It's April 1 and my computer has already made a fool of me. For unknown reasons it is refusing to "get pictures from camera". I resorted to the scanner even though some clarity and color

had to be sacrificed.

As all you midwesterners will know, the end of winter is prime time for "mizzeries" in our part of the country. I recently came down with an upper respiratory virus that segued right into pneumonia. Fortunately it's all gone now, but if you've ever had this experience yourself you know that even after recovery you still have the blahs for awhile. All that hacking & wheezing seems to cough your creativity right outa your brain!

Where did that inspiration go? Has this ever happened to you? The first time I felt well enough to sit down at my craft table again, my papers, pens, & paints all looked like toys from outer space. Were these really mine? What do you do with them? This was maybe a week ago. Now it's just barely starting to seep back into my brain. . .oh, these tools are mine. They are fun to use. They make pretty cards and stuff.

I'm still not too inspired or competent. But it's almost our granddaughter Tory's birthday. I couldn't buy her a card because - well - like many of you, I always make our family's cards by hand. It's a tradition. So I spent 3 hours yesterday trying to come up with something passable.

I don't think I did, but time's running out so it'll have to do. Maybe she'll be distracted by the $$ inside (that's why the card is long and skinny - money holder, y'know.) If not, I know she'll appreciate that Grandma made her a card and not be too critical of its appearance.

Thank goodness for rubber stamps - they make images easy! I combined two from october pumpkin's Beach Kids set. This little girl, with her straw hat tied around her neck and her cheery polka dot sundress, barefoot in the sand, reminds me both of our daughter Stephanie at maybe 10 yrs old, and of her own daughter Tory. After stamping and coloring the images, I contour-cut both kite and girl and adhered them to the sky-colored background.

But is the polka dot cardstock too much with the polka dot dress? Or is the scalloped card edge too much for the bunches of polkadots and rickrack trim? Why didn't I come up with a smaller embellishment than that shell, and is the color of the shell ok? As I struggled with all thse questions in my totally un-creative fog, somehow I decided to stop before it got more complicated. Notice I didn't even attempt any text.

I'm showing you this not-my-best-effort in cardmaking to ask if you've ever had the same experience - didn't feel up to par, couldn't come up with anything stunning, so had to go with

your best effort under the circumstances. Or did you have a different way of handling this

rare but iffy situation?