fannie & millie .: handcrafted goodness

What would your world look like without the threat of cancer?

In April I wrote about my family’s experience with cancer, but have avoided sharing the news we received shortly after that post. At his one-year-anniversary doctor’s appointment, we found out that the Gleevec Chris was taking is no longer working for him.  The good news is, there are some new medications he can try.  So far, it seems that the Sprycel he is taking now is doing what it’s supposed to do. We actually consider ourselves among the lucky ones, we have medical insurance, the Leukemia was diagnosed in time and we have wonderful and supportive friends and family. Even so, the additional support offered by the Lance Armstrong Foundation has been really important to us. They have worked to empower us to feel more in control and to take charge of Chris’ treatment by giving us numerous, invaluable resources and also by helping us to connect with other survivors so that we don’t feel so alone. They also have a broader agenda quoted here from their website:

We must close the gaps between what we know and what we do in the cancer fight.

Nearly 47 million Americans lack health insurance. About 16 million more are underinsured.

Health care coverage and financial concerns should not dictate who lives, who dies and who suffers unnecessarily.

Ethnic populations in the U.S. carry a disproportionate burden of poor quality cancer care, and minorities are much more likely to die and suffer needlessly from the disease.

With screening, we could prevent 1/3 of all cancer deaths.

90% of colorectal cancer deaths, 30% of all breast cancer deaths in women over age 40 and virtually all cervical cancer deaths can be prevented now.

Cancer funding is decreasing and government attention is fragmented.

While 13 different government agencies fund cancer research, no one is in charge of the nation’s cancer program. Hard to believe when 10 million people in our country are living with cancer.

We must be more efficient, more collaborative and more directed about how we use what we know.

We must close the gaps.

We must make cancer a national priority.

Today.

Please join me in supporting the LAF. It’s a matter of life and death.

If you’ve been planning to join Team BFR, tomorrow is the day to do it! Click on the coupon to go directly to the team page.

I’m back online and no longer a Microsoft drone; I’ve got Firefox now and I can’t believe how much better my blog and shop look with it.  It might take a while (as most good relationships do) to really get into the flow of things; but I think I’m in love…

♥ Besides, isn’t that little fox just adorable? ♥

I’m just checking in to let you know that I won’t be online until Monday:(   I was scheduled to be up and running yesterday but there was a problem, so now Monday is the day!  (I’m typing this as quickly as possible on a borrowed computer and connection.)

 See you all soon!

Please don’t feel neglected.  I’m having computer issues that I hope to resolve within the next couple of days.  I promise I’m still here and working and will be back soon with the new treats I promised you. 

So, go on, have your beverage of choice (I think I’ll make mine a double) and talk amongst yourselves.

Here’s a great bike story in the Oregonian - justice prevails!

 

I’ve added three new bird necklaces to the shop today. 

If you are sensing a theme, you would be right.  Spring has me thinking about the birds and the bees and the flowers in the fields and birth and rebirth and growth and…

More to come…

It was a great weekend for a road trip - no rain!  I took the umbrella but didn’t need it at all. Yippee!  The weather was beautiful and we had a great time.  See if you can guess where we went…

Ha, ha, I know, that’s a pretty good clue; isn’t it?  We stayed at a really artsy hotel, here’s a photo of the mural that was on our room door:

Every floor had photos (each floor a different artist) covering all of the doors.  The multiple huge photos in the dark space combined with the low ceilings, striped carpet and heavy-scaled woodwork to make us feel like Alice In Wonderland.  I loved it!  The hotel has 350 original works from both emerging and established Seattle artists.  Brianna liked the “spiritual menu” in our room and ordered a Torah within the first 15 minutes of our arrival.  Check out the photo below! We also went to late happy hour (10 pm - 1 am; gotta love that!) at Red Fin, the restaurant at the hotel.  My martini was perfect and the edamame, sushi and french fries (!) with togarashi sure were good but I was puffed up like a blowfish when I woke up on Sunday.

We visited Pike Market, rode the Monorail, did lots of shopping (of course) and lots of eating (I’ll get back to that another time…) but, for me, the highlights of this trip were the Rem Koolhaas-designed Seattle Central Library and the Seattle Art Museum’s Olympic Sculpture Park.  Both places are free to visit and absolutely worth seeing!    

I hope you had a great weekend, too!!!

  a little bit of fun and nonsense for your Thursday pleasure…  also, a reminder that I’m still here.  New items (plural) will absolutely be in the shop early next week.  I just made a bunch of great pieces with the intention of listing them in the shop, but my wholesale account bought them all!  hurrah! bummer! no, hurrah!  I suppose it all depends how I look at it… or which way the wind blows.

click on the photo if you need a weathervane;)

Do you Pandora?  I do. 

In their own words,

Ever since we started the Music Genome Project, our friends would ask:

Can you help me discover more music that I’ll like?

Those questions often evolved into great conversations. Each friend told us their favorite artists and songs, explored the music we suggested, gave us feedback, and we in turn made new suggestions. Everybody started joking that we were now their personal DJs.

We created Pandora so that we can have that same kind of conversation with you.

I can’t quite explain how it works, but when you sign up for Pandora (it’s free or you can create an ad-free paid account) you just type in the names of artists or songs you like and Pandora matches those choices to music with the same musical DNA.  As I said, It’s hard to explain but very cool!  Every account can have up to 100 “stations” and those “stations” can even be shuffled for a “quick mix” and played as a random combo of different types of music.  You can give a “thumbs-up” or “thumbs-down” on songs as they are playing, tell Pandora to stop playing and never play again a song you dislike, or just ask Pandora why a certain song is on. 

I listen to it all the time!  Let me know if you give it a try.