Update and a Birthday card

Hello Crafters, 

how are you all doing?  Again it's been a really long time since you heard from me. 
Life has been busy, throwing things at me, good and bad. 

Just a very quick life update, from where I left off:
My sick cat passed just before Christmas 2017, which was really hard for us. We still miss her a lot, though we adopted two young cats rather quickly, to keep our little devil Nala company.

Meet Benny (red) and Cleo (mostly white) in their typical pose. The adorable couple were about 6 months old when they moved in in winter 2018. They aren't siblings but grew up at the same shelter, and they are simply inseparable. They conquered us humans in a heartbeat and though Nala often pretends to dislike them, she has been caught letting herself be groomed by Benny and letting Cleo sink her paws into Nala's fur.

Here are all three of them together, in a rare moment of unity:

At first I had an allergic reaction to Benny and feared I would have to return them, but luckily the girls and I decided to keep him out of my bedroom (that proved entirely impossible),  to vacuum clean a lot and have the girls brush him often  and see if any of that helps. We also went ahead and had him neutered a bit quicker than planned.
And I actually have grown accustomed to his fur and have no reaction at all anymore. Lucky me, having to return them would have been a tragedy, even after only an hour. I could write about my cats forever and post a million videos, but unfortunately I have more news to tell you, and rather sad ones.

I have repeatedly written about health issues in the family in the past, both our Grannies weren't well. Sadly my mother-in-law passed late last year, which hit the whole family hard, as you can imagine. 
I 'll not write more on this topic, since I don't think the rest of my family would appreciate that, but I felt I did at least have to mention it. 

It happened just after I had found a new place to live for the girls and me. We had been looking for years without success, but after taking more options (aka a new area) into account, we finally found the perfect flat. It's large, 4 bedrooms, so finally my girls have separate rooms and we have a craft space/office on top. It is about 40 minutes from our old place, so the decision wasn't popular with the family and the girls had to change school. However, they were with me in that decision and we are very happy here now. It's a more rural place, with a huge garden, which luckily I don't have to tend to, since it belongs to my landlady who lives on the ground floor. Our balcony suits me much more, no snails and slugs... But we do love to look out on the wonderful garden and hills. This is a shot in early spring from my bedroom window. Isn't it lovely? And that's not even when the garden is at it's best. Now that it's summer I can barely see the hills in the back, for all the trees.

Our new landlady is a lovely, caring person, we have already become good friends. I am so happy to have found our new home. And I am sure to get rid of the last 3 boxes from the move at some point. In a month maybe. Or a year. Or...

Enough with the updates. Though I didn't manage to tend to my blog despite the fact that I even had several blogposts prepared, I did make a few cards in the last year or so. Since I already wrote so much in this post, I'll just show a very quick card, done with an embossing folder, some Washi tape and a die cut and embossed sentiment combo. Isn't the flamingo adorable? I wish it was clearer on the photo, but think you can see it well enough on the second image.

I hope you have a good start into the next week. 

Hugs
Ela



Challenges:
Creative Friday: #237 We want to see an animal
Seize the Birthday: Anything goes Birthday 
The Paper Players: #455 Any cards for Kids (the card is for one of my girls friends)
Addicted to stamps and more: #354 CAS