In the current global situation, we are all currently facing you know that C-word that everyone is talking about! It is easy to feel overwhelmed. Well, that is how I am feeling at the moment, staying inside my little home bubble, keeping busy in the craft room or garden and keeping trying to keep a positive outlook. I am a creature of habit, almost every morning I follow the same steps after waking, one of which is checking my emails and the news online. The latter is getting harder, the past few days weeks the leading stories are all about Coronavirus or disappointing reports of humans acting poorly mostly in supermarkets.
Facebook also receives a morning check-in, on Monday when I opened my FB account I have a notification that a friend invited me to a group called The Kindness Pandemic, well that got my attention. I mean kindness is one of my favourite things! Upon clicking over I found a little happy corner of FB, lovely stories of kindness that have been seen, received or given in the past few weeks as we have been surrounded by craziness. I may have had a little tear in my eye, reading about a sweet teenage girl who lost her job, deciding to place herself into quarantine to be able to move in with her grandparents to care for them as she worried about having their normal carers visit the home after being with others. Other reports of kind acts as simple as total strangers spitting one of the last packets of toilet paper.
Most that day was spent thinking about what I could do to share a little more kindness, in true Teneale Style I was thinking BIG until that night when I sat at my craft desk and remembered a chat I had with my sweet older neighbour (can I say neighbour if she lives 5 houses away?) who pulled up in her car on Sunday afternoon to have a chat as I was working in my front garden. I learned her husband of 57 years had just been placed in a nursing home and she had been limited to 10-minute visits with him daily, she was crying and all I wanted to do was open the car door and wrap my arms around her little body. We talked (at a safe distance) for over an hour and her parting words that she so much enjoyed our chat, she can’t even get her sons to return her phone calls let alone have them ask about how she was coping with everything inspired me to do what I do best. Make a card. To say, I am here.
I struggled to decide on a greeting for the card, I did not want ‘thinking of you’ I was happy to use ‘hello’ until I found Tags In Bloom Stamp Set which is part of the new Sale-A-Bration second release and one of the greetings said ‘wishing you the best’ I felt like that was the right tone. It also helped that I really liked the flower frames that went with it.
With Sale-A-Bration ending next Tuesday (31st March 2020) I had a few products that are new and not played with yet like this So Very Vellum Specialty Designer Series Paper. 
I used the coloured vellum, which comes in Pool Party, Purple Posy, Soft Sea Foam to make a little box from the Mini Curvy Keepsakes dies to go with the card. Inside the box, I was placing a Ferrero Rocher inside. When we talked she had said how much she enjoyed them as a one of treat.
Normally I post inside my card but this time it had a message written, so I took a photo showing the card and box together.
This may have been the longest blog post in my history of blogging, maybe it is all this social distancing that is making me chatty.
Look after yourself and loved ones. Keep yourself busy and make time for crafting, it really is the best therapy.
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Thank you Teanele. I loved your long blog post. Your cards always make me smile so hopefully we will get to see more of them during this crisis.
This was so sweet and thoughtful. The card and box are exquisite, but what you said–I feel so for those who live alone at this time of social isolation, and especially for those like your neighbour who had just had her husband move to a care home. Bless you!