October is Lupus Awareness Month

Besides being Dysautonomia Awareness Month, October is also Lupus Awareness month.

For those of you who don’t know what Lupus is, Lupus is an autoimmune condition, autoimmune being a condition in which the body’s immune system attacks its own healthy tissue. Lupus can affect the joints, skin, kidneys, blood cells, brain, heart and lungs.                                                                                                                                                      There are three different types of Lupus:

• Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE).
• Discoid (Cutaneous)  Lupus and
• Drug-induced Lupus (DIL).

The awareness ribbon colour for Lupus is purple so to raise awareness and show my support for people living with Lupus I decided to decorate my cupcake with purple icing and butterflies because the  symbol for Lupus is a butterfly because of the butterfly like rash (Malar rash) which appears over the bridge of the nose and the cheek and is one of the symptoms of Lupus and I love butterflies. I find cupcake decorating very therapeutic.

I will be making some handmade Lupus Awareness merchandise too in the coming days which will be up for sale on my new website at all-hearts.org/shop/ so please follow me at all-hearts.org and on my Facebook page Allheart Australia if you want to keep up to date.

 

 

Luis and the Aliens

A couple of weeks ago I went and saw Luis and the Aliens, A funny, family film where an eleven year old boy befriends three aliens.  Now I’m not usually a fan of alien movies as they’re usually boring so at first I wasn’t sure what this movie was going to be about but it’s not the type of movie about freaky, monster like aliens, they’re green little blobs. Luis’ father is something which starts in U and sounds like Urologist but it’s not, it’s the word for studying aliens and he spends all day in his house waiting for the aliens to come to planet Earth and after a neighbour reports Luis’ father for not taking care of him the is going to be taken away but when the aliens crash land their UFO in his garage Luis soon finds out that aliens really exist and things are about to change.

The first thing I enjoyed was when the aliens clicked their fingers and were able to change into human bodies and pretend to be Luis’ father to stop Luis from being taken away from him. Don’t we wish we could all do that? There are some great jokes which I won’t give away, including one about farts and who can forget the nubby dubby. You’ll have to watch the film to see what this nubby dubby is.

Rating:  3.5

Launch of a new website

A couple of weeks ago I posted about choosing a host to go with for my new website. Some of you may have read the news that I decided to go self hosted with Bluehost but on a WordPress plan. And I have some exciting news. My new website is finally up and running. And the name is., drumroll………………… AllheART.
AllheART is is a website about raising awareness for chronic conditiosn through art.  I wanted to create soemthing where I could use my artistic talents to help others and turn my experiences of living with multiple chronic illnesses into something positive. AllheART aims to provide positive experiences for people of all ages living with a chronic condition and/or physical disability so they can be themselves, have fun and forget about their illness for a little while as well as  raise awareness and funds through art.

So if you haven’t visited my website yet please follow me and check it out at https://all-hearts.org/

and follow me on Twitter @ArtAllhe

The follow and like buttons are not yet up and running, I still haev to figure that out but in the meantime you can still follow me by going into your reader, clicking on manage followed sites and copy pasting the link to my website into there and clicking follow. Of course I will still be blogging on Coolncreative from time to time so you can still follow me on there but you might like to see what I’m up to in the art world too.

And if you’re looking for the perfect Christmas pressie, why not visit my new online store at https://all-hearts.org/shop/. If you don’t live in Australia you will have to contact me for shipping costs as the prices which are up include shipping but are for within Australia. Thank you to all of my followers who helped me choose a host to go with and supported me during the process although website makingis a lot more challenging than I thought. Who said it was easy.  I hope you will continue to follow me at all-hearts.org.

Invisible Disability Awareness Week

This week (15-21st October) is Invisible Disabilities Awareness Week, a week dedicated to raising awareness to all chronic conditions which you cannot see. In fact 96% of people who live with a chronic illness live with an illness which you cannot see. So with this in mind you may not know that someone you know is in fact living with a chronic condition and is in fact struggling because it is not visible and looking at them they look the same as everyone else on the outside. People living with these conditions may not be in a wheelchair but they experience other symptoms which have a significant impact on their quality of life such as fatigue and brain fog. So the next time you meet someone with a chronic illness the number one thing to remember is NEVER ever say “but you don’t look sick” or “I hope you get better soon.”  Instead support them but asking them how they’re going or how they’re feeling that day,allow them to vent to you if they need and take the time to listen without being judgmental and making comments when you don’t know what it’s like to live with the condition.                                                                       Don’t try to think you know what it’s like to live with their condition if you don;t have it but show your support by saying things like “that must be really hard to live with”, I wish I could do something to help you”, ” I wish I could understand what it’s like to live with your condition but I don’t have it so I can’t but I will try to as much as I can and offer to help them out by asking if there is anything you can do to make thing easier for them. I know over the past few weeks I have had comment on blog posts saying that you are keeping me in your thoughts and prayers and although you may not be able to help me it’s the thought that counts, just knowing someone cares and is thinking about me.  I have shared a picture on 10 things to say to someone with an invisible illness from kalaidoscopefightinglupus .org.

Dysautonomia is just one of the many invisible illnesses. To read more about Dysautonomia and how you can support those living with this condition check out my previous posts, links are below.

https://coolncreative.wordpress.com/2018/09/30/five-facts-about-dysautonomia/

https://coolncreative.wordpress.com/2017/10/24/how-you-can-support-people-living-with-dysautonomia-and-help-raise-awareness/

You might ask, what disabilities are invisible and what exactly is an invisible disability? Basically an invisible illness is a disability that is not immediately apparent. Well there is a whole list besides Dysautonomia I wouldn’t be able to fit them all on here but just some of the many invisible disabilities include:

• Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS and Neurally Mediated Hypotension) which are forms of Dysautonomia.
• Migraines
• Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
• Fibromylagia and chronic pain
• Lyme Disease
• Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (EDS)
• Many autoimmune conditions including Lupus, which it is also awareness month for, Multiple Sclerosis (MS), Undifferentiated or Mixed Connective Tissue Disease, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Scleroderma, Sjogren’s Syndrome, Coeliac Disease and Crohn’s Disease.
• Endometriosis
• Depression and Anxiety
• Autism
• Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS),  just to name a few. If you know of any others feel free to add them to the list.

National Poetry Day

4th of October is National Poetry Day! I’m not much of a poet myself but I know many of my fellow bloggers out there write beautiful poems too so I’d like to shout out to Rose Elaine (roseelaine’s blog), Simplywendi from simplychronicallyill and Vivian from God’s whisperer’s of truth so I thought I’d make a mention. Today also happens to be  Maya Angelou’s birthday which is coincidental with craftschronicillnessand crafting also sharing one of her quotes on their blog so I thought I’d share another one of my favourite quotes which Alyssa from Fightmsdaily has previously shared to celebrate.                           Happy National Poetry Day!

 

 

Choosing a host to go with

As some of you may already be aware I am in the process of hopefully creating a new website.Now the thing that is stressing me out is what host to go with and what domain name to choose. So many options. I am currently with WordPress and don’t really want to leave as I have met so many wonderful bloggers this year and I want you all to continue to follow me but I am unsure of whether to stay under the same name or create a new website all together. If I keep the same name everyone who already follows me will still be able to see my new posts and continue following me but I will lose all of my likes 😦 and may also lose all my comments (hopefully not). If I make the decision to be self hosted I have been recommended Blue host but I’m not sure how I bring a domain name with me since I live in Australia and therefore the website will be either .org.au or .com.au  The new website will be art based. So do I keep my old name or go with a new one? Stay with WordPress and upgrade thsi website to a paid plan or switch over to Bluehost. Any advice would be much appreciated.