Some Christmas cards I made last night for Operation Write Home

below is a closeup of the glitter glue embellishment that I made. If you zoom in you can see how sparkly it is.

Sorry about the sideways card below. It is made out of a soda can colored with Tim Holtz alcohol ink, embossed with my Cricut and touched up with stickles and Crystal Effects (zoom for detail).

Oops, I just found out that we are supposed to leave the inside blank, so these cards won't be going to Christie (see previous post about her challenge)  because I stamped this sentiment on the inside of them. It seemed really appropriate, but rules are rules and hey, I need Christmas cards for other things anyway! I'll make more tonight and leave them blank. It was really fast making these out of one sheet of a page out of a glitter card stack and a page or two of decorative paper. The cards themselves are just plain old card stack either white, blue or green. I really love the fun colors and think they'll brighten anyone's day, so will make more like these for Operation Write Home.

A frog in my plants

Earlier this week I moved the plants from my front porch in to the garage to protect them from the predicted cold temps at night. When I reached down to move what appeared to be a rock in one of the pots to my surprise it was soft and breathing! Yuppers.... it was a frog (or are they called toads?) Here's a few pictures of the darling little thing.

Sadness and mourning

I am in mourning now over the loss of my dear Tucker. If you have time, please celebrate his life along with me by watching this slide show on his blog. It was tough putting it together, but is part of my healing process. Thank you for your warm thoughts and prayers.

Prayers for my Wire Fox Terrier Please

My daughter has posted a wonderful note on her blog about our Wire Fox Terrier, Tucker, who might not make it through the night. He will be 14 on October 26th and has far outlived the vet's prediction after surviving Mast Cell Tumor removal. Maybe he'll surprise us and spring back after getting some rest, but his breathing is labored and he can't hold his head up, so for now we've put him to bed and will try to get some sleep ourselves. I would appreciate your prayers, both for Mike and I as we go through another loss and for Tucker's comfort. Please go look at his pictures on her post and also on his blog.

New Blog Hop

After this nice lady followed me on Blog Frog I hopped over to her blog and she was doing a blog hop, so I hopped along! Won't you join us too?

Sunrise over Topeka

Sunrise over Topeka taken with my old, not-so-high-tech cell phone. Right before I took this picture the sky was all sorts of shades of cotton candy pink, cherry red, luscious peach, lemon yellow (are you hungry yet?) reflecting on soft billowy clouds. Then all of a sudden this huge orange ball appeared from behind the capital dome and was just too good to pass up. Even though I'd much rather be home than at work, it's mornings like this that make me thankful for working on the 8th floor of a downtown building across from this awesome architectural marvel!

Mushrooms around the Topeka Statehouse

Last week a co-worker and I noticed a bunch of odd looking things poking up above the mulch surrounding the trees on the grounds of our Statehouse. Of course the first day I didn't have my camera with me, so I remembered to bring it along the next day. The first pic shows some pretty standard clumps of mushrooms.

and the next one looks pretty standard too

but the next two pictures made our minds wander a bit and caused so much laughter that we almost drew a crowd. I can't tell you what we were thinking because this is a G-rated blog, but for a couple of old ladies we sure had some fun! She tried posing these because in one day's time they had totally wilteed, then when we did finally come across one that wasn't wilted she just HAD to add those two ball thingies.