Blessings

I haven't had the best week and was feeling a bit down in the dumps.   Then the car broke down - again, same fault!   So I was pretty cheesed off.  I intended to enter the Simon Says challenge,   which was to include a heart.   I had my heart but no idea what to do with it,  so I put my down in the dumps mood to some use, turned it around and thought about counting my blessings. 

For the picture I used some canvas board for the base, some bits of paper,  die cut the music thingy,  stained some white lace with tea.    I coloured the big heart and after letting it dry then I stamped on it adding gold embossing powder.   Craft Artist came in handy to generate the 'blessings', which of course I can add to it as I choose.  I stained the canvas board, then while wet pressed some bubble wrap on it.  The other bits of paper were embossed and stamped on.

It felt good to do this.  It came about after I'd read a chapter in a book I'm reading,  the chapter explained the need for struggle and how we can emerge from it stronger and wiser.  It certainly banished the blues. 

I had quite a day on Thursday.    I had a hospital appointment,  to get a taxi there and back would have cost me £16,  so I wondered if I could manage to drive my car.   We'd had a hard frost overnight so the car did need to be defrosted and started up.  Once I'd done that I felt that my knee would be okay to drive, so I just did a test drive down the street, did an emergency stop and all was well.   I left for the hospital in plenty of time, in fact I made sure I gave myself extra time to get there and get a parking space.  At the hospital it was chaos, one car park had been dug up to be made into a heliport!  That means 200 LESS spaces...  it was mayhem,  the security guards overseeing parking were a joke and clueless,  the disabled section of the multi storey had plenty of spaces, but they weren't checking to see if anyone had a disabled badge,  I showed mine to one guard but he just shrugged.  It was now near my appointment so I rang the clinic and explained I'd be late.  So I drove round a few times, still no spaces,  then the car conked out!    Some chap shouted at me, so I told him why I was stopped and asked him to go do something useful like get someone to help push the car into a space - and he did! So rang my mechanic, we both knew what the fault was, same as last time,  something is causing a fuse to blow.  So I cancelled my appointment, even though I was just yards away from the clinic, without electrics I can't lock the car, so much for modern day techonology!   Got home feeling fed up and cold,  hence the down in the dumps mood.   But as I said that changed when I read the book,  plus the sun was shining,  my jeans are fitting much better (lost my appetitie since the op),  I've got good friends,  a nice place to live, money in the bank (not a lot, but enough), food to eat and I am cared for.

The Craft Barn cheered me up, my order arrived on Friday,  very fast service, and with a freebie, which left me very impressed.   The new stamp set is gorgeous,  so are my two new dies, one of which I've used on the above picture.  I'll put up some examples of my new stamps tomorrow. 

Right best post this on Simon Says!   Enjoy your weekend all.