Ramona---Zombie Dog Extraordinaire

This is the last pic I took of Ramona and one of the best.

**This blog post was actually written 8-31-10 and never published. Sadly, Ramona, zombie dog extraordinaire, had to be put to sleep just 4 short months later on 12-30-10 due to worsening health and being unable to use her back legs any longer. We miss her terribly, stenches and all. After re-reading the post though, I didn't have the heart NOT to publish it because it made me smile to read it again. Love you Mona!!

Our dog Ramona, has just a few health issues at her ripe old age of fourteen years. She is missing quite a few teeth from her years of misadventures with her dental health. She has the sugar-beetis and gets insulin twice a day. She has a narrow trachea that makes it difficult to breathe when she gets too excited (when you're a million years old...peeing can be exciting) This makes her snore like a freight train even when she's just "cat-napping", grunt when she's walking, and makes eating so taxing that she now sometimes lays in front of the dish to feed her piehole. In addition to her 2 daily shots, she gets a total of 4 pills. BUT WAIT!! If you call in the next 90 seconds, we'll throw in a quart of noxious dog gas that could make even the most heinous beg for mercy.

After taking all of this into consideration, my husband has decided that she is part zombie. Parts of her have died and the rest of her body just hasn't received the message yet. The first really dead part of her has been determined to be her underbelly. It is hairless and pinkish-grey. It has lumps, bumps, anomalies, scabs, dry skin that peels off in large sheets, superfluous nipples that have grown in since we got her....it's just gross. No doubt about it, it has died at some point along the way.

We also have a new call for her...not the regular whistle or tongue click...we just moan "BRAAAAAINS". She always comes a-runnin'. (Well, not really. She's all but deaf and has cataracts and can't see for shit.) Despite all these seemingly terrible things, we love her to death and would hate for anything truly terrible to happen to her.

iPod Randomness

I won't claim this post was my idea. One of my fellow twitterers @karlerickson of Secondhand Karl posted it on his blog and I liked it so much I decided it had to be on my blog too. But I was at least nice and asked if it was okay before I stole it because I am unoriginal and uninspired at the moment. So anyway...here's the deal. I open my iPod list, hit shuffle and tell you my 1st 20 random songs that come up. Keep in mind that while I have edited my playlist, my husband added most of the songs to begin with because I am technologically challenged and generally lazy. I swear to God if Fleetwood Mac's 'Tusk' comes up in these 20 random songs, I will puke. I hate it. Jeff loaded it. I have unchecked it in my iTunes list, deleted it, had a Catholic priest come exorcise it from my iPod to no avail. It is evil. It keeps coming back!!! (I am also editing out all the lullaby music I added for the baybee because it does not represent my musical choices although it does rock the casbah because we're cool parents and don't pick no sissy lullabies!)

1. I Gave You All-Mumford & Sons (my new fave obsession)
2. Long Way Down-Guster
3. Other Side of the World-KT Tunstall
4. Modern Love-David Bowie
5. Assassin-Muse
6. Around the Way Girl-LL Cool J
7. First Love-Adele
8. Cosmic Girl-Jamiroquai
9. A Day in the Life-The Beatles (Love soundtrack...awesome show. Go see it!)
10. Tired-Adele
11. Unnatural Selection-Muse
12. Take a Walk-Edie Brickell
13. Viva La Vida-Coldplay
14. Life in Technicolor-Coldplay
15. I Am the Walrus-The Beatles (Love soundtrack)
16. The Story-Zee Avi
17. Hunter-Dido
18. Come Downstairs and Say Hello-Guster
19. We Never Change-Coldplay
20. Saturday-Josh Rouse

Bonus Track: Give it Away-Red Hot Chili Peppers

In conclusion, it looks like I have a very unoriginal taste based on this list, but my iPod shuffler is a dirty whore and likes to play the same artist incessantly. Don't judge me!!

Cole at 7 Weeks

Not really sure what this face is all about, but it's funny!

Tomorrow will mark 7 weeks since we became parents in whirlwind fashion. Cole will be 8 weeks old on Monday. Last night, for the first time, he slept from 9pm-6am with a feeding at 2am. It was pure bliss! I also hope it's a sneak preview of good things to come.Cole's "Old Pappy" Great Grandfather Rosenwald with me and Cole in his James Dean outfit.

Most people have 9 months to prepare. We had 2 1/2 hours. Combine that with a baby who was less than happy for his 1st 6 weeks and things were difficult to accomplish. But with Cole's new-found fondness of napping, I finally feel like I have been able to accomplish some things around the house. I unpacked the last bag of donated baby items given to us by friends this morning. I still have a couple "piles" of things that are too advanced for Cole to use yet that I need to find homes for until they are needed, but everything else is finally put away.Cole looking all "cool dude" in his bucket hat and shades. Our first walk outside.

My favorite part now is that he likes to play. He can spend minutes (literally minutes!!) staring at his brightly colored toys dangling above him, kicking his legs and punching the air with wild abandon. He also has started smiling more. He smiles when we talk to him. He smiles when he gets picked up after a nap. He even smiles when we make hilariously funny jokes (not really, but he IS gifted!)Cole's big bro, Charlie Murphy, guards his little brother closely during naptime.

He is the cutest baby we could have wished for. As I thought about writing this post, I wondered how I would ever decide just which pictures to include in the post. Then I decided I would have to just choose a number and pick my favorite to fill the quota to keep it from being ridiculously filled with adorable baby pictures. So here are my top 5 pics of Cole in recent weeks....enjoy the cuteness!

Come on, who can resist this pitiful little face?

Cole's Arrival Story

I mainly use this blog space to blog about my Etsy business and my craftiness with occasional personal entries interjected. (although I've been a terrible blogger over the past year!) So many of you don't know about our struggles with infertility. It just seemed a very emotional and private part of our lives that I didn't feel ready to share with the world. I'll spare everyone the details unless there is someone out there that has a burning desire to know the specifics. I'll just say that we tried to conceive by not preventing pregnancy since 2004, casually sought answers in 2006-2008, got tired of it and took a break for a while, and then really hit things hard with full infertility work-up and treatments starting in Nov. 2009 until Feb. 2011 with one failed pregnancy in Mar. 2010.

After the failed pregnancy in 2010, we sought information on adoption. We were ignorant. So we met with a social worker that helps families through the process by completing the home study and assisting with all the work that goes into adopting. It sounded like something that was definitely an option for us, and I felt good about it after the meeting. But the mom inside of me just wasn't ready to give up on the idea of being pregnant. So back to the treatments we went. Then in December of 2010, I did laparoscopic surgery thinking my issue was endometriosis and all would be right with the world after that. Well, it wasn't endometriosis and all did not magically become right with the world, which we discovered after 3 more agonizing months getting to know our reproductive endocrinologist on a first name basis. It was especially romantic when I was inseminated on Valentine's Day. It's just every girl's dream!

My breaking point was when my husband and I decided on one last try. An end point was in sight. Either it was going to happen or we moved into the adoption route. The thought was comforting in a way. I went in for my baseline ultrasound and had a large cyst in my ovary. The options I was given were to take a month off or go on birth control pills and try again in 2 weeks. I chose option 3. Put a fork in me, I was done. It was too hard emotionally to deal with month after month. So we talked about it and decided it was time to have our 2nd meeting for our home study (10 months after our initial visit). We had already done our fingerprinting for our FBI and state clearances and had our child abuse checks done. We were on the road!

We had meeting #2 on Saturday, Apr. 2nd (oddly enough, 1 year to the day of my miscarriage in 2010). We discussed all the possibilities, options, etc. We chose an agency, started making calls to ask questions, and working on our application. We told our friends and family what we were doing. We called to get references written. Jumping in with both feet. We wanted to get the process rolling as soon as possible. I was just finishing up our application for the agency on Thursday evening (Apr. 7th), putting it in a priority mail envelope, and was sitting at the computer typing a cover letter to let the agency know that our home study was nearly complete and would be following our application shortly................


and the phone rang. It was 10 pm. It was our social worker. She wanted to know if my husband was home and asked me to put him on another line so she could talk to us both. There was a baby. He needed a home and he needed it tonight!!! We were both shocked and overwhelmed. We have no children...we have no nursery, no crib, no diapers, NOTHING!! Yes, we wanted him. Bring on the noise, bring on the funk!

We spent the next 2 hours glued to the phone calling our parents, our friends, our employers, random people from the phone book, and customer service lines to tell them the good news. Jeff ran out to Wal*Mart to get some essentials to get us through. A little after midnight on April 8th, our son, Cole, arrived on our doorstep and he was perfect! We became parents in the blink of an eye. So from start to finish I guess you could say our process was 10 months. Truthfully though, from the time we decided to be "in it to win it" until our son was placed with us was a whopping 6 days!!!! What a ride!

Happy Holidays

Happy Festivus, Christmas Eve, Merry Christmas, Happy Kwanzaa, belated Happy Hanukkah, and any other holiday out there that anyone may celebrate!

Santa was very good to this chica this year! Very blessed for the family and friends in my life! I hope everyone is taking time to enjoy their time with family and friends.

Angie

My Coolest Handmade Gift Evah!

This year I did not take a whole lot of time to devote to cross stitching, my very first crafting love. So when we went on vacation at the end of September, I treated myself to the cutest little pattern ever by magpienight on Etsy. If you read my blog with any regularity, you know that I love all things Golden Girls. It would stand to reason that a few of my friends do as well. My friend Stacie and I can equate any situation in real life to an episode of the Golden Girls. (Drives our husbands cRaZy!) It made sense that she would be the recipient of this fab handmade Christmas gift. Now don't worry...I've already given her the gift so I'm not ruining any surprises!


The pic above shows magpienight's Little Golden Girls as charted stitched on 28ct. linen over 2 threads and framed in a 5-inch wooden hoop backed with cardboard.
I had to put a personal inscription on the back with one of Stacie's favorite quotes. For all the fans out there, this was actually Dorothy speaking for God.The companion pieces was a creation of my own. I found a fat quarter of a matching fabric, cut a small pieces and backed it with a fusible lightweight interfacing. I then wrote out my phrase on a plain piece of paper in my own handwriting. I taped the plain paper with the phrase to a bright window and taped the fabric over top, tracing the phrase with a water soluble fabric pen. I then used embroidery thread to stitch the phrase and framed it in a 4-inch wooden hoop as well.

Thanks for reading!
Angie

Bad Blogger in 2010

Yes, I will admit I have been a terrible blogger this year. On the flipside, I really put a lot of time and effort into my business, 15 Pieces of Flair. Not only did I list a ton of awesome things in my online shop at Etsy, I did my first 2 craft shows. Both were outdoors and both were longer than 1 day. That was one of my biggest goals for 2010 and both shows were a great success!
In addition to my crafting victories, there were some personal victories and sadly, some losses. And I also made a job change after 6 years at my old job. Granted my new job is doing the exact same thing as my old job, but I think any kind of job change can be stressful.

Ramona, our toothless dog that my husband has deemed a zombie-dog afflicted with the condition permafart (this is where her weakened B.H. constantly leaks smelly dog gas), is still plugging along.....barely. Charlie Murphy is becoming quite the distinguished gentleman with a bit of graying around his snout at the ripe old age of three. We also added a new member to our family this year in the form of a silver Subaru Outback that my husbands drives named "Big Sexy". If you haven't figured it out already, my husband can be a bit full of himself at times. ;) Love you honey!

Anyway, I am confined to home for these last few weeks of 2010 and have been looking around the web for "blogspiration" for my upcoming crafting season of 2011. I plan to post links to some of these fantabulous blogs as well as some great tutorials here in the next couple of weeks. There may also be some Christmas pictures sprinkled in for good measure!

Jubilee at Jackson's Mill

I have been noticeably absent from the blogging world lately, but I do have good reason. I have been busy working away in my studio (aka. spare bedroom in the basement with no windows and butt-ass ugly wallpaper) preparing to do a huge craft show on Labor Day weekend. After the smashing success of my first show in May, I decided that I was insane enough to go for another round this year. If I didn't have to work full time, I would really like to do more of this type of thing, but 2 weekend-long shows this year while working full time has proven challenging enough. My husband loses his wife for at least the last four weeks before the event for the final push to get everything done. He's been very supportive through it all. He thinks that I will bring him fame and fortune someday....ummmmm....is he serious?! So for anyone that will be in the Weston, WV area anytime during Fri, Sat, Sun of Labor Day weekend, please stop by The Jubilee at Jackson's Mill to do some shopping, eat some great food, and see some awesome demonstrations (the bee beard guy freaks me out every time we've visited!)

Possible Party Ideas

After planning many a party at the end of 2009, I couldn't imagine hosting anything at the beginning of this year. Now as the weather is improving and people are getting out and about, I am feeling more up to have some gatherings. There are a few party ideas that I've had in mind for a while. They aren't for specific events or holidays, just silly made up parties.

The first one was an idea concocted with some close friends of ours to have a "redneck" dinner party. The party would involve each couple invited to bring the most redneck dish they could imagine to have a totally trashy junk food buffet. It could include things like Slim Jims roasted over the grill/fire, Frito chili pies fixed right in the mini Frito bags (an old Wal*Mart snack bar favorite!), a giant jar of pickles or pickled eggs....the possibilities are endless! This is still a fledgling idea though and any input would be fantastic. So warm up your comment-typing fingers and let the ideas fly! Note: I actually found a page with some great ideas while searching for an image for my blog post.
The second idea for a fabulously fun party is to have a Golden Girls-themed party. It would be girls only, obviously, and include watching episodes of the Golden Girls, trivia, cheesecake, sparehooven krispies (I need to come up with a recipe for this one), and would be perfect if held on the lanai. People could even come dressed as their favorite Golden Girl. This could be especially hilarious if your friends' little girls were also invited. An afternoon of moms, daughters, and friends having fun...what could be better?

Both are still just tiny ideas, but things that could prove to be very fun! Anyone out there have any other kooky party ideas? I'd love to hear them.

Challenging Custom Order

One of my coworkers' children requested a sock monkey after seeing one of my previous orders. He decided that a drawing would be the best way to show me exactly how he imagined his monkey would look. I have included the drawing and what I came up with based on that. I think I came pretty close. I just hope it meets his expectations. I hear a 10-year-old can be hard to please! ;)

Diary Entry in Pencil Drawing. Enjoy!

Click image to enlarge to view exquisite detail!

Devil Dog

Charlie Murphy loves to snuggle down in any time he wants to take a nap. This particular evening, he chose to wriggle into the flap on our pillow sham making himself a true wiener in a bun. These pics are courtesy of Jeff as he thought it was too cute!
Have a safe and happy 2010 everyone!