Pixie's Snippets Playground - Challenge #407

Welcome to a new Snippets Playground Challenge.  It's been warm and humid here - with some rain thrown in, just to keep us on our toes! 

World Cup tension around where we live has been palpable - enough bunting and flags for a Royal Jubilee! I wonder if they will do the same for the Jubilee - I hope so. The final match is on Sunday evening and amazingly we reached the final. 

Let's just see who can throw themselves on the ground, roll around faking pain waiting for a penalty and then miraculously hop onto their feet when their team scores a goal anyhow. What a farce. One of the funniest quotes I read recently - no team mentioned - but it doesn't surprise me. 'Good grief - he just slapped him in the mooey!' I had to look up mooey (face) and from then on have cried laughing at the expression.

And for this challenge we have another lovely Guest Designer. This time it's Katrina (Bufton), one of our UK Playmates:

Katrina will tell you all about how she made her lovely card when you hop over to her blog, link above. I really love this sea themed card - such a fun play on words for the sentiment and lots of snippets used. I also really think the design is terrific (reminds me of bubbles or little portholes), plus and a big plus, see the super die cut circles? The die is a Leonie Pujol design called 'In a Spin' and the sample card that Leonie chose for the packaging, shown below, was made by Katrina! I would be so thrilled if my work was deemed good enough for product packaging - or even magazine publication. I did once or twice have cards published on a magazine 'readers page' but that's the extent of it for my crafting fame.

The prize this fortnight, VERY kindly donated by Katrina, is made up of two items:

It's that terrific Leonie Pujol 'In a Spin' die - with Katrina's card on the packaging and it's absolutely perfect for using up snippets. Plus a great set of alphabet stamps in both upper and lower case and a few additional sentiments included in the set too.

What a super prize, thanks so much Katrina!

As always, the Snippets Challenge will run for two weeks and the Playground gates will close at 11am UK time on Saturday 24th July. The gates will open again at midnight UK time on the same day.

It's a maximum of ONE entry, please say in a comment if you wish to play and be a possible winner of the prize. Please also link back to the Playground in your blog post to be eligible for the draw.

Remember, if you link into the Playground and don't say clearly that you want to be in the draw in a comment on here, then you will be bypassed if your name comes out of Mr Linky. I'm sure you all know I ask for a positive 'yes' on the blog post itself - just in case you're only playing for fun - otherwise I don't add you to my little list.

 

Please also remember that I only allow a total of nine other challenges, which makes 10 in total, when you enter a snippets make into the Playground.

 

I finally braved the car dealership and took my car in for its first service. It all went very smoothly (with so few miles on the clock I should hope so!) and they are obviously observing all the current COVID protection regulations - which was reassuring. Thankfully the manufacturer relaxed the time limits on servicing which allowed me to wait until I felt more secure. 

 

Not that I'll be whipping off my mask with gay abandon later on this month when things here in England are planned to change quite dramatically. Just not convinced that leaving social distancing and mask wearing to 'the judgement of individuals' is totally safe yet with infection rates still rising - and total 'eedjits' romping around the country.

Dudley was responsible himself for some rapidly thumping hearts here earlier in the week. On Monday I was playing with him and, as I regularly do, took the opportunity to take a peek at his teeth and gums. I do try to brush them even though he puts up such a fight and up until then they were looking pearly white and very healthy. However, what I saw was a bit like something out of a horror movie - his upper right canine tooth was brownish black right from the gum to almost two thirds of the way down. I called Len and we both had a good look and a gentle feel. It was like a very thick layer of tartar had rapidly descended right down and around the whole tooth. Oh dear, looking like a trip to the vet. Len took him out for a walk whilst I frantically Googled about dog's tooth issues. After the melanoma issue about 20 months ago, both of us were silently thinking it might be something sinister growing very rapidly.

 

Anyhow, after the walk Len hopped Dudley up onto a garden table to brush the inevitable grass seed from his coat and especially his face (nose into everything) and took the opportunity to take another look at the tooth issue. He gently felt the 'brownish black thing' again and it was slightly moveable - so he carefully ran his fingernail along the gum line - and bingo, with a gentle wiggle - off popped this:

The photo is of the offending item, sitting on my glass cutting mat and those lines are at quarter inch intervals to show the size. Turned out to be a piece of the outer covering from some domestic wiring cable that Dudley had decided might be interesting and fun to chew! Unfortunately, 'it' had other plans and he got it wedged firmly around his right canine tooth - to the point it was actually pushed right up under the gum line, probably as he ate and very likely as he chewed and mouthed his beloved Stinky Monkey. 

 

How he hadn't been showing any signs of something amiss is beyond us as his gum even bled a little as Len popped it off. I'm sure that one of us would have been pretty stressed and in discomfort - but even with his issues like separation anxiety and fighting the dreaded grooming sessions - basically Dudley is very laid back when it comes to health issues, he's a tough little guy deep down. Day by day it's become less red around the gum line but what a little pickle he is and we may never know where it came from. I think I know as we recently had some careless builders working high up, a lot of feet from and above us, They used to flip bent nails over into our back garden, daily collected by Len and flipped back over the fence. 

 

The main thing is that Dudley is fine, the gum is practically back to normal and it didn't turn infectious. And I quickly replaced his old Stinky Monkey with a new one when he wasn't looking ☺ So far, he hasn't totally rejected the new monkey but neither has he launched into the usual licking and sucking frenzy with it. He isn't looking for the previous one either - perhaps another milestone in his growing up journey? Almost three year old now - where did the time go?

 

Our heart beats? Almost as normal as they could be, with Dudley Dog around to keep us on our toes!

Stay safe and be kind.

 

Lots of love from us all - Parsnip, Dudley and of course me,