The hot weather has arrived!! Woohoo!!! It was beginning to feel like the rainy, miserable and dull weather was never going to leave.  Almost overnight we went from wearing heavy sweatshirts (in the house too) - to wearing tank tops and shorts - and it’s still stifling hot. I am so lovin’ these sunny days.

However the ones who are not so much lovin the hot weather are all the furry little critters we share our house with.  On of the guinea pigs in particular, Fro, has been getting quite toasty in his over sized fur coat… so we decided to give him a buzz cut! Before his hair cut, he was by far the largest pig of the bunch, but  now afterwards, he is the smallest. He was more than twice his actual size with all that fur!

Here it is - the very first boy themed mini book I’ve done. I’m not used to scrapping boys at all since I only have nieces and I seem to use pinks and flowers on *everything* I do! The cutie in this book is Logan, our friends son. A couple weeks ago we went to his 2nd birthday party which is where Brent managed to get these great photos of him. Isn’t he just the cutest little guy? He was thrilled at having the chocolate cupcake but I think more of it wound up on his face rather then in his mouth! lol

The cover has a peek a boo hole on it which I made into a shaker box - you can see the photo on the next page through it.

This is really cool!

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This will be a rather short and sad post. Our little guinea pig Wheezy will not be returning home again. After 2 surgeries he still has not gotten better and instead he took a dramatic turn for the worst. The vet called us last night to tell us that we need to think about putting him down, as he is suffering and his chances of getting through this are pretty much zero. He is now just slowly dying. Brent called to tell me while I was just cleaning up at the LSS after a class I taught, so it was a long sad car ride home. We really hoped he would pull through this.  We went to visit him one last time today, it was heartbreaking. In just over a week since we last saw him, he has lost an incredible amount of weight and was really just all bones. His eyes had a hollow look to them and weren’t bright anymore. He barely moved at all while we held him.  The disease that he had is called Cervical Lymphadenritis which looks like big lumps under the skin. It is a type of abscess and in Wheezy’s case, they kept spreading and multiplying. In just the last week, he has developed them all down his chest, under his arms, and on his sides. Apparently it commonly occurs in guinea pigs  - I sure hope our other ones never get anything horrible like this. Poor little Wheezy, he will be gone now.

I just have to say that Dr Harris and Dr Yechouron  (and all the rest of the staff) at the Trenant Park Pet Clinic are fabulous! They did such outstanding care for Wheezy and I know they all wanted him to get better just as much as we did. Wheezy lived there almost more then he did at our house, and even the staff all told us they got very attached to him.

I have had quite a few emails lately asking for instructions for the exploding boxes so I have uploaded them here

I will work on getting a proper tutorial up with step by step photos soon. Let me know if you have any questions - and please post your photos of the boxes you create - or post a link - I’d love to see them

We got back last night from spending the weekend on the island visiting my parents. It was a busy weekend but we had a lot of fun! It always seems that we have to cram so much into the little time that we have to spend there now. It was my mum’s birthday a few days ago on May 10th and I made her a little paper bag album (pictures below) - so once again Mum - Happy Birthday!!!

I hope everyone had a great Mother’s Day yesterday!

The rest of the pages of the album can be seen here (#26 under projects)

Me and my mum - she is the best!!!!

With my grandma : )

I am so lucky to have such awesome parents!!

My parents’ 14 year old dachshund “Rusty” (my 1st baby, we got her when I was 15 and I took her everywhere with me)

1 year old “Mitzy” - Angus’ favorite playmate

Leo

My friend Rebecca’s little Frenchie “Sammy”

Yesterday was Zoey’s 3rd birthday!! I can’t believe my baby is 3 already…where does the time go… So we had a bit of a birthday paw-ty for Zoey, lol We had already invited our good friend Jodi and her 7 year old daughter over for a BBQ, and we also had Brent’s friend Jason join us. We had a lot of food and a lot of fun. We had cupcakes for all of us and pupcakes for the puppers! I made up a healthy batch of apple/ carrot & oat pupcakes and the dogs love them!! (if you want the recipe let me know - its super easy). Lol - I know, we need kids. But it’s so much fun to spoil the dogs

Wheezy update: Back at the vets. We barely had him home 3 days then his stitches all burst open so he was rushed back to the vet yesterday morning They are keeping watch on him until tomorrow when they will decide if they are going to do another surgery. This little guy is one tough cookie - I just hope he keeps his strength and pulls through all this.

7 weeks old: My baby Zoey, the day I got her - July 1, 2004

Zoey 2007

Pupcakes and mini pupcakes!

Cheesy title isn’t it? Lol! that’s what Brent said when he read my class handouts the other day. I taught this class last week and thought I’d post the hand outs I made on here in case anyone is interested.

Here are a few of them:

The full size of these and the rest of them can be downloaded here

A little bit of sad news about Wheezy, our little sicko guinea pig: He came home yesterday from the hospital where he has been the last 2 weeks. He had surgery last week and had 4 highly infected lymph nodes removed from his neck but has since developed more. His neck is terribly swollen and he’s on a new antibiotic. He goes back to the vet on Wednesday. Basically he is home to get some love and to be spoiled as we don’t know if he is going to make it through this. We asked if we should consider putting him down as I hate having to put him through all this, but the vet isn’t giving up on him yet. He is still eating well and has some spunk, although I have already noticed he isn’t as “spunky” as he was a couple weeks ago. Poor little guy, it just breaks my heart. Anyone who has pets will understand - it’s so hard to see them unwell. I feel just helpless as I can’t take away his pain….