Appendectomy

It's been a few weeks since my last post! I woke up the morning after dropping off my Chair-ity project at 5:45am with severe pain in my stomach. I thought I had an upset stomach so I got up and took some medicine. While walking downstairs, I noticed the pain moved to my lower right quadrant and it was hard to walk. I was crying by this point and wasn't sure what was going on. I went back upstairs to lay down in bed. I ended up calling my Mom to see what I should do. Unfortunately, my parents couldn't drive to my house to take me to urgent care. Luckily, my knight in shining armor, my boyfriend John, came to my rescue. We went to urgent care and the doctor sent me straight to the ER. I had to sit in the triage area with the other sick/injured people hoping to get seen. There was this older woman in the triage area with me. She was in obvious major pain crying out every so often. Honestly it made it a little unbearable for me since I was in major pain as well. So, I said a prayer for her while I was sitting in triage and hoped that her pain would go away. I was called to go to my room in the ER department around 9:30am. At this point, John had to get to work and my Dad was with me. They ran test after test for hours on end. Finally at 4:30pm in the afternoon they told me I had appendicitis. I thought to myself, another surgery, UGH. The Surgeon came to schedule the surgery for that evening at 7:00pm. As usual, they were running behind. Before I was wheeled to the operating room around 8:30 they let my Dad, Mom and boyfriend all stay with me till they were ready, thank God. They must of given me some anesthesia because after saying bye to my family I don't remember anything until waking up in the recovery room. I was shivering and my teeth were chattering. I asked the nurse for a blanket but was told she couldn't give me one b/c I was running a fever. I won't go into other gruesome details of bedpans and going in and out of consciousness. Finally, a very nice man pushed my bed up to my room on the third floor. My family was there waiting on me. It took them an hour and a half to wake me up after the surgery! I spent 6 days out of work and 4 days working from home. I went back to work on Monday of this week. I'm very thankful for my family, boyfriend, and the entire hospital staff for taking such good care of me! Thanks to everyone for their prayers and get well wishes! I'm on the mend finally!

My creative juices have been flowing and I have drawn some designs for new necklaces that should be ready in the next few weeks! I'm also thinking of adding some paintings to my line so be on the lookout for those in the coming months!

It's for the kids

Hello everyone!

I've finished my Chair-ity project for the Wayne County Arts Council. On February 5th, the Arts Council will be auctioning off all the painted chairs and will be raising money for arts programs for the kids. I spent countless hours perfecting my chair. I first took the adirondack chair and filled in the screw holes with wood filler. After that dried, I sanded down the entire chair so it would be nice and smooth. I applied a thick coat of primer and let that dry. Then I researched waves and thought about how I was going to lay it out on my chair. Then I painted the wave and it ended up being a lot bigger than I had wanted! Woops! haha. It was a happy accident though. Then I decided to bring the wave into the arms of the chair so if you are looking at it, it'd almost be like you were looking at a flat canvas instead of a chair. Then I painted the arms of the chair and the back of the chair. Last I painted the sand which I ended up changing several times because I didn't feel like it looked like sand. I finally got it the way I liked it! So my last step was to glue on the seashells John and I found on the beaches of the Outer Banks this summer. I sprayed several coats of acrylic clear coat on the chair to seal it.

Today John and I loaded up his Jeep with the chair and my mixed emotions for letting go of a project I probably spent at least 40 hours on over the course of the last few months. It was hard for me to give the chair up but knowing that it was for a good cause made me happy! I'm really proud of my work and am now thinking about picking up painting and adding paintings to my business!

I'm attaching several pictures of the chair to share with everyone. Hope you enjoy!