Don't be crabby

In the past I've shown you different little drawings that I've made and left on my work table for the girl who works my days off. After she sees them I usually leave them up for a while until I get tired of seeing them or they get really beat up. Here's the latest one that I put up before I took my four day weekend.

Underneath the crab it did say I'll be back but I cut that out of the picture. Maybe I'll cut the crab out of this one and tape him to another piece of paper with some other clever saying. It's the little things that amuse me and get me through the day.

Hydrangeas

I may have mentioned a while back that this year I didn't have one single bloom on my hydrangea bushes. That's really quite unusual considering the fact that they are usually loaded. Last week I happened to notice that one of them has one single bloom started.

So far, this is all I've got. It's only green, so don't know if it will change to a different color or not. Hopefully these bushes won't do this again next year

New phone

I know that I mentioned getting a new phone but I don't know if I said anything more about it. The phone is a Samsung galaxy A14 5G. I'm loving the camera on this phone right now. It takes a much nicer picture than my old phone. And it has a couple settings that the old one didn't have.. One of the settings is for food. Just to test it out I took a picture of one of the deli salads at work.

It also has a10x zoom. Although it doesn't take a great picture from that far away, you can get pretty close on this. I was standing in the back of the store and the picture is at the front of the store. 

Other settings on the phone are pro, macro, panorama, night, slow motion and hyperlapse. Don't ask me what all of those are because I haven't figured them all out yet. I'm still working on learning the phone and where everything is in comparison to the old phone. Overall I think I do like this one over the other. I especially like that this one doesn't act like it's possessed by evil demons. 

Edinboro Lake

On one of my recent days off I needed to make a run to Walmart. While I was out I decided to make a quick stop at Edinboro lake to grab some pictures.  Unfortunately the majority of the pictures that I took were blurry. I was taking all the pictures blind since I couldn't see the screen on the phone at all. Here is what I did get

Back to school

I recently purchased a cut file From Myscrapchick.com for a school bus box card. This one is going to Presley before she starts her 1st day of kindergarten.

This card folds flat to mail.

Since this is a back to school theme I wanted to make an envelope that went along with it. This card is a slim line card which fits in a legal size envelope. I wanted to make the outside of the envelope look like notebook paper. Using a ruler and some markers I think I achieved that goal. 

The battle is real

 You either want to hold on to summer or you're ready to jump into fall and all the pumpkin spice items available for your sweater weather heart. 

Because my mind works in mysterious ways sometimes, I went to Bing's AI image creator. I typed in "summer flip flops battling pumpkin spice, digital art" This was the result.

Care to pick a side? Honestly I'll take either one. Just please don't give me a parka and tell me we're expecting a foot of snow.

Cool art work

Yesterday I forgot one picture that I took at Sugar n Spice. This was sitting outside by the front door. 

Lunch at Sugar n Spice

 The place where we had lunch is in an old hotel. I'm talking seriously old. It was built in 1826. They have tables set up in several different rooms. In these pictures we are entering and walking past the cash register and the other picture is one of the rooms off to the right.

We both chose the stuffed chicken breast with mashed potatoes and green beans. I had a side of coleslaw and Amanda had cottage cheese. Both of us took half of our dinners home. We also splurged on a piece of chocolate peanut butter pie to take home. 

I was so stuffed from lunch that I didn't even eat dinner that night. I saved my leftovers for the next day.

A fun day out with Amanda part 2

 So did I buy anything while I was out? I sure did.

I got some cardstock at Michaels

2 soaps at Bath & Body works

A purse at Boscov's

A few Christmas decorations and some fall napkins for a decoupage project at Hobby Lobby.

I spent way too much money on things I didn't need but I had fun. 

Tomorrow more about our lunch.

A fun day out with Amanda

 Saturday Amanda and I went out to do some shopping and go out to lunch. She had seen some Christmas things at Hobby Lobby and they're all 40% off now so she wanted to go there.

Our first stop though was Michaels.

Next we went into the Millcreek Mall because Amanda wanted to stop at Bath and Body Works. They had their soaps for $2.99 each

After Bath and Body Works we went to Boscovs. They had a clearance on their purses so I thought I would get one.

Then we went to Hobby Lobby. After that it was out to lunch at Sugar n Spice

Tomorrow I'll show yo more of our day out.

Starting on Christmas

Back in July I started working on Christmas cards. I wanted to get a head start on making them before I had to get them in the mail. I've had plenty of other stuff to post about so I've never gotten around to posting about them. After I made 4 of them I fizzled out and that was as far as I got. I have 3 of one card and only one of the other.

This is the one that I have 3 of. The stained glass Santa image is printed on glossy photo paper.

And this next one I only have one of

Tomorrow I'll get back to what I did on my 4 day weekend.

On a side note, I was wondering if anyone would be interested in being put on a happy mail list. I can't say how often I would send something. It would depend on how many are interested and how actively I'm making cards. If you are interested you can send your mailing address to me at iannieam@gmail.com.

A 4 day weekend

I decided that I was in need of a long weekend. I took Friday and Sunday with Saturday and Monday being my regular days off. I didn't do a whole lot on Friday but I did manage to get out and finally get a new phone.    

I've been wanting to do this for some time since the phone I've had for the past 3 years has gotten to be a bit of a pain in the butt. I'm pretty sure that it's possessed. I went to the closest Cricket store and told the guy what I wanted. He asked me a few questions and then went over and got a phone off the shelf that I said sounded good. He went over and started picking out a case and a screen protector I told him that's okay you don't have to bother I just get those on Amazon because they're way cheaper. Then he told me they came with the phone and were included in the price he gave me. Then he goes to his computer starts punching in some stuff and tells me that there's also a coupon here for $70 worth of accessories that you can get free. So for roughly a $145 I got a phone, a case, a screen protector, headphones and a party speaker. Not a bad deal if you ask me. Now I just need to get used to the phone and where everything is.

Look! Up in the sky.

I saw this interesting cloud in the morning sky at work the one day. First I saw a dragon. Then I saw a girl in a long dress. Do you see anything in this cloud?

Stickers

Just for fun I decided to make some stickers. I may use these myself or send them to Presley. I haven't decided yet. Either way I did these on the Cricut.

Oops the picture is upside down. But you get the idea. Anyway I had this group of images uploaded to design space so I did them as a print and cut on sticker paper

For a guy's birthday

I thought I would get a head start on Wade's oldest son's November birthday. I got his card made and hopefully I'll remember to get it in the mail on time.

I got the idea for this card on a video I saw on Facebook. They used a punch but I used my Cricut machine. I cut an owl shape out of the top layer and put a piece of cardstock behind it that had a sunset picture on it. Then I added the "another year wiser" sentiment. I thought about attaching the top layer to the back side of the card base which would make the card open backwards. And then I was going to put on the inside "and you still don't know how to open a birthday card". Maybe I'll do this card again and do it that way

For a birthday

For some reason this time of year I start forgetting about birthdays. Wade's youngest daughter's birthday was the 13th. I didn't remember until the 11th that it was her birthday. Then I have another birthday on the 18th. Luckily I had time to get a card made and it will be in the mail on time for that one.

This one is very basic. A card base with some pattern paper, a couple die cuts and a stamped sentiment

just another cake

It seems like I've been on a roll with cake orders at work lately. Here is another one. I also had another one that apparently I forgot to take a picture of. 

Liberty Park and Amphitheater

The day I had my appointment for the EMG I also made a stop at Liberty Park and Amphitheater on my way home. I got out and walked around a bit and snapped a few shots.

I don't know if you can tell by enlarging this picture but each points shows a destination with the distance to get there.

There were lots of very nice looking boats.

Venturing out

I happened to see a post on Facebook for a place called Crawford County Liquidation Depot. It's about a half hour drive away from me so I decided to spend part of my day off checking it out.

It wasn't quite as good as I thought it might be but I did manage to spend a few bucks. They have lots of food items but most of them are seriously outdated. While I don't mind buying something out of date I'd prefer it be within the last month rather than a year ago. So what did I buy? Well let me show you.

I paid $4 for this tray. I can't decide whether I will leave it as is or maybe do something to it. Another purchase was a pair of wood pumpkins and two small tags. These items will get paint or maybe decoupage. 

The pumpkins were $2 each and the tags were $0.50 each. My final purchase was a pack of Christmas gift bags that I paid $2.50 for. There were eight bags in assorted sizes in the pack. I'll either use these to hold gifts or for craft projects.

cake

I have yet another cake order to share with you today.

While I was making this one I couldn't help singing. 

early morning sky

One morning when I was heading to my car to go to work I noticed the moon in the sky. I decided to try and take some pictures. They never turn out

Oh well, I tried. And it gave me something to blog about.

Answers

 Or at least I'll answer all the questions the best I can.

Most of you said that you weren't familiar with this kind of test. Rather than me trying to explain it poorly I'm giving you a link that will tell you what it is and how it's done and why.

https://medlineplus.gov/lab-tests/electromyography-emg-and-nerve-conduction-studies/

There was also the question as to what was wrong and why I was having the test.

Well over the course of the past year I've had a few incidents where I had a shooting pain go up my left arm and across my chest. It was sort of a squeezing feeling that kind of took my breath away. Each one only last maybe half a minute. After several of those (months apart) I thought I better go to the doctor. First they did blood work and then she sent me for the EMG. Why I had to go for the EMG is beyond me because in her office she even said that everything I described pointed to heart. An EMG is for someone who has symptoms of a muscle or nerve disorder. 

Did I get the results back yet?

The doctor said that they would be to my doctor by noon Monday. They never called me. As I'm typing this late Tuesday, I still haven't heard from them. The last time I called them regarding test results I was told, "We'll call you". The doctor also said that from a quick glance it didn't appear that there was any problem. That didn't surprise me. I didn't expect him to find anything. 

Did it hurt?

I had an EMG and a nerve conduction study. For the nerve conduction study, some of the shocks were rather strong. They start out mild and grow in intensity. I was beginning to wonder if I would walk away from there with a permanent twitch. The EMG was what I was stressing about most because of reading about them inserting needles into the muscle. Turns out the needs were super tiny like what they would use for acupuncture and I barely felt them. 

I think that pretty much covers all the questions. My big one now is what will they do next or will she do nothing. Maybe they would prefer I just wait until I have a heart attack and the hospital can deal with me. I suppose that sounds a little over dramatic but sometimes doctors make me feel like I am nothing but a nuisance to them. That could explain why it takes a lot for me to make an appointment in the first place.

Dobbins Landing

There were lots of questions on yesterdays post so I will do a post with answers tomorrow. But let me just say that I am ok. Not to worry.

My first stop after leaving my appointment Monday was at Dobbins Landing. Back in the day we used to just call this the Erie public dock. I took a ton of pictures but I'll try not to overload you with too many. I'll just let the pictures do the talking