A Little Off Topic

I was watching the news last night when a report came on about the proposed Badger cull. The reporter announced that by killing 70% of ALL Badgers, Bovine TB could be reduced by just 16% over 4 years! I had to back the program up and play it again to check what I had heard I was so stunned. How can killing an animal, who we should remember is a protected animal (Protection of Badgers Act 1992) to near extinction for so little benefit be logical. 

When the Government wanted to control TB in humans it introduced the BCG injection. The TB vaccine for cattle has proven to be between 56% and 68% effective but it cant be used because of existing EU legislation! Madness in my opion, utter madness.

I have provided the following links so that you can see for yourself the facts and figures and then please sign the petition.

Protection of badger Act 1992
The Badger Trust
defra.gov.uk/bovine-tb-vaccination
League Against Cruel Sports

*Important. If you do nothing else, Please sign this e-petition

Dogs

The longstanding campaign aims to raise awareness of the consequences of treating dogs as gifts or toys. Every year hundreds of thousands of children plead for the latest fad or top toy on the market, only to discard them a few weeks after Christmas when the novelty wears off. Unfortunately, the same perception is also apparent with dogs. We are continually seeking to change this.

"A dog is for life, not just for Christmas".

If you agree...copy and paste this into your blog....thank you x

Give Big

I want to bring to your attention a wonderful campaign that Kristen of Saturated Canary is running. She is trying to raise funds for   St Jude's Children's Research Hospital in Memphis Tennessee who are trying to find cures for children with cancer and other life-threatening diseases. Now before you say 'Yes but that's in USA' please remember that research anywhere will benefit children all over the world and lots of British children have gone to America for treatments of one kind or another.

But if that is not a good enough reason for you to donate to the cause then how about this; Krista is giving away 2 digi's in exchange for your donation! Now surely that alone is worth a small, or even a big, donation to her cause.


Read about her campaign for yourself here and if you are not familiar with her work have a look around while you are there.  

All Change

Wow, so much has changed in my life recently, for the better I hope. So where do I begin, well we finally did what we had been saying we would do for the past 3 years and sold our house and moved to a smaller one. We really did not need a large 5 bedroom house for just the 2 of us and the utility bills alone were huge. Now we have a 200 year old 3 bedroom cottage in Norfolk complete with beams in the ceilings and an inglenook fireplace with a wood burning stove. The only problem is that even though we sold some furniture and gave more away before we moved we still have too much and some pieces are too big! So we are still unpacking boxes and deciding what to keep and what has to go and in the meantime we are making the best of the situation until we can get the house the way we want it.

I have also signed up as a Stampin' Up! Demonstrator, I hope this will be a good thing for me and will help me in more ways than one. I have been using Stampin' Up! products for some time now and love the quality of them. The lady I bought from was the one who suggested that I start selling for myself but I resisted for a while and finally decided that the time was right for me a couple of weeks ago. I love helping people craft so I am really looking forward to getting started. If any of you lovely people want to have a party, you know who to call....ME!

50th Wedding Anniversary

I cannot believe I have not posted since New Year’s Day; life has just been so hectic. There are big changes happening in my life but I don't want to jinx any of them so I will wait until everything is finalised before I tell you about them. What I can tell you is that with everything that is going on I have not had a lot of time for crafting but when some friends from our church announced that they were going to be celebrating their Golden Wedding Anniversary I just had to find time to make them a card and here it is.

I like to use the Bookatrix template for special Birthdays and Anniversaries; I think they make quite a statement. The photos are not very good I am afraid as they were taken just as we were running out the door to deliver it to the happy couple. They were leaving for a 5 week holiday and I had forgotten to photograph the card earlier so I just had to grab what shots I could.

Of course I used Gold as the base colour for the card but I added some browns and oranges to break it up. Each of the 4 'pages' are from a different paper and all but the bottom layer is double sided. To give the base a finished look I stuck two pieces of the same card together. All the layers are edged front and back with the same peel off and are secured together in the centre only. I am sorry but the papers and ribbon I used are from my stash and I can not remember where they came from. 

All the flowers are from Wild Orchid Crafts, the green leaves are Prima Artful Leaves and the gold leaves I made using Martha Stewarts Brancg Punch. The Gold numbers I bought from Capture the Magic.  

The poem is a collaboration of 2 poems I found on the internet with a bit of tweaking to make it flow. I made a matching stand but I did not bother taking photos of that. I made a separate tag to write a greeting on which you can just see peeking out in the picture above.

Thank you for stopping by my blog and I would love it if you would take the time to leave a comment.

God Bless

Elaina

Well, here we are folks, it's 2012. I wish everyone a Happy and Healthy New Year and I look forward to seeing all the crafting you will do this year.