Using my Kitchen Sink Stamps!
Ingredients: Stamps - Kitchen Sink Stamps 3 Step Hearts & Roses, Mix It Up! Monogram & Alphabet; Paper - Soft Sky, Cool Carribean, Certainly Celery, yellow (unknown), Whisper White; Ink - Whisper White, Night of Navy, Cool Caribbean, Certainly Celery (craft & classic), Yoyo Yellow, More Mustard, Old Olive; Other - Ribbon (Making Memories, white gel pen, Tim Holtz Harlequin Grungeboard, dimensionals, Robin's Nest Dew Drops, flower (Prima), Cuttlebug Floral Fantasy Embossing folder, Cuttlebug 2 x 2 VIntage dies, sponge wedge
Ah, yes...back then, it was all in front of me. This photograph was one of the proofs I had taken for the newspaper announcement before the wedding. I didn't choose this one, but I really liked it, so I bought the proof. Oh my...so young and so much hair...sigh. I've often wanted to grow it out again that long, but I can't get past the part where my head looks like a bush...I have very thick hair!
These colors were the colors of my wedding, soft aqua and yellow. I had yellow roses and aqua carnations in the bouquet. I've been meaning to scrap my wedding pictures for just FOREVER, but it always got put on the back burner, partly because I didn't have an alphabet stamp set I liked for it...until now! This Mix It Up! Monogram & Alphabet set from Kitchen Sink is just the set I've been waiting for. It looks like beautiful calligraphy, doesn't it?
I would recommend you use a gridded block with this set as it will help you in lining up the letters. There is only one of each letter, so in order to build complete words, you have to work in sections, as I did when I stamped "Jani" and then added the "ne" in another stamping. I used a white gel pen to highlight the letters after I finished stamping.
And then it was only natural to use the 3 Step Hearts & Roses set to create my background paper and single rose element. For the rose I used 1st, 2nd, and 3rd generation inkings with YoYo Yellow, then added the fourth stamping with More Mustard.
The background paper was done by stamping all four rose steps with the same ink (Cool Caribbean), which makes a soft and hazy rose rather than a crisply defined one like the yellow rose is. I love this set...you can vary the look of it by the ink and paper you choose.
I had purchased some embossed paper to use in my wedding album a long time ago, but I didn't want to use that this time. So to help me tie in this layout to the layouts I may do with that paper, I used my new Cuttlebug Floral Fantasy folder to create an embossed mat for the rose. I actually embossed two pieces and butted them together, then tied the ribbon over the seam to hide it. This yellow cardstock was also bought long ago to do my wedding album...I'm glad I kept it as this soft yellow is not an easy shade to find!
Finally, I decided to add the Vintage photo corners die cut from the same cardstock, which ties everything together nicely. Isn't it GOJUS?!?!?! (YILM!)
Now, I bet you are wondering how Friday went. Well, let me tell you (you can just skip it if you'd rather):
After we drove all the way back from Kalamazoo, Laurel and I hopped in my van and went all the way back to Ypsilanti to get my second mammogram. This was at the hospital instead of the local health center, so there is a special area in the women's health center just for breast issues. Laurel stayed in the little health info library where there were some computers and she could go online. I got ushered into the dressing room and given a pink gown. Then it was a matter of sitting in the waiting room waiting for the inevitable. There were lots of other ladies waiting for their turn, in pink or flowered gowns. We didn't look each other in the eye. There was no chit chat. There were many flowered love seats and lots and lots of magazines to take our minds off of what was to come. Finally, a technician called me in.
Now, I had been told the possible cyst was in the RIGHT side. So when the technician said, "We need a few views of the right side, though the LEFT side is the one with the area in question". "Um...they said 'right' side!" I said. She looked at the paperwork and went to confer with the radiologist. Turned out that it was the left side after all; the paperwork was wrong. So she began the process and put me in the torture device.
As the plastic paddles moved inexorably together, trapping my tender flesh between them, I resisted the very strong urge to scream, "C3PO, shut down all the garbage mashers on the detention level!!! Shut down all the garbage mashers on the detention level!!" Somehow, I didn't think the technician would get the joke. The lady who had taken a photo of my cervix at my OB/GYN's office long ago (to keep track of changes that might occur) didn't get the joke either when I told her that if it turned out nice, I might ask to use it on my driver's license. After all, it would probably be a better picture of me than I usually would have on my driver's license.
But actually...the pain wasn't as bad as the last time, probably because the better technicians work at the hospital. I don't know if I could do a job like that...I wanted to ask if the technician had thought when she was in high school that yanking womens' boobs to get them into position, then squeezing them in a hydraulic press is what she'd end up doing for a living, but, like the C3PO thing, I resisted.
Finally, she finished getting her "views" and sent me back to wait again.
I sat and watched ladies who had already had their mammograms as the technicians came out and said, "You're all set! See you next year!" But what happened to me? The technician came back and said, "We want a couple more views of the right side."
Naturally, I am freakin' out. Not only is my left boob probably riddled with the big C, now the right one was probably full of it too. I comforted myself that at least I wasn't going to turn out lopsided, since both sides were getting equal treatment. Of course, at this point, I wasn't sure how much longer I'd have my two old friends, but surely it would be weird if one ended up looking different because it got more mashings than the other one, even for the short amount of time I might get to keep them.
So now I'm waiting out in the waiting area AGAIN. And more women are getting the good word and leaving and I'm still sittin' there. By this time I'm convinced they are going to rush me into emergency surgery any moment now!
Finally, another technician says, "I'm going to take you for your ultrasound now!" Ack! Ack! Obviously, I was a goner if they had to do the ultrasound! To do the ultrasound, I had to take all my stuff to yet ANOTHER dressing room, then wait in yet ANOTHER waiting room. Finally the ultrasound technician takes me in for the ultrasound.
The first thing the technician says after she squirts warm goo all over my left boob and runs her wand over it is, "Oh, that is definitely a cyst." Phew! Talk about RELIEF!!! She then proceeds to tell me that I won't have to come in for any follow up for a whole year, which is when I'd have to have another mammogram anyway!
Color me very relieved, though the "girls" are still not feeling quite themselves. Emily leaned over to hug me tonight and leaned on my chest just a bit and I nearly levitated off the chair! Ouch!
So that is my story of worry and terror which was all for nothing. I have a couple of cousins and two aunts who have had breast cancer, so I know it's not funny. No matter how confident you are that you won't get cancer, you can't help but worry anytime you have any sort of screening test. I still worry when I have my neck ultrasound, even though I've been cancer-free for 4 years. I'm very happy to be done with tests for another year. And so are the girls.
