Going on a Hiatus

Hey friends and fans!

I just thought I'd write a quick note to let you know that Snappee Turtle will be on a hiatus for  a bit.  I had hoped to relaunch the blog in November, but it may be longer than that.  I may do periodic posts to keep you in the loop, but don't expect anything consistent.  Here's why:

My daddy (yes, I still call my dad "daddy" and I always will!) has been battling cancer for 5 years now.  It's been quite the roller coaster, that's for sure!  September 2006 we found out he had colon/rectal cancer.  We thought it was surgically cut out and taken care of with radiation, but the cancer popped it's ugly head back up in a lymph node around that area.  More surgery.  Thought it was gone.  Nope.  Big C was back.  This time in his liver and his lungs.  At this point it was considered Stage 4 since it had spread to distant organs.  2 years of different kinds of chemo and the cancer was gone in his lungs and shrinking in his liver.

However, this past spring he was told his body was no longer responding to the chemo, and his doctor suggested trying some clinical trials.  At the time, his insurance wasn't going to cover all the MRI's and scans he would need every week with these clinical trial.  Instead, he found another cancer center that did a Y90 radiation treatment that his insurance did cover.  He finished the treatment the end of July, and the doctor said "it worked."

The beginning of August he went into the ER because his abdomen was filling with fluid which was causing him a lot of pain.  He needed to get the fluid drained by paracentesis (where they insert a needle into the abdomen to drain the fluid).  During this visit, he was told that his cancer had now moved to his pelvic bone and was untreatable.

My family came down for Stella's birthday, and my daddy's leg/foot had become so swollen that he could barely walk.  He had radiation treatment scheduled for the bone cancer to begin when they got back, which he did for 15 minutes a day for 10 days.  This helped with the swelling in his leg, but only temporarily.

Just last Wednesday he went back into the ER because he woke up at 2:30 in the morning with shooting pains in his abdomen and shortness of breath.  They did another paracentesis and found that his blood pressure was really low and he was dehydrated.  They tried to surgically install a catheter drain so that he could drain the fluid himself into a catheter bag, rather than having to come to the hospital to have a paracentesis every time.  However, when they made the incision, there was too many adhesions in that area and cancer that they couldn't find room to place the drain.

Instead, they inserted a JP drain, which at first wasn't working for 3 days, and then it all of a sudden started working.  Thank the Lord, because it really relieves him from pain when the fluid does not build up so much!

His cancer doctor suggested that he go on hospice care (which you are only approved for hospice if your doctor recommends you because you are believed to only have 6 months or less to live).  We worked it out with hospice that he can get blood transfusions if needed, as long as it doesn't turn into a weekly thing, but rather a monthly deal.  When his hemoglobin is low, he feels really weak.  Hospice is all about increasing your quality of living for the length of time a patient has left to live, so they agreed to this accommodation.

This is a really difficult time for our family.  I was an emotional wreck last week.  Couldn't sleep.  Anxiety.  I am so thankful for all of the prayers that have been lifted up for my daddy and our family during this time!  My daddy has a lot of fight in him, and his trust in the Lord no matter what happens is amazing!  We pray that he is one of those patients that surprises everyone by making it longer than 6 months!

The social worker from the hospital up north was extremely helpful.  She helped us get hospice set up down here (2 hours south of where they live), and my oldest brother and parents moved into our house as soon as daddy was released from the hospital on Tuesday.  So far, the hospice staff has been great!  It's a tight squeeze in our house, but we rearranged enough to fit pretty comfortably.

Daddy needs a walker to get around, but he likes to get up and walk from feeling stiff and sore from sitting or laying all the time.  He's feeling tired a lot.  Not sure if its the methodone or the cancer.  The nurse said it's just part of the journey.

So that's why Snappee Turtle is going on a hiatus.  More important things right now.  Trying to build as many memories as we can in the time that the Lord chooses to bless us with!  Time I don't want to regret that I didn't spend with family!   We played cards last night, and that was fun.  My daddy wants to take Stella to the zoo next, so that's the first thing on our list!  Just needing this cold, rainy weather to cooperate!

Thanks for understanding and for all of your prayers!

Much love,

Eva

WAWW • Going MIA

I haven't posted anything in a few days, but I sure have been brain storming a lot!  I talked to a good friend of mine from college who is a pretty awesome photographer with a successful business.  We brain stormed quite a bit over the phone about the Snappee Turtle product and how my blog relates.  She gave me awesome feedback and quite a bit to chew on.  I realized that what I'm doing with my blog doesn't exactly coincide with what my vision for Snappee Turtle is.

I often find myself back at the drawing board.  I guess my constant rethinking and revamping comes with jumping in with both feet before having a fully thought out and prepared plan.  But hey, I'd rather take the jump and learn and grow through experience!  Otherwise, Snappee Turtle would just be another idea that I never did anything with.

In a nutshell, I'm planning on working on the Snappee Turtle brand/image, getting inventory made, my Etsy store up and going, and marketing my product lines.  Sooo...I won't be posting anymore "Make it Mondays" or "Thrifty Thursdays," and I plan to introduce a new look and vision for the Snappee Turtle website/blog in the upcoming months.

And my friend that I mentioned earlier, she and I have a super fun photo shoot planned for November...so stay tuned!  Thank you to all my readers so far.  I hope you will enjoy what is coming soon!

Be blessed,

Eva

Thrifty Thursday • Cereal Box Repurpose

Things that need to be filed or shred is a constant annoyance to me.  I hate to do it, but if I don't do it consistently, we end up with a messy pile that is an eye sore.  I have a thrifty tutorial showing you what I did to go...

Supplies needed:

A cereal box (13" tall x 9.5" wide x 3" deep)
scissors
ruler
adhesive
pen
paper cutter
12 x 12 designer paper





First, let's cut our paper to cover the cereal box.

I want to hang my box on the side of the hutch, so I did not cover the back of the box or the inside part of the box front.

For the front:  10" x 9" (1 of these)  - if you want to cover the inside of the front of the box you can cut another, but cut it 9.5" x 9"

For the exterior sides:  12" x 3" (2 of these)

For the interior sides:  9" x 3" (2 of these)

For the inside back of the box:  12" x 9.5" (1 of these)

For the bottom of the box:  9.5" x 3" (1 of these)

Let's get started!

1-2.  Cut off the top flaps of the box as shown in the pictures below.

3.  On the front of the cereal box, measure 9" from the bottom of the box to the top.

4.  Draw a line across where we will want to cut off the excess at the top of the box.

5.  Only cut the front part of the box out, not the sides.

6.  We now want to trim the rest of the box so that it is only 12" tall, so measure and mark 12" from the bottom of the cereal box to the top.

7-8.  It's easier if you cut the sides first, so you can draw your line with your ruler.

9.  Now cut down your line.

10.  Lay your box on it's side, and use your ruler to draw a line from the corner of the side and back of the box and the corner of the side and front of the box.

11-12.  Cut the triangle off to create the slanted box as shown below.

13.  Get ready to glue your designer paper!  I used some Stampin' Up designer paper that I purchased a few years ago.

14.  For the 9.5" x 10" rectangle for the front of the box, snip about a 1/4" square from each of the 4 corners.  The front of the box is actually 9.5" tall x 9" wide, but I wanted the paper to wrap around the edges for a more finished look.

15-16.  See how the paper wraps around to the side of the box.  I used a glue stick to glue it in place, and used my scissors to crease the paper in place.

17.  Now glue your 12" x 3" strips onto the exterior sides of the cereal box.  Fold the top of the paper down over the side of the box and glue onto the interior side of the box (it will make a triangle on the inside of the box).

18.  Glue your 12" x 9.5" sheet of paper onto the interior side of the back of the box.  Fold about 1/4" of the paper over the top of the cereal box and glue it in place on the back of the box.  This will leave a 1/4" gap uncovered at the bottom of the interior of the box, but you won't be able to see it since the box is so deep.

19.  Now take the two 9" x 3" strips and glue them into the interior sides of the cereal box under your folded over triangles.

20.  Glue your 3" x 9.5" strip onto the bottom of the box, and you are done!

I will most likely go back and embellish the front of the box some more, but for the sake of time and wanting to post the tutorial tonight...this is what I've got!

Hope you enjoyed!

Eva

Linking up with...

 

Win It Wednesday • And the Winner Is

AND THE WINNER IS...

SO...this is really funny to me, and I PINKY PROMISE that this was the first draw and totally RANDOM!  The reason it is funny is because Shelli and Leslie have been joking about how they were each going to beat each other in the giveaway, probably assuming that neither of them would actually win.

Here is how Rafflecopter works...as each participant clicks "I DID THIS" when entering through the Rafflecopter form, the entry information is imported into a spreadsheet and assigned a number based on how many entries each category was worth.  For example, "Tag Snappee Turtle in a Facebook Post" was worth 2 entries and could be counted once per day.  "Like Snappee Turtle on Facebook" was worth 1 entry and could only be counted once for the whole contest.  However, Rafflecopter will allow a participant to click on the "I DID THIS" button for liking the Facebook page each time you come back to the giveaway page, so it is up to the moderator (me in this case) to manually delete entries that were not supposed to be counted twice.

After I moderated the entries, there were 45 total entries.  I clicked on "ADD A WINNER" and the winning entry was generated through random. org and came up with entry #19...Shelli Morrison.  Shelli already has "The Stella" so I added another winner to see who the next winner would be and the random number was #29...Leslie Russell!  Too funny!

Thanks to all of you who participated!  Stay tuned...there will be another  Snappee Turtle giveaway later this month!!  HINT:  NFL

Warm wishes,
Eva

Turtle Tuesday • Last Chance to Enter

Today is the last chance to enter the giveaway!  Tomorrow I will draw a number at random using the random number generator from random.org.  The votes are in, and one lucky winner will win "The Stella" flower Snappee,  a 5 petal satin flower Snappee in the winner's choice of color, and the winner's choice of either one cream satin covered, interchangeable headband or two elastic interchangeable headbands in two different coordinating colors.

This weekend we traveled up to Naperville, IL for Labor Day weekend to hang out with some dear friends who recently moved away.   One of the Snappees my friend ordered for her daughter, Morgan, was "The Stella," so she got to model it for me!  This is Morgan, sporting "The Stella" flower Snappee with a white 1/4" elastic band.  Doesn't she look super cute?!

The first night we went out for deep dish pizza in downtown Naperville at Lou Malnatti's.  Stella debuted one of my finished 5 petal satin flower Snappees in magenta.  Stella was loving that lemon!  She didn't cry until I tried to take it away from her!  Silly girl!  I guess she gets it from her mama, because I actually love lemons!

Here are a bunch of the colors of elastic I just received in the mail today!  The lucky winner will get to choose between 1/8" or 1/4" elastic.  The 1/8" comes in 26 different colors, and the 1/4" comes in 17 different colors.  Yummo!!

You still have an hour to get an entry in!  Enter now, so you don't miss out!  Just make sure you click on the "I DID THIS" button for your entry to be counted in the giveaway!

Looking forward to seeing who wins!  Thanks for participating!!

~Eva & Miss Turtle :)

Fab Idea Friday • Versatile Blogger Award

To my surprise, I received an email notification that Melanie from Bear Rabbit Bear had left me a comment on one of my blog posts.  She said that she had nominated my blog for the Versatile Blogger Award.  Cool!  I have only been blogging a little over a month now, so it's been fun to have been nominated!

I had no idea what this award was, so I started searching the internet to see if there was an official site or something.  All I could find were numerous blog posts about other bloggers who were also nominated for the Versatile Blogger Award by someone else.

I wondered if it was like some sort of chain letter, which I would usually disregard...but I think this is a great concept!  It's such a fun idea to build blogger camaraderie.  A way to share the love, pay it forward and promote one another, so to speak.  Besides, there is so much crafty goodness out in blog land, so why not share some more with you all!  So here is how it works...

Rules to accept the award:

    1.  Thank the person who gave it to you and link back to them in your post.
    2.  Share 7 things about yourself.
    3.  Nominate 15 blogs you have recently discovered.

I thanked Melanie right away the other day, but I am just now finally getting to post this and share the love.

Seven Things about Me

1. I love Jesus!  Words can't even describe.
2. I adore my husband and sweet little daughter, my family & my friends...and our 3 furry friends.
3. I love coffee....with flavored creamer.  I used to put in an additional 4-8 packets of sugar (which is why my dad calls them liquid candy bars) until I had gestational diabetes with my pregnancy and converted to Splenda.  Now I just do the flavored creamer, no sugar or Splenda.  
4. I also love Cherry Coke, but it has to be the Coca Cola Cherry Coke...none of that grenadine stuff or any other Cherry flavored pop.  (Yes, I call it pop...not soda...and I only call a Coke a coke.  I don't consider Mountain Dew a coke).  -That's for all my "southern" friends.  I'm originally from "the Region," the northwest corner of Indiana, and apparently we say things weird.
5. I can only draw if I look at something and can pretty much draw it exactly how it looks.  For example, if I just try to think of something (like an elephant) in my head, it would not turn out nearly as good as if I was looking at an elephant.  
6. My husband and I love to do jigsaw puzzles (we've been collecting the Tooniverse puzzles by Steve Skelton for about 5 years now).  It's usually a winter month kinda thing we do.  We do play Euchre with friends about once a week pretty consistently.
7. I love to play sports...soccer, basketball, volleyball, softball, ping pong, you name it!  Fastpitch softball was my love, but I've come to love coed slow pitch because it's been my only option...I still slap hit, even in slow pitch...ha!  Itching to play this spring, since our team has taken a 2 year sabbatical since almost all the women on the team started having babies!

Before I chose my 15 blogs to nominate, I looked up Merriam-Webster's definition of "versatile."  It says:

Definition of VERSATILE

1

: changing or fluctuating readily : variable <a versatiledisposition>

2

: embracing a variety of subjects, fields, or skills; also :turning with ease from one thing to another

3

a (1) : capable of turning forward or backward : reversible<a versatile toe of a bird> (2) : capable of moving laterally and up and down <versatile antennae>b of an anther : having the filaments attached at or near the middle so as to swing freely

4

: having many uses or applications <versatile building material>

So here is my list of 15 recently discovered versatile blogs:


The list is in order of blogs I have most recently discovered beginning with the newest blogs first.  They are all great craft blogs that I have come across through linky parties or Pinterest, but the last one is a friend's craft blog that I've bee following a while ;)

1. Live.Laugh.Rowe
2. Yellow Me Daisy
3. Blue Velvet Chair
4. Rhinestone Beagle
5. The Jaderbomb Blog
6. Lil Pink Pocket
7. A Content Housewife
8. Seasons with the Sewells
9. Funky Faith Girl
10. Candace Creations
11. La-Dee-Da Creations
12. Hungry Happenings
13. The Ivy Cottage
14. Thrifty Decorating
15. Amy Cornwell Designs  

...so check out these versatile bloggers, and enjoy!!

On another note, while I was over at Bear Rabbit Bear, I noticed that she included my "Star Themed Party" in her collection of party ideas.  Check out her blog, because she has a bunch of different party theme ideas among other crafty fun tutorials for kids and teens!

Hope you all have a Fab Friday!


Eva

Enter the Snappee Turtle Grand Opening Giveaway

There's been some slight changes to the giveaway rules that were announced yesterday.  All entries must be entered through the Rafflecopter widget which can be found at the end of this post or at the Snappee Turtle Facebook fan page.

Voting for the winning flower Snappee is still being extended through Labor Day Weekend.  Be sure to check out this post and then head over to the Snappee Turtle facebook page to vote for your favorite!

Along with the flower Snappee that receives the most votes, I will be giving away a coordinating 5 petal satin flower Snappee and a either a magnetically interchangeable satin covered headband or two magnetically interchangeable coordinating elastic headbands that are coming soon!


The Grand Opening Giveaway winner will be announced during next week's "Win It Wednesday" blog post!

DIRECTIONS
First click on the "DO IT: Click Here" or "DO IT:  Click for Instructions" hyperlink.  Once you've completed the task, click on the "I DID THIS" button to complete the entry.

REQUIRED TO ENTER (worth 1 entry)

1.  LIKE Snappee Turtle on Facebook

NO LONGER REQUIRED (but worth 5 entries)

Leave a comment in the comment section of this post (you don't have to have a blogger account to comment) with the following:

• where you heard about the giveaway by stating "Coming over from..." 
• who the headband and flower Snappees would be for if you won the giveaway (if not for you, the age of the person who will receive the giveaway items)
• your name

Your comment may look like this: 

"New fan coming over from (insert friend's name here)'s Twitter tweet.  If I won the giveaway, I would give it to my daughter who is one.  ~Eva Taylor"

or

"Existing fan coming over from the Snappee Turtle facebook post.  If I won the giveaway, I would keep it for myself.  ~Eva Taylor"

WAYS TO GET ENTRIES INTO THE GIVEAWAY (all worth 1 entry a piece):

1. FOLLOW this blog on Blogger (see the widget in the left sidebar) 
2. FOLLOW this blog on Networked Blogs (see the widget in the left side bar)
3. FOLLOW Snappee Turtle on Twitter

GET MORE ENTRIES DAILY:

1. Tag @Snappee Turtle in a Facebook post, and mention the giveaway.  (counts as 2 entries; you can do this once a day).
2. Mention #SnappeeTurtle and this giveaway in a tweet. (counts as 2 entries; you can do this once a day).
3. For each new comment who says "coming over from (your name)'s Facebook post/share link, Twitter mention or blog" will count for 5 entries per referral.  You can only submit this entry once a day.  However, if the referrals all happen to be on the same day, you can submit each of them separately on different days.   You must check the comments section to see if any of your friends mentioned you as a referral and type their name in the "additional info" section of the entry...or make sure your friends let you know when they have mentioned you as a referral so you know to enter for that category.

HOW THE WINNER IS DETERMINED

The Rafflecopter widget automatically assigns numbers to each entry.  A random number generator from random.org will be used to come up with the winning number.  The winner will be announced on Wednesday, September 7, 2011.

READY, SET, ENTER!!!

The Giveaway Prize: