I have this bush near the garden gate and I honestly can’t remember what it looks like when it has leaves and flowers.  However it has several orange things on it at the moment that look like dried satsumas, so I’ve christened it the satsuma bush – spikyalis japonica satsuma to give it the latin name (my Nanna told me that anything from Japan has japonica in the latin, I can see thorns and satsuma sounds oriental, so that must be right).

You probably know my approach to gardening by now – pay someone else to mow the grass so Adrian isn’t crippled by hayfever, zap the tough weeds with the flame thrower, play with the pressure washer to clean the path, oh, and occasionally buy a load of plants from the local nursery and forget about them for a few weeks then plant them and see if they survive.  I have a slight handicap when it comes to gardening – due to my former knee problems, I can’t kneel and in my experience it does seem to be a bit of a pre-requisite for planting.  The alternatives aren’t pretty or comfortable – I can’t squat for long, the knee won’t take it – and if I try sitting on the ground, I need a winch and hoist to get back up again without twisting or injuring something.

No I firmly believe that if I was meant to garden, I would have inherited a stately home with a team of gardeners so I could plan and design it on a grand scale.  I’m happy to stay behind a camera lens in the garden and let the flowers and plants be a source of inspiration.

We’ve had a hard frost overnight on top of a few more inches of snow, so it looks pretty, but I suspect it’s quite treacherous out there.  I had planned to go Christmas shopping today, but I think I’ll check out the online options first.  I think this is one of those days when the met office would say don’t make a journey if you don’t have to.  I might make one little journey though – out into the garden again with the camera!

PS – if you’re on an email digest, you may not have spotted the edit on the previous post.  All the stash boxes are gone now – thanks to everyone who ordered them, you should get them for Christmas.

[EDIT: Sorry, all the stash boxes are gone - thanks to everyone who ordered, you should get them before Christmas.]

Well this is the first chance I have had to sit down and breathe today.  I think this has been one of the busiest ever days we have had on the telephones, which naturally is because we have people on their Christmas holidays already so there’s less of us to answer the calls.  Good old Murphy’s law coming into play there I think.  I haven’t even started my Christmas shopping yet and judging by today’s calls, lots of other people have left it later this year as well.

Anyway, we had to take the stash box off the website today as we got in this morning to find a huge number of orders for them which cleared us out.  We kept trying to get downstairs and make up some more, but there were so many things going on, we didn’t get chance to.  We worked late to get some more made up and we have put the stash box back on the website tonight, but I will be keeping a close eye on it and will probably have to take it off again tomorrow morning if the same thing happens again overnight tonight.

So please don’t think I’m doing pushy sales talk if I say ‘get it while we’ve got it’ because that really is the case at the moment.

I’m off now to snuggle the Black One who is not impressed with this weather!  I’ll leave you with a couple of photos taken this morning.

Some of you have already spotted that we have made up some more stash boxes and put them on the website late this afternoon.

They’re not quite the same as last time, but still incredible value for money with lots of Graphicus goodies in there.  At full price, there’s well over £80 worth of stuff in there, probably closer to £90 to be honest.  There’s Bazzill card  (plain and bling), Elusive Images stamps, Stampbord and Stampbord inks, Glimmer Chips or Glimmer Glass, ribbons, glitters and all those other fun bits and pieces (can’t spoil the surprise) that make each box a delight to explore.

Plus each and every box has a discount voucher in it, valid until the end of January.

This is the last time this decade* that we will be making up Stash Boxes, so when this batch sells out, that’s it, they’re gone.  It’s all a cunning ploy you know – the more stash boxes we make up, the less there is to stocktake in a couple of weeks time.  Even if you don’t buy them, all that stash becomes a single item to stocktake instead of a whole mixture!  I do have my moments of genius…

I must just say a huge thank you for all your wonderful comments about Basil and my Nanna.  It really does mean a lot to Adrian and I, everyone’s comments are so heartfelt and understanding – we appreciate it very much.

We’re all doing fine, soldiering on with upper lips as stiff as boards.  You have to really don’t you?  I think there’s a time to fight (I think that’s particularly important with something like cancer) and a time to face facts and accept the situation.  Sometimes you carry on fighting and railing against the world after the point when you really need to accept things and make your peace with it.  Adrian and I do that at different speeds, but we know each other’s differences and help each other come to terms with things.

I’m keeping busy anyway.  With three people on holiday today, we were rather short staffed and of course the phones never stopped all day!  I spoke to some lovely people today and found it funny that so many people were suprised to get me answering the phone!  I’ve managed to squeeze in some time to make some Christmas cards and decorations too – they fit with this month’s dangly/white challenge theme so I’ve blogged about that over on the Graphicus blog.

Well I hope you’re all tucked up warm tonight, we’ve got some severely cold weather going on here – well below freezing, quite a blustery wind and enough snow to make it treacherous out on the roads.  I think we’ll have to get up an hour earlier just to defrost the cars tomorrow!

*OK, I was trying to be clever with the decade thing instead of saying ‘last time this year’.  However, my pedantic husband has just pointed out that 2010 is not the first year of the second decade of this century, but the last year of the first decade.  So IF we do another stash box at any point during 2010, then my statement would be inaccurate.  Which of course means that I really can’t allow any stash boxes at all during 2010 so that at the start of the new decade I can (in a very mature way) stick my tongue out at him and say “nah!”

Go grab a tissue, you’re probably going to need it.

In fact, grab the box.

If you have had a bad day, or you’re feeling emotionally drained, maybe this isn’t the right blog post to read right now.  You see Basil has not been well for a while now.  We thought the problem was his thyroid, but after six weeks on the thyroid medication, they took him off as it obviously wasn’t really agreeing with him.  He has gone off his food and he is eating less and less, having to be tempted with ever more refined delicacies.  The two vets we have been seeing have gone into great detail about the minutiae of his blood test results, with lots of speculation as to what might be wrong with him.

A week of antibiotics was prescribed and we just finished those.  He put a tiny bit of weight on, but he is turning away from almost all the food we put down now.  Well today we got the latest blood test results and our worst fear was confirmed.  Despite testing negative last year and being vaccinated against it, he is now testing positive for FeLV, the feline leukemia virus, which of course is what we lost Sesame to last year.

Like Sesame, we don’t know if he has full blown leukemia, but even if it hasn’t developed fully and it’s just the virus at this stage, it is a bit like being HIV positive – a higher susceptibility to infection and less immunity to fight anything off.  He is still sporting several bald patches from fights he had a few months ago – his fur just isn’t growing back.

It’s hard to tell how unhappy he is, but he cries all the time and he’s certainly not a well or happy cat.  He is most at peace when one of us is holding him and he seems afraid to go outside, though that may have something to do with me following him round the garden with a litter tray trying to get a urine sample last weekend.

Over the last few weeks, Adrian and I have both noticed some similar behaviour to Sesame in the later stages, so I wasn’t too shocked when the vet gave us the news.  I don’t think he’s anywhere near as ill as Sesame yet, he’s still jumping up onto the table and running up and down the stairs.  But we are both devastated because we feel like he’s on borrowed time and we have this awful moral dilemma again – doing everything we can to give him a fighting chance, but not wanting him to suffer.

There is some twisted irony at work here somewhere.  We have also been going through a similar process of testing and leukemia speculation with my 86 year old Nanna.  The latest news is that she doesn’t have it, which is great, but her blood profile is a bit of a puzzle to the doctors, so we’re not quite sure what is going on with her.

So all in all, it’s a very sad and subdued household here.  Basil cried for food again tonight, but turned away from butter basted chicken and poached salmon when we put it down.  He won’t touch ordinary cat food of any variety at all now.  We keep trying different things, including things we know aren’t good for him.  He will rush towards it, then sniff it and back away, turn and look up and cry again – it breaks my heart.

As you can imagine, we are both feeling a little wrung out and emotionally drained at the moment, so I think we’re probably going to spend the evening smothering Basil with cuddles and trying to tempt him to eat something.  It’s not often that I whine or bemoan the hand that life has dealt me.  I know that our pets have much shorter lifespans than we do and that’s the price we pay for sharing our lives with them.  But I’m sorry, this just sucks!

I don’t know if I’ll get round to making a Christmas card for Adrian this year, but in previous years I have often incorporated hearts into my cards for him.  Last year I made a red button heart.  This year, I think he might get something similar to this one.

2010 will be our 14th year together and in February it’s our 13th wedding anniversary.  For the first time in five years, we won’t be working at the NEC trade show for our anniversary – yay!  People often ask how we cope working together, but we were colleagues and friends before we started dating so we knew what we were letting ourselves in for.  We were a secret office romance and enjoyed shocking everyone by just turning up engaged one day when no one knew we were even an item.  Actually that’s not true, several of the secretaries had worked it out, but none of the men had!  One of my friends asked me how I knew he was “the one” and I said I recognised him.  I also said I had expected him to be thinner and have more hair, but I knew he was my soulmate and that was that.

Sorry, I almost started to bore you with the story of our romance, I’m sure you’re not here for that, so I’ll get back to the card.

This is all Distress inks – the background is shaded with the blending tool using Spiced Marmalade, Fired Brick and a touch of Aged Mahogany and Dusty Concord round the edges.  The words were stamped in Spiced Marmalade and Fired Brick and the hearts were Fired Brick, then rubbed over with Spiced Marmalade and Dusty Concord around the edges again. The background and sentiment are matted onto burgundy card and the main card has a touch of ink around the edges as well.  Fairly simple and I can easily adapt the colours to be more festive – a touch of stickles to give it some Christmas bling.

Well, I am in the middle of a major craft room tidy up, so I better get back to it.  I am almost there – I have more than 8 inches of workspace clear … for now!

I don’t know if you’ve spotted the new Spring Romance stamps over on the Elusive Images blog?

Here’s a card that uses the main image from Weekend in Venice and a lovely flourish word stamp from Romantica.  I have stamped the ‘romance’ stamp in chalk inks, then wrapped vellum over the card to diffuse the colours down to a beautiful subtle pastel.  The image has been coloured with Copic Markers and it is very simply finished with a ribbon knot.  I confess the main image isn’t stamped – it’s the printed one I coloured for the packaging, but I was so pleased with how my sky turned out that I just had to use it.

Anyway, check out the other romance stamps, there’s some beauties in there and I’ve actually used one of the sets to make my Christmas card for Adrian!

Just a little heads up – details of special offers are over on the Graphicus blog right now.

Better not pout, I’m telling you why …

Well, I’m not telling exactly, I’m teasing.  Graphicus has a few surprises up it’s festive sleeve over the next few days – it’s our way of giving our customers a big thank you gift.  We are repeating two of our most popular promotions from this year – can you work out what that means?

Stay tuned to find out more …

There are some beautiful hand crafted Christmas cards starting to arrive at the office.  We appreciate each and every one of them and I would like to make this my public thank you to all of you who send cards to us – we do appreciate it, but we simply don’t have enough time to get in touch with each person individually who sends us a card.  Sometimes they are signed with a first name only and there’s no other clues to tell us who it is!  Sometimes there’s a hand written email address, but it’s not legible enough to fire off a quick message.

So if the only response to your lovingly hand crafted card to us is a resounding silence, don’t take it personally, your card has been gratefully received, lightly stroked, cherished and admired and displayed for all to see.

Adrian and I took the decision last year to donate money to charity instead of sending Christmas cards and we extend that to the business as well.  We are matching the amount of charity money raised at last weekend’s open days and adding in a sum of our own to donate to the PSP Association.

Now one canny customer has ensured a mention on the blog this week – forget cards, Jackie brought us cake!

Jackie and Grace came along to our Wednesday Crop ‘n’ Craft and arrived with this beautifully decorated Christmas cake for us all.  The snowflakes and lettering are dusted with beautifully twinkly edible glitter and it tastes as good as it looks.  Much appreciated and there’s still plenty left, so if you’re popping into the shop this week, we can offer you spice cake with a cup of tea!

While tidying up from the open days, I found a simple tag I made.

The flourishes are from the Patchwork Butterfly stamp set, the bird is a cute little McGill punch which we just keep selling out of.  I’ve stuck some glitter behind the aperture the punch creates, then put matching glitter on the punched bird.  The tag is coloured and stamped with Ranger pigment inks.  The glitter is holographic gold and it has a wonderful range of colours when the light catches it.

I still haven’t unpacked all my stuff, who knows what else I’ll find!

PS – I think I need to make the point that cake is welcome at any time of year …

I keep thinking I haven’t made any Christmas cards, but actually I’ve done more Christmas crafting than I realised this year.  I went through my photos and came up with all this:

I hope it gives you some inspiration if you need some ideas.