Where does the time go?

This past week seems to have gone by so fast. I'm usually not wondering on Saturday how I got here so quickly because my life has been pretty slow paced for the past few months. Not that much has changed, either. I did join a gym this week and worked out almost every day. I ended up trying both a yoga class and a water aerobics class this week. Yoga was harder than I anticipated, and water aerobics were easier than I had imagined. I also stumbled upon Project Runway: Australia this week and spent a day just watching episodes on Youtube. It's actually fabulous! I love PR, and the Canadian and Australian versions are both awesome.


Today Goodwill was running a 50% off everything in the store sale, so it was a perfect time to run out and stock up on surprise supplies. I've found a plastic cow and a necklace made from a walnut painted like a jack o' lantern in one jar already. I won't be making jewelry from them! :)

So cute!

So Amanda of Sygnet Creations makes some super cute things and sells them on etsy. You should especially check out her awesome travel pillows! And she blogs, too. On her blog yesterday and today, she made up some rhymes that are a take off of nursery rhymes, but are about different etsy shops. Today she included my little shop! Go over there and check it out, it's adorable!
http://sygnetcreations.blogspot.com/2008/08/rhyme-time-feature-2.html

We Have a Winner!

Congratulations, shelaby_96! You are the lucky winner of my blog giveaway. (Cheering and confetti) That said, do we know each other? Reading your blog, I'm almost positive we have to have met.
Well, I've been super busy over the last few days, actually insanely busy for a person who never does anything. :) I've barely been online at all between Thursday evening and this afternoon.
Friday I went to base for a reception that was held for all of the new Staff Sergeant selects, my wonderful DH included, and then we went out afterward to celebrate. We ended up at Red Rock Casino at the end of the night, in the arcade of all places. We spent $25 and won a handful of candy. Woot!
Saturday was a girl's day out for a few Air Force wives (and one Air Force airwoman/wife). I am really mostly acquaintances with all but one of the girls, but it was fun anyway. And long! We started the day at 9 AM, and I didn't make it home until around midnight. One of our stops was at Goodwill, and I bought a jar of broken jewelry as supplies to make more pieces for my etsy shop. I took a few pictures of my raw, unsorted materials, to give you an idea of what I work with. I'm excited about some of the separate possibilities, and looking forward to a challenge with some of the other materials. :)
Today I had to work to get up and make a dish for a potluck lunch. My friend Nichole picked DH and I up this morning and we drove to Mount Charleston for church in the mountains. It was beautiful up there, the weather was excellent, and the service was just what I needed after a long weekend. After church was the potluck, and then we sat and visited with members of the congregation. I got to hold on to the cutest brindle coated beagle/Boston terrier puppy (a bogle) for a while. I really want a dog!
I really hope that your weekend was excellent also. It's time to get to sorting my new materials!

I'm not neglecting my dear readers. I promise.

I usually like to have a picture for every post or at least every other post. I don't have a picture today. :(
I have been preoccupied with watching the Olympics and having insomnia lately. Insomnia really messes with one's ability to think clearly.
I've also been on an Etsy spending spree. I congratulated myself for making sales by spending twice the amount of my toal sales in other shops. :)
I bought a bunch of soap, some soap dishes, and lavender. I feel good about my purchases because they are not hard to justify. I mean, who doesn't need soap?

Yay I sold something!!!! And a Giveaway

Now when my friends or family ask, "Have you sold anything on Etsy yet?" I can say, "YES I HAVE!!"
I went from having 0 sales to having 3 sales in about 24 hours, too. I sold a necklace with a PIF (PIF means Pay It Forward, and it's not so much a sale as a gift, which makes it even more fun!) on Wednesday night, and I was so excited about it, I had to go tell my husband, who was mostly asleep, the exciting news. Then last night, I sold a pair of earrings, which came as a surprise to me. I had to go tell my husband again, and this time he was totally asleep. I think he heard me, but I'm pretty sure he wasn't all that happy about me waking him up out of a sound sleep! I shall try to only sell things when he is wide awake from now on! ;)
I'm so happy about my sales, I made a little trinket to celebrate and now I want to give it away! I think I like sending packages as much as receiving them. As I send them out, I'm imagining the person on the other end opening their package and loving the contents, of course!
If you would like to receive the *surprise!* trinket that I want to give, please, just leave a comment on this entry. I will randomly pick a winner in one week, next Friday, August 22, I think. Make sure that I have a way to contact you if you win. (The best way to do that is leave your e-mail address in the comments section)

My new favorite and why I love what I do

Sometimes I make a piece of jewelry and then obsess over it because it is colorful or elegant or attention-getting. This is one of those necklaces! These colors are so vibrant, it gives me energy just looking at it!
I am so blessed to work with recycled materials. I work with what comes to me, broken and discarded things and I don't do a lot of picking through things to get my materials. I mostly take discarded jewelry off the hands of friends and buy lots of broken jewelry from the local thrift stores.
I have to sift through what comes to me and see how different elements from different pieces of jewelry come together. I never simply restring what comes to me. I always recombine elements of different pieces. I do a lot of experimenting, too. Sometimes elements scream out that they need to go together, but the technical aspects don't work, so I have to remake it until it works. Other times I get a great idea and when I visualize it, it looks bad.
Every time a necklace works, or my accidental beads match in that perfect way, I feel the thrill of my creative vision being realized and gratitude for the beauty that is all around us, that can be seen if you just look.

My Etsy shop featured on another blog!

I woke up this morning and immediately went outside to take some Etsy pictures. When I got back inside and on my computer, I got a lovely surprise! My Etsy shop is featured on a blog!
http://ginabees.blogspot.com/2008/08/wastenotwhimsy.html
I got another lovely convo about my photography, too, so a couple things to make my day!
I have a meme that I WILL post soon, I didn't forget, Robin!
I'm off to work on pictures, though, and maybe list some new jewelry on Etsy!
Have a blessed day!

Ok, it's tagging time!

I've been tagged for a meme by Robin from http://creations-anew.blogspot.com/ (I really need to learn how to link)

Here are the rules:

1) Link to the person who tagged you

2) Post the rules on your blog (this is what you are now reading)

3) Write 6 random things about yourself (see below)

4) Tag 6 people at the end of your post and link to them (This is only a game)

5) Let each person know they have been tagged and leave a comment on their blog

6) Let the tagger know when your entry is up

Random items about me...

1) I am number 6 of 7 children, and all our names start with the letter K!

2) I had my wedding dress made for me in two weeks and saw it for the first time as I was getting dressed for my wedding.

3) My oldest sister is the only immediate family member not in the picture above. She is profoundly mentally retarded and lives in a group home.

4) The picture above was taken a year after our actual wedding, we didn't have a reception for our wedding.

5) I love to "invent" in the kitchen. I love cooking!

6) I miss WI. I miss the community of East Troy and the kids who were members of the Good Shepherd youth group most of all, and my heart is hurting for them right now as they have experienced a great loss.

Now, I am afraid that I don't know 6 people to tag. :( I'm glad I was tagged, but now I'd have to tag strangers, and I don't know how that would go! Thanks for reading, comment away!

Happy Birthday, Ricky!

Don't look so sad, it's your birthday! And I baked you a lemon bundt cake. It looks delicious, can't wait to dig in!
Here's to many more years!

Terrorists targeting Presidential Candidates?

Or not. I don't know, and that's not what this blog is about. i was talking to friends the other day about generating more traffic on my blog, and they suggested having a sensational title. Eeh, it doesn't hurt to try, and it's a little funny.

Last weekend I finally got up to Mt. Charleston! Ever since I moved to Vegas, I've complained about the heat and lack of vegetation. People have always encouraged me to visit Mt. Charleston, which is about an hour drive from downtown Las Vegas, and about a 45 minute drive for me. DH never seemed to want to go, but on Friday, he decided we should go and spend Saturday night there. So he reserved a cabin at the lodge, and Saturday morning we set off.

We decided to hike a trail before checking in, and we picked a trail named Mary Jane Falls. The brochure said it was an intermediate hike that should take an hour each way.

Not so much. It took us two hours to get up the trail, mostly due to my general out-of-shapeness, and an hour to get back down, It was worth it. We saw this butterfly on the way up.

This butterfly was somewhat easier to photograph. :)

When we checked in, the lady at the desk good-naturedly scolded my husband for not asking about their military discount when he called to make the reservation. Then she threw in a free bottle of champagne instead. This is what the back porch of the cabin looked like. It was heavenly.

We woke up on Sunday intending to hike a second trail before heading home. We overestimated ourselves. Instead we headed home and went to see "The Dark Knight" I realize that probably makes us the last people on earth to go see it, but that's ok. We prefer our theaters a little empty. It was a pretty darn good movie, too.

And as a parting shot, a newly listed necklace from my etsy shop.

Major awesome buy!

I honestly went to bed last night planning out pictures I was going to take and post today. I was going to post my stalled progress on my t-shirt throw, a skein of hemp that I am very unsatisfied with, and the cover of a book that captivated my interest so thoroughly that yesterday I did practically nothing except for reading.
Things don't always go as planned in life however, and I woke up early this morning not feeling well and inexplicably thinking about needle felting. I got up and perused etsy for needle felted wall hangings for a while and then I was driven back to bed by my unhappy body.
My DH has been home from Afghanistan for around nine months now, and on his way back he had a layover of sorts in Kyrgyzstan. He went to a restaurant, and in the foyer of the restaurant, there were some stalls for tourists to buy little pieces of Kyrgyzstan. My DH bought a few of those pieces, which made a few things clear to me. The first was, there's probably a lot of sheep in Kyrgyzstan, because everything he brought back was made of wool. The second thing that was clear to me was that Kyrgyzstan had rapidly joined Mongolia on near the top of places I wish to visit someday. There was an organic beauty to the crafts and pictures of this place that I can't even pronounce.
This finally brings me back to the beginning. I had never heard of etsy when my DH handed me the piece pictured above, but I had heard of needle felting, thanks to Martha Stewart, so I knew what this piece was, even though my DH didn't. He had chosen it because he could roll it up and put it in his backpack for the ride home!
Since this picture was taken, we have gotten this piece framed, and we spent $350 on the framing. My DH was a little baffled at the cost of the framing, while I am still a bit baffled at how much he spent buying this piece originally. A similar sized piece of needle felted artwork on etsy costs around $200 and is worth every penny. The DH claims he doesn't know exactly how much he spent buying this piece, but it was around $40. I call that a great buy!
And honestly, it's probably the most beautiful piece of art I have ever touched. I am honored to have it in my home.

Creative mojo

Hanging around creative people makes me more creative, I think. I am inspired by people who get an idea in their head and then try to realize that idea. I have been frozen from trying to realize many of my creative ideas throughout my life.
It's my mother in my head. I love my mother, and she is the one who taught me practicality. I think she might have done too good of a job at it. I was always afraid to make creative mistakes, in that if something I "invented" didn't turn out, then I just wasted materials and money. Wasting anything was always a sin in the household I grew up in.
I've learned, though, that the creative process is just that, a process. Most things you try new won't work the first time, but you will learn techniques for the next time. Now that I used recycled materials in almost all of my crafting, it's loosened the knot in my head that's terrified of wasting things. I've also had this realization: Unused materials are wasted twice as much as materials that are destroyed by learning. Write that on your workroom wall.

Thoughts on faith

A couple nights ago, I was having trouble getting to sleep. I thought I heard a bug on my sheets, something outside the window, etc. I'm as bad as a little child with my imagination in the dark. I started to pray about my fears, as is my habit. As I started to pray, I also started to think about why I was praying. Did I believe in my professed faith? Did I believe that God heard and answered my prayers? Now I have heard all sorts of logical arguments (or apologetics) for and against Christianity. Prominent atheists seem to be churning out a lot of books lately and Gnostic works such as ideas popping up in "The Davinci Code," and the gospels of Thomas and Judas are suddenly "found" (or refound, if you know your history of Christianity). There are so many arguments and counter-arguments. I am a masters level student with a pretty high IQ, and I can recognize many of these arguments, while not always being able to form a counter-argument. So why do I consider my faith to be valid? This is my answer. Because I have faith. There is an absence of sense and a bit of mysticism in my answer, but it is my answer. I believe that my faith in God is a gift from God and evidence in itself of God's evidence and the truth of the Bible. This might be too simplistic for some, but it's my story and I'm sticking to it.

(If you came here wanting to read about jewelry, sorry for dragging you through that.) ;)

Flickr Mosaic

Wee! This was fun! I know the idea of most memes is to be tagged, but I couldn't resist stealing this one. If you see this, steal it from me please! And let me see it on your blog!

The instructions to create the mosaic are:Type your answers to each of the questions below into Flickr Search .Using only the first page, pick an image.Copy and paste each of the URLs into the mosaic maker.

Questions:

What is your first name?

What is your favorite food?

What high school did you go to?

What is your favorite color?

Who is your celebrity crush?

Favorite drink?

Dream vacation?

Favorite dessert?

What do you want to be when you grow up?

What do you love most in life?

One word to describe you.

Your Flickr name.

It's Amazing

how dirty a house can get while you're not feeling well. There are dishes piled up in the kitchen and tissues in the bedroom and living room. I really didn't feel like doing much of anything for the last two days with this stupid cold. I'm picking back up today, just in time for class. Oh, and yea, last Monday was my birthday (30, uck!) and my husband gave me a shiny new cobalt blue Kitchen-Aid mixer! Now that I'm feeling better, it's time to bake! :)

I'm in a treasury!!!

http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list_west.php?room_id=16918

Sneak preview!!!

So I'm sick and feeling, well, icky. I've got stuff to post on etsy but I'm not feeling up to it. So you get to see some of them first! Aren't you lucky?

I'd love to post a picture

but I can't because I don't have my pictures. I'm not posting from my computer. I broke my plug-in for my laptop somewhere between Missouri and Las Vegas. Bummer, I know. Vacation was great, but I'm still recovering. :)

People like my photography!!!!

I've received a handful of compliments on my jewelry photography in the last couple of days. It makes me happy! Ok, I'm headed out to MO late tomorrow night. I'll see you all on the flip side!

Homework day!

On Mondays I'm always scrambling to finish homework that I've been procrastinating on. Luckily, this week there's not much to get done.
Last Tuesday when I went to the thrift store I bought a large mason jar filled with broken jewelry. I've deconstructed almost all of it and made quite a bit of new pieces already. It was an exciting and inspiring find, and I wanted to share a picture of one of the pieces I made from two broken necklaces, a single earring, and some faux pearls that I had already. I love how it turned out!