A Little Bit of "Grunge" ..... and more Vintage Gentlemen

First of all, I hope everyone has had a lovely Easter break, whatever you've all been up to - mine has been fairly quiet and I was able to spend some time creating a few cards and another page for my "grunge" chunky book (so now I have two pages completed).  Here they are .....

"Vintage Journeys"

"Heavy Metal"

Here are a few more vintage gentlemen images for you to make use of - if you fancy joining the April Fools ATC swap (details in the sidebar), remember that you can use any of these images on your cards if you wish.  There's still plenty of time to take part in this swap - the closing date is not until 30th April. 

Here is a card I made for the April Fools swap, using one of these vintage images .......

Thank you to everyone who joined in the Butterflies and Dragonflies swap - I received some wonderful cards and I'm happy to say these have all been swapped out now and flew out to you all today.  I'll wait a few days, so as not to spoil the surprise element, and then post pics of all the cards that were created for this swap.

Mia has been causing havoc again! ..... she zaps around so fast, she can hardly keep up with herself.  One of her favourite things to do is to launch herself at top speed into the kitchen (it's a long narrow one), jump onto the wastebin and then onto the windowsill, still at lightning speed.  So last night, I was there in the kitchen, making a brew, when she tore past at what seemed like 100mph and the next thing I knew there was a tremendous crash and the sound of something(s) clattering down onto the stone floor - Mia had been unable to put her "brakes" on and had collided with a jar of marbles I have sitting on the windowsill - the jar amazingly was not broken but there was a shower of marbles spilling out all over the floor in every direction - of course, by now Mia had flown out the room and was hiding upstairs ("nothing to do with me, mum"!) - what a handful Mia is, the mischief she gets up to .... we just wonder what to expect next!

New Swap Posted ...... April Fools ATCs

Well, here we are, 1st April - and so I thought it might be fun to make the theme for this month's swap April Fools (see the sidebar for more details).  I'm also adding some new images of vintage gentlemen for you all - you are absolutely free to use these images any way you like, but you might also want to use them on your cards for the April Fools swap.

In the meantime, Mia decided to play a real "April Fool" on us this morning!  I'd just let her out the window whilst I made a cup of tea and she was chewing at a mint plant growing in a pot outside (she seems to like the flavour of it) when all of a sudden she appeared to get something stuck in her mouth.  Well, the fun we had after that ..... she wriggled out of my arms when I tried to pick her up, flew into the house and upstairs, all fluffed up, with us in hot pursuit behind.  She was making a horrible crunching sound with her teeth and I was really worried she was doing some damage to them.  Tried wrapping a towel round her to calm her down (got scratched for my troubles) and opening her mouth (no, she kept her jaw clamped tight shut)!  We just had to let her go and then she seemed to calm down, settled in her basket and Graham reckoned whatever it was, she'd got rid of it and was going to be fine.  He then popped out to the post office up the road.

As soon as he'd left, Mia got up and went to her bowl to try and eat some food, but it was obvious she wasn't able to - she was still making the crunching sound and doing a "wretching" action.  The vets (luckily, right at the top of our road) were about to close in 10 minuts so I rang them up, said please would they still be open if I dashed round now and then I scooped Mia up into her basket, hopped into the car and drove round fast as I could.

When the vet examined Mia he said, oh yes, she has definitely got something caught in her mouth!  He let me look and it was part of a thin twiggy stem from the mint plant, but it was caught at the back of her throat, running horizontally from side to side - there was no way she would've been able to get that out by herself or be able to eat and it could've turned out quite nasty; he pulled the twig out with tweezers and Mia was very brave, not a whimper or a wiggle; had a little bit of inflammation where it had rubbed so she was given an injection and some liquid drops to help ease it over the weekend.

Phew!  What a start to the day!  And now, here she is - none the worse for her adventure!

I just love the way she sticks her little pink tongue out (butter wouldn't melt - she's about to launch an attack on my arm)!