…life throws you a curve ball or two…

My eldest son, Juston, who is 11 has complained on and off of back pain for the last couple of weeks, I put it down to bruising or something (we are a family of klutz’s lol) and just kept an eye on how he was feeling…yesterday I noticed his posture looked off so I got him to stand in front of me. His right shoulder dropped noticably and he was sort of hunched over to one side.

I made an appointment for him to see the doctor today as Scoliosis runs in our family, and once there the doc took one look at him, asked him to take off his shirt to look at his back and agreed about the scoliosis, sent him for x-rays.

As the x-rays were being taken they came up on a screen where we were standing and I could see the curve in his spine was quite pronounced. We are sort of in limbo at the moment as his doctor will be out of town next week, so we won’t know exactly what needs to be done until our next appointment which is 2 weeks away, all I know is that it will be either a brace or surgery which scares the heck out of me.

I have been Googling and reading up on scoliosis treatments and surgery to try and get some idea of what we are in for, though I know I won’t truly be able to gauge that until we speak to our doctor and the specialist.

All the emotions from this have been compounded by that we have also had to make the painful decision to rehome our black labrador pup that we only got a couple of months ago…he won’t stop snapping at my younger 2 children’s faces no matter how much I try and train him not to, and my children refuse to be taught not to run away and around him squealing…and to add to that he has literally chewed up everything in our yard lol, the kids’ trampoline, swing set…the bikes (seats and padding etc), he chewed the newly installed wires on the trailer and today I think was the final straw for my husband when he found Jasper had chewed up the cords on the brushcutter, hubby was so angry I swear he could be heard on the other side of town LOL

Sooo…I feel like all my emotions are in a blender that has no stop button lol

I don’t know how many still read my blog as I am not the world’s greatest blogger and never have been the journalling type….but I will keep you all updated who may still be reading….and thanx for ‘listening’

I have been working on my brand new site for the last month or so and now it’s finally ready for launch!! Of course we’ll need some awesome designers and creative team members….come visit us and check us out

AMS is a new store looking for designers who are fun, friendly and not interested in drama.

We want designers that are willing to help promote the store and be active in the forum & gallery

WE OFFER:
- complete control over your products, sales, coupons, etc
- no monthly product requirements
- 4 collabs per year (1 every 3 months)
- 20% commission plus Paypal Fees
- email notifications of sales
- monthly pay cycle
- Quality Control – all products will be checked

** We are looking for designers with high quality products, creativity, and some level of uniqueness is preferred. To that end we will be carefully looking at all applicants for the amount of actions and/or scripts used in products, and while some action usage is accepted (they do have their place sometimes lol) any designer who uses *primarily* actions or scripts to create their kits may be declined on this basis **

INTERESTED?
Send us an email with the following info and “AMS Designer Call” in the subject line:
- Name and Designer Name
- A short bio about yourself
- Links to your blog and store/s (we do not require exclusivity, nor do we require you to be in a minimum number of stores, however preference will be given to applicants who are in fewer stores and therefore able to spend more time being active in AMS)
- How long you’ve been designing for
- A preview of a product that you designed and think shows your best work
- A sample of your work (a minimum of 10 pieces)

Email: admin@amomentinscrap.com

AMS is looking for an awesome creative team! If you’re fun, friendly, dedicated and creative, we want you!

We need you to be able to commit to:

- 1 layout per kit
- 4 kits per month
- Post layouts on your blog and in our gallery, and at least 2 other galleries of choice

You get to keep the kits you choose for Personal Use only.

AMS would like a mix of different styles to showcase our designers’ kits.

All applicants will receive a reply within 2-5 business days, so if you don’t hear back in this time please resubmit your application

INTERESTED?
Send us an email with the following info and “AMS CT Call” in the subject line:
- Your name
- A short bio about yourself
- Links to your blog and galleries
- How many CT Teams you are currently on
- How long you’ve been scrapping for

Email: admin@amomentinscrap.com

This morning we went to the RSPCA to pick up our newest furbaby…a 7 month old black labrador pup named Jasper. He’s so gorgeous with the softest eyes and a beautiful temperament…while I was looking for really new puppies Jasper drew me straight away and I just couldn’t walk past him lol

He’s great with the kids, I was watching him yesterday while we were there (at the RSPCA) and getting to know him and every time he was running and the kids were he veered around them rather than bowl into them, he’s quite well trained already so his previous owners obviously put some time into it.

He was an absolute angel in the back of the 4WD on the way home, I sat with him just incase, but no need to worry lol and soon as we let him out into our yard he was feeling right at home…the funniest part though came when we went inside! I heard banging on our screen door at the back and thought he was just banging at it to get in….nup LOL he managed to squeeze in through the cat door and was quite happily munching on our cat Jade’s food LMAO

Jade is our 2 year old cat….and she wasn’t too happy at the new addition, as you can imagine hissing and arching lol but they will get used to each other soon enough

Here is a pic of our new baby, you can see more on my facebook (see photos here, open to public), add me as a friend if you’re not already added lol

Isn’t he just gorgeous?

Ok…so if you visited my blog in the last 8 hours or so you’ll have noticed it was down LOL but I have it back up now except for the downloads

Cos I plan on having my designz loaded into a new store here next to my blog, I won’t have a store up without SSL…and when I got this domain I originally added it as an ‘addon domain’ to my main domain (havendesignz.com) which meant I couldn’t add an SSL Certificate….sooooo…my options then were to either purchase separate hosting for this domain, or upgrade my account to a reseller account, I went with the reseller account because the price is still around what I was paying just for the havendesignz account.

After having all that setup, in order to get this domain into it’s own account, I had to backup my files and databases and delete the addon domain, and re-create it on the new account….which mostly went smoothly….but I was having problems re-uploading the files, I kept getting errors in my FTP Client….and here is where the ID-ten-T error came in….for those not familiar with the joke, try reading it as ID10T *giggles*

When I downloaded all the files, I also downloaded a file called .ftpquota …this file holds the ftp info needed to be able to login etc….and yup…I was reuploading this with the rest of the files, I felt SO embarrassed when it finally dawned on me LOL

So end of story…I have the blog back up and running, but I am having to re-upload all the freebie downloads…I left this till last lol and it’s going to take several hours to do that, I wish I had a super fast connection but our options are different and more limited here in Australia lol

Please try again later if you can’t get the downloads you want, they will all be here again soon

Where to start LOL

K…a couple of weeks ago just after my Pop passed away, I came down with the Swine Flu…since 2 of my cousins had to return from a vacation in Thailand I can only assume they shared LOL

Seems every time I start to feel better it turns around and hits me again, and between that, trying to find time to spend with my kids and looking after the store, I don’t have much time let alone energy left for designing lol, so I have decided to cut back on how much work I do…I really don’t want to be looking back and wondering where my babies’ younger years went.

With that uppermost in my mind, I have decided to close down the store at HDDS, I will keep the forum, gallery and topsites…it would be nice to grow a nice little community there lol

I also decided I still want to keep my personal store, so I am in the process of adding that onto this site…will prolly take me a few weeks to get it all organised, and when I do, I will have a ‘re-opening’ sale lol

I also decided…as you can see lol, to rehaul my blog…I posted a while back how I had a custom preview template created for me by Flergs…well she has graciously given me permission to use the elements she created for the preview in my new blog design….doesn’t it look wunnermous? lol

You can find the credits and a link to her blog at the bottom of this page

Sooo….that there is pretty much it for the time being, HDDS is on a store-wide 50% off sale till the doors close in a week’s time, all my girls have been wonderfully supportive…and if you are a store owner looking for some more designers, I highly recommend each and every one of them

Till next time….I’m heading back to bed LOL