Please help Taco Papacito!

Hello friends & followers!  You know my blog is called 'Canines and Card Designs' - well, today is all about the CANINES!  My friend Kelli Jo posted a link to a video by Laurie Bershin about this little stray she rescued, meet Taco Papacito:

 You can watch his adorable youtube video here - I dare you not to fall in love: Taco Papacito.
     This poor little man has vet bills that are really stacking up and needs to have surgery left eye.  I implore you - please do what you can to help Laurie care for this little guy, share his story on your blogs and on FB and Twitter, if you tweet.  Donations of any size are greatly appreciated and can be made to the vet's office (Dr. Sauer at Jansen's Animal Hospital in Torrance, CA - just tell them to add it to Taco Papacito's account) directly over the phone at 310-328-0380.  A bunch of kind stampers and stamping companies have been kind enough to donate products and design digis for an upcoming fundraiser to cover his expensive eye surgery - so stay tuned for information on that.  Please help Taco get healthy and find his forever family (I want him in MINE but hubby is still saying 'no' sniff sniff), he is such a sweet little boy.  Thank you all for your love, concern and help, from the bottom of my heart!
~ Crafty Math Chick   

Sigh, bye bye Google Reader

Good evening friends & followers!  Thank you all SO much for your loyal friendship and support of my creations and issues in my personal life from time to time.  All your comments have brought me such joy, and I am grateful for ALL of them.  I do hope to get back to creating more regularly again SOON!

I have heard that Google Reader will be disappearing July 1st.  I was not sure which new service to use, but for now I am trying BlogLovin' because I liked that it could import all of my loyal Google Reader followers with the click of a button.  If you are interested, you too can try it here:

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Determined Little Starlings...

...yep, they came back... twice... here is the third rebuild (didn't photograph the fourth one):

...we now have the grill in the open position as we can't seem to keep the holes plugged up and them out.  Hopefully they will take the hint that they need to find a new location for the Starling Dream Home.  I actually felt bad for them, hopping around with beakfuls of twigs and straw looking at me like "...um... what's going on...?   What have you done with our home that we have worked so hard to build?"  Poor little things, this is just not a good location, but I digress...
     This week's Wags 'n Whiskers Challenge is an easy one - so I hope EVERYONE will play along - Anything Goes!  I decided to use the adorable 'With Love digi' to create this Miss you card:

The ribbon on the mailbox reminded of a the yellow ribbons military families leave on their houses and trees until their loved ones come home from deployment, well at least they did before it became a security concern anyway.  This card also fulfills the requirements of the following additional challenges:

• The Play Date Cafe Challenge: (there is a little green in the grass I colored in)

• Pixie Dust Studio Challenge 122: Ribbons, and 
• Digi Doodle Shop's Best Challenge 103 - Paper Lace.

     Thanks for stopping by to visit my blog, see my creations, and read my ramblings!  Have a great Friday!
~Crafty Math Chick

Know the expression 'Don't Be Getting All Up in my Grill"?

... apparently the neighborhood Starlings haven't...  I heard lots of pinging and knocking outside but every time I peeked outside I saw two starlings with beakfulls of twigs flying off.  I figured they were just gathering haphazardly and flying past the grill brushing against it or something.  When hubby returned home with Ty baby from their morning walk I mentioned inspecting the grill in case the Starlings had damaged it.  I was shocked when he opened the grill to find this:

LOL!  and we have a large grill too!  OMG!  Those starlings are industrious little birds I tell you!  They must have flown in the holes in the sides of the grill and thought they had stumbled upon the Barbie Dream Home of Starling bird houses (hornets did this back in GA, MUCH prefer the starlings!).  I could not stop laughing as my hubby contemptuously began glaring at every feathered friend that happened to fly by our yard as if he was asking them "Did YOU do this?  How about YOU?!!"  "I told you, starlings did this - not the finches, not the robins, they are too busy scouting for worms Honey".  (My knowledge of birds is limited, but I know what Starlings look like).  Thankfully, the 'nest' was not completed enough to have any eggs in it yet.  (Back in GA we had a family of cute red house finches that finished their nest in less than 24 hours - and since I saw one of the birds sitting there a lot I assumed eggs where already 'in the house' and didn't want to be responsible for any aviacide so I left it alone, and it was a tiny nest at the top of the porch, not really causing any trouble or inconvenience, and it was fun to see the baby finches once they hatched, I like little birdies, but I digress...).  At my insistence, he left the clippings in a pile so they could use them to build elsewhere and cleaned the grill.  I warned him to plug up the holes in the sides of the grill before they attempted to rebuild, which he insisted they would not do as he had just let the grill burn for about 10 minutes to kill off any bacteria or anything. 
     This is was we found less then an hour later:

There is tin foil blocking the holes now.  ;)  Hope everyone has a happier Easter and Passover than these poor now-homeless little Starlings.
~Crafty Math Chick