BCA Kit

I REALLY DO appreciate those that have hung around the last few months of me not sharing anything, and I REALLY DO appreciate those of you who have found me through a search for digital scrapbook kits on the internet.

I have been in a really bad creative funk since my dad passed away on January 20, 2012. I've just been in a bad funk period. The whole family has been, mom especially. They were married for 56 years before he passed. We all miss him, his smile, his hugs and kisses, his laugh, his jokes, his farming tales, his work tales, and that inevitable hand on our shoulders with the grip of a bear if we screwed up, We all miss just having him around and being able to talk to him.Some of those farm tales all of us were a part of. I am VERY PROUD of my parents and all that they have done, all that they accomplished, and all that they have taught us. It has been a very tear filled time. Do not miss the chance to spend as much time with your parents in their older years as you can. You never know when they will be called back "Home" to be with our Creator. I know that all 5 of us kids are wishing we had spent more time with him and mom....and we are spending more time with mom. It doesn't replace dad being in her life, but it helps all of us get through this time of grief. I know it took me quite a while to come to grips with the death of our youngest granddaughter 13 years ago. But I know that both my dad and my granddaughter are together in Heaven, waiting for us with smiles and watching over us.

I've been working on and off over the last few months on just bits and pieces of various kits, sometimes just playing with the various scripts that I've purchased to see how they work, and how they look, and then just putting in them in folders for future kits. Sometimes they just go into a folder with a "label" on them as to what is in that particular folder. Like if I've done animals, whatever animals I've done go into that folder.....etc. I have a LOT of different scripts to help create all of the goodies I share with all of you. There are times I create my own stuff.....which may or may not go into a kit. Sometimes playing is just therapeutic and if I like it, it goes in a folder, if not, well, it goes in the "trash".

So, my "playing" has at least created one full kit....some of which was started before my dad passed away, but never got finished until the other day. There are 40 papers and 119 elements. Some of the elements of the kit are not shown in the 5 previews, but they are all worth the surprise of getting the kit. There are 4 different angels, but only one is shown. I just can't get into loading the previews with all of the different elements in the kit, and then having it look like a huge jumbled mess. In some respects, I guess I'm a "neat freak" when it comes to my scrap kit previews. And, I think sometimes people like to be surprised. I hope you like the surprises in the kit and can use them for your digital pages!!

Also, the elements in the kit are the size that the script ran them, so you may have to resize them to fit the way YOU want them to be.

Please remember....All of my kits are for personal use only. They are not to be sold either as a whole kit or as individual elements.

Here are 5 previews of some of what is in this kit:

Here is the MediaFire link for the kit:

https://www.mediafire.com/?5vdck6c88za3d9j

A HUGE THANK YOU for visiting!! And your comments are VERY welcomed and appreciated!
Enjoy!!

It's been a while

Things have been rather chaotic in my life since my dad passed 19 months ago. I finally have a job. I've been driving a cab 12 hours a day 4-5 days a week, and when I'm not driving, I'm either doing something around the house or trying to put some kits together.....a couple of pieces at a time when I can find some time and energy!

I never thought I would be driving a cab, but it brings in some money. It was a job that was actually hiring, though I had to wait 2 1/2 weeks to start because of the background check. It definitely is NOT a consistent paycheck! One day I could take home $100, and the next $30. It's a yo yo job....up and down as far as money goes. It is definitely an adventure everyday I drive! I may stay in town, or I may get sent out of town. I've been to Springfield, IL, Peoria, IL, El Paso, IL, and various other towns around Bloomington/Normal. I never know what vehicle I'm going to be driving from one day to the next. I never know if the thing is going to work or not. I never know if it's going to break down....which I have had happen when I was in Decatur, IL! I was NOT a happy camper that day! It took 3 hours for me to get picked up and taken back to the office. By the time I got back to the office, I was not in the mood to drive anymore, and I still had 5 hours left to drive! I only had TWO runs for the day, but I did make money for the day. I could have made more money IF there had been something else for me to drive when I got back. But all of the working cabs were taken, and the rest were waiting to get fixed.

I really do need to find another job. Something that I like to do. I like to cook, so restaurant jobs are going to be an option....even if I have to do dishes....wouldn't be the first time doing that. It was my very first paying job! There are so many restaurants here, not sure if they want a 58 year old, but hey, at least I KNOW how to WORK!! I liked driving a forklift and loading trucks. Yes, I have a very diverse work history. I can do whatever I put my mind to, and my mind is still in good working order!! :)

Been thinking about making jewelry and other accessories and selling them at the local boutiques and shops here....and maybe online. I know this won't be a consistent paycheck, but it will bring in extra cash. Maybe create my own "Junk Gypsy" type business....oh how I love my Junk Gypsy girls on the Great American Country channel!! Yep, I'm too creative for my own good!!

I'm also going to keep up my blog, though maybe only on a weekly, bi-weekly or monthly basis. It's fun to create things for others to create their own scrapbook pages with!!

Hopefully I will have a new kit done in the next few days and get it out to you so you can create that special page for your loved ones!

Thank You So Much for hanging out (and hanging on) with me! You are very much appreciated!
Many Blessings to You and Yours

St. Patrick's Day Kit & QP

Things are about the same on the emotional level since dad passed last month. We are all on the emotional roller coaster. Mom got a card from one couple that shops at Walmart sending their condolences. They said that the place isn't the same without dad being there. And one of the managers there said that there have been quite a few customers asking about where dad went. It was hard for the manager to tell them about dad's passing because she liked dad like her own dad. Dad was pretty special to us and a lot of other people, too. He treated people with respect and dignity when he was at work and helped the customers as much as he could. I've also run into a few of our old co-workers when we worked together at GATX in various places around town. Saw three of them at Denny's Saturday! One of them works there. It's going to be a while before we can feel the ease in the sorrow we all feel. I know that I still feel sad about my late granddaughter, and it's been 11 1/2 years since she passed.

I've taken the plunge back into creating kits and quick pages again. And I do apologize for the previews, I'm sort of out of practice. I'm not really good at them, but I'm trying. This kit is in three parts plus the quick page. There are 36 full size papers, 8 torn pages (full size), 8 torn edges, and 122 elements in this kit, so make sure that you download all 3 zips as they are parts 1-3, and they won't download onto your computer without all 3 of them being in your files. The quick page, which is separate from the .rar files, has a link on Media Fire. There are also elements that are not shown in the 3 element previews....there are 7 previews....3 paper, 3 elements and the quick page is on the bottom.

HUGE Thank You for sticking with me through all of my ups and downs! You are all so very, very much appreciated!!
Here are the links for the kit and the quick page.
Part 1:   http://www.mediafire.com/?yxpjns8qn5z8hjh
Part 2:   http://www.mediafire.com/?b3kpfc8x0y5336x
Part 3:   http://www.mediafire.com/?t7ebbd6qsd61nk6
QP:       http://www.mediafire.com/view/?6g8ub5uyo65koyj
Have an AWESOME week!
Enjoy!

Life in the Odd Lanes

I hope you have all been well. 

It's been almost three weeks since my dad passed away, and things have been up and down emotionally for all of us. Mom has been thinking about a lot of things that should have been tip offs that things were not going well with dad, and he wouldn't do much about them until after they got really, really bad. I know that he was not the same after his open heart surgery, and things started going down hill really fast. We all figured it was just something that happened after heart surgery until things got more stable. I know that some people heal much slower, especially older people. But this was more of a rapid down hill slide. Little did we know just how bad things really were. Mayo Clinic confirmed what the doctor had found in the biopsy.....adenocarcenoma. It is a cancer that originates somewhere in the GI tract....liver, gall bladder, stomach, etc. But they couldn't pinpoint just exactly which organ it started in, and since an autopsy wasn't done because the basic cause was known, we will never know just exactly where it started. And, he was cremated.

Mom gave me dad's truck because I had helped her out financially when dad was in the hospital and with some of the funeral expenses that had to be paid the day we made his funeral arrangements. It is REALLY HARD to drive that truck knowing that my dad will never drive it again. It was his first new truck he had had in years. He bought it in 1994. The truck, like my dad, quit working on December 13, 2012. He didn't know that it was in need of some other work besides the front end. The fuel injector, spark plugs and starter all needed to be replaced, plus 2 tires that had some problem or another. But, the repairs will be done so that I can drive it safely. But it is really hard to drive it as I keep thinking he'll be wanting his truck.....I know, he's gone, but I am still having an issue with wrapping my head around the fact that he is not coming back.

I know that we've all been thinking about all of the times that we have spent with our parents, and how much love there was between us all, even in our not so good times, we loved each other a LOT! I had made both of my parents quilt tops when I was in Oklahoma in 2011, but I hadn't gotten them into quilt form. I got dad's done, and hoped that he would be able to enjoy it before he passed, and know that he had it. But that was not to be. I finally got it done on Saturday the 19th, but he was not conscious the whole day. He passed away under that quilt. Mom has been under it (when she's in her chair watching TV) since we brought her home the morning of the 20th. She finds it hard to go to bed at night, and she wakes up about 12:45 Sunday mornings and doesn't go back to sleep until after 3:30. She thinks that his time of death was actually about 12:45, not 3:15 when the nurse pronounced him deceased. She's regretting not being awake and with him when he passed away, but I know that my dad would not have wanted her to see him leave her. Their lives were one. They were a true couple. They didn't do too much without the other knowing what was going on. When dad had to be away to do seed corn harvest, he was on the phone with her when he wasn't doing something else. When he was on lunch break at Walmart, he called her. He would call her when he got to work, and call her when he was on his way home. It was what they did. They didn't like cell phones, but they used them for those calls when they were apart.

Well, I'm going to go back and watch TV with mom. My sister that has been living with our parents since September is in Alabama helping her oldest daughter. Her grandson will be having surgery Monday and her daughter will be having colonoscopy Wednesday, so I've been here since yesterday evening, and will be here until next weekend sometime.

I hope that I can get back to feeling creative soon, and start sharing with all of you again!

Love and HUGE Hugs
Trish

In Loving Memory of My Dad

Early Sunday morning, January 20, 2013, my dad quietly passed through the door to Heaven and into the arms of God. He passed away in his sleep.
It was very hard for us to have him leave us, but he is free of pain, free of his cancer, and in a new body in Heaven.
We have an inside family joke that we put in his obituary. When we were younger and living on the farm, we would help dad walk beans to get rid of weeds during the summer. Whenever it was time for lunch or at the end of the day, the five of us kids would start walking really fast through the rows that we were weeding. Dad would always tell us...."Don't be haulin' ass to the truck!" Well, Sunday morning, after my two sisters and a niece helped mom get everything packed up and home after dad passed, my sister Jennifer and I were outside. We gave each other a hug, and Jennifer whispered in my ear "Don't haul ass to the truck!" I told her that dad's already hauled ass to the truck. At the end of our dad's obituary we put, through popular vote...."He snuck off and hauled ass to the truck." A fitting family tribute to a great man we called our dad and will miss greatly. He's in Heaven, driving the big red tractor God had waiting for him and farming....without a GPS! His rows are probably straighter there than when he was here on earth and having to use a GPS. He hated the GPS!
LOVE YOU and MISS YOU POPSIE

Life Sucks!

The end of the year was not good at all, and the beginning of this year is even worse. I apologize if this narrative seems rather jumpy.....but considering what my family and I are going through, I'm lucky to be writing this without being in tears.

My dad has had physical problems since May 2012, when he had a triple by-pass on his heart. He has not been the same at all. His health has been going down hill, and has gotten even worse since just before Christmas.

I have watched my dad go from being able to walk normally to not being able to walk in three weeks. On January 3rd, we took him, by ambulance, to the emergency room. There was no other way to get him to the ER because my next to youngest sister, my youngest son and I were NOT going to even attempt to carry dad down 4 steps to the drive way and into the van, then into a wheelchair at the hospital. There would have been 4 people hurt! And dad would have gotten hurt the worst! He didn't argue when I told him that I was going to call the ambulance so none of us got hurt.

The prognosis is not good. On his 81st birthday (January 4th) they confirmed that he has stage 4 metastasized cancer in his bones and spine.....cancer that never showed up on the MRI in May (2012) before he had his open heart surgery....but it is now in various bones.....right upper leg, hip, spine, ribs, and other places showed up on the January 3rd and 4th MRI's that they took. His blood work that they did in the emergency room was not good at all. He's been on Warfarin since before his surgery and the doctor wanted his blood thickness to be between 2 & 3. The higher the number....the thinner the blood....his was greater than 10!! His sodium was very low, his calcium was very high, and his potassium was out of whack too! They said that the cancer will royally mess things up with his blood and his brain. The high calcium they said will make him very tired and sleep a lot and will eventually mess with his memory. The cancer will do the same. They are giving him between 1 and 3 months to live. My sad thoughts were: Happy Birthday dad, your doctors have told you that you have stage 4 cancer and you have 1 to 3 months to live.

They did a biopsy on a spot on his rib that was bigger, and safer, than doing the biopsy on his spine. They sent the biopsy off to Mayo Clinic. Not sure if they couldn't figure out what the cancer is here, or whether they wanted a second opinion. Either way, my dad is in and out of consciousness. He is losing his lucid state more and more every day. The doctors have warned us that he will go through being awake and lucid, to sleeping a lot, to being agitated, to being belligerent, to not knowing who anyone is, to being in a coma and then death. I LOVE MY DAD! So please don't misunderstand me when I say this, but.....honestly, since he's not been on Warfarin and hasn't been moving around, I hope that he has a massive heart attack before he gets to the point of not knowing who anyone is. I don't want to see my parents suffer in any way, shape or form.

So far they are keeping him as pain free as possible. My dad's Spirit is getting ready to leave us little by little and there isn't a damned thing I or anyone else can do to make him better! The chemo and radiation won't do him any good....if anything....it will just prolong his suffering. He doesn't want that, mom doesn't want that, and neither do the five of their children, nine grandchildren and seven great grandchildren.

I WANT MY DAD BACK! I want him back the way he used to be....but....the Divine has a different agenda than what mine is. I can't fix this. I can't heal this. I can only Pray for him and my family. I know that dad is not going alone! His Angels have always been with him and are going to be with him to walk with him through the door to Heaven. None of us walk through this life alone. We are always in the presence of the Divine and our Divine Angels. I know that each of us has our own Divinely appointed Angels that help us and comfort us when we are going through any crisis. The Divine carries us when we are in real need of Divine help.

I hope that you will send Prayers to my dad and my family during this time. Even though I don't know you personally ...... I LOVE YOU ALL!!

<3 Trish

Down in the dumps

How are you today? I hope you are doing well!
I apologize for not posting, but I've been in a really bad funk lately, and have misplaced my creative mojo somewhere. I've been doing some other stuff trying to get out of my funk, but that hasn't been helping either. Tried doing some jewelry, but that mojo seems to have disappeared, too. Not sure if it's the change of seasons or the holiday's coming up or I'm just temporarily burned out on being creative, but this lack of creativity totally sucks! Especially since this is the season where creativity is important to me to create something for my family during the holiday. I'm not in the fun place to decorate the fire place mantle or a Christmas tree, and that's just not me.....not at this time of year. This is the time of year that my creativity is usually abundant and over flowing.
Hopefully I can find my creative magic soon, especially since I had started some Christmas stuff to share with all of you before my bad funk showed up and kicked my creativity out the window.
Hope you have an AWESOME day! And an TERRIFIC Holiday Season.....whatever Holiday you celebrate wherever you are and whatever Spiritual path you follow.
Know that I do appreciate all of you very much, and I really miss posting creations for you to use.
LOVE YOU ALL! HUGE Holiday Hugs.
Trish aka Dragon