Button Picture Project

My boys have often come home from school with works of art that consist of buttons carefully glued onto various pieces of cardboard and paper.

I duly and diligently file them in the growing number of lever arch files I keep for their creations and promptly forget about them.

But when I saw this on my addiction that is Facebook, I fell in love.

Crafts by Amanda

Isn’t it gorgeous?  On closer inspection it appeared I could make it myself.

I experienced a strange mixture of fear and fizzing excitement.

I don’t “do” make and do.  I just don’t.  I hold no interest in it whatsoever so I was scared if I attempted to recreate the button picture, I would make a mess of it. 

But there was also an easy to follow tutorial on how to do it and this was the cause of my excitement.

Maybe it was possible.  Maybe it was possible to do without me making a mess of it.

I let the thought fester.  I needed to get comfortable with it. 

It sounds ridiculous but I think I just might have a make and do phobia.

So after a month or so, I finally took my finger out and bought the supplies I needed after deciding to make a Four Seasons collage.    

There is a great discount store near where I live and they have a fantastic arts and crafts section as you walk in.  I bought four small canvas boards, a bag of buttons and some PVA glue.

Back in the day Mister Husband liked to draw and paint so I managed to source some of his old supplies, namely some water colours and a brush.

Firstly I sketched the outline of a tree onto the canvas with a pencil.  Took me ages with the first one, so determined was I not to ruin it.

When that was done I set to painting it in.  They dried really quickly

Then came the fun part.  I went through the bag of buttons and divided them up into spring, summer, autumn and winter colours.    Then began the task of gluing them onto each canvas.

These are the finished pictures.  I hope you like them!

Spring

Summer

Autumn

Winter

A Plague on Our House

The Start Of It

Smallest Boy has chicken pox.  The spots appeared on Thursday last.  By Saturday he was covered.  And more were appearing. 

His normally sunny disposition was rapidly descending into one of an alien, whinging, crying brat child.  An alien, whinging, crying brat child who refused to be more than two feet away from me.

Saturday night saw him waking every twenty minutes to cry loudly and scratch his head violently.  He couldn’t bear to wear his nappy.

He finally fell into a hot and sticky sleep at 4am on the floor beside me on a rolled up duvet.   

To wake again at 5.30am.  For the day.

He didn’t nap. He couldn’t.  Mister Husband and I took it in turns driving so he could snatch twenty minutes here and there. 

I was pouring calamine lotion all over him as per his screaming requests.  Anything stronger was not advised as his skin was broken at this stage.

My go to children’s pain killer was also reputed not to be compatible with serious Chicken pox cases as it could cause a mild complication.

I have never used strong sleeping or teething medicines on the boys.  They frighten the life out of me. 

But Sunday I was desperate.  Desperate for Smallest Boy to find relief of some kind so I gave him a strong anti-histamine and hoped for the best. 

Before he went to bed I gave him another dose.

He was asleep beside me at 9.30pm, heat radiating from him.  An hour later he woke, agitated and started to tremble violently. His arms stiffened and his heart beat was rapid.  

 He was roasting to the touch. 

I lifted him and he immediately put his hot, sticky head on my shoulder and fell asleep.  Still shaking violently.

It stopped after maybe fifteen seconds and I placed him back on the bed beside me.  Half an hour later saw a repeat of the same thing.    And yet a third time later.

I scanned the leaflet with the anti-histamine and according to it he was having a reaction.

An ambulance was called and we were taken to the hospital. 

His temperature went from 39.6 to 40.1.  It had to be brought down and fast.  He was given some medicine in the ambulance and his heel was pricked for sugar levels.

Smallest Boy was so exhausted he just sat, sweating in my arms, all the while to the hospital.  Totally unaware of what should have been the biggest adventure of his little life so far – a ride in an ambulance.

At the hospital, his high temperature was found to be the cause of his febrile tremors.  He was admitted overnight for observation and some anti-bio tics.

For the first time in over twenty four hours, Smallest By finally rolled over, as much as the intravenous drip in his arm allowed, and settled into a deep sleep. 

Due to his chicken pox we were in an isolation chamber.  We could not leave the room which didn’t matter on that first day.  All he wanted to do was sleep and stay in my arms.

By 7pm that night, there were definite signs of him perking up again.  He didn’t sleep until midnight and then woke at 4am to shout out the window at the ambulance drivers down below.

He was asking about his brothers and his daddy and wanting his shoes so we could “Go! Go! Go!”

Uh oh.  Trouble ahead.  I spent the next day desperately trying to entertain him and keep him in the room. 

It was looking like they wanted to hold us for another twenty four hours.  After a bit of desperate persuasion, we were finally allowed to go home after 38 hours of isolation.

I didn’t know parents aren’t fed in hospitals.  There was a parents lounge where tea, coffee and toast were available but Smallest Boy was not allowed come with me. 

A night duty nurse brought me in a cup of coffee and two slices of toast.  Smallest Boy’s appetite had returned but he very kindly left me half a potato one day, five peas and a thread of chicken. 

It was time to go home.  But first we had to stop off for a rather large bag of drugs on the way.

I don’t know how his two year and three month old body is coping with a sudden and massive very first introduction to drugs.  He was having two anti-bio tics and an anti-viral drug every 6 hours in the hospital and we were instructed to continue this four times a day at home for the next three days.

We took our little sheet of sandpaper home where he was re-united with his beloved Juno and bubble lawn mower.  He didn’t go to bed until after 11pm last night and woke at 10.30am. 

Our boy is back.  And at home where he belongs.   

Signs of Summer

It’s beginning to look a lot like summer. 

I know because there are:

Blue skies, hot sun.  Spanish visitors, swallows.  Hay fever, fake tan.  Exams, repeats on TV.  Paddling pools, sun block.

Car windows left down, sleeping with the windows open.  Maxi dresses, shorts and t-shorts.  Salad for lunch, ice creams for tea. 

Water, smoothies.  Flip flops, bare feet.  Sleeping under a sheet, sleeping in underwear.  Cool showers at the end of a day, cool showers to start the day.

Water sprinklers, water fights.  Garden loungers, lawn mowers.  BBQ’s, beer gardens.  Beaches, swimming pools.  Road trip, summer holidays. 

Painted toe nails, tan lines.  Sun glasses, picnics.   Wimbledon, strawberries and ice-cream.    Ice boxes, summer songs on the radio.

Bikini’s, tankini’s. 99’s, belly buttons.  River swimmers, joggers.  Electric picnic, Oxegen. 

And the best bit?  According to Met Eireann, this fantastic weather is set to continue for the next three weeks.

That’s right.  Three weeks!

Sunday Miscellany. Poppy

For the last couple of weeks, on the way to do the grocery shop, I would see poppy flowers at the very edge of a corn field.  Just one or two dotted in amongst the crop. 

For the last couple of weeks I always meant to stop and take a photo.

This morning I did.

Hay Fever Fever

Two and a half years ago we moved house.  We left a housing estate and moved back to mine and Mister Husbands home town, and out to the countryside. 

Two and a half years ago Oldest Boy came woke up with what I thought was a bad chest infection.

Walking across the GP’s car park that morning, he struggled to chat and had to ask me to slow down as he was finding it difficult to keep up.

An hour later saw Conor about to embark on round two of the surgery’s nebuliser.  His chest was “very tight and not loosening” so it was thought best to get him to A&E for a chest x-ray.

Holy shit.  That was scary stuff.  But I refused to panic until I knew what the story was.

The story was, Conor had asthma so we were discharged with a script for an inhaler, some steroids and a mask to help him use his puffer.

As relieved as I was that it was just asthma, a part of me was dismayed.  I hated the idea of him being reliant on an inhaler.  Was this going to be for the rest of his life even though we had been told he would probably grow out of it?  

Two and a half years later Conor is smack bang in the middle of his third summer of asthma brought on by hay fever.

We have tried everything from showering at the end of the day to remove pollen and smearing Vaseline under and onto his eyelids.

I was told a dog can help.  The thinking being, pollen and traces of flora and fauna will be trekked in and around the house thus helping to build up resistance.

Local honey was also suggested to me.  But this is something you are supposed to take all year round and not just when symptoms appear.

Earlier on this year, when I was putting out hay fever cure feelers, a product was mentioned in passing by a friend.  And then by another. Great stuff with great potential by all accounts.

I was filled with hope.  So I bought several bottles. 

It was also advised that I try a homeopathic remedy called Pollenna.  These are little white pills and can be either sucked or chewed. 

It was almost the end of June.  We are surrounded by those glorious beautiful yellow Linseed fields.  The air is heavy with the scent of pollen when it is released.

The garden needs to be mowed every week.  Conor is outside every day, as often as possible.  Coming in to rest and have a break from the heat when he needs it.

His hay fever hadn’t abated at all.

In school he needed to be excused to wash his face several times to cool his streaming eyes. 

He took his homeopathic remedies regularly.

Nothing was working.  He tends to get worse before he gets better but the inhaler wasn’t bringing him any relief and his chest was starting to rattle.  He began to complain it hurt. 

I took him to the GP.  Almost a year to the day since he had been last and for the same complaint. 

He was moved onto Beclazone, a preventer inhaler.

The middle of the night coughing and wheezing fits all but stopped nearly immediately. 

I have grudgingly accepted the inhaler is the only thing that works for him.

It is now early July and he has been inhaler free for several days.  His eyes have stopped bothering him and he is back to sleeping normally as a result.

I don’t like the inhaler.  I don’t like it at all.  But it is a necessary evil.