MIA...

You may have been wondering where I've been. Well the last couple of days I've been in the hospital. I suffer from bipolar disorder and have been dealing with severe depression for quite some time now. It got really bad last week and on Sunday, after talking to my mom and my family dr. we thought it was best for me to spend some time in the hospital.

I'm not very happy with psychiatrist lately, so we've decided to try to get me a new one. We've also decided to do some changes with my medications and whatever else we can think of that could turn this all around for me. Unforetunately this is not an exact science so it's a lot of try this, try that...see if this will work, or that will work. The big bummer is that most meds take 3-6 weeks to start working. And before we can start me on new meds we have to get me off the old meds, and you are supposed to gradually go off those meds, so that could take a month or two....unless you do it in the hospital where they can do it alot faster since they can watch you to make sure you don't have seizures, heart problems or any other such fun stuff!

So chances are I will be spending at least a few more days in the hospital if not more. Hopefully though after all is said and done, I will finally start to feel better...for more than a week or two at a time.

So if you don't hear from me for a few days it's because I don't have internet in the hospital, but I will try to keep you all posted as much as possible, and as soon as I'm feeling better I'll be back to creating soon I hope!

Side three is done...

Well, after taking a couple days off, today I got back to work on the memory box, and just as I had hoped the end did go alot faster than the sides had! So I am now done 3 sides and only have 1 side and the lid left, so I am over half done and now looking down the home stretch....WOOHOO!! And I must admit, I am really happy with how this is all turning out!!

The weather around here has been rainy, snowy and just plain yucky this week, so it has been conducive to hanging out inside and getting some scrapping/creative work done, but yesterday I had a sick little girl, so that was NOT conducive to actually getting ANYTHING done!! lol

I might see if I can get started on the other end tonight, but we'll just see how that goes. I might also take a little break from this and do a few cards. Not sure. I know I probably won't get much done tomorrow, cause I have to go into the city and do something I dread....shop for clothes...blah! :( One of my best friends is getting married this summer so I need to go get a dress to wear and tomorrow is the day, but whatever I get done in the next day or two, I definately plan on having this all completed by the end of next week for sure!!

Although it's been a totally new kind of project for me, and it has definately made me use my brain a time or two ;), I have actually really enjoyed working on this. One of the reasons is that it's a boys project and I don't get to do boy things very often, so they are always more of a challenge for me, but also the different shape, the fact that it is a 3d project and then doing 5 seperate LO's, that are different but still co-herent. All and all it's been alot of fun!

I will post more again when I have more completed. Hope you all have a wonderful weekend!!

Side Two is done...

Although it took the better part of the day, I managed to get the front of the memory box finished! Woohoo....two sides done, 3 to go (well 2 sides and the lid)! I figure since the ends are smaller they should go faster than the front and back did, but you never know how creativity and inspiration will work sometimes. So anyways, here's a picture of the front...

Mercedes has already decided that as soon as I finish this project that she wants me to make her a memory box too. In fact last night she even found a box that we can use. I'm kinda hoping that she forgets about it for a little while cause I'm pretty sure that when I'm finished this I'll want a break from this kinda project for a bit, but I have a feeling that more memory boxes are definately in my future. Oh well, I do think it's a cool idea, and I am happy with how this one is turning out...of course, I wouldn't consider it finished until I was happy with it!

I'll post more later when I get more done on it. :)

Memory box - First side is done....

Today was pretty productive, considering that I slept in until noon! I've had nothing but this memory box on my mind, so I started working on it almost as soon as I got up and although it looked like this, this morning...

I am proud to say that it looks like this... tonight!

It is tipped up it's side, and it's not the best picture, but you get the idea. The flowers and butterflies are all Tim Holtz grungeboard that I painted with acrylic paint in the colors that is in the Fancy Pants paper that will be used on some of the other sides. The cardstock is Core'dinations & I used Distress inks to ink the paper & photos. The brads are Recollections Antique Copper. I used Mod Podge as my mail adhesive for everything except the photos which I attached with Elmer's glue stick. I think that's about everything!

Now that I've actually gotten started I'm hoping that the rest will flow smoothly and this won't take too long. I just need the uninterupted time to be able get the work done and hopefully now that I have the house back to just me & Mercedes I will be able to get my alone time again!

Happy long weekend...

It's been a busy week, so I'm sorry that I haven't been posting, but I've been trying to catch up on everything that fell behind while I was sick. And then on Thursday evening Brad came for his first visit since he's moved to Edmonton. Mercedes is thrilled that he's here and I've enjoyed a little break from single parenthood for a few days. He will be going back home tomorrow, so we've tried to pack as much into the four days that he's here as we can.

He showed up with a cooler full of a bunch of our favorite foods that we can't find down here and then spent the whole evening playing with Mercedes. Friday we went to Lethbridge and did some shopping and then we went to dinner at the Keg and still got home in time spend most of the evening with Mercedes. Yesterday we just hung around the house, and he helped me sand and seal the wooden memory box that I am starting to work on. Then last night we watched Avatar on Blu-Ray...WOW! Considering that we didn't see it in the theater, high def, was definately the way to go, and we all really enjoyed the movie. Today, I got to sleep in until noon, and then Brad and Mercedes wanted to go fishing so I tagged along and took some pics and then just hung out and watched them for a couple hours.

So I have a few pics to show off...

This is the scenery I see everytime I am coming home from the city....I just love coming home, cause I LOVE this view...I love my mountains!!!
This is a pic that I took while Brad & Mercedes were fishing. The big mountain in the middle is Chief Mountain and it looks over our town, but I loved the way it looked today with the clouds and the snow.

Here's a pic of Brad & Mercedes during the time they were fishing....it was really cold & windy so they would set up their rods and then come sit in the car to warm up, so I managed to catch this pic just as she hugged him to thank him for helping her get her rod set up. I thought it was a great pic of my little girl with her daddy.

Tnis is a wooden box that I've been hired to decorate. She wants LO's done on each side & the top and then she is giving it to her son to use as a Memory box and every year he can go through all his projects and pick his favorites to save and he can store them in this box. This is a totally new kind of project for me. I've altered boxes before, but on a much smaller scale and usually just with paper & embellishments, not usually with pictures and doing layout type things. So this is the box that Brad helped me sand & seal yesterday and I was grateful for the help, and I've pretty much finished all the pre-planning and gathered all the supplies, so now I just need to sit down and get started on the actual creating. I'm just a little stuck on which side to start with! lol

But I wanted to post the before pics and I will take pics along the way and definately post after pics since I could not find any pictures of something like this when I was looking for ideas, but I do think it was a neat idea, although I can't take credit for it, it was my cousin's idea...she just hired me to actually do it! Wish me luck!!

This is just a pic from the front. It doesn't matter that it's so scarred and beaten up since it will all be covered with paper & pics by the time I'm done!

I've decided that I'm going to be giving some of the graduates that I know this year some packages of thank you cards to use for either gifts they recieve or to give to some special teachers, so I've been working on thank you cards and congratulations cards for the actual graduates themselves. So that's what these cards are all for...

The paper is all K&Co and the stamps are all Close to My Heart. Ink is Distress Inks and the pattern for these first 2 cards is from the book Wishes from CTMH. While the pattern from the last 2 cards is one of my own patterns using Spellbinder's Nestibilities Label's Thirteen.

Gift tag I made using the scraps left over from the above two cards & a wooden heart sprayed with a couple different colors of glimmer mist.

Busy last night...

I've been starting to feel better the last couple days, so last night I actually got alot accomplished. Here are the cards that I made...

Sorry that it's been so long....

I know it's been over a week since my last post, but I've been busy using all my energy trying to fight this severe depression I've been dealing with. However, I'm happy to say that today, for the first time in weeks, I actually feel some hope that maybe, just maybe I am starting to feel better! Here's hoping, cause I've desperately missed feeling like a real human, and I really miss my creativity and enjoying using it!

So today I did manage to get a few cards made, which is good cause I've had some customer's come by lately and my supply is starting to need replenishing, so I need to get my butt in gear and get my selection built up. Plus I will be starting a new project within the next few days...I have a customer that has hired me to decorate a memory box for her son. This is a totally new thing for me, so it will be a bit of a challenge, but I think it will be fun to do something new and I like the idea of what she wants me to do. And don't worry I will post pics as I'm working on it!

And now here's the pics I have for today...
First a fun pic of my soapy princess in the tub tonight...she was just being silly and insisted on me taking her picture to prove that she really did scrub her WHOLE self clean! lol
I made a couple of these cards, since I'm hoping to use them for graduation cards.

A couple baby cards...don't ya just love that little elephant....I just think he is so cute!

Just a basic card using paper & stamps from Close to my Heart.

Still depressed, so here's just a few pics...

Well, it's been another rough week. My brother's birthday was on Wednesday and we did get together and try to celebrate it, but it was just all too obvious that he wasn't there and will never celebrate another birthday again. And he had way too many birthday's left that he should have celebrated.

But enough about that. I did manage to get a couple things done this week, although it did feel like I was forcing myself to do it, rather than actually enjoying it, but I forced myself in the hopes that something might make me feel better.

I hope this depression lifts soon or I'm not sure what to do. I am on new medication and I do have to give it time to work, but patience is NOT one of my virtues so this is a big challenge.

I did get a little mini album made using the pics of Mercedes that I took last weekend, so here it is, although I did upload it backwards. Please just bear with me.

So this is actually the back cover

Some cards I've made over the last couple weeks and finally managed to take some pics...

Photo Shoot

Depression steals my creativity...

along with my energy, motivation and general desire to do anything or be anything other than a pile of useless cells, wasting skin, taking up space on my couch, watching the minutes tick by.

And that pretty much describes what I've been doing for the last couple weeks, give or take a few minutes here and there.

Were it not for my sister, my daughter would not have been fed and cared for. And were it not for my mom, I would not have been fed and cared for, since there were literally some days that I did not even have the energy to make myself something to eat.

Thankfully on Friday I felt a teeny bit better, and had Mercedes come home and over the last couple days, I've slowly felt the desire to participate in life return at least in some form.

So I'm sorry that I haven't written much lately, but I had pulled into my shell and that was where I stayed until a couple days ago, and I am just now slowly starting to poke my head out.

So, not much more to say, just a bunch of pics of the things that keep me going.

First and Foremost, my Princess...when all else fails, she will always keep me going...we did a little photo shoot yesterday with some roses that she got from her daddy. We got a bunch of pics that I love. Here's just one of them....

This was just me fooling around with my camera and I was really happy with how this pic turned out, so I wanted to share it with you! Isn't this rose gorgeous! This is my favorite color of roses!

This was just a quickie gift tag.

The card is 3 1/2x8 and I made the envelope too.

Another 3 1/2 x 8

One of the hardest things for me when I'm depressed is going out, so it was tough to make it out to Mercedes choir concert, but it was worth it when she got this look on her face when she saw me in the audience!

Here she is singing her little heart out!

Another choir pic!