Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!!

Wishing everyone and their loved ones a very Merry Christmas and a happy and wonderful New Year!!

Thank you to all my lovely customers, my dear bloggy friends, my faithful blog readers, and everyone who has done me the honor of looking at my jeweled creations for making this a wonderful year! I hope that 2008 starts off wonderfully for you all and that the year just keeps getting better and better from that point on!

I will be taking a short break from the blog and will be returning on Jan. 3rd. I'll still be working in the studio every day, running the boutique and my new etsy store and sending out your lovelies quickly, but it will be nice to spend some quality time with my family during the holidays. I also have plans for new creations that are already underway that I hope to unveil when I get back.

See you in 2008!!!

Tagged

I've been tagged by the creative Jen at The Fabled Needle. I'm supposed to tell you 10 weird/interesting facts about myself. Maybe it's just me, but I found this really hard to write - I'm just not terribly weird .... and it's crazy busy around here! I'm sure it would have been much easier to write from a tranquil, relaxing oasis like the one pictured below. (The Reception by Frederick John Lewis, 1873 from The Scented Salamander)
Here goes:

1) Spent my formative young years being raised abroad in Japan and Hong Kong. America was a completely foreign country to me when I moved here. I thought Americans were strange because every day at school the kids would stand up suddenly in eerie silence, orient to the corner of the room with military precision, and start chanting in unison. What the?? What on earth were they doing?????? After a few weeks it was explained to me that they were chanting to a flag up near the ceiling - oh yeah - like THAT made it seem any less bizarre!

Rest assured, I am quiet capable of doing the Pledge of Allegiance now :)

2) I can bake breads & desserts like a diva, but if it's not something floury & sugary from the oven.. better get take out because everything else will be both burned and soupy. My husband, a gourmet cook, always wonders how you can both burn food and have it a liquid mush. I tell him it takes a special brand of talent :)

3) Buttons, especially cool carved vintage ones, make me happy.

4) I've been to Stonehenge.

5) My New Year's Wish every year is the deepest desire that every animal in a shelter find a happy home with a loving family.

5) I fell for the S. Morgensteen plot device in the Princess Bride. If you've read the book (NOT the movie) and want to be shocked go here. (it's about halfway down the page)

6) I'm a sap for historical costume movies.

7) I am a book addict. Cheerfully addicted with no plans to reform. Before I had children I read 10-20 books a week. Now that I have children I still read, it's just Chicken Little and Winnie the Pooh now :) An adult book is a rare luxury so I try to make sure it's a great one. Anybody have a great book recommendation?

8) I built my backyard patio almost entirely by myself. Lugged 50 lb. pavers from Home Depot, dug the ground, prepared the crushed rock and sand base, laid the pavers levelly and with the proper tilt for drainage! Those stones were heavy, but what a feeling of accomplishment. Girl power!!!

9) I have a whole cupboard full of yarn for which I have no plans. Why did I buy it? It was pretty, I fell in love, it was going home with me in the car before I knew it. I love to just open the cupboard and look at all the pretty. Husband thinks I'm nuts.

10) I think being a mommy is one of the most rewarding jobs in the world :)


Now I get to tag some of you! Have fun with it!:

Natasha
Lori
Karin
Gracie Belle Butterfly
Jo at NeereAnDear
Michelle at Hold Dear
Lola Enchanted
Sandra at Warehouse Artchix

P.S. There's still room in my PIF for happy crafters if you are interested (see post below). You don't need to do a thing until after the holidays :)

Pay It Forward - Handmade Gift Exchange

Thanks to the amazing and very sweet jewelry artist Sheela of Eclettica who posted about this in the etsy forums, I have joined in her Pay it Forward (PIF) and now it's my turn to post about this wonderful opportunity to give to others! I'm sure some of you have seen this floating around in blogland, but if not, here's how it works:

I will send a lovely handmade gift to the first 3 people who leave a comment here requesting to join this PIF (pay it forward) exchange. I'm not sure what that gift will be yet- it will be a surprise! The only thing you have to do in return is to pay it forward by making the same promise on your blog.

Once you sign up, I'll email you to let you know that you are one of the three. Then copy and paste the above paragraph on your blog, and three other lucky people will be recipients of your handmade work.
Let's keep this going and share the handmade love and spread some holiday cheer - Pay it Forward!

Oh, and you can of course still comment without volunteering for this :)

I'm feeling the guilt here. I took the handmade pledge and then this weekend bought buttons and some cards that weren't handmade. Bad Bejeweled! Everything else this month has either been crafted by me or a fellow creative indie soul, so it's OK, right? :) I've been looking for vintage style pear cards with a French feel for forever. And the buttons? Well, just look at them - especially those fleur de lis ones that look like hammered pewter.

Still working on writing that tag - I'm up to number 8! Almost done :)

(image from Better Homes and Gardens)
Blogging today has been a bit like surfacing for air. It has been CRAZY busy around here! Orders, post office, client meetings, more post office, a birthday party to plan, yet more post office, crafting, home maintenance issues, and my favorite.....buying our first artificial tree and getting the kids all excited... then dismantling and repacking it 20 minutes later to go back to the store. Because ..... it had lead warnings on it!!

Did you know that almost all artificial trees have toxic lead in them?? That you need to wash your hands after touching them? And that they can shed lead-laced dust, which may cover branches or shower gifts and the floor below the tree??!!? I didn't. How horrible to have such a happy thing for children, the Christmas tree, be contaminated with lead that could give them lead poisoning. Back to the store for our new tree!

**upate** links for more info on lead in artificial trees: here, here and here.

Cupcakes & Giveaway Winners

I'm sure you're all familiar with the story "Alice in Wonderland". This past week I was living out the parallel story "Bejeweled in Etsyland". I followed the white rabbit and fell down the hole into Etsyland, where I have been happily lost for days discovering wonderful shops and new friends. I crawled back out into the real world today and realized an entire week had gone by in the blink of an eye! A whole week! Eek!! And I thought blogland was vast :) Thank you to everyone who helped me launch my new store by stopping by to visit, hearting me, or wishing me good luck! Here it has been storming madly with even a stormstorm warning. The weather center, the news crews, indeed....everyone in the know seemed to think we were going to get a lot of snow, but in the end it all turned to rain. We don't see snow too often here on the valley floor, so it would have been exciting for the kids, but maybe next time. Now we're being pummeled by huge winds (hurricane force on the coast) so it's time to be really careful on the road looking for downed tree branches and flooded parts. My husband said he saw a car submerged almost to it's roof last night on his commute home. Update: I wrote this last night - this morning it has become clear that the storm was even stronger than expected and has left a wake of devastation in Oregon and Washington - please take a moment to pray for all those lives have been affected by this event.(storm pics from the Statesman Journal online storm coverage article)

Holiday time means holiday treats! Let's all share a piece of this tasty European style apple & cranberry tartlet I found at Costco this weekend and draw some winners! It also came with chocolate macadamia nut tartlets but those lasted about 10 seconds after we opened the box :)

Winner of prize A: Kari & Kijsa
Winner of prize B: Michelle at Hold Dear
And ... I was having so much fun let's draw another winner for mystery prize C: Alison Gibbs

Congrats to you all!!! I will be contacting you shortly for your addresses.

Who doesn't love a happy cupcake? With the grey, rainy, wintery weather now firmly in place for the next 4 months, I made some cheery cupcake paintings for my kitchen. I had visions of coming downstairs, seeing these happy prints and smiling as I made my Earl Grey tea. I got so inspired I made a whole bunch! When the artistic muse strikes ... you gotta paint! With sprinkles, without sprinkles, with cherries, without cherries, with cake flower decorations, and on and on and on...... I think I painted about a dozen? I've been making hand-illustrated cupcake and cake mini-birthday gift tags for years now so it was really rewarding to paint some larger, bolder ones. I hate to part with any of them, but these are a few that will be going up for sale soon.


Next week ... the answers to the "10 weird/interesting things about you" tag. This tag is hard to write, but I'm working on it! And .... I've been making so many new friends so fast, my bookmarks have become out of control. I can't even find the link to my own shop sometimes. Yikes! Updated blogroll coming soon so I can visit you all!