I finally had my right knee replaced! I was cancelled every month for the first 5 months of this year due to that lingering infection. Finally had it done three weeks ago and since then have discovered some new best friends.
First up is Kodiak. Now this is a very Canadian name but no, it does not refer to a bear or anything remotely to do with bears or bear country. Breg, Kodiak is my new cold therapy, ice cooling machine. It is fabulous! It allows you to ice your knee every other hour all night without having to hobble over to the sink to set everything up each time. You fill the ice up before bed and it last several hours until it is time to get up.
You soon get into a routine of an hour on and an hour off...although I find I am checking the minutes before the hour off is up...just dying to get the icy relief back on my knee and calf.
My second best friend is this clunky old lady walker. It takes such pressure off your knee when you are first up and trying to walk. In fact, there is such a sense of relief to reach for it and know it will help support you till your calf muscles "warm up". It seems to take about 10 or 15 steps for my calf to stretch and I have learned I can speed that up by leaning over my walker and flexing my calf, before I even start walking.
I have just graduated to a normal 4 wheeled walker with a seat,and now can venture out into our neighbourhood for 30 minute walks. It is great to have this freedom as I was getting a little housebound.
So all is progressing fairly well. I have been to physio and can bend my leg about 100 degrees so they are happy with that. Life is now all about getting that bend up to 120 degrees, which requires a lot of painful stretching and other exercises but the pain will be well worth it to have a working, pain free knee back at the en d!!!
I was doing a bit too much in the knee stretching and walking department, and had a small area crack open. I saw the surgeon as I could not get it to stop weeping, I am on reduced stretches and the walks got limited to the 30 minutes as I had gone out for a couple of hours to the paper craft garage sale the day it happened. I did combine walking and sitting looking at the stamps, dies, papers, etc but it was too much for my poor knee to keep up with. Ahhhh, the trials of being paper crafter! lol
Once again, it is time for the Rudolph Days Challenge. Here are the rules for your perusal...
1. The Rudolph Days Challenge will start each month (January to November) on the 25th, and will close at midnight PST, on the last day of that month.
2. The theme is always Anything Goes, as long as it is Christmas.
3. One entry per person and you just need to enter one Christmas card or Christmas project.
4. You may combine your entry with other challenges (maximum of 10 in total).
5. Your card (or Christmas project) should not have been previously posted to your blog. It should be posted to your blog during the current months Rudolph Days Challenge, (between the 25th and last day of the current month)
6. Please link back to or at least mention, the Rudolph Days Challenge.
7. Please leave a comment on the challenge post. 8. The winner will be selected by random draw and announced on the first day of the following month. Prizes will be mailed anywhere in the world.
9. A special draw will be held at the end of the year, in December, for all those who submitted a card or project every month that year, January to November.
Linda has coloured up the sweetest snowman holding an even sweeter bird! I love her careful colouring and the intricate fussy cutting she has put into this pretty card. The background is so soft and pretty too!
We have the additional treat of a second version in non traditional colours. It is so hard to pick a favourite!
Next up is Sam at Whispers Cards Blog
Sam has made this adorable Penny Black Hedgie image into such a beautiful card. The choice of gold for the jingle bells and the background mats is perfect here. That huge snowflake on the design paper sets off the hedgies so nicely!
Next up, Sam has made us a second card.
This one is a teddy bear treat, with lots of red and green colour bursts. I love this particular shade of green! Perfect for the sentiment and that beautiful Christmas Tree border.
I hope you will pop over to Sam and to Linda's blogs and leave them a bit of love. They work so hard to create inspirational cards for us!
And now for my cards. I did a spot of batch baking! I found a few large snippet sheets of this embossed and glimmery snowflake accented 12x12 scrapbook paper. I cut what I could into 6 x 6 and turned them into some religious themed Christmas cards. I think I am blessed to have become a card maker after at least ten years or more of being a scrapbooker. I have about 8 feet of 12 x 12 paper if I stacked it vertically, and that is a lot of paper! It is surprising how many sheets are small enough patterns for making cards.
Now, I know that it does not snow in Bethlehem, but I took a little creative licence here with my design. My theory is that it certainly does snow here when I am thinking about, and then celebrating Christmas. So my snowflake background is setting the stage so to speak, for me to dream of Christmas!!!
Everything else on these cards was cut from my snippets boxes, so I had great fun whittling away at these leftover scraps. I cut the nativity die from a snippet of plain brown card and then slid a circle of gold mirri card behind, to pop it up a bit. I then cut the Paper Roses Palm Tree die from some brown glitter card and glued to flat to the card.
For the inside of my card I cut a Memory Box,North Star die, from another snippet of gold mirri card.
Rather than a verse inside my card, I chose to use my Believe die and left it at that.
The envelope has a stamped Nativity image.
I enjoyed making this card so much that I made two more the same, only changing up the gold mirri to silver on one of them, as I did not have enough snippets of the gold. I then used the same design with a snippet of dyed background, with white glitter paper as the nativity background. I thought the background looked like a sunset.
Here is a photo of the group of them...
Sorry about the terrible photos. it is so hard to get a photo of mirri card and glitter card!
The prizes this month are a choice of this Penny Black Robin stamp
47 Fabulous Entries! What a great number. Finished visiting all of you last night and was amazed by the talent of our posters. So many wonderful cards!
Random Org drew # 47 Barbara G. I have never had it draw the last number before, so was quite excited when I saw the winning number.
Barbara, drop me an email at maureenkane@telus.net and let me know your mailing address and which prize you would prefer.
