The first rose of Spring and some simple cards.

These photos were taken in my front garden. The first rose to flower. I took photos of the same rose over three days. Anazing to be able to document God's creation in such a way. I think I am going to print these rather large and hang them on the wall as art.

These two cards I made last night. Literally in the middle of the night. I couldn't sleep, actually I couldn't lie down, because my nose is so blocked. I finally gave up, got up and went to play in my craftroom untill the meds I took started working.

The first card is for a friend. She needed a sympathy card for her friend, who lost his mom. All Bazzil with an image I stamped in clear embossing ink and embossed with silver from Crafty Individuals, some ribbon from my stash and some bling I found in the local habby store. I fins sympathy cards very hard, because I like happy colours.

The next card is for my niece who is getting married on Saturday. Her colour scheme is green and gold. I have wanted to use this image from Great Impressions for a long time. Again all Bazzil. Can't remember where I got the gold cardboard, I have had it for years. Image was stamped in clear embossing ink and embossed in gold. The ribbon is from my stash. I really love how these cards turned out, even though they are so dark. Must have been my mood, because I could not sleep. LOL

Helping a friend and its STILL September in my house!

I told you I was working in my craftroom with my friend the other day, but I never told you what we were doing. I was too busy complaining about my life - LOL.
We were busy making thank you cards for her. She is the friend who's mom passed away a while ago and she wanted to thank a few people for all the help and support they had given her. She is my big scrapping buddy, but the cardmaking thing is not her forte, so she asked me to help. This card is what we came up with.


It is made with only Bazzil cardstock, a Heidi Swapp stamp, a border punch and some bling. Very simple, but very effective.

OK, here comes the next exciting episode in my month of September.
On Thursday morning I got a phone call from Hannah. "Ouma," came a very tearful voice over the phone, "where can you buy silkworms?" When I told her I didn't know, she started crying, so hard and so heartwrenchingly sadly that I found myself crying without knowing why.
Finally she gave the phone to her mother and Karin told me that they woke up that morning to find that the ants had attacked her silkworms during the night and killed them. You must understand that these silkworms had names, Cinderella and Sylvester. They came with to school and were fed three times a day.
Karin told her that she should stop crying, because the worms were in heaven now. That made her cry even harder. She said:"no mommy, they are NOT in heaven, they are still being eaten!" Karin had to wait untill she was distracted and then took the worms out of the box and threw them away. A little while later, Hannah told her that she thought the worms were in heaven now, because they were no longer there.
Operation 'find silkworms for Hannah" started in my family. We even searched the internet. Did you know you could buy silkworms on the internet? They were too far though, but then Ankie remembered that Barry's mom had silkworms and phoned her. She was so kind and sent 4 worms with Barry. Hannah was bouncing up and down she was so happy. She couldn't stop hugging and kissing Barry.
Thursday afternoon I had to travel to Magalliesburg for my niece's kitchen tea. Ankie came with me, but was picked up by Barry from the party to go to Spring break at Sun City for the long weekend. That meant that I was travelling home alone that evening.
Drving on the main road to Johannesburg, near Krugersdorp, my car suddenly overheated and every light came on, telling me to STOP. I stopped next to the road, but knew I could not phone DH, because he would just flip out completely, he was still not over the last car fiasco. Then I remembered that my brother stays in Krugersdorp! I phoned Jannie and he came to my rescue within 10 minutes. He filled the car with water and told me to follow him to the closest garage at a shopping centre. He said we should have coffee and wait for the car to cool down completely before I tried to drive home.
What a gift this time I got to spend with my brother was! We talked, laughed, I cried a bit about all the drama in my life and he just listened and said all the right things. We ate pizza and talked for about two hours. Then he followed me almost all the way home to make sure I was OK.
Funny thing is, since then the car has not lost a drop of water and has not overheated again. In the beginning of the year, when I was going through another bad spell, I came to understand that God has devine timing and that everything happens for a reason. Now I can't help thinking that maybe God wanted my brother and I to spend some time together. He wanted me to remember just how much I love my brother and that I should spend more time with him. So, I thank God that my car overheated.

Would anybody have any objections if September ended now?

I know it is Spring here and I really love Spring, in fact I found these beautiful blossoms while visiting my daughter at her new house and just had to snap them. Aren't they amazingly beautiful? This month, however, has not been the nicest of months in my life. Do you sometimes feel like you want to resign from the job you love most in this world and just go and hide under a rock somewhere untill the storm is over? Today I wish I could resign as a wife and a mother.
Ankie has had a very hard month. First she was in a 4 car pile-up on the highway, then she nearly died from carbon monoxcide poisoning when her stove malfunctioned and stayed on after she had put it off. (Of course there had to be a pot with left over food on the plate that didn't work.) Poor child woke up the next morning to a cloud of black smoke filling her little house! She had to bring every piece of clothing, linen, curtains and every other thing she could carry, home to be washed and we tried to get rid of the smell.
I have arranged for a cleaning lady to go and help clean the walls on Friday.
Then I drove through a pothole on the way home from work (nothing like living in Africa, is there?) It had to be on the day when I had to pick up my DH (the D is not for 'dear' today!!!!) so that we could collect a courtesy car from the panel beaters. I had to pick him up at 3.30, because the panelbeaters close at 4.30. Traffic being so bad lately I left home at 2.30, went to get petrol, only to be told I had a flat tyre! Phoned DH, told him I was changing tyres and then left. Just through the toll road and traffic came to a standstill - they were blasting for the Gautrain! About 3 km from DH''s work, traffic came to another screeching halt. A taxi drove into a truck and we were rerouted, only problem, the only other way to het to DH would take me an hour. He decided to walk (run) to the car. By this time I was getting it on the phone, because I was late. Like any of it was my fault!
By the time he got to the car the poor man was breathing so hard that all I could do, was pray. Please God, don't let him have a heart attack now! I don't know where the nearest hospital is. (Yes, I can laugh about it now, but it was NOT FUNNY at the time)
Turns out the tyre was so badly damaged that it could not be fixed, had to get a new one. But wait! There's more....
Last night I was busy making cards with a friend in my craftroom when the phone rang. Ankie again. "Mommy, dad is going to kill me." were her first words. What now? was my first thought. "I have just had another car accident" she said. My heart just stopped. A million things went through my mind. Was she OK? Where will we find the money to fix a second car? How am I going to stop DH from killing her? What happened, was all I could say. She was driving along the main road when another driver disregarded a stop street and drove straight into her from the side! Luckily she wasn't injured (the angels are working overtime around my child lately!) Luckily there are witnesses that came forward and are prepared to testify.
DH completely lost it. He is still ranting and raving 24 hours later. She has no regard for anything. I raised her to be like that. Why does he have to work so hard only for her to show no respect. He screamed at her when he got to her. he screamed at her boyfriend because he couldn't open the car's bonnet. He screamed at the traffic officer, he screamed at the other driver. He screamed at her some more when they got to the police station, because she was explaining to the other driver what was going on.
When he got home, he screamed some more at me, telling me that she would move back home and that he would take her to university and fetch her again after work.
I am feeling so tired, its not like she was driving along thinking, how can I inconvenience my dad tonight? Should I pay somebody to drive into me? Accidents happen, sometimes more than once in a very short space of time.
The car is so badly damaged that it will be written off. It breaks my heart, because it was the car that I inherited from my dad, but the fact that I am hurting and tired of being in the middle, trying to protect my children and trying to make my husband happy doesn't seem to have entered any of their minds.
OK pity party is over. If you read up to here, thanks for listening, I will feel better tomorrow and I wouldn't swop being a mom for anything. I am so grateful to God for protecting my little girl and I trust Him to bring some sense to my DH's head.

I can finally share.

A while ago Audrey, from the Scrapping Studio in Boksburg, my LSS, asked me if I would be interested in designing a home studio kit for the store. I was very scared, because I have never done anything like that before, but decided to not let my fears and insecurities get to me and agreed. They gave me everything that would be included in the kit and I could do with it what I wanted. The only rule was that I could not add anything from my own stash.
Sounds exciting and pretty easy, doesn't it? Not on your life! I sat for a whole week after I collected the kit, staring at the papers. I would unpack all the papers and lay them out in front of me while we were watching TV at night. Every now and then I would look at the papers from a different angle. Eventually my DH could not stand it any longer and he asked me if I was planning to look at the papers untill they finally dissapeared.
That is when I decided to stop trying to design the 'perfect' layout and just do what I normally do - PLAY! That is exactly what I did, I played with the stash in front of me and I actually really liked the final product. I think the women who normally buy from Audrey must have liked it too because when I went to pick up my page today, I wanted to buy a kit to give to Tertia-Lee's granny who is visiting from England, but there was not a single one left over.

I used all the papers in the kit, but can not remember by whom they were made. The kit had a large swirly stamp which I used on plain Cardstock to make the background paper. I used household bleach to get the effect that I wanted. The large flower was made with 21 circles. I found the instructions for it in one of my many magazines. The flowers were also included in the kit and are amazing! I think I used about half the flowers in the packet. The kit costs R130 and I think it is incredible value for money. If you would like to get your hands on this months kit, contact Audrey or Sarah at the Scrapping Studio. Have a look on their blog: http://www.scrappingstudio.blogspot.com/ to see the new kits.

Has it been 10 days already?

I can't believe it has been 10 days since my last post! So much has happened in my life that I don't know where to begin.
Maybe I should start where I left off. My words are slowly but surely coming back to me. At least I am not sitting, staring into space not knowing what to say any more. When it happened, I did not know what hit me - how could I have nothing to say? Me? who never stops talking? I think I was right, when I said that it was God's way, but not for the reason I thought. God was trying to get me to shut up for a few minutes so that I could hear Him when I needed to.
Last Friday Ankie came to get petrol money from me after school, before she left to coach her Water Polo team in Fourways. She knew that I would be busy untill at least 3 o'clock with my weekly SRC meeting, so when the phone rang at 14h15 and I saw it was her, I knew that it had to be serious, because she would never phone me in the middle of a meeting. When I answered, I could not make out anything she said, she was hysterical. So many things went through my mind. Was she smashed and grabbed - again!, for the third time? Was she attacked, Hi-jacked or worse? (You know what a mother's heart is like) It took me a few minutes (it could have been seconds, but it felt like hours) to calm her down enough to hear that she had been involved in a four car pile-up on the highway.
What a relief! She was OK, the car wasn't, but who cares? My child was OK!!! The next problem was, how do I get to her to help? DH works a lot closer than where I was, so I phoned him and off he went to rescue her. Agonising minutes (hours?) untill he finally got to her. Poor man, got stuck in traffic (caused by her), and he is not the most patient man I know. By then everybody knew. I SMSed all her siblings and they were all ready to jump in their cars to rescue their baby sister.
What does this whole saga have to do with me and my words you ask? Well, because I wasn't busy talking at the speed of white light, I could see and hear God in all this. I knew that there were only a split second between getting a phone call from a hysterical child and getting a phone call from some stranger phoning me to tell me that my child was lying unconcious or dead next to the road. How can I ever thank God enough for protecting my child? How can I ever know why He saved her, because I know for sure that I did not deserve it more than my dear friend that lost her daughter in a car crash 10 years ago, in fact, I am so terribly unworthy, but so very very grateful.
If you have your children around you today, thank God for that and remember to hug them often. Spare a thought for all those parents who were not as lucky as I was, and who had to stand next to an open grave, because they are no less worthy of having their children with them than we are!
A lot more happened in the last ten days, but I won't bore you with the details. Maybe some other day. I have been crafting, but I haven't had time to photograph any of it. Maybe life will slow down to normal speed soon and then you will have to look at everything I made, so enjoy the peace for now, I will be back soon.

Sad day today.

Today I went to the funeral of a dear friend's mother. I didn't know the lady, but just listening to her grandchildren talk about her, tells me she was a very special lady. It is amazing to think that it has already been six years since I had to bury my own mother. It feels like yesterday.
I remember so clearly what my dad said shortly after mom passed away and I asked him if the pain of losing her would ever go away. He looked at me for a long time and then he said: "I don't know my dear, maybe it gets better after 27 years, I will tell you if it does." I thought it was a very strange answer untill I realised that his own mom had passed away 26 years before. Today, when I sat in church, I realised my dad was right, it never really gets better, we just learn to live with the loss.
Today's card was made for my friend. I thought I would send her some cheerful flowers, hoping they will make her smile.