Working again...

Hi there family, friends and followers. Just wanted to give you all a quick update.  I am back to work after my back surgery.  I found a 3 day a week LPN position.  It allows me time to craft and run my house so I am very excited and I am praying that it will work out.  I have spent the last 2 weeks in training, which will be ongoing because there is a lot to learn but so far it looks promising.  I am now going to Physical Therapy 2 times a week to hopefully get the pain in the back to calm down.  My surgeon believes it is nerve pain caused by my muscles spasming.  Either way it is not hurting to go and I am feeling a little better. 
Since I last updated my blog I won a grab bag giveaway from Northridge Publishing. The grab bag included tons of goodies and a Mini Cricut.  So I now own 3 bugs!!!  I have included a picture of the goodies that I won. Today I am going to share with you all the card I made for my darling sweet husband for Father's Day.  Neither of our sons live near us right now one is in Korea in the USAF and the other is currently living in Las Vegas so it was just the two of us.   I used my Create a Critter 2 cartridge for all the cuts and the paper was found in my stash.  I love easel cards. I will be entering the Exploring Cricut Challenge for this week.  I hope you like the card.  

 Well that's it for now.  Thanks for stopping by my little corner of the web.  Please leave me a comment so I know you where here.

God Bless,
Vickie

Cards, Cards and More Cards...

 Hi there family, friends and followers.  I can't believe that it's been over a month since I last updated my blog.  I have been busy with this month's Cricut Club kit & visiting with family. My precious granddaughter turned 10 earlier this month & I was excited because I was able to go to her party in the Salt Lake City area over Mother's day weekend.  I can now drive again, Yipee!!! However I have been laid off from my job, so  I have been looking for another LPN job but with my current lifting restrictions, due to my recent back surgery, I have not been able to find another job yet.  I have spoken to a disability lawyer and she has informed me that she thinks I would be granted disability due to my age and lifting restrictions. This was a hard decision but I have begun the very long process required to get disability approved. The up-side of not working is that I have tons of time to craft and have gotten caught up on some  projects.  I thought I would share the cards with you. I hope you are inspired and will give the step cards a try they look amazing and they are fairly easy to make. I found the instructions on YouTube.

I used my Paper Lace Cricut cartridge for this card. I sent them to everyone who blessed me after my back surgery. As I had a lot of these to make I was thankful that I could make several at a time on my Cricut.  All the supplies are from my stash.

I used my Nifty Fifties Cricut cartridge for this card, it was for a special boy who loves cars and turned 13 yrs old this year.  I made a pocket on the inside of the card for some $$$. I remember the day he was born, time is just wheezing by...

I have a dear friend who came over and took me out to lunch and craft store shopping while I was recovering from my surgery.  She loves Steampunk stuff and I happened to have this Jolee's sticker set in my stash so I thought I'd use it for this card.  Actually everything is from my stash.

This is my first step card.  The focal piece is a cut from my Elegant Edges Cricut cartridge.The image is stamped and hand colored with colored pencils and OMS. It's a 5 1/2  inch square card so I even made an envelope that matched for it using my Martha Stewart scoring board.  My mother in law loved it!!!

For my second step card  I used my Birthday Bash Cricut cartridge for the dog, the mats, gift boxes and the number 10. All the paper and embellishments are from my stash.  The dog on the front is on a homemade action wobble. My granddaughter loves her dogs.

Okay yes another step card but they are fun to make and they look awesome. This one is for the older brother of the boy who got the car card above and this one also holds $$$ which all teen guys like. Masculine cards are a challenge for me but I think this one turned out very good.

Yep I love step cards, this one is cut the same as the one above but is overall smaller and fits in a standard A2 envelope.  This one is for my youngest son Robert to thank him for the his sweet & yummy Mother's day gift.  He has been accepted to Lawyer school and will start in the fall. I am extremely proud of him. I made a second one with slightly different paper for my oldest son and his family for their lovely figurine they gave me. My oldest son services his country in the USAF and leaves in about 1 week for a year in Korea, so your prayers for his safety would be greatly appreciated. Without the sacrifices of men & women like him we would not be able to live in this land of the free. Thanks Philip for your service, I am very proud of you. Can you tell I love my boys???

Okay last one I promise.  I made this card for my Pastor's wife to thank her for being an awesome Pastor's wife, friend & for all she did in putting together a wonderful women's retreat. The word "THANKS" is from my George Cricut cartridge.  I also decorated a journal, pen & gift bag to match.


Well that's it for now from my corner of the web.  I hope you have enjoyed your visit and will leave me a comment so I know you stopped by. I wish you all a wonderful Memorial Day weekend.

God Bless,
Vickie

I am Healing and Crafting...

Hi there family, friends and followers.  This is going to be a back update first and then I will share a peek at the ongoing Cricut Club perpetual calendar project I have been doing with the ladies who attend club meeting. I will be sharing the entire project when they are done in June.

So for the back update; as you know I had back surgery almost 4 weeks ago.  The recovery so far as been up and down. But as of today I feel that my healing is about right where it should be for almost 4 weeks post op.  I have a follow up appointment with my surgeon this coming week and will be having x-rays to see how things are healing. I am still having a small amount of pain and some muscle spasms too.  I am taking a muscle relaxant & a small amount of pain medication.  At first I was upset that I was still needing pain and other medications at this point, after all I had the surgery to get rid of the pain & other issues, but after speaking with my surgeon's nurse and following her instructions I was able to relax and I have been doing much better.  I am walking for at least 30 minutes every day and I am no longer using any of those assistive devices that I had to use when I was first home from the hospital, well except for my back brace, which will be my "little friend" for another 2 months, It really does help support my back. I still need to rest several times each day but these "breaks" seem to be for shorter periods of time each day.  I want you all to know how grateful I am for all your prayers, thoughts, visits, cards and gifts.

Now for the crafts; for the last 2 weeks I have been able to craft for a portion of each day and have been busy working on my July/August Cricut Club calendar pages kit and can't wait to share it with the ladies. I have also made several cards. I hate being stuck at home (I won't be able to drive for at least 2 more weeks) but it sure does allow me to get a lot of craft stuff done. My darling sweet husband does take me out to run errands and etc. I get out at least 3 times a week which helps me from being grumpy.  I have also been looking at all the challenges on the web and I have decided to share just one part of the ongoing Cricut Club project so I can enter it into the Fantabulous Cricut current challenge- "something with an umbrella" & into the Exploring Cricut current challenge-"something with a flower".  I also thought I'd share with you my version of a birthday card I've made using inspiration from a friend who is a Stampin Up Super Star demonstrator Connie Stewart. You can find her blog and all her great creations at Simply Simple Stamping.com. She has a wonderful "flash card" video series too.  I just love what she comes up with. Thanks Connie for sharing your creativity.

 I hope you all enjoy these creations. I wish you God's blessing. Thanks for stopping by my little corner of the web.  Leave me a comment so I know you where here.
God Bless,
Vickie

Hello There Blogger Friends...

Hi everyone, so sorry it's been so long since I last updated by blog.  My full time job really was more than full time which left very little time for updating to my blog let alone crafting.  For the last several months I have only had time to keep up with my Cricut Club projects. In addition to the extra time for work I have also been experiencing major back pain again. It's been off and on, well really mostly always on almost for the entire past year.  I finally decided to talk with my primary MD and get that new MRI that he said was needed.  When the MRI results came back it indicated that there had been some changes and that the disc that I had repaired almost 10 years ago has herniated again. There was also some changes that meant my back was not doing well so after a long discussion with the surgeon that did my first surgery,  I decided that I would do as he recommended and undergo a Transforaminal Lumbar Interbody Fusion aka a "TLIF" to hopefully stabilize my back and help me avoid any further back surgery.  Of course even with the TLIF there will be changes in my life.  I will not be able to do any twisting, bending or lift anything over 15 to 20 pounds for pretty much the rest of my life. This means that any nursing job that involves direct patient care will no longer be an option for me.  My recent job required direct patient care so my employer ask that I step aside, which I did, however as I do not qualify for FMLA that means I no longer have a job. My employer told me that she would like me to come back and that she would try to place me in a different job at that time. So I had that surgery last Monday, the surgeon did not need to do as much work as he thought so that's a plus for me. While there is still pain it is surgery related and it will hopefully fade in time.  I have a 12 week recovery period due to the graft (interbody) part of the surgery needing to harden and to begin to adhere to the vertebrae space at L5/S1 part of my back.  I want to say Thank You to my darling sweet husband, my son Robert for all they did to care for me this past week and for all of my prayer warriors and other family members for your prayers. I know that all of this is in God's timing and that as far as a job goes the Lord will work all that out too.  Since I haven't had time lately to share with you all any of my craft projects, I thought I'd share a few with you tonight. I hope you all will enjoy them. Once the next two Cricut Club meetings are completed I will share with you the ongoing project the gals are working on.

The first card is for a special couple who just celebrated their 30th Wedding Anniversary. The second card is for my employer for all her help with my job stuff. The third card is the Easter card I made for this year.All the pieces and parts for all three cards came from my stash.
Thanks for stopping by my little corner of the web. I will be linking this to Sarah Hammer's Tuesday Link Up Party tomorrow. I have a blinkie button on the right side of my blog so if you get a minute, click it to stop by and check out all the other crafty folks.  Please leave me a comment so I know you visited.
Happy Easter to all.
God Bless,
Vickie

Happy New Year...

Hi there all my blogger friends.  Happy New Year!!!  So sorry that I haven't updated my blog recently, but blogger was causing issues and then I've been very busy with my new job and the holidays.  My husband and I traveled to his mother's in southern California for Christmas.  It was wonderful to get away for a few days. I'm back at work already and very busy again.  I did manage to get a few Christmas gifts made and thought I'd share those with all of you as well as one of  the thank you cards I made for all the wonderful gifts I got for Christmas. The gifts are shadow boxes for my wonderful mother in law and sisters in laws. Each one was different and yet the same just tweaked for each of their home decors. I didn't post them before Christmas as I want the gifts to be a surprise for each of them.  They all seems happy to get them so I think they were a hit.

 I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas and have been enjoying the new year. It's a negative 16 degrees here in eastern Idaho with 6 inches of snow on the ground...brrrrr!!!  A perfect day to complete my Cricut Club project for next Sunday. I hope to be able to post those pictures soon.
Thanks for stopping by my little corner of the web. Please leave me a comment so I know you were here.

God Bless,
Vickie

Happy Thanksgiving...

Hi there blogger friends and follower.  I know that I am a bit early for my greeting but as I will be very busy this coming week I decided that I'd better post today. So to start the holidays off I am sharing today my Cricut Club project that everyone finished yesterday and my granddaughters Christmas countdown box and a card I made with my new A Quilted Christmas cartridge. I think that this cartridge and the new Teddy Bear Parade cartridge are so cute!!!

As you can tell I have been focusing on Christmas both at Cricut Club and for my granddaughter's items. I hope you all enjoy. Thanks for stopping by my corner of the web. Please leave me a comment so I know you have been here.

God Bless,
Vickie

Wow where has the year gone...

Hi there blogger friends and followers.  Sorry it's been so long since I last updated my blogger.  As I mentioned I got a new full time job and well it's a bit more than full time it's 45+ hours a week and with the stuff I do around the house that doesn't leave much time for crafting. As this is the month of Thanksgiving I want to say that I am so thankful for the new job and I know that it will settle down in time and I will be back to crafting more in the meantime I feel so blessed to have a job when so many Americans don't.  Because it's Veteran's day I want to take a moment and thank my son Philip who is currently serving his country and is stationed at Hill AFB in Utah.  He is a 3rd generation military man.  His father served as did both of his grandfathers.  I am very proud to come from a military background and while that means I don't call any one town home I do call the USA home.  I pray that God continue to bless this awesome country.
Today I am sharing the project that my Cricut Club made last month. It's a vertical banner and I think it turned out very cute.

I hope you all enjoy.  Thanks for stopping by my little corner of the web.  Please leave a comment so I know you where here.
God Bless,
Vickie