Hello! and you are...?

SOOOOOO sorry it's been so long! I'm thinking it's time and past time for a little update. Who knows when the next one will be!

Hum... where to start... Etsy shop stuff first I suppose. I've gotten LOTS of new pendants listed along with a few pairs of socks. I'm working on V-day pendants now and would have more done if I hadn't missed a Fedex delivery on Saturday.

Go figure, the ONE time my dad's family decides to do a family party on a Saturday instead of a Sunday is the ONE time I needed to stay home... And it doesn't look like they do deliveries on Monday so I have to wait even LONGER...

I really needed this box too which SUCKS! I have a couple custom orders I really need to get done and off my plate (Dawnberries' beaded flowers and a custom order pendant for another CEMer, LoveToStamp). I had ordered white seed beads a couple orders ago and they're STILL out of stock/backordered! So I ordered a different brand so I can get these done before dawnberries gets hitched!

I'm soooo frustrated that I missed that delivery...

So I have one more custom order to get done before the end of the year - an amethyst and elephant charm bracelet in a similar style to the breast cancer bracelet I made in October. That's the second half of an order and the last part that needs to get done. I think that'll be the project of the day.

My husband pointed out that I get a new obsession about once a month... and he's right... it was dreamcatchers 2 years ago (I will get back into making them and I still like to and I'm good at it, I just gotta get the desire back), last year it was french beaded flowers(recently lost the desire... dawnberries' will be the last ones I do for a while.)

Now I'm doing jewelry stuff, mostly my circle pendants since those seem to be pretty well liked and have had a good reaction. Some more than others, and some surprising me when they sell.

I've started teaching myself to crochet with an "I taught myself to crochet" kit. My mom crochets and I would have loved for her to teach me, but with her working 6 days a week now she doesn't have time, especially because this is killing her and she'll be most likely sleeping on her one day off. Poor girl :( I miss my mommy.

Anyway, I have most of the stitches in the book down, I just don't know what I'll make! There's patterns in the book, but I've got a panel of single stitched that I think I'll keep working on and turn into a little purse for my daughter. I really need to figure something out to do for my son. Maybe a pillow for the car. I dunno. We'll see.

Moving on!

SNOW!!! We've gotten snow, snow and getting more snow now! It's snowing so hard right now i can barely see down the block! I love seeing my kids' faces when they look out the window and realize what's going on. It usually doesn't take long for them to think that they can go outside nekkid.

I finally got a picture of my hugeness last night - as soon as I find my camera cord(yes it's lost again....) I'll get one up! I am so not ready yet! This baby can come any time between now and Jan 19th and I don't have bags packed yet(that will be fixed today) and the house isn't cleaned(hopefully will be fixed in the next week, preferrably before Christmas... something I should be doing right now instead of this).

We got lights up outside right after Thanksgiving and yesterday I finally got the last milkjug set up - I'll get pictures of the lights outside one of these days when it's dark and I remember. We had gotten a 4' blue tree for the kids' room but we put it in the living room on top of the table we moved from the kitchen since we didn't have a chance to get our big tree out of storage. Took a lot of time out of decorating, that's for sure.

Ugh... I suppose I should get a move on and get to doing chores - I have so much to do I'm already getting overwhelmed but somebody's gotta do it... Later folks! Don't forget to check out my Etsy shop for the new pendants and socks!

Etsy stuff

Since the Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend was such a disappointment, I'm carrying my sale all through this week.

Exciting stuff! 10% off EVERYTHING, AND FREE SHIPPING!!

I am also going to be listing more items and creating more items this week - I got my firemountain package and have had some inspiration after sorting through everything!

Today I will be listing a pair of newborn Princess socks, and some christmas bracelets in a variety of sizes, including adult, along with whatever I get finished! (It's about time I got productive on my end of the store)

As of right now, I have some destash listed and everything else is still there. Go buy stuff so I can buy more supplies!

Happy Late Thanksgiving

I know it's late but Happy late Thanksgiving. It was so crazy around here and I was so stressed and busy with so much to do and on my plate that I didn't even have time to THINK about blogging.

It's been a rough week though, that's for sure... extreme depression problems have popped up again, I was reminded why men are total and utter disgusting pigs, I didn't get much crafting done, but on the upside I was told my pie was amazing on Wednesday's Pie Night(what's pie night? exactly that... a night where you eat PIES) and was even told to make another to go with Thanksgiving dinner. So I did and was told it was amazing again. It was pretty darn good, if I do say so myself.

It wasn't anything special, just a chocolate banana cream pie. Sounds special, sure, but all I did was a graham cracker crust -

crush 18 graham cracker halves finely, add 1/4 C. sugar, I like to shake them up in the same bag to get them mixed up really good, then I dump the crumbs into the pie pan and add 1/2 C melted butter or margarine and form a crust in the pan. The crust needs to chill for about 45 minutes.

The filling was just jello chocolate pudding mix, made according to pudding directions with 2 1/2 C milk instead of 3 C milk to make it thicker, then I sliced bananas into the pudding and folded them in BEFORE putting the filling into the crust. This seemed to give the chocolate pudding a more chocolate banana flavor.

With the bananas, I didn't do a certain amount... I did as many as I thought looked good. The first night it was 3, the second night it was 4. BUT the first night I had 1 big banana and 2 small ones. The second night was 4 small ones.

You can do whipped cream for the topping, either reddi-whip or frozen whipped topping, but I didn't have any on hand so I just crushed one more graham cracker and made pretty designs(a swirl night 1, and random curvy lines night 2 - pretty much wherever bananas were peeking through the pudding).

For Thanksgiving I also did Stuffing Stuffed Mushrooms(rachel ray recipe, it's on her site or you can google it and it'll be the first link.) I also did green bean casserole. That recipes is on the back of Campbell's cream of mushroom soup cans, and many other variations etc googled.

The brown clothes I made for my kids were a big hit at Pie Night, and dd wore the orange fringed dress on Thanksgiving.

Anyway, like I said I didn't get much crafting done this week, but last week I did get a bunch of pendants made and they are now listed in my etsy shop.

TAKE A LOOK!!! I'm extending my black friday sale to cyber monday.

10% off all items AND free shipping.

You can either wait for a revised invoice or be refunded with paypal's refund option.

For now, I'm going to go play World of Warcraft and separate my fighting kids...

New dresses!

I had to show these off -

winter pillowcase dress for DD -






and another fall one - one side tie, with bottom fringe - the fringe is beaded (my mom's idea hehe. I hope she likes it!)

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Kids are too fun

And so is making stuff for them!!!

I made the pillowcase dress on my dd:

to match the bows I bought from SMOX:

And then after watching me make a pillow cover and the pillowcase dress, DS wanted something too! AND he wanted it to match! SO I made him a matching vest! These are pretty much their Pie Night outfits, minus the bright orange shirt underneath the white shirt for DD, some leggings instead of jeans for DD, and minus the Spiderman slippers for DS(hopefully). I wanted to do long sleeved shirts for both of them but do you think I can find them? NO! DD threw a FIT when I took the dress off her to save it for Pie Night - I'm thinking more to come for her- she loves it! Maybe I'll try to let her choose the next fabric lol. DS even wants me to make more "jackets" for him.

And last but not least, here's a silly face my DD has started doing out of the blue, about 2 days ago.

Time to play catch up

I don't know exactly how long it's been since I did an update... too long, that's for sure. About 2 weeks it looks like...

Anyway, I don't know where to even start. My daughter has been sick, with what, I'm not sure but she has a runny nose, a cough, sounds froggy, and the last couple nights has been throwing up milk. So no more milk for bed.

I've been trying to get the house cleaned up and caught up and kept caught up - I know one of my husband's biggest pet peeves with me and my little quirks is my inability to clean house... ok so maybe it's not an inability, just an extreme dislike. And laziness... BUT I am working on it and it does seem to be even helping our relationship. So far I've kept the kids room clean and caught up *wonder of wonders!!!* Today I plan to get our bedroom worked on, more laundry done, and one of the bathrooms... of course, now that I've said what I plan to do it probably won't happen.

My computer crashed last Sunday so that was frustrating and upsetting... we had to reinstall XP and totally wipe out EVERYTHING - it wouldn't repair. Stupid technology... BUT it got rid of a lot of crap on my comp I didn't really know what to do with. Luckily I had gotten most of the pictures of the kids off the computer and onto cd. There were just a couple of new ones, maybe 5, that hurt to lose cause they were so dadgum cute... but oh well. Can't do anything about it.

The downside of this is I can't find half of my software cds... I don't have sound on my computer at the moment cause I don't know where that disc went...

In the way of Etsy, I do have a bunch of new items and will be adding more! Among the new items, my mom has done some more toddler and baby socks! We now have 18-36 month socks and 0-6 month socks. There's a sampling and a link in my widgets to the right!

One other new item, contributed by my sister, is duct tape wallets and soon belts. I don't have them listed yet - she won't call me back... grr... BUT they are coming soon. So keep an eye out! These aren't just the regular old gray/silver duct tape wallets and belts - she has all sorts of funky colors - I'll post later with exactly what colors. She also can do up to 4 pockets on the inside - like the card pockets we all stash our business cards/credit cards/etc into. It's amazing! She even does a driver's license window! I can't wait to get the pictures up cause the description gets lots in translation.

She's already gotten a lot of custom orders at school - some from repeat customers buying for other people! And one of my dad's friends even ordered one for his son and another one for his niece! I even plan to get a wallet for me and belts for my kids. Maybe a belt for me after the baby's born...

All of the profit from the wallets and belts go towards the student ambassador program she got into. She's going to Europe next year/summer.... and yes, she loves to rub it in my face. She's going to the places I want to visit most in the world - England, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland. Jerk. I'm proud of her though.

Anyway, also going into my store soon as I get better pictures is some more pendants and some earrings.... but not my usual... The earrings are in a new style of my own design. At least, I didn't use any kind of reference for them. I just thought they would look cool... BUT not only that, the pendants and earrings will be in a set! I should have some chain coming soon(I hope!!!) that will be included as well!

And last but not least, some destash items will be added.

OK so, in the way of PROJECTS - I signed up for free sewing lessons on about.com and have made a pillow cover - I have the next one in the works, but need to find my sewing macine manual... I made a pillowcase dress for my daughter to match some clippies from SMOX and it turned out DARLING! A lot better than I thought it would be lol...

After my son watched me make the first pillow cover and the pillowcase dress, he wanted something too! So I got a vest pattern and am making him a vest to match!

Ok so am I the only one that hates to buy one pattern and massacre it just for ONE size??? I HATE it! So, what I did with this vest pattern is traced through the tissue with a permanent market onto poster board and it worked out pretty good!! Not only that, but it used up some of the scrap posterboard I had left over from my pillow patterns, and the cutouts will be more durable and last longer than the tissue! AND I can reuse the patterns on the tissue if/when I need/want to do another size! Wish I had done this with my renaissance dress patterns....

So I have the pattern pieces cut out, next I need to cut out the cloth and put it together! Sounds easier than it actually is - the kids like to crowd me whenever I pull out something to work on. So I'm thinking about tracing out some of the pattern pieces of my stuffed dragon patterns! After all, my dad did challenge me and said he would be impressed if I could even make one... so naturally I HAVE to rise to that challenge... I should have picked up some polyfil though while I was at walmart last night... not that I need it yet so we're safe.

On another note, my Cafemom Etsy Moms Team is doing a secret santa type thing... and I have no idea whatsoever what I would do for the child one! I don't do kid stuff - yet... though the pillowcase dress was super fun to make... but that's Cozycabinmom's thing! I would feel bad... oo Maybe I can do pillow cases! Hmm... I don't know! I'll have to think on it...

So now that I've given you a novel to read... I think I'm all out of ramblings so I'll let you go now! Besides, the kids are getting fussy... (I mentioned chores....)

Win a Winter Wonderland tutu set and matching clippies!!!

First off, this is one of my favorite tutus from maggiesrosegarden, and some of my favorite clippies from smox!! I am DEFINITELY going to try to enter as many times as I can!

Details are in SMOX' BLOG! SMOX Workshop

Coming soon - update.