Hope you don't mind a little time-out from stamping talk to hear a little about my personal life and a bit of a public service announcement!
As most of you probably know, February is National Heart Month, a time to raise awareness about heart disease, which remains the leading cause of death for American men
and women. And as most of you probably do
not know, I was recently diagnosed with high blood pressure and high cholesterol. So I am now under a doctor's care, after too many years of my own laissez-faire
health management and a few years with no medical insurance, and I am determined to do everything in my control to live a long and healthy life. I know there are a lot of women out there (and men, too) who put off dealing with high blood pressure and cholesterol, since there are usually no symptoms associated with it. So I want to encourage all of you to take the time to {heart} your heart!
To that end, I am now on medication to control my blood pressure, and have changed my eating habits to lose weight and try to bring my cholesterol levels under control. In fact, in the last 6-1/2 weeks I have lost 20 lbs! And today I underwent a Nuclear Stress Test to determine whether my heart is healthy enough for me to sweat to the oldies with Richard Simmons. There was really nothing to it, but I had worked myself up to such a state of anxiety that my blood pressure went so sky-high that they almost had to cancel the test! After a half-dose of a mild sedative, they finally got me down to a manageable level and proceeded with it. Turns out the hardest part of the whole thing was figuring out how to stay on the treadmill, since I had actually NEVER been on one before and kept almost falling off the back of it; my doctor had to keep his hand on my back to keep me in one place! And let me assure you, no matter how scary the "nuclear" part of it sounds, it's a piece of cake!
(Edited to add: Actually, the hardest part of the whole thing was cutting out caffeine for 2 days before the test!)I'll get the final results back shortly, but I'm not worried. From all accounts it seemed to go fine. My life is really, really good — filled with blessings and happiness. And all of you out in blog-land are part of that. So take care of yourselves! Go get your blood pressure checked and do whatever you need to do to make sure we can share our love of all things stamping for a long, long time.
Today, just to be a tease, I'm giving you a sneaky peek at a very important project I have in the works. You won't see any more about it until after April 18th, though. That's right, Chickengirl, it's only 7 weeks away, and I've got some practicing to do!
It's time again for the Papertrey Ink Blog Hop. This month's theme was anything to do with Spring. Like most of you in this hemisphere, I just can't wait for winter to be over. To me, Spring is epitomized by the budding of new leaves and blossoms on the trees, and that was what inspired this card. I love the soft colors. And yes, I did use pink and brown again, but I did throw in some green this time!
For further inspiration, I used Julee's Mojo Monday sketch. Definitely more layers that I
am accustomed to using, but totally delightful. And if some of the layers look just slightly askew to you, let's blame it on the angle of the camera, shall we?
Hope you don't mind a little time-out from stamping talk to hear a little about my personal life and a bit of a public service announcement!
I just can't seem to get away from it. I like it, really. It just seems that I use it too often. Anyhow, this week i {heart} papers is the sponsor of the sketch challenge on the CardPatterns blog. And as sponsor, Kate is giving away an awesome bundle of goodies to the winner of the challenge.
There's something about butterflies that just lift my spirits! We've had a string of bright, sunny (but still kinda cold) days, and you can almost believe that winter will be behind us soon. So when I decided to do Julee's Mojo Monday Sketch this week, I really wanted to use butterflies in a bright, springtime-y way.
Now I have to say, this card tickles the heck out of me. Not only did I manage to think outside of the proverbial box, but I stepped, no leaped, out of my comfort zone. If you've seen much of my stamping, you will know that my style doesn't lean toward shabby or distressed. But because of the nature of the paper design (OK, and because I kinda smeared the white ink when I was trying to highlight the embossed buttons) I went and dragged that white ink pad around the edges of everything. Instant shabby. I'd like to think it adds to the snow concept. But perhaps I flatter myself too much...
And what is that contraption, anyway?
PaperTrey Ink is celebrating their 2nd anniversary, and they're having all kinds of cool contests! Today's contest looked especially fun, and I had a little time to play, so I decided to go for it. Nichole hid a sketch in a connect-the-dots puzzle, to celebrate a new line of ribbons she's coming out with. I decided to turn the sketch upside down for my card.
OK, just in case you were wondering why I've had pink and brown on the brain lately, here's why...
Yikes! It's been a rough week or two, and I'm glad to be back at my table doing something creative! I continue in my mission of building up my stash of non-cupcake birthday cards. Not that there's anything wrong with cupcake cards — it's just that there's a woman at work who likes to buy my cards, and her friends are just not the cupcake type. Whatever...
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