Hello Friends

Hey lovely blog buddies,

Sorry its been so long in between posts. What can I say. Life has been busy and full, some good and some really not good.

All I can say is.....thank you for sticking with me in my absences.

And for those of you who have used other methods to contact me and encourage me....bless you!!

It truly means the world to me.

Last year ended in a frenzy of busyness. Work practically took everything I had to offer and then some, but I made it to Christmas with my mind and my heart intact, even if the body was a bit bruised from the stampede.

I worked through the Christmas/New Year period as I had planned my holidays for early January.

I took my dear Mama home to Queensland to visit our family and friends up there.

And we made it through five days of solid, heavy, rain at Noosa on the coast.

After all my planning and scheming to get Mama up there, we were not really able to see all that I had planned as there was so much flooding going on.

It truly did not let up. Then we ventured up to Toowoomba, which is about 20mins from my hometown of Oakey.

Yes....we were there when the floods came through. We were safe, thankfully, though our room was flooded and my suitcase was soaked through.

We were unable to leave when we had planned though as all roads around Toowoomba were cut by flood water or pavement damage.

Whilst I was incredibly stressed whilst I was there, partly because I was unable to contact my family and friends and partly because it was stressful for Mama and her frail health, in hindsight, given what my family has lost and had to endure, it was so insignificant.

Sadly, I know some who lost their lives in the floods as well as too many who lost property, houses, possessions, livelihoods!!

My heart is broken for you Queensland and, if it was truly within my ability at this moment, I'd be back up there in a heartbeat helping out.

So, I haven't had much time to create lately, though I've managed to produce a card or two when the need arises, it's usually under pressure and I don't have the luxury of sitting and creaing just for the fun of it at the moment.

My roommate is getting married in just over 6 weeks and then I'll be changing bedrooms and creating my very own little crafty cave in our garage!! I'm too excited. A space of my own to set up and leave up for crafting!! Yay. I won't have to put everything away when I'm done and will have everything there at my fingertips to use. Double Yay!!

Anyway, I'm sure you stopped by to see a card, right??!!

Here's one I made last year as a gift for a gorgeous girlfriend.

Kraft and black - does it get more elegant than that??

Be hard to imagine. :)

I've stamped the chandelier images with Versamark and then embossed with black EP directly onto some printed Kraft DP by Basic Grey.

I added some pleated Kraft coloured grosgrain ribbon I picked up at Spotlight and then wrapped this and made a bow with a thin strip of black satin ribbon.

Adhered it to a Kraft base and there you have it.

I hope to blogging a little more regularly from now on and certainly/definitely so once I've made the move and set up my new little "happy" place.

In fact, one of the reasons I haven't been blogging is that our ISP at work blocked access to Google and blogger back in late October. This meant that I was unable to log in to view my own blog, create new posts and leave comments on other blogs as well. I could have done it from home, but honestly, I get home exhausted most evenings from work and by the time I've done dinner, etc., I did not want to go sit in front of a computer again.

I've constantly checked access at work and yesterday discovered - to my absolute delight - that I can now log in again!! Whooopppeeeee!!

So hopefuly that means I'll be back to some regular sort of posting and updating of this ol' Blog-o of mine. Mind you - this is ususally done at the end of the day so we'll see. Its already after 8pm on Thursday evening here now!! Eeeee.

Thanks for sticking with me to the end of this looooooong post.

Much love.

Michey xxxx