Dolly's Dreamings

Phew - call this a holiday

Nigel and I are on holiday - holiday at home - at the moment and it's been frantic today.

The cats' room is now clinically clean in case Kira's allergy - which seems NO BETTER - is dust mite related. It was a big big job. There are too many soft furnishings in there. All stipped, hoovered, washed, dried and some replaced.

We have also been shopping todaya nd I got two lovely new tops, a fuzzy cardi I know I am going to live int his winter, a new pair of boots which I don't like. Went for cheap and cheerful whilst I look for a nice proper pair and a fabulous new Kipling bag which takes 12 x 12. (Also spotted what I think Nij may buy me for xmas int he Kipling outlet shop!

We had dinner out and now have a sor or relaxing evening, watching Kira and making sure Fiki doesn't hurt her any more. Bless him, he is only trying to help, but whilst she is raw again licking is NOT good.

Nigel's birthday tomorrow so need to get wrapping his presents. I am totally ashamed to say, with everything going on, I have bought his cards not made them. How awdul is that!

The page was a quick one I made using the Pencil Lines sketch and a Sweet Shoppe collaboration kit. So totally nt my style! I quite liked it when I did it late last night, but int he cold light of day I can see why I DON'T do pages like this! Ah well

Stourhead in the Fall

We have had a glorious day today, We went to Stourhead - my favourite of all the National trust properties. It has been - and still is - one of those glorious Autumn days where the sky is cloudless, though a little hazy, and there is that special light that we get in the Autumn.

It was crisp and cold, though warm walking round the lake. I love Autumn. I don't think the other seasons match it at all.

Stourhead was incredibly busy - never ever seen so many people there. Obviously there were a lot of people like us who felt they had joined the National Trust so they might as well get their money's worth out of the membership and get out and do stuff.

When we were leaving there was a queue a good mile long to get in. There was nothing special going on, just a lot of people like us who wanted to enjoy the fall colours and the wonderful weather in the spectacular gardens.

We had a little bit of a disaster there as just a short trek round the lake my second pair of walking boots broke! My old faithful pair had finally given up the ghost at the big cat photo shoot as the sole and the shoe parted company, never to be reuinted. 

I wore my newer, but less comfy pair today, even though I knew they really needed rehealing. mmmm - worse than I thought. Damp had obviously got into them where I had left them int he garage after the last trek int he Spring as I had been too lazy to clean the mud off them. Suddenly I felt a sort of spongy glitch and the heel of one just crimbled where the foam like stuff inside the heel had rotted! I hasten to add these were good quality boots as well. It was not quite as much fun walking round the lake with one boot where the sole was higher than the heel and going up hill was a killer. I thought my calf was going to burst wide open! Still good exercise - well for one of my legs anyway! Looks like I really am going to have to invest in a new pair of walking boots now. Maybe I will get the bright red pair I have always fancied.

So now I have just sat and downloaded the pictures and have yet more things that need to be scrapped. Ah well, once can never have too many pictures I guess. Just need the extra hours in the day to scrap them all now.

LURVE Saturdays

I love Saturday's The whole weekend stretches ahead and it is a lazy day.

We had a lovely eveing yesterday - just a real chill out with friends night at Jakki and Gary's with a take away and a LOT of wine. I needed to forget my troubles of the past couple of weeks for a few hours.

Kira was a wee bit bad early this morning. We were allerted by a smashing noise at around 5.30 am. She had been trying to get a toy mouse from behind my porcelain Jardinaire in the hall and had knocked off the pot and it smashed. After clearing it up, which needed the hoover as well, we tried to get back to sleep. Nigel gave in at around 7.30 and got up and I, incredibly, slept until 10!

Her face is still lumpy, just waiting to erupt into scabs and she point blank refused Piriton this morning. We tried and failed a dozen times and as she was so stressed we have left her quietly in her room for the day whilst we give Fiki some much needed 'us' time.

I have had a good scrapping day and have almost completed my next two classes for the Design Collective - and no ..... of course I am not going to share them!

Nigel has been productive too and has finished editing our holiday video. It looks wonderful and he has uploaded a tiny section to You Tube. It is lovely (apart from the bit with me on it which I hate!)  and I am going to attempt to put it here.

He has worked hard on it and would love some feedback.

FREE Doodled Hearts

I was working on the doodling class and drawing hearts so I decided to make some digital hearts to use on my digital pages.

I thought maybe someone else would like them so I have uploaded them.

Please snag them if they are of any use to you.

You can download them here

More scabby spots

I came home determined to be more positive about everything and lasted less than a minute. Kira has loads of new lumps (the ones that turn into spots and scabs and sores) over bboth eyes. It is all red and inflamed and that is WITH the steroid jab still active. I am at a loss what to do.

We started the food trial this morning so it can't be the new food.

We have started putting them back together so Fiki may have helped cause it.

It could be stress related as she was very stressed 2 days ago when she went to the vets.

I just don't know but I have had a good cry and don't feel any better about it.

The page here is one I did for Mel and Jill last month at ATDML and was using a paper that would have scared the hell out of me. It still scared me a little bit, but as luck would have it I had just come back from California and had a picture of some surfers.  I ended up loving it, though I would never have chosen the paper. That is what I love about being on a design team. You have to think outside your comfort zone and when you are an old stick in the mud like me it is a really really good thing.

Much to do about nothing

Can I say a huge thank you to everyone for their positive comments yesterday. I don't really know what to say other than you are a fabulous group of girls and your thoughts and hugs and good wishes mean so much. Thank you so much, Nigel and I are very very touched and I am sure Kira is too. She pretends she can't read of course, but I am sure she's been looking over my shoulder.

I went to the vets today to collect the food they ordered specially for us. It is a Hills Science diet but a version only sold through vets not like our ordinary Hills. And my goodness - no more stash shopping for me ever if this works! With three cats, they all have to go on it for the trial. The bag - smaller than a normal Hills bag - is to last us 10 days, but witht he weights given it will only last us a week. *Fiki is a BIG BOY) And it was £20!!!!!For a week. That works out at over £1000 a year on cat food. Heck. That sounded like a heck of a lot. I have sat and worked it out and it almost exactly twice as much as we currently pay for cat food annually!

However, if that is what it takes I don't begrudge a penny and I will go without myself if needs be so she gets well. We CHOSE  to have her and promised to love and care for her whatever it took when we welcomed her into our family - so that's what we will do. Of course!

So - we start tonight. Nothing anywhere except this z/d food and I just hope to heck they like it. Else I really am stuffed.

This page is a page I made for the cyber crop on UKS. I have always prided myself (and nigh on killed myself) buy usually doing every class and every challenge over a cyber crop weekend. I LURVE cyber crops. However this one has sort of passed me by. the first weekend I was away allw eekend at Scrapcamp. I simply don't get to scrap in the week at all at the moment. Last weekend I was at a crop and then had to make Nigel's album and so I have done almost nothing. Unheard of for me. There was, however, a scraplift challenge. One was to scraplift a page from the person posting above you so I made this as a scraplift of one of lacemakers pages.

The other was to scraplift a page from your favourites. well one of my all time fave scrapper has to be Sue (doogle007) I adore her work. I love her style, the content, everything (and she is a really really nice girl too) Her work is often very detailed and intricate but I had one of her pages in my faves which was the opposite. It was breathtaking in its simplicity and so I also scraplifted that. It was a real page to let the picture do all the work. I actually found it really really hard NOT to add more bits to it.

Disappointing news

Not such good news from the vets I’m afraid.

We took Kira this morning. She is indeed still losing weight, her coat is very poor and we are tight to be concerned.

We have to start a food trial tomorrow – dry food with special allergens. It is worth trying even though only about 10% of allergies prove to be food related apparently. The blood tests for everything else are not in yet so we will do this whilst we wait. All three have to go on it as we cannot risk her getting anything else in her diet.

But that was the good news!

It is possible she also has some sort of irritable bowel inflammation and that she is eating loads but her body is not absorbing the food and nutrients hence the weight loss. We wouldn’t be able to tell this from her pooh, but it is a possibility. We will have to do the food trial first, see if her coat and skin improves and then explore this if the weight loss continues.

But even that wasn’t the bad news!

Apparently she has a heart murmur as well and whilst there are no obvious symptoms as such, this could be causing the weight loss and quietness. The vet has never really quite believed us about the mouth breathing but when he did the recent blood test he was concerned that she was very very stressed and mouth breathing a lot. It is an indication of a heart problem. And she was doing it again in the vets as she was stressed again. I said she had done it since she was a baby, and explained the time we thought she was going to die in my arms as she could not breathe. I have known (Lord knows how but I have) that she had a heart condition from when she was 12 weeks old and we fetched her. It is always a risk in Bengals – they carry a leaning towards cardomyopathy – but I just knew. And no-one listened to me. No-one believed me. And now she has a heart problem just diagnosed.

So, we have a cat who keeps getting scabby, whose coat, which was pelt like velvet and so stunning everyone was amazed, is now really poor, all manky and sticking up and rough and horrid. A cat who has an undiagnosed allergy to something, a cat that is losing weight hand over fist again, who may have bowel inflammation and who has a heart condition too. And to cap it alls he has to live with a step sister who hates her, a brother who won’t stop licking her face and bum for more than 2 seconds and a mummy who is too upset for words.

Sorry – I KNOW it is only a cat – I do really. I KNOW there are people with far far worse problems than this – I do really. But she is my baby and I can’t seem to help her. I can’t comfort her, I can’t tell he that what I am doing is to try and help, I can’t ask her where it hurts and I feel so bloody helpless and miserable.

My husband is upset about his job and the move and in denial, I am so damned tired all the time, I spend most of my day fighting back tears and I need a bloody good moan. Sorry!

Chrysler Chiefs on Tour

  Three years ago, when we did our Wild West Tour we hired a car and it was the brand new (then) Chrysler 300. They had only just been introduced in the States and were not due for relase in the UK for two years. We loved it and it was a great car to have for a road trip that meant lots of hours in the car. Nigel loved it and couldn't wait to dream of having one of his own, which he eventually did.

When we went to Canada this summer we hoped we could hire one again - and we did, though of course they are 10 a penny now and where as before - and still to a certain extent in this country - you saw hardly any of them, in Canada most of the hire cars seemed to Chrysler 300's and so we saw hundreds. However, he still loved it.

He had designed us 'tour t shirts' before we went away (he always does this and then I print them onto really top class expensive Primark T shirts. His design this year was a play on the Kaiser Chiefs ... The Chrysler Chiefs - and so it was doubly important that we managed to get a silver Chrysler. The logo he designed was a mix of Back to the Future (one of his fave films) his car and Peyto lake, one of the symbols of the Rockies. The tour dates were ont he back - like with any good tour t shirt. Yes ... I know .... we need to get out more.

Anyway, the page here was made playing on that theme hence the Chrysler chiefs. It was a page made for Mel and Jill at A Trip Down Memory Lane this month using the lovely new Basic Grey periphery which I am totally hooked on. It just works so well with the colours of all the Canada pictures.

A duckling day

It's been one of those days. You know - a duckling day. Where you look all calm on the surface like you are in control but your little legs are paddling like crazy underwater trying to keep you afloat. People see the calm and have no idea of the frantic paddling beneath the surface.

We all have 'em and they are sent to try us. Other people swimming alongside you helps enormously too. The only thing to do is keep paddling, safe in the knowledge that soon the current will slow down and you can return to floating and gliding!

The good news is - and I know it is early days - but Kira's coat looks a teeny tiny bit better. Not quite so brittle and sticking up. We have had her (and Boushka as I have to feed the two girls together) on just white fish and sensitive skin Hills Science diet for the last 24 hours. It seems, thought early days, to be having an effect. My house stinks of fish though and we don't ever ever eat fish so it's horrid. But heck - I would do whatever it takes.  Mind you, if I have another night like last night I may not be so sympathetic. Nigel had half the bed and Kira and I were meant to be sharing my half. Half is obviously a concept she has not quite understood! I'm a 'big girl' and I had such a teeny part of the bed I could only sleep on my side, dead straight with one leg on top of the other. I had NO ROOM! I hope she is a little more understanding tonight as she is playingt he sympathy card rather too well at the moment.

This page was the one prepared recently for the A True Friend blog. The challenge was to scrap a day in the life of your pet. Well, there was a lot to cram on for the monster and I had to leave quite a bit of his daily routine out! (Plus some was highly unsuitable for a page that was to be displayed on a public blog LOL)

I confess I am just loving the bright lime greens and turquoises at the moment. And that from somebody who tends to scrap in neutrals most of the time.

The papers were Creative Imaginations, Heidi Grace, Basic Grey and I used an Autumn Leaves stamp and CI chipboard. Great fun to make, except now I need to do one for each of the girls as well.

Oh well, off to cook yet more fish. It doesn't go very far between two of them!

An album in under 12 hours

Now that is what I call speed scrapping! I needed to make a birthday gift for Nigel and I needed to make it yesterday as it is the only chance I had. OK so I could have done some today but I have never been a totally last minute sort of girl and that really would have been pushing it.

I started at midday yesterday and apart from lunch, dinner and watching Strictly and Casualty I worked pretty much solidly on it ..... and I finished it. I want to thank Marja too, as if she had not completed her album I would never have been motivated to get my act together and do this one.

I had been THINKING about it for weeks, but thinking and doing are quite different things aren't they!

It is a 6 x 6 A - Z album of Canada and it was quicker to do as I kept the pages the same range of colours, using only 5 different cardstocks, a few patterned papers and lots of stamps.

I had already cut the circle letters (did that three weeks ago when I should have made the album!)

It is really really simple, but I am dead chuffed that I completed 27 pages in under 12 hours.

I won't be doing it again in a long while, but I have a great feeling of satisfaction.

I have posted a couple of pages in this entry but have put the whole album in a photo album down the side.

I would love it if anyone went and looked and told me what they thought. Only I can't give it to Nigel for another week and it is killing me not showing anyone LOL All the work and I do want someone to see it!

Now, I have a whole host of other scrapping commitments I need to do - if only I could do them all that quickly eh! Ah well. At least it is Sunday

Have a fabby day, everyone. x