Giving away a Mystery Box!

To celebrate my being published, I'm giving stuff away! Join my blog and follow me, and leave a comment, and I'll pick a winner on Monday September 6th. You'll receive a Mystery Box filled with lots of fun goodies!

I've been Published!

It finally came! The September issue of Bead Trends Magazine and I'm in it! I am so excited! I'm on pages 58, 59 and 119. The project is a little necklace I made, and I adore it! I'll be making a set for Halloween and a set for Christmas, so look for some classes with these fantastic jewelry pieces!
This past weekend was the Scraptacular Getaways and as always the ladies put on a fantastic fun event. I get to see all my friends, and make some new ones. I look forward to participating every time! I've been making a few changes to the website, and will continue to slowly change things in the next few weeks or so. Look for more goody bags, lots of items and bargains galore!
Bianca comes home for one day this weekend, and I am so excited, I can't wait to give her a big ol' hug, and Tony is about to loose his first tooth.. can you say "Scrap That". I also got a few layouts done this past weekend, and I'll share them later this week! Big hugs

Here we go!

Here are my babies, the most important people in the world to me (plus of course my hubby) on their official last day together this weekend. We moved Bianca into her new dorm.
This has been a week of self discovery, a week of realization, and a week of transition for me and my family. I let my little baby girl go and spread her wings 340 miles away! I am so proud of her and myself for not crying and being a baby, but being strong, supportive and actually HAPPY! Today is a happy day for me, her first day in a new city, first day of college classes and her first steps into the world as an adult. This also gives me pause on my goals, dreams and aspirations. I think every couple of years you need to assess where you have been and look at a few forks in the road and see which one is making more sense. I am ready to turn onto a new road in life.
Starting next weekend, I will be shifting my business. I will be selling off all my current inventory of scrapbook items. I am going to go back to my roots of my business and only sell a few lines of products which will be my own making. More vintage ephemera, more OOAK goody bags, kits, layouts and occassional classes. My life has been encumbered with scrapbooking product and has taken over and I have become overwhelmed. I need to purge, I need to see the light, the floors, the walls, and my scrapbook desk, lol! I am too tired at night to put together orders of scrapbook product that I can't find, and then find the time to meet my own personal deadlines for kits, classes and orders. I have let customers down and ultimately myself down by not being the business person I want to be and growing personally.
So, I will tell you now, that next weekend at Scraptacular in the Hilton Concord will be a sell-a-thon of great products at rock bottom prices! If you can come out, do so August 26-28th. The deals will be fantastic. After Scraptacular, I will be announcing a garage sale at my home, which will be lots and boxes of stuff at even more reduced prices. Once I am done there, I will do boxes of goodies on my website and narrow things down.
Once the dust settles, I plan to have a much smaller offering on the website, and open up my ETSY site again, with wonderful vintage items, class kits and OOAK designs. I hope you'll come with me and step onto a new road for The Art Life, but first help me purge my stash be getting some FANTASTIC deals.. email me for more information or if there is anything in particular your looking for...

Back to Blogging

Well here I am back to a Monday blog posting! So excited to start this part of my journey back up again. Big changes will be happening in my life in the next month, and one of them is to start this blog back going! I don't know what I'll post, and I'm not worried about it. I might ramble, share some art, but I will post, so stay tuned!
I had the opportunity to go back to my roots of scrapbooking and spend the day with my friends just making layouts. It was so much fun and rewarding! I got a whooping 6 layouts done and I am pretty proud of most of them. Here are a few. It was really fun to pick up a line that really wasn't my "normal" vintagy style like Amy Tangerine and make my favorite layout of the day which was "squeeze". It worked perfectly with my photo and the paper and embellishments were DARLING! Everyone was making layouts with this line. I am hooked! I'll be taking a class with Amy Tan next Friday night at Scrapbook Oasis in Irvine. I am so excited.
I can't thank everyone enough for all their thoughts, comments, and prayers this past week. I felt every single one of them and so did Bianca. We leave on Thursday to head to college and I am scared, excited and proud of her. When I come back, I am going to be making some announcements, and taking a new journey in this thing called "Life".. I hope you'll join me!

48 Hours Can Change Your Life

As a mother of two, you always are thankful that your children are healthy, happy and thriving. A little over a year ago, my beautiful daughter was diagnosed with Diabetes. She had never been sick, and never even had her blood drawn. Even after her diagnosis, she was thriving and incorporating the disease into her daily life, and things have been just great. Last week, she came down with a flu. This was your typical throwing up, not feeling good, 48 hour typical flu. By Sunday, she hadn't eaten much and I thought she should be seen on Monday. By Monday, Bianca couldn't even walk. I got her to the hospital, and they immediately whisked us off to the ER. A normal sugar reading for a healthy diabetic is 120. By this time Bianca's sugar was up to 420! This was with no food, no drink other than water, how does that happen? In the ER, they kept trying to get IV's in her, but she was so dehydrated and sick they couldn't get them in. They also started taking PINTS of blood. As a mother, it is the worst thing in the world to see your child in pain, and then to put your trust in the doctors and nurses, when they seem to be hurting your child. Within a few hours, they did get an IV in and had given her doeses of pain medication, this was the only reprieve she had. Her lips were completely white, and frankly she looked like a cadaver. Never in my life have I felt so scared, alone, guilty, helpless. We spent 8 hours in the ER, and finally she was stable enough to move to ICU. She was on an Insulin Drip, Antibiotics, Electrolytes, and had gone through 4 liters of intreveneous fluids during this time. By the time Aaron got there later in the day wit Tony, I lost it. I was tired of being strong, and tired of telling her it was going to be ok. I had to let it all out. By this time, Bianca was resting and didn't see me "lose" it thank goodness, but my little Tony did and was a little scared. By the end of the night, Bianca had 3 IV's in ONE ARM, was exausted but looked so much better.
Its a weird thing, having a connection so close as your child. By that time, (and this gets weird) both my arms on the insides and down to my wrists (where they kept poking her for blood) we sore and I felt like I had been working out my arms and they felt like rubber. If you touched the insides of my arms, it hurt and I truly felt my daughters pain. Strange, but so true.
Yesterday, the doctors told me that her white blood cell counts were almost back to normal which was miraculous. He couldn't understand how fast the meds were working. By the end of yesterday, they gave Bianca food, she was sitting up, and now it was time to get her fluid levels back to normal. By this morning, she was almost back to normal levels and she is coming home! It is a miracle and blessing that everything happened so fast. I believe in the power of prayer, thoughts and positive thinking. Even if you took a minute out of your day and thought good thoughts for Bianca, they worked. The Doctors and Nurses at Kaiser Hospital in Walnut Creek were fantastic and I can't thank each and every one of them enough for their help and care during the past 48 hours.
This has taught me alot about how fragile this disease makes my daughter and that a little flu can turn deadly very quickly if not addressed immediately.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart to all the family and friends that were there for us.