Pixie's Snippets Playground - Challenge #396 - Ruby's Memory

This is the first of what I hope will be several Challenges (every third one for as long as possible) - devoted to the memory of Ruby, Lynne in NI's adorable little Westie, who went to Doggie Heaven just before Christmas.

Ruby's start in life was very sad. The USPCA (a prevention of cruelty to animals charity in Northern Ireland) had rescued a load of dogs from an illegal puppy farm and she was one of the lucky escapees. When Lynne's husband Greg read about the rescue he went along 'just for a look'. Ruby 'fixed her wee sad eyes on him and it was love at first sight'!  She was in an awful state when Lynne and Greg got her (several baths and a visit to the groomer to get rid of the pong) and she had a weeping sore on her nose that took weeks to heal. She was so lucky to have been rescued from the most awful conditions that made me cry when I read a newspaper article about the court case. She went to her forever home with Greg and Lynne and lived a good and full life filled with love and joy.

Wee Ruby was one of the drivers behind Len and I finally deciding to get our much longed for Dudley and i will be always so grateful for that. Each time I went to Lynne's blog - there was this dear little face looking out at me. Different breed but no less adorable than Dudley.

I know that Lynne and her husband are heartbroken, and I wanted us to do something to remember Ruby, and at the same time to do some good for the USPCA. That's why I've been asking for donations of any new and unused craft goodies you might have so that I can offer them as prizes. Normally Ruby's challenge won't have a snippets sample showing off the prize as of course they will be 'one off items' so we'll have Ruby's photo instead and then details of the prize contents. Sometimes it will be one item, sometimes more depending on how I feel a prize will balance out.

This means that there is less pressure on me to make a snippets sample every other week, which was eating into my time to play and try out my bucket list of things to make here - and of course I won't need to buy duplicates of much of the stuff I buy. However, I'm also really conscious of wanting to do something positive for USPCA. You are doing that whenever you donate a prize for Ruby's Challenge because I will in turn be donating the money I would average on spending on each prize to USPCA (plus they can claim tax on top in Gift Aid making 25% more, yay!) each time we run a Ruby's Memory Challenge. That's something the Playground will be doing as a group of friends and crafters if you follow my logic. You all have big hearts so I do hope we can run this in Ruby's memory until you finally throw your hands up and declare you've no more unused items left! Sorry Darnell - I just realised I might be crossing over your NBUS challenge here. Basically I'm sure many of us buy stuff on a whim and never use it - or we win something and, again, will never use it. What is it they say - one man's food is another man's poison? Donate your poison and I'll turn it into food! I DO know that our next Ruby's Challenge has an adorable prize which her 'Mum' Lynne bought online and had sent directly to me. I cried when I saw it and am sure you will absolutely love it. But that comes later on in March - three challenges from now. Before that you have me, then another Guest Designer.

This will run just like my usual challenges and the rules are exactly the same. The Guest Designers will be making their own sample card as well as offering a duplicate of somethings(s) they used as a prize - taking even more pressure away. Yours truly will be doing all the in between challenges in the way I always have. And if we run out of donated prizes and Guest Designers I can pick up any slack and do more of the challenges.

Just to slightly complicate this first Ruby's Memory Challenge - it's actually combined with a lovely Guest Designer! Long story involving me getting my dates mixed up so we have both options in one challenge. And this is the snippets card that Nana Connie, our Guest Designer, made:

I really love this card made by Connie. It's so sweet - and of course I do believe in fairies as well as Pixies!

Do hop over to Connie's blog HERE to leave her some love and also to find out more about her, as well as more detail about the card she made. I've seen images online of them made using red and white spotted paper for the tops - I reckon these will be good fun to use and perfect for Snippets, more so with the current trend for gnomes still very popular!

So, here's an image of the prize:

It's a really cute Poppystamps 'Mushrooms and Toadstools' set of dies - kindly donated by Connie.

I'm adding in a second item as well because it's Easter/Spring themed and if I leave it any longer, with the postal service being what it is, you might not get it in time to use for Easter 2021:

It's a lovely set of LOTV Easter Bunny toppers (three sheets, two of the design shown and one of another  - same Bunny but with Easter eggs) as well as some silver Easter/Spring sentiment peel offs, kindly donated by Kath B for Ruby's Challenge.

Massive thanks to Connie for getting Ruby's Memory Challenge going for the first time with her Guest Designer card and the lovely set of dies as a prize - and to Kath for the sweet Easter/Spring themed part of the prize.

As always, the Snippets Challenge will run for two weeks and the Playground gates will close at 11am UK time on Saturday 20th February. 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. And I won't be splitting the prize of course.

 

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'm booked to have my first COVID vaccination on Tuesday - hooray! Len had his on Tuesday and the whole place (a local hotel) was running smooth as clockwork. 

I posted off what I thought was all of the Grand Draw 2020 prizes on Tuesday. A couple of days later Len found all the UK ones, thankfully stamped with ordinary stamps, still sitting all forlorn in a spare bedroom. Len and Dudley popped them in the post when out for a walk on Saturday lunchtime.We have a possibility of snow so they did a special detour just in case it does show up and causes any further delays! 

I baked more treats for Dudley yesterday afternoon, 'peanut crunchies'. Basically biscuits made from mostly wholemeal flour, small amounts of polenta and porridge oats, an egg, water and doggie peanut butter (never use human peaut butter!). Got 30 biscuits from the recipe and to be honest they're a bit like Armed Forces 'hard tack' biscuits (we three all tried them). Dudley went crazy for them and I do wish I'd had the camera handy when he was up on his hind legs trying to see if there were any left hanging around - after I'd packed enough for the week in the fridge and popped the rest in the freezer. He really worked for those, by helping to deliver the forgotten post to the post box :)

 

He only has one home made biscuit treat per day, at breakfast time along with some doggie 'Baker's' food, as well as what he can scrounge from us ( a teeny, tiny piece of egg yolk and he's in absolute heaven!) and of course we know exactly what's in the biscuit ingredients.Next time - Vegemite I think! The amount of flavouring is hardly there but of course doggie's have much more heightened senses of smell and taste than we humans do. It's quite interesting to learn how blandly flavoured stuff will really appeal to him. I might even start to take orders. Joke! But I will happily share recipes of course.

Stay safe and be kind.

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