Six Million Dollar Mouth

I swear, sometimes I'm afraid to even THINK anything positive.   Everytime I start to get a little bit cocky, things just go to hell.  Take my last visit to the dentist, for instance.

I sat down in the chair for my cleaning and thought to myself, "No problem.  I haven't had a new cavity in forever, my gums are always in great shape and my baby teeth (yes, I still have two) are perfect...I'll be in and out of here super fast."

HA!

I was right about the cavities.  I was right about my gums.  The baby teeth?  Not so much.  Unfortunately, one of my baby teeth, which has always been rock solid in my jaw, was suddenly NOT so rock solid.
So I had a decision to make.  Within two weeks of my cleaning, I had  my poor little baby tooth yanked out, a titanium rod screwed into my jawbone, and  a bone graft just for good measure (to fill in the spaces where the old roots were).  The weird thing is that after the first day, it really didn't hurt at all, and I find that curious.  I mean, the doctor DRILLED A HOLE IN MY JAWBONE. With a drill.  Then he screwed a piece of metal into the bone.  Then he stuffed the holes from my baby tooth with bone-graft stuff.  I'm not complaining, mind you, but shouldn't that all hurt?  Just a little? 

 When the bone has (hopefully) grown and the graft and  implant have "taken", I'm supposed to go back to my dentist and they'll screw and glue a tooth onto the rod.  (Actually, I think there's an in-between step where they have to MAKE me a tooth but whatever!)

Just think, once I get that tooth, I will have a bionic mouth that will be nearly as expensive as all of the six million dollar man's bionic body parts put together, given the cost of inflation. Still, I've been told that an implant is the way to go...and that it may very well outlast my other teeth (as well it should, being practically bionic and everything.) 

Tooth version 1.0.  The baby tooth in question is the one with the metal filling.  It's just as well it had to go --I had to have the filling replaced in it once already.  If they had to do that again I probably wouldn't end up with much tooth left anyway!

The space where my baby tooth used to be.  Now it's just a hole with the cover of the screw showing.  (The dark stuff on the tooth behind it is metal from the old filling from the baby tooth.)

So that's me and my six million dollar mouth.  Or it will be when I get the dang thing installed.  This is morbid but I can't help but wonder what an archeologist digging up my grave in thousands of years will think.   If my bones and hair are all decayed and all that's left is a fake tooth and a small titanium rod, what what will they make of it?  These are the things I wonder!  lol

Cool Art

I am the Art Masterpiece volunteer for Jessica's class.  Our last two projects turned out especially cool!  We talked about Eric Carle as an artist before we made ice cream, cakes and cupcakes using stencils and paper that was painted and textured.  These are a couple of samples Jessica made for me to show the class.  I LOVE them so much I laminated them, and of course, hung them on the art wall in the new craft room!

Cool cupcake

Incredible Ice Cream

Another project we did used "found" objects to create three-dimensional collages.  After the kids glued items into their shoebox lid, I took them all home and spray painted them gold.  These looked very cool.  Jessica only used natural objects on this one.  (The collages that were fullest looked the most awesome!)

This was a super fun, easy craft.  I did learn that gold is the perfect color to use as it offers complete coverage while most other paint colors do not.  Also, Aleene's tacky glue is once again the glue of choice.  Elmer's is too thin for this project.  Small boxes, seed pods, bark, popsicle sticks, paper doilies, fake leaves/flowers, trashed CD's/DVD's, soda/food lids, pill bottles, broken toys, game pieces, etc. were just a few of the "found" items I saved for the kids to use and the boxes that were most full were the ones that looked the coolest after being painted. 

Craft Room

I used to be a big crafter.  I've done it all:  needlepoint, cross stitch, and ribbon embroidery.  Scrapbooking, card making, pergamanno and quilling.  Tole painting, jewelry making, leather crafts, and probably several other things I can't even recall off the top of my head.  I've even had a few scrapbooking pages and cards published in idea books and magazines.

However, I'm not much of a crafter any more.  Oh, I still scrapbook --but I do it digitally with my Creative Memories Storybook software so the finished product is a bound book that won't fall apart (and so I won't have to clean up afterwards!)  Once in a while I might even sit down to make a card.  But by and large, my creativity is limited to writing these days.

All of which makes the fact that we now have a CRAFT ROOM a bit ironic.  As I was cleaning out the extra bedroom one day, it occurred to me that maybe Jess would like to move into that room and use the big bed rather than waiting for us to repaint her room as we've been talking about doing in a few years.  She jumped on the chance, so we sold her loft bed, moved her into the extra bedroom, gave it a quick update with a new comforter, fabric baskets for the bookshelves, and voila!  She has a cute bedroom befitting a pre-teen (in other words, it does NOT have pink walls and flower decor) AND she also has a whole room to craft in with her friends (which DOES have pink walls and flower decor).
Gary's office is upstairs so he often overhears bits and pieces of conversation between Jess and her friends.  He told me that every kid who's come over since we made the switch has said, "Whoa!  This is sooooo cool!"

So there you have it.  Me. Cool, genius mom. With a craft room.

View of the far corner --the walls don't look nearly as Pepto-Pink as they really are!  lol  The stuff in the corner is my Sizzix machine and dies. Finally --they have a home and can be easily accessed. 

The "art wall."  I love having Jessica's art all in one place in this room!

Ahhh....My anal tendencies get to shine!  I LOVE having things labeled.  If I thought I could get away with it, I would probably label all my own clothes so you would know, at a glance, that I am, indeed, wearing Anissa's shirt, Anissa's underwear, and Anissa's shoes.  Okay, not really, but you have to admit that all these identical labels really make me SEEM neat and organized!

The back of the door and one of my favorite organizational tools --a $7 plastic shoe organizer from Target.  We have these on the back of every closet door in the house, including the pantry (it's awesome for storing kid snacks, hot chocolate packets, tea, seasonings and so forth). This is the only one that's labeled, though.  It's PERFECT for keeping all the different types of markers, crayons and colored pencils organized and accessible.