You're So Good For My Heart, MFTWSC219

Hi friends. I'm back with fun pet card using My Favorite Things Wednesday Sketch Challenge (MFTWSC219). Nobody can disagree with me that their March release was nothing less than stellar! I had so much fun with my box of a whole lot of happy that I got right down to it and made this adorable card – for my dog. Yep, you read that right, my dog. Bella is 1-1/2 years old now and is still a ball of fire, but she's good for me. She's my constant companion. She makes me happy and laugh. She also snores and hogs my bed. And, like her human mom, she's a little diva. She goes to puppy daycare a few times a week to play with her little friends and even my cousin, who owns a dog daycare service, made a comment that she's a "little diva and the life of the party." She is. When she comes home, she even looks tired and sleeps for the next 2 days. I have to wake her up in the morning if she sleeps past 10 a.m. and she groans at me. One time, she actually snapped at me and that was surprising! However, she will never do that again since she knows who is the boss lady around here and that's me. She loves everybody and everybody loves Bella. Dachshund's can be temperamental, hard to potty train and a host of other things, especially stubborn. Bella is stubborn, but I'm more stubborn. I bought her from a professional breeder and what a difference that makes compared to puppy mill Dachshund's! It's night and day. She's very smart. She has her toys and she has her "babies." Her babies are stuffed and her toys are not. She knows the difference when I tell her to get her baby or her toy. She has 2 bad habits. She piddles when she gets excited and chews – especially Victoria's Secret panties. I started to close my closet door and that took care of that. Wait, make it 3 bad habits. She likes to eat the cat's food. I make sure she's within eyesight but she can still get sneaky with me. When I say "crate," she goes right into her crate. She's low maintenance to me and fun. She doesn't like loud noises. Thursday is lawn day here and with the mowers and leaf blowers going, she's right at my feet. I make sure to have her outside at 7 a.m. as they generally arrive about 7:45 and I want her to take care of business.

I'd prefer to have a full-time male companion, but for now, Bella is it. On the other hand, I'm pretty sick of being alone since I was one of those "married" single people anyway. My "husband's" friends were single guys and mine were widows. He obviously had more in common with the single guys and I had more in common with the widows. Now that I have more years behind me than in front of me, I plan on making some changes and there's nothing wrong with being truly happy and fulfilled in every way possible in life. I deserve to be happy and fulfilled so I'm going to be happy and fulfilled and that's pretty much it. I have been "dating" a wonderful man for over a year now and I have built an impenetrable wall around myself. He came in with a wrecking ball today and rightfully so. He validates me.

I'm back on chemotherapy again and it's rough. I'm also back in physical therapy again too so that in stretch ballet class, I don't injure myself. Dancing is the one thing that I can do where I didn't feel like I had 2 incurable autoimmune diseases or sick, and now that's taken away from me too because I have to go to PT to make sure I don't worsen my conditions. I thought that I chose a "safe" class where I could be free and forget. Even at church, if I'm sitting in the church pew too long, my back starts to holler and that's one place where you should really be safe. I don't know. I don't want to think about this anymore so let's talk about the card I made my Bella.

I'm also finally taking the plunge on Monday and seeing a podiatrist and getting a few ingrown toenails permanently removed. My oldest daughter had them something bad and at 16, she had hers permanently removed and she hasn't had a problem since. I'm not all that happy about the needles injecting the local, but the past few times I've been to the nail spa, it's only been the $5 job for them to remove ingrown toenails. Twice I just about cried and one was so big, all of the nail techs came over speaking in their native tongue like my toenail was a new life form and I think it was too. Tom said it was the biggest he's ever seen. I went today and called a podiatrist sitting in the chair. What scares me was that I got an appointment so fast. We shall see. My daughter's toenails don't look bad and you can't even tell. They just cut straight back on the very edge and remove the root. I'm really looking forward to it. It hurt to touch the nail on the left and it would wake me up at nights and putting on shoes was not fun. Now that it's been 80 degrees here during the day lately, it's sandal weather and I'm ready for some polish but I don't think I will be able to get a pedicure for a month or be able to wear nail polish. I should have taken care of this in the winter.

I also rearranged my living room and sure do need to find my notes when cable came over as they couldn't run a line to where I moved the TV to so it needs to be "fished" or something like that and they gave me a name of a few companies to call. I just need to find the sticky note since I haven't been using my planner lately, which is a very bad thing for me. I live off of that.

I took some great close-up pictures because I wanted you to see the embossing paste that I made by mixing in My Favorite Things Kraft Premium Dye Ink Refill with Ranger's Texture Paste to make my own color. I then spread it over the new Staggered Paw Prints Stencil. You have to work fast with this stuff because it dries fast. I first had to mask off where my Red Hot card stock panel was going to be. It was quite the process, but I love how it turned out and added so much dimension and texture to my card. I do not color people (especially hair and faces) or animals because I'm not very good at it, but I was pleasantly surprised at how Bella turned out and the hair of my Pure Innocence stamp, both from My Favorite Things You Have My Heart and coordinating Die-Namics. I used my Copic markers to color my image. I used the Blue Green group of colors for my Pure Innocence dress because I love teal and look good in it. It didn't blend quite the way that I wanted it to so I decided to use my Signo White Gel Pen to put polka dots on the dress. I think I colored Bella pretty good since she is a black and tan Dachshund. I randomly stamped the heart image from You Have My Heat onto Red Hot card stock, die-cut it using Vertical Stitched Stripes Die-Namics and used Versamark to randomly stamp. I LOVE anything stitched from My Favorite Things and used Blueprints 22 on the Kraft layer of card stock. Fishtail Banners was die-cut using Smooth White card stock and I stamped my sentiment onto that with the new After Midnight Premium Dye Ink and sprinkled some clear embossing powder over it then heat embossed the sentiment. It was stapled to my card. The card needed a little something above the sentiment so I added My Favorite Things Hemptique Cord and tied it into a bow after wrapping it around the Red Hot card stock a few times. I also die-cut a bone with Dark Chocolate card stock using the new Pet Accents Die-Namics and then dry embossed it with a Tim Holtz Burlap embossing folder. The main image and bone were both placed on Scotch Foam Adhesive and added to the Red Hot panel. My enamel dots are from My Mind's Eye Mistletoe Magic, which is really Christmas embellishments, but they worked and were sitting on my still extremely disorganized desk.

For the inside of my card, I die-cut another Kraft panel with Blueprints 22, stamped and heat embossed another sentiment from You Have My Heart, again using After Midnight Premium Dye Ink and then I die-cut a heart from Red Hot felt from Hearts A Plenty Die-Namics. After that was done, I grabbed a paw print from the Pet Accents Die-Namics and die-cut that out from the middle of the heart. It ties in the front of the card perfectly to the inside making a very well-rounded card.

If I give this card to Bella, she will lick it a few times and then ultimately chew it apart, so I will just show it to her and tell her that mommy made her a little something special, she will give me lots of kisses and then I will display her card on a shelf for the both of us to enjoy.

Thank you so much for stopping by to visit me today and God bless you. Make a difference and make every. single. day. count.

All products used for this card are by My Favorite Things unless otherwise indicated.

I hope you enjoy my card for today. Have a great weekend!