Moxie Fab Monday...

I have talked on here before about the Moxie Fab blog...it's an awesome blog by Cath, PaperCrafts editor. The whole blog is dedicated to trends in the design world. I love to go over there and check out all the wonderful eye candy that she features each week. Well, this week, she is featuring Unity Stamp Company!!!

Well, it's no secret to me that Angela keeps Unity on top of the trends, but it is so awesome to see that recognized by one of the people in the "know" in the papercrafts world. You need to go check out the write-up...it's so fun and there are some stamps being giving away too, so make sure you comment when you visit the Moxie Fab blog.


I had to play with some of the latest trends to create this layout for today's post. I used my brand new SEI Bridgeport papers (full of all those purples and grays that are so hot right now.)

On the green paper, I stamped Sweet zzzzz's (the birdcage) and that cute little birdie from the Enjoy Your Story...Laugh kit.

The journaling says, "Summer, 2008- Kat is an animal lover- all types to include bugs. It never occurred to her that bugs were any different. A fly in the house was just as exciting as a puppy on TV...until this preying mantis showed up at our door. He was huge and for the first time ever, an "animal" made Kat nervous. She didn't know what to think about him..."

Supplies used:
*Unity Stamp Co. Sweet zzzz's
*Unity Stamp Co. Enjoy Your Story...Laugh
*Unity Stamp Co. Love Birdies (birdhouse in the oval)
*SEI Bridgeport paper
*Prima bling
*WRMemory Keepers felt flowers
*buttons
*MM Chloe's Closet Journaling piece (I added the white detail work to it.)
*Marvy Uchida punches
*Martha Stewart border punch
*Bazzill

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and now this next little bit goes under the topic of "What the heck was I thinking?!?!"....

I have had lower back pain and neck cricks my ENTIRE life...it's just something that I have had to deal with and overall, I know how to handle them. Well, last summer when DH got back from Iraq so fit, I started his workout routine and was thrilled to say that I haven't had any issues with either of those two things since.

That changed this week as I got hit with BOTH neck and back pain at the same time (btw, I have never had them at the same time before.) At first, it was just a slight niggling of pain in both my neck and my back, but you know...right now we are in a Push month with our lifting so I felt like my neck (which is really the dead center of my way upper back) was probably more just sore muscles than an actual crick since the only time it actually felt like a crick was when I was trying to sleep at night. The lower back issues were similar since there are just times of the month when a woman is more prone to a bit of back pain so I didn't do anything to accomodate either issue.

Friday was the beginning of VSN and there is just something about spending hours hunched over my computer and work-table that is not very conducive to healing any kind of spinal issues. When I got up Saturday morning, I was really stiff and since it was a cardio (i.e. lots of jumping) workout day, I opted not to work out. We get to yesterday and I was still stiff, but again not feeling injured per se, but Kat was running a fever all day (she's getting her eye-teeth in so I think that was a teething issue) so I pretty much sat around with her on our furniture which is not so good for back issues. By last night, I was feeling pretty stiff so I took a hot bath to try and relax my muscles and went to bed.

That gets us to this morning when Ben got me up to go workout. Today is a weightlifting day and after a walk across our bedroom, I knew that I wasn't going to be lifting anything so I went back to bed. Fast-forward to 7:30 when everyone was finally out of the house except for Kat and me. I was feeling really guilty because I haven't worked out since Friday so I decided some yoga might be good to help stretch me out and limber me up and at first it did feel really good (although I tried not to worry about the fact that my back kept popping as I would stretch...from the sounds of it, I am seriously out of alignment right now.) After 15 minutes, it was clear that I was doing WAY MORE damage than helping...so now I feel ready for a bit of traction...or maybe a chiropractor. So I am trying to relax all muscles with Motrin right now, but if you don't hear from me for a few days, it is simply because I can't sit anywhere and work.