know I so appreciate you all! Crafty hugs, Brenda

Taking a Break

Hello all my crafty friends!  I'm sad to tell you that we got bad news on hubby's scan. His cancer is progressing and there isn't much other options for him. So those $10,000 a month pills did work for him. We will talk to the doctor at the end of the month to see what is next steps are. We are not giving up though. But since I don't know what the future will hold, I have quit my DT's and I won't be crafting or making cards much. So it might not be very active here as I just feel I need to be with my beloved husband. Please keep him in your prayers,there still could be a miracle and if we don't get that miracle pray for me that I will have the strength to get through all this. You are all wonderful and I love this crafting community. I can't believe all the friends that I have made through crafting and card making. I thank you ahead of time for all your prayers. I know you are probably thinking that we are to young, and you would be right. Hubby is only 52 and I am 55. Much to young to lose my husband, and God willing, I hope I don't. But I have to be honest too, because it isn't looking good at all. Please pray for our son's too. The older boys will get through this, it is our youngest who is very close with his dad that I worry about. Hopefully I will see you again soon here. 
Crafty hugs, Brenda

Hello Crafty friends, I hope you are having a great hump day! Hubby's CAT scan was a wild one yesterday! First off he has to drink that chalky drink because they use the dye on him. Secondly, he got back there and the technician hooks up his IV, turns around to work on something else and when she turned back to him there was his blood all over the floor! The tubing had a crack in it letting the blood pool to the floor. Thirdly, while having his arms up and over his head, his face turned very red, which scared the technician so she called the doctor in. Hubby thinks that he just pinched off an artery or something like that. Anyway the doctor looked over him and let him go. I was waiting in the waiting room wondering what was taking so long. Well I found out when the technician walked him back out. She explain to me what had happened and then was going back to scrub up the blood. So glad she turned back around and they didn't drain his blood out of him!!!  Now we will wait to see what the scan shows.

It is my turn to post over at Cardz TV Gallery today. I recently had a SU party and I wanted a little thank you gift to place in the bags of my orders. So I made these cute bunny boxes on my Explore. I found it on the CTHM Artiste cartridge. I cut them at 7 inches, and I put 3 pieces of candy in them, a mint and 2 Hershey Kisses. On the spring color ones, I just stamped my "thanks" directly on the box, but for the white and black ones that wouldn't work, so I cut a tag out and placed my thanks on it instead. Aren't they dear?! The Cardz TV stamp set that I used was Heartfelt Wishes. I used the "many thanks" sentiment and just cut the "many" off. I can still put the stamp back together to stamp the whole sentiment if I so choose to. 

My next project is some boxes for Easter for my Grandchildren, still have to make another yet. I used my Explore once again with some Lori Whitlock files. My first time cutting SVG files and I have to say that I am loving using other files too! For these cute boxes, I used the CardzTV stamp set Easter Punnies, Birds and Bees and Easter Blessings. I stamped on a top note styled tag and placed it on the back of the boxes where I will sign "love papaw and grandma". These little boxes are just adorable and I will be filling them with some candy.

Thanks for take time out of your day to visit my little ole blog. I certainly love having you come by and your comments always make my day. Crafty hugs, Brenda

Think Spring! BBTB2 Challenge

Hello crafty friends, it is a busy Monday here. Taking MIL to see the radiologist to get her radiation treatments set up. She will be going everyday for 5 weeks and I will taking her. Hubby has a CAT scan this afternoon as his cancer marker keeps going up, so now doc wants to see what is going on. I don't understand how he can feel so good when the marker is going up. I sure hope that the CAT scan doesn't show the cancer is growing. This journey is still so stressful and now MIL has been added to the mix with her cancer. I swear they are going to put me in the grave. lol Yes, I'm being over dramatic, but it stressful for me.

Anyway on to why we are here for today. It is Monday as you all know that when Monday's roll around it's time for a new challenge over at BBTB2. My sweet friend and BBTB2 leader Susan has issued our challenge this week and she has chosen for us all to use a birdcage on our project. Not really sure how I wanted to go with this challenge at first, but then I got to playing around on the Explore design studio and just came up with my card. I welded a square doily from Mother's Day cartridge onto a square adjusting my sizing to make it the size of an A2 card base and cut it out in pink. I layer chocolate card stock behind the doily. Then I cut a birdcage out that I like, it came from the French Manor cartridge. I layered the birdcage onto a SB oval mat. Then I dressed up the doily and birdcage with punched out flowers using little Studio G punches-love these for when you want some tiny punched shapes. Then I added some liquid pearls to my flowers as well as added a MCT die cut butterfly to the cage. And lastly punched the word window shape from SU to place my sentiment on. My sentiments came from a Cardz TV Stamp set. I also finished off the inside of my card with another SB oval, some more of the punched flowers and my sentiment. 

I hope you will go over to BBTB2 to see what inspiration my DT sisters have for you and then I hope you will cut a Cricut birdcage to put on your project and link up with us. You know we love it when you get crafty with us!

As always, thank you so much for dropping by today. Your visits always mean so much to me and your comments really make my day! Crafty hugs, Brenda

 close up

Hello Beautiful!

Hello my crafty friends, I hope you all are having a lovely Sunday afternoon. It is beautiful here, so sunny and actually pretty nice out. Hubby and I took a 4 wheeler ride around the farm land in the snow. Very wet snow, so it was flying all over me. lol Very wet under the snow from all the rain we got before the snow came. It is going to have a lot of drying to do before any crops will be able to go in the ground. And that depends on how much wetter it gets with the April showers. Keeping my fingers crossed that hubby will be able to get the crops in the ground in a decent time frame. We will see how March and April play out.

Well I got a little crafty today taking care of some DT projects. I also was kinda' challenged by Michele over at I Card Everyone to enter the Muse Challenge. Well more like she talked me into it. lol So the Muse over at Muse Challenge is Vickie Dutcher and we are to use her card for inspiration. Well, I'm not great with putting together pattern papers at all. But thought I would give it a go since Michele wanted me to play along. The inspiration I got from Vickie's card was not to use pattern paper but to use washi tape instead! I hope I'm not illegal and still will qualify to play along. I took some washi that came together in a box, so I figured they had to go together, right? I loved the colors a lot, so I began. I took a scrap piece of paper and started adding the washi tape. The flowery blue tape, I put on twice to make it wider on the panel at the bottom of the card. Then I just keep adding the washi. When I thought I had enough on the bottom, I started on the top. Then I cut it apart and popped each panel up on my card. I used a MCT stamp and die for my Hello Beautiful. I practiced stamping on the washi tape and did great, but when I did it on the card I rocked my stamp some, bummer-but I didn't think I warranted peeling off the tape and starting over, so I left it. I added some black sequins like Vickie did and it was finished. I am pretty happy overall with this card. I think it is beautiful and I don't often say that about anything I make. lol 

Vickie's Amazing Card:

As always thanks for popping by to visit me, I love it when you do! Your comments sure make my day as well. Crafty hugs, Brenda

What's old is new again!

Hello crafty friends, I hope you had a wonderful weekend. We woke up on Sunday to it snowing. Then it turned to freezing rain in the later afternoon. I am so over winter, and I think we all are. So why isn't winter leaving yet?! Since it came in like a lion, I am hoping that it goes out like a lamb. lol Enough about the weather, it already gets to much attention!

Well since today is Monday, you all know that means it is time for a new challenge over at BBTB2. My sweet design team sister, Emily, has chosen our theme this week. And she has told us that it is National Old Stuff Day. Who knew?! So in honor of that we are to use a Cricut cartridge we haven't use in at least 6 months. Well I haven't used a lot of mine in 6 months because I have fallen in love the the CTMH Cricut carts and use them a good bit. But I did go through and used a cartridge that I first go when I got my Cricut and that is Beyond Birthdays. I also use Solar System digi for my world. 

I used my Explore to layout my window card base on, which is from Beyond Birthdays. I then wasn't sure where I was going to go with it, and then saw the Peace on Earth cut on BB, so I then decided to make it a Christmas card. Then I saw the dove with the olive branch, and thought that went well with the Peace on Earth. So I laid two out. Then of course I needed an earth, and I found that in Solar System digital images. I used dark blue cardstock for my base. I used all snippets for my card except for the card base. The blue for the ocean on my world was a cloud looking paper, but I thought it worked well for on the earth. The land is green foil paper. The "peace" shadow is some left over from the blue card base and the "peace" on top is cut from silver foil paper. The doves are just from white cardstock and the olive branches are cut from the same green foil paper as the world land. I just added a simple Merry Christmas to the inside and called it done. Not my most favorite card, but I loved the idea behind it. lol Want more inspiration? Then look no farther than my DT sisters, they have some fabulous projects for you today!! After you are done being inspired, make a project using a cartridge that you haven't used in a long time! Then link up with us.

As always I want to take a minute to thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to stop by and visit me. I so appreciate your sweet comments. You always make my day and I always enjoy your visits! Crafty hugs, Brenda