Stubborn Sick Boy

So we take my son Evan (who is 9 and autistic) to the walk-in clinic.  He's been sick the past several days with a runny nose and sneezing and just seems to be feeling icky (I don't know if he has a store throat or not since he doesn't talk and seems to be eating things that you'd think would hurt to swallow if you had a sore throat).  His classmate's mom called me last night and told me her son has strep.

I go into a bit of panic mode because my husband just had a kidney transplant last year and is on anti-rejection medication and is more susceptible to getting sick than he used to be (compromised immune system). So my husband slept on the twin bed in my craft room in the basement last night while I sat up with Evan (sleeping next to me while I worked on this blog) so he wouldn't be breathing in anything Evan may have last night.

Anyway...so we take him to the walk-in clinic (because of course it has to be a weekend when his doctor is closed). They wanted to do a strep swab on him to test him for strep.  The little booger would NOT open his mouth to be swabbed.  So they call in for reinforcements a nurse to come in and help hold him down.  That didn't work.  So they called in the doctor who sat and held Evan down.  With FOUR of us holding him down, he wasn't going anywhere, but that didn't stop him from crying and clamping down his jaw like a vice grip. Arghh. The little booger :)

So after four grown adults give up trying to get in that little mouth, the doctor wound up just writing him a prescription for anti-biotics just in case.  He told me it's normallly a 10-day treatment and to only give hi 5-days worth unless he still seems sick after that, then give him the rest of the doses. So he MAY have strep and may not and my husband gets to sleep in my craft room again tonight till Evan has been on the antibiotics for 24 hours to be on the safe side.

This autism mommy and wife of a transplant husband is not easy, let me tell ya! :)

Back to working out the rest of the blog bugs. Have a great day everyone!!

Helen

Some of My Recent Craft Projects

As a way to start out my blog, I thought I would share some images of recent craft projects of mine. I've done a lot more than this, but these are the ones I have pictures handy of.

There really isn't any rhyme or reason for the crafty things I'm into. I love it all  :)  I enjoy wooden things, crochet, sewing, computer graphics, digital scrapbooking, paper scrapbooking, cards, oh I could go on and on :)

Everything but knitting. I've never learned how to knit. I find I always want to use the knitting needles like crochet hooks :)  I'm not giving up though! A good friend of mine knits and I may get the itch to talk her into teaching me how to knit before long :)

This Santa bowing down to baby Jesus is one of my favorites.  It's wooden yard art and about 36 inches tall:

   

When I make other ones, I won't put the holes around the edges as it just didn't look right when I put mini lights through the holes and lit it up.  That one is our own and it's got a spot light shone on it. I think that worked the best.  I cut it out of plywood after transferring the image I worked out in my graphics program to the wood.  It's secured into the ground with steel pipes. I've been wanting something like this for years and could never find it, so I figured it out myself and made it!

I used plywood left over from our yard art and corn hole game work to make these cut-outs of cartoon characters for my son for Christmas last year.  They were a big hit and he still loves them!  It's a TV show that used to be on called Connie the Cow and Friends.  Evan LOVES Connie and friends and you just can't find toys from that show, so I got this idea.  I already had the wood.  I just designed the graphics in my graphics program and transferred the image to the wood and cut it out with a jig saw.  I painted them with non-toxic paint (as my son is still into sticking things in his mouth) and then covered them with Mod Podge Hard coat (also non-toxic) to make them really hard so the wood wouldn't hurt him if he put them into his mouth (and to protect the wood from his teeth :)

I made bags to store them in:

There are around 62 in all and Evan loves them.  That was a LOT of work!  To see him love them so much was worth every minute though :)

Last Christmas I also made new salt dough ornaments for my Charlie Brown holiday tree:

 

My husband and I started making corn hole sets to sell last year. He and I cut them with a table saw, sand them and construct them. I jigsaw the holes out and do all the paint work. I sew the corn bags as well.  Here are some images of the sets we've made so far:

This Ohio State set is ours and it got scratched. I need to touch it up.  I got an Associate of Arts degree (2 year degree working towards a Bachelor's degree I never got to finish due to suffering a mild stroke) from OSU before I met my husband, so I'm a Buckeye alumni and fan :)

We just did this one a few months ago for a friend of his who is a veteran:

Youngstown State Penguins for my friend Joanne:

and the Browns for my son's bus driver aid:

I made this Christmas Advent calendar last year. I've never had one... ever!  It looks crooked in the picture, but it's the angle of the camera :)  I learned how to print onto fabric (thank you, Pinterest!) and printed the images at the top of it onto muslin from pics of the nativity I found online.  There is a tiny stocking for every day of the season that hangs to the calendar by a little button so you can adjust it for every year. There are little cards with activities, scriptures, etc. on them and we put one of each in the little stockings for an activity to do that day.  Once the card is used, I put it in a little pocket in the lower right hand side that also hangs by buttons (it says Thank You Jesus on it)

More wooden yard art for my friend Joanne (each one is about 40 inches high if I remember right):

Easter basket and more eggs to scatter around it

Currently I'm teaching myself how to crochet rag rugs from bed sheets.  This is my first effort. It was going pretty well till I noticed a tear drop shape forming. Ugh.  I need to take it apart and re-do it.  I want to try one using a crochet doily pattern next to make one a lot prettier!

That's it for this post :) Thanks for looking!