Free Business Cards....

I got turned on to this website and they truly are free. You can pick from 45 or so designs, you add the information you want and no more, just pay a small shipping fee. It is just over $5 for the cheap shipping and you get 250 matte business cards. You can tuck them in with every order and gift.  

How exciting is that! It would cost more than that for the paper and the ink to do it yourself! Then you have to cut them out or tear them if they are the perforated ones.

For a fee you can have things like a 2011 calendar on the back of the card, thanks for your business, we like referrals, things like that on the back. 

For 19.99 you can have access to hundreds of other designs and for 24.99 you can use your own pic and logo.

If you are feeling like really promoting your business they also offer matching pens, journals, address labels, magnets, big car magnets and more.

This is a screen shot of the card I am going to get payday. Just the basic freebie.

But check it out at Vistaprint

 I am not affiliated in any way with them, just turning you on to a site I was turned onto and is used by many crafters and business friends.

Friends.....

I have got to tell you... I have some wonderful friends. But this post is specifically about 2 of them. E and P... You know who you are.
I am truly blessed to have these two women in my life. P about a year ago got me a bunch of yarn... a bunch and a wonderful royal ball winder, gifts for my grand babies and so much more. E has also given me yarn and gifts for me and my babies.
Well.... long story short, I loaned my precious ball winder to Cheryl Slocum Dorchak along with a bunch of cotton yarn in trade for her to make me a couple sets of kitchen items and Cheryl decided she was going to disappear with all the yarn and my ball winder and has never answered another email or phone call from me, so please use extreme caution in ANY dealings with her. 
But I digress..... E sent me a big ole puffy of cotton this last week and today in the mail came a new royal ball winder. I am back in ball winding heaven and can take this nightmare rug out now!!! Thank you so much E!!!
I am so grateful for these 2 women, I cannot even put into words what the 2 of them mean to me and probably never will know how to put it into words. So for now this very public acknowledgment of what they mean to me! 

So... P and E.... I love you both and am so lucky to have you in my life! I am forever grateful to you both!

Ambers Leg part 2

Well, she had her surgery and they took the external fixator off (The metal halo thing) She is back home now. These are pics from The 20th on Miss Shaylee's birthday. I know, I know, blog neglect. But life has been a real muther lately and time isn't my friend! LOL 

But here are pics of the leg healing. Will try to get over there in the next week or so to get pics without the halo!

Can you say OUCH!!!

She is home from the hospital now and thrilled to be in her bed tonight.

Curling Ribbon Coasters

I love these things and they seem to have disappeared from my blog, or I just plain thought I posted and didn't, so I am re-posting them. (you know how the mind is! LOL) I am leaning towards the fact that I just thought I posted..... 

Anyways, I ran across this about a year ago and HAD to make some.....

 

You can tell by the penny that I made them quite large to fit the bottom of my huge coffee cups.

Takes a little patience to make them, they wont be ready today type of patience, so be prepared... not an instant gratification project for sure.

Here is the link to the blog where I found them. Making coasters from curling ribbon. I hope you try some out, be sure to check out all the other things that JO and Chica offer. They show you how to make your own tablets and even offer a small amount of the padding compound for sale so you do not have to buy a huge amount that you will never use all of! They have recipes, how to make photo cubes, lamp shades and more. Be sure to check them out and tell them I sent you!

Great eBay purchase.....

I have to share this seller! We have been desperately trying to find some teal cotton yarn that won't break the bank to get and I ran across some Peaches and Creme on eBay that only costs 6.95 to mail 1 cone, not over $10!
I was thrilled and placed the order and I had told her that we needed it to make ovarian cancer things for Mom and she emailed me back to tell me she had a pound cone of teal that she would get right in the mail. Well.... 3 days later the package was on my doorstep with a note apologizing that what she thought was teal was actually peacock and she sent me 8 balls of teal cotton AND stated in the note she ordered the teal pounder and would mail it to me as soon as she got it!
She was wonderful and went above and beyond outstanding customer service....  Truly above and beyond! So many of my cotton needs will go through her! I got her permission to post about this and her eBay id is carol14270, her store is called Do it Yarns and here is a link to her store on eBay.. Do it Yarns. 

I hope you will check out her store and give her some of your business. A lot cheaper shipping for just one cone!

Moms Ovarian Cancer Awarness Ribbon Dishcloths....

Here are the cloths I have been desperately looking for Teal Cotton Yarn to make for Mom.... I finally found a small amount and got them done! Woo hoo!!!! So very pleased with them! There is a link to purchase a set for yourself or a loved one as well as a link to the Breast Cancer Cloths too. 10% of ALL sales of these or any other Cancer Awareness Item goes to Breast and Ovarian Cancer research. I Hope this inspires you to do the same! And please remember to get yourself checked regularly!

Ovarian Cancer Cloths

Breast Cancer Cloths

I am in an Etsy Treasury!!

My Sofa Tissue Box Cover made it into a treasury on Etsy... how exciting is that!?!?!?!? I am honored and thrilled to be in it! That she thought my works was good enough out of all of those on Etsy to be listed in her treasury is humbling! YAY! I am so excited.

Here it is.... Not so Humble Facial Tissue Toppers Treasury

Thank you so much for including me!

Worsted Weight Ovarian / Breast Cancer Awareness Ribbon Pattern

In all my searching for things to make for my Mom, who is undergoing Chemotherapy for Stage 4 Ovarian Cancer, the one thing I cannot find is just a plain worsted weight cancer ribbon for basic plain old lapel pins, appliques, key-chains, etc. 

So.... I set out to figure it out myself and after playing with double crochet, too loose and holey, half double crochet was too bulky and single crochet with 1 row was too narrow and 2 rows too wide, G hook was too big and floppy, so I went down to an E and love the results. I ended up doing it kinda like a foundation chain!!! Heck, I don't even know if I do it right to call it a foundation chain! 

Please feel free to share this pattern, sell what you make from it, whatever you like, but do not say the pattern is yours. Please link it back to me. Thanks and enjoy. 

 

 (I am including yellow ones to show support for our troops! So these do not have to just be Cancer Awareness Ribbons!) 

Here is the pattern for The Worsted Weight Cancer Awareness Ribbon.... With pics dedicated to my mom, LaDonna ... I love you. 

Worsted Weight Cancer Awareness Ribbon

(I used Cotton Yarn and a G hook for these pictures.)

Materials:

Very small amount of any worsted weight yarn you have in your stash.

Size F crochet hook

Hot Glue gun or other way to join the ribbon. I use hot glue like most people use duct tape.

Hint: Make sure to keep your tension tight as it makes a neater and tighter ribbon with less flopping on you.

Instructions:

Ch 2, insert the hook back into the first chain, yarn over and pull through, but instead of finishing the stitch, do a chain one and insert the hook into that chain just made,

 

yarn over and pull through, yarn over chain one, 

yarn over again, pull through both loops, that is the first single crochet,

now insert the hook into the chain previously made, yarn over and pull through, chain one,yarn over pull both through both loops, 2nd one done,

do this until you have 20 sc. tie off and weave in all ends.

Now just bend your ribbon into shape and attach it to whatever you like, I use a drop of hot glue. Be careful not to use too much, it will burn you! 

Please email me if you have any questions. 

Here I just incorporated the key chain into the 9th, 10th and 11th sc. Enjoy and be sure to make some for your local cancer center. It will brighten someones day. If your sell them, consider donating a portion of your sales to Ovarian or Breast Cancer research.

Happy International Crochet day everyone!

I hope you all got to support the cause today and got some quality hook time in. I know I did! I created a pattern for Cancer awareness and will be posting the pattern here tonight.
I am teaching my neighbor to crochet Granny Squares tonight after I get the kids all fed and bathed and in bed. YAY! I enjoy teaching ... well... sometimes! LOL! I know you all know exactly what I mean!
But just wanted to pop on and say Happy International Crochet Day and hope you got to support the cause and got to Crochet in public or got to teach someone to crochet... the day isn't over... it's not too late to do it still!
Have a great day!

On Life .....

 You just have to wonder sometimes what life has in store for you. I know my life is not what I expected it to be at this point. I really am thrilled about things the way they are, don't get me wrong ... then sometimes I just have to ask ... "Why me"?????? Really...
I know in the big picture of things I am doing a wonderful and loving thing, raising my grandchildren. I love their little faces to pieces and cannot imagine my life without them and then there are days that I really don't know if I can stand even another second of it. Am I horrible for thinking this? I know (and have been told) that I need to give myself a lot more credit for what I am doing, because it really is a good thing that I am doing. 

With my big boy finally having a 'diagnosis' of severe hyperactivity and severe attention deficit, I am at one moment thrilled THEY have finally recognized it and have given it a label, but then that label carries a lot of things.... not all good.
I do not know if I want him on meds, but then the days he is having a really bad day, I would give anything to have him on meds.... what do you do? On his bad days he is very hyper, very aggressive, very loud, very mean, very uncooperative, very everything bad ....  Are all the drugs they want to put them on bad?
Am I wrong for wanting him to be better?
We are waiting for them to get back to us with his full assessment and we have the appt at OHSU in a couple months for further genetic testing, and also have the EcCares program assessing him on Thursday for school placement. Things will get better, they really will.
And now the counselor, school and Dr are all pushing for me to get full legal custody and become their foster parent so we can at least have access to a lot more resources for help with the kids as well as more money that we deserve for sure. On one hand that would be great, but on the other hand, I do not want to hurt my daughter in any way, I know she is in no position to take the kids any time soon, she is going through enough right now. I am so torn. My daughter has always been the most important thing in my life and now I have her kids..... what do I do people? 
All of this is because I was looking at a friends pics of her burned crafting room being put back together, (thankfully all were OK, she lost some sports memorabilia plus a very old doll from her childhood) and I am so envious of her yarn collection... in a very good way, I had much more yarn than she does and she has a lot, but I had to sell almost all of mine to help with the moving costs to get to where we are now.
It hardly ever bugs me, but seeing her room made me remember what I had, what we had to do to get here,  how far I have come to recover from the abusive situation I was in, to where we are now ... all of us in a much, much, MUCH better place and I have my babies... so life is really rather great in the big pic of things, it sure could be a lot worse, I could still be where I was, the kids could have been taken by the state almost 2 yrs ago... so life really is good.
I am just having a pity party for myself at the moment.
After all... I am entitled once in a while... right??? After all... it has been a bad year starting with me breaking my knee, tearing my mcl and physical therapy April 19, Mom having serious serious surgery April 25, Micheal's ambulance ride May 30, Amber getting hit by a car and critically injured June 22, Mom being diagnosed with stage 4 ovarian cancer July 7, going through chemo and Gramma passing August 26... Yep, been a bad year so far! So yes... I am entitled!
But life is basically good for us right now considering it all.

My morning (mourning)

Well.... Gramma's service it today at 2, so I woke up this morning feeling the need to bake in honor of her. I made some fresh Banana Nut Muffins (had some dead bananas that needed to be cooked) and a small batch of Chocolate Chip toll house cookies.
Got out the cake pedestal and put a little white doily on it and viola...
Just thought I would share them with you all... take one, they are so yummy..... Enjoy... I know we will!

***ADDED 9/3/10: Had a couple emails for the recipes... I only use the toll house recipe off the package for the cookies and the Banana muffins are the banana bread out of the betty crocker breat cancer awareness cook book.***