Spring is in the Air

Mom's Guard Gargoyle

As you walk up to mom's front door this who greets you, Baby.  Isn't he adorable!

Tonight I was over at mom's working on other stuff but beading.  Before I headed home mom and I decided to walk around her yard and I had my camera with me, so pictures to share.  I am so glad to have nice weather coming our way because I miss being outside taking pictures.

So, for your viewing pleasure - pictures!

Just so you know mom and I have a tendency to name our trees - yes, we know we are weird.  This is "Chichi" (named for my aunt), a weeping something.  This is the first year mom and I have noticed the pussy willow sort of branch coming out the top of the tree.  We are going to have to find a tall ladder so we can get closer to take pictures of the limb.

This is a close up of the buds on "Peary Como" the Bradford Pear mom has in her front yard.  This is the tree that was damaged in the large wind storm we had last year.  The tree lasted the winter is blooming so mom isn't going to have "Peary" removed.

This is "Merdy", named after my grandma.  This is a weeping something tree, mom is in too much pain right now to look for the paperwork on the trees she bought, so sorry I can't give you the proper tree types.  This tree has gone crazy, must have good water and fertilization.

This is "Lucy" mom's crab apple tree.

This is the bud from a Moscow Lilac.  The lilac bush use to be pretty scrawny until mom cut it back and then it came back with a vengeance.  Love how it looks now.

These are some of the tulips mom planted last year that are coming up now.
I hope you enjoyed the springy pictures.  I am off.  Have a wonderful night!

Grilled Cheese/Tomato Soup, Cleaning, Tattoos and a Giveaway

Last night I had my all time favorite foods - grilled cheese and tomato soup.  Of course my grilled cheese didn't look as nice as this image, I burned one side of the bread, but it still tasted oh sooo good!  I don't know about you, but I love to dunk my grilled cheese in the tomato soup and in ketchup.  It sounds gross but it is yummy.  Give it a try, I dare you :)

After eating I started to clean my house.  I am having Home Depot come over to measure the living room and two bedrooms to have wood floors laid in my house.  I am paranoid when I have people come over, I don't want them to see a dirty house!  So I went to town on the house and did a quick cleaning - vacuumed the living room and both bedrooms and bathroom, cleaned up the kitchen, mopped the floors, put away clothes, cleaned the bathroom and put some stuff away.  It isn't a through cleaning but I am not to embarrassed to have someone come into my house now.  Like I said I don't allow anyone in my house buy mom because I hate cleaning!!!!  So, this should be interesting to have someone in my house laying flooring.  I will come to that hurdle when I have to.

It has been two years since my last tattoo and I have been wanting another one.  I had mom design my last tattoo, and you can go here to read about it.  I have eight tattoo's right now and six of them are flash.  I love all my tattoo's but now that I am older I want my tattoo's to have more meaning to me.  This new tattoo I want to represent my time in the Army.  Mom and I are trying to look for images to represent my vision, but I am still trying to define that vision.  I would like to have the tattoo on the inside of my left wrist, not a bracelet, and I don't want the tattoo huge.  I love color and something feminine.  You have any ideas please share because I am open to suggestions right now.

Studio Waterstone

The wonderful Lori is having a giveaway on her blog, a bag for you coffee lovers out there.  If you haven't been to Lori's blog or Facebook or Etsy site you must head there now.  I am sending subliminal thoughts your way so you go there - go, go, go, go there now!!!

If you would like to participate in the giveaway just follow her instructions - you won't be disappointed!

Pretty Maudling Post But Eye Candy At the End...I Promise

This week has been a blah week for me and mom.  Mom is taking a nap right now because she is on muscle relaxers and pain medicine.  This past Monday she started having a stabbing pain in her left shoulder blade that then went up and down her next and by Friday was pain down her left arm.  Mom finally broke down and went to the doctor and the doctor thinks mom's bone spurs are acting up and she might have a pinched nerve.  Mom is going in for a deep tissue massage and possible Cortisone shots in her neck.  If the Cortisone shots don't help it might be surgery time.  So no sawing from mom or working in the yard for her.

Me, who knows what my deal is.  I had a migraine on Monday and Tuesday and I just felt depressed the rest of the week, maybe not enough Vitamin D.  I usually don't feel like this but I was missing my military friends, I was actually missing the Army, feeling like a slug (who needs to get her ass off the couch to workout) and feeling lonely.

I guess it is hitting me that this year would have been 20 years if I had stayed in the Army and it has been almost 10 years since I got out of the Army.  I don't regret my decision for getting out of the Army one bit, but there are times I seriously, seriously miss it.  I still feel out of step in the civilian world, though I have been out longer now then I had been in.  The Army had its bad moments but it sure had its good moments too.

I don't know what it is with me, but just the thought of exercising makes me crawl on my couch and never want to leave it.  I know I need to get moving if I want to stay healthy, but I DON'T WANNA!  I don't know if it is because I had to do P.T. for almost 10 years or what but exercise is a dirty word for me.  I have all these walking tapes, ab tapes, leg and arm tapes, but do I use them, that is a big fat NO.  They sit on the shelf and gather dust.  I really not happy with the weight I am at but I just can't seem to get motivated to do something about it.  Anyone got an answer to get my fat butt off the couch and do something?????

The problem with being lonely is my own fault.  I haven't been on a date since I have been home, and people if you haven't been paying attention, that is almost 10 YEARS.  When I first came home I was still seeing a friend from the Army, though we finally just broke up in December of 2001, you can do the math can't you.  After that my excuses were:
1)I am helping mom with my grandparents and going to school full time - so no time to date (2002-2006)
2) I am working full time now and going to school part time - so no time to date (2006-2010)
3) I am working full time and mom and I are trying to get the jewelry business off the ground - so no time to date (2010 to present)
4) I look like a beached whale and I don't want to freak a guy out - so no way do I want to date (present)
5) I have never gone a date with a civilian guy (won't count the one date I went on with a civilian guy in 1994 because that was a disaster) so what in the world do you talk about with a civilian guy - so don't date
5) Internet dating freaks me out because what if you are stuck with a stalker/killer - if you didn't know I am one paranoid person

Usually I am alright being by myself and hanging out with mom working on jewelry.  This week I was feeling lonely.  I was missing the holding hands, talking or just hanging out together (though we would have to hang out at their place because I am like a guard dog with my house - IT IS MY HOUSE AND I DON'T SHARE!!!)  I am a little possessive with my territory now, the only person I have in my house is mom.  I am in almost panic mode because I have to allow the Home Depot people into my house on Tuesday so they can measure the living room floor to lay wood floors.  It is totally freaking me out. 

See, I am a freak, but I am a lovable freak as my friend Lisa tells me.

Sorry to lay that out there for all the world to see...I have been going over these thoughts all week.  They have been a whirlwind going around and around in my mind.  I am feeling better today, so maybe actually typing the thoughts out has helped.  I don't feel so bottled up.  I also wanted to thank you for leaving comments on the last post and I do plan on answering your emails, but this week just seemed like to much work and again I apologize for that.  I will try and do better you all.

Okay, if you lasted this long, I did promise you some eye candy to make up for the maudlin post of Beth.  The eye candy I am sharing today is another necklace mom and I made last weekend and some of our birthday gifts and images of what I worked on today.

Barefoot Thru the Scottish Thistle

This is a necklace we made last week with one of our pendants (Scottish Thistle) and some of our lampwork glass beads and Mokalite accent beads.

This is my torching table today.  Mom wanted me to make some yellow beads, with frit, to go with some of the pendants she received for her birthday.  So, I worked on making beads so I could finish off the last of the oxygen so we can order more this week.

The pendant I got mom for her birthday -  a dogwood pendant from BeeTree by m.e.

My Aunt Vickie bought a gift certificate to BeeTree by m.e. for mom and these are the pendants that mom bought:

My Aunt Vickie bought me a gift certificate from Juls but my beads have not arrived yet.  Juls and I had a lot of issues with my gift certificate.  Juls has a nice blog post about some of the issues we had and if you would like to read about it head over to here.  Needless to say it was one big fiasco after another and none of it was Juls fault.  I do have to say Paypal is not on either of our favorite list right now.  At one point "The Bitch" came out and snarled at the poor representative at Paypal (usually I am very nice to representatives on the phone, but I was on my last nerve and "The Bitch" snapped) and I had to have mom call them to try and fix the issue.  Needless to say it was finally all fixed on the 20th of March and we are all now happy.

Mom did buy me some pieces from Cindy Gimbrone.  Love the pieces and I have ideas and I can't wait to put the ideas into action.

Well if you stuck it out - hurray!  I am feeling a lot better now and I hope to have more lampwork beads done this week - after we order more oxygen.  I also need to start sawing pieces out if mom is not going to be able to do it.  Need to get into production mode because we have a show in a little over a month.  Need to get cracking.  Thanks again for being here for us - both mom and I appreciate it!  I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and I will try to be in a better mood in the following posts!

Feeling Blah

Have you had one of those weeks where you just don't feel like doing anything and your are in just a blah kind of mood.  Well, that is me this week.  I have had a migraine for the last two days and it was all I could do to get out of bed this morning.  Plus it is yucky outside. 

So, to get out of the blah mood I wanted to share some of my fav's today.

Julsbeads

Waterstone

Jane Perala - Ladybugs and Flowers

Beach Pebble Ring - Sharon's Jewelry Garden

Grommet Necklace - My Bead Journey

The Blessing of Adversity - White Stone Studio

Ear Posties - Missficklemedia

March ABS Piece

Nave Nave Moe (Sacred Spring, Sweet Dreams) by Paul Gaugin 1894

For this month's Art Bead Scene Challenge piece mom and I based our piece on the color and one of the women sitting by the spring.  Mom came up with the design for the pendant, sawed it out and then I enameled the pendant based on the colors in the painting.  Below is "Island Paradise":

For accent beads I used white and clear glass and rolled the glass in red/orange frit.  We then accented the lampwork beads with red Czech beads.  To finish off the necklace we used "Fancy Fur" yarn from a stash of yarn that Juls sent us.

So, that is our piece for the March ABS Challenge.  I recommend heading over to the ABS Flickr site and checking out all the other pieces that were submitted.
If you look at the ealier blog post you can see who won our birthday giveaway.  Thank you again for all of you who participated.  Mom and I both had wonderful birthday's!

Birthday Giveaway Winner Announcement

Thanks everyone for participating in our birthday giveaway.  Have a wonderful weekend!

Bead Table Wednesday

Working on Beads for March ABS Challenge

Where does the time go?  Can you believe it is another Bead Table Wednesday??? 

It is spring break at the college campus I work at and I use to take the week off while I was taking classes.  Since I am not taking classes anymore I thought I would just take Wednesday, Thursday and Friday off.  I thought I would work on beads, maybe saw some things out or work on the junk room (which I really don't think will happen).  Today I am working on making beads for the March ABS Challenge.  Tomorrow I will clean the beads and work on putting the necklace together.

Here are some of the other projects we are working on:

Projects on beading trays



Pieces to be photographed and posted on Etsy

Enameled pendant for March ABS Challenge



Necklace Project - enameled pendant and beads

Pieces to be sawed out and bowls to be filed and sanded

I want to have another large enameling session this weekend so I will probably work on sawing these pieces out for this weekend.  Mom and I have shows coming up in the next month so we need to make sure we have enough inventory.  It is back into production mode now that it is starting to be warmer outside.  Today is gorgeous; nice and sunny and I am actually not freezing in the garage - happy day :)

Just a reminder about our "Birthday Giveaway".  You still have time to participate - just head to our "Birthday Giveaway" post and leave us a comment.  We will be drawing a name out on Sunday, March 20th.  Have a wonderful beady Wednesday!