Meet Amy

Yes, I am still on my family kick and today I would love you to meet my cousin Amy. I am so very proud of her. She is in the Army and has already done a tour in Iraq. She is now getting ready for her second deployment. This picture was taken during what is called predeployment training. On a romantic note for just a minute, she met her husband during her first tour in Iraq, I was able to go to her wedding and it was great!

Any way, I give her mom, my aunt, alot of credit for being strong about Amy's career choices but beleive she along with all our service people deserve a world of thank you's, I love you's and prayers for their safety while they do what many of us could not for the rest of us. Please keep Amy along with every other man and woman in the Armed forces in your prayers.

Playtime

This weekend I lucked out and had Friday and Saturday off from work. My daughter who is in a strange mood was home and we spent Friday night playing with my craft supplies. When my kids were growing up probably from the time they could sit in the highchair and not eat what I gave them to play with, I taught them to craft. It has always been a family affair and I have done the same with my grandchildren. But the times when my daughter and I sit down and play together are very few and far between now. Any way, we pulled out the wood scraps, the polymer clay, the acrylic paints, the glitter paints, all the fun stuff. While she got to work on making decorations for her son's room, my thought s turned to what I could make to go with the gothic jewelry line that I am struggling with. These black roses are what I came up with. They baked up very nicely without losing their shape, I shaded just the edges with a bit of silver glitter paint. Now I just need to give them a seal coat to shine them up and figure out how to incorporate them into a necklace.

Sunshine

I know it is the first day of fall but I am in love with the color of these seedbeads. I know I have spent to much time in blogger today but I am feeling like super woman and wanted to brag. My day's off from work are broken up, I work 2 or 3 days then have a day off then work another 2 or 3 and get my second day off so I try to fit a whole bunch of stuff in on that one day that I just don't feel like doing on a work day. I have to shamefully admit. I love my job but it is physically doing a number on me. When I woke up today, not only had I slept half the day away, my legs and feet were in some serious pain. My extra strenght tylenol did not touch it. Any way, after a few coffees and my different regular meds then another coffee and my tylenol I got busy. I delivered some new avon books, I went to the market, I washed several loads of dishes that got left for me. I cleaned and rearranged my studio/office/bedroom and then I finished this bag , got some pictures and got it posted in my Zibbet shop. Now it is almost midnight, need to get to bed but wanted to share. I know alot of my bags look very closely alike. The difference is the colors. I love trying different colors and stone combinations all the time. Tomorrow going to work on a few more keyrings for my custom order. Hope you all are having a great week and I am going to leave you alone for a day or two now.

My mind is an open book

Well as you can see by my need to post these pictures I really am missing my siblings. Seems funny to say that because we are all middle aged at this point but we are really still a fun bunch of people and I wish I had known growing up we would spend our adult years so far apart from each other on this planet. Most of the time all I have are my pictures and a hope that we get to see each other once or twice a year for many years to come.

Just one more

This is my sister in Dubai, you never know what you will find on the beach there! I can't even imagine.

My family continued

Well since I am exposing my family to the world here is a sneak peak of my other brother Dave, this is one of his more lighthearted moments that are few and far between. Just a very serious hardworking soul who gets little playtime. But when you add our few family gettogethers when someone can get back home and a little bit of alcohol you just don't know what will happen. In this instance he got bowled over by a 6 year old nephew!

Family Ties

Hi everyone, it is late Sunday night and I hope you all have had a wonderful weekend. I was sitting here thinking about my family, which I often do. I guess because my grandkids just got done fighting. Made me think about how bad my own kids used to fight, which made me think about how me, my sister and my brothers used to fight. Why is it we can't realize how important we are to each other until we are all grown up? This picture is my brother Scott. I miss him so very much. He moved to California when he joined the Marines 30 years ago and made his home there. I have a brother that lives locally here but I don't get to see him much but we are able to keep in touch. My sister, well I think I have told you my sister and her husband are currently living in the UAE or as she calls it the land of sand. She moves alot too because her husband just recently retired from the military. Any way back to Scott, he does try to come home for a visit once a year although it did not happen this summer. Any way the week he spends here is just not enough time to catch up with everyone so it is a really fleeting visit. We just recently had a bit of banter on face book after I looked at some pictures he posted, he is very into Cheetah car racing and such. Any way, I know him as a very strict, religous , father , husband such. I really don't know the fun loving side of him because hey he has been gone 30 years. He commented that it made him sad that we don't know him that well because of his absence. But you know, that is life, we all make choices, I personally give him credit for deciding to stay where he was happy but I miss him all the same. Course I miss my other brother who lives right here because I don't get to see him either. He is super busy with life.
I guess I am wandering away from the point of the post. That point is that I so love my family and miss spending time with all of them. I just wish we could have all foreseen that as teenagers trying to do each other bodily harm :)

Building My Bank Account

I get alot of emails. I get a ton of jokes and quotes and generally funny stuff from my Aunt. I love it because it gives me a smile each day but I pass very few things on because I know alot of people don't want their email cluttered up with this stuff. Today though she sent me something that I really wanted to share and decided instead of emailing my small list of contacts and share with all of you because I think it has a really powerful message. Thank you for reading and thank you Aunt Kathy for sharing something that touches my life.


A 92 year old, petite, well-poised and proud man, who is fully dressed each morning by 8:00 with his hair fashionably combed and shaved perfectly, even though he is legally blind, moved to a nursing home today.

His wife of 70 years recently passed away, making the move necessary. After many hours of waiting patiently in the lobby of the nursing home, he smiled sweetly when told his room was ready. As he maneuvered his walker to the elevator, I provided a visual description of his tiny room, includint the eyelet sheeets that had been hung on his window.

I love it, he stated with the enthusiasm of an 8 year old having just been presented with a new puppy.
Mr. Jones, you haven't seen the room, just wait.

That doesn't have anything to do with it, he replied. Happiness is something you decide on ahead of time.
Whetaher I like my room or not doesn't depend on how the furniture is arranged....it's how I arrange my mind. I already decided to love it.
It's a decision I make every morning when I wake up.
I have a choice: I can spend the day in bed recounting the difficulty I have with the parts of my body that no longer work, or get out of bed and be thankful for the ones that do.

Each day is a gift, and as long as my eyes open, I'll focus on the new day and all the happy memories I've stored away. Just for this time in my life...........

Old age is like a bank account. You withdraw from what you've put in. So, my advice to you would be to deposit a lot of happiness in the bank account of memories.

Thank you for our part in filling my Memory Bank. I am still depositing.


How awesome!

1st Attempts

well I have been researching and thinking and surfing to come up with ideas to create a line of jewelry for my daughter for the tattoo shop. I needed to get an idea of what the difference was between my jewelry and "Gothic" yet, it needed to be my own. This is my first idea. Now mind you this one is junk, a prototype just to get my idea into something physical to look at and work from there to make it right. I used really junky seedbeads and thread. The polymer clay cab was a reject. The perfect supplies to play with. I can look at it now and see what to change and do when I have the proper beads but I made this, put it onto my grandaughter to see what it truly looked like. She is very into this gothic stuff and loved it. Wants this necklace. Good, wasn
't a waste of supplies even if they were junk. I wanted to tell you to, I used a peice of ribbon, threaded it through the loops of the necklace and left the peices long , just tied a knot on each end so there is no fraying. By doing this in one way or another on the necklaces, any necklace can fit many different neck sizes without having to have 6 of one item in 6 different sizes. Yeah!
So this one is a go, when I am using better supplies the end product will look much better,
Now I have a second style I am working on. Will post it for you when it is finished. One more prototype on the way.!

What shall we do on a lovely Sunday?

Well I went and worked today. When I got home this was in my email. My daughter has decided the tattoo shop had to be repaired, cleaned, and painted. Pulled the whole thing apart on a Sunday, the only day the shop is closed and then talked my son into coming in to do the painting. I guess she thought he was a good choice since that is what he does for a living but why did I feel the need to show this picture to you? Look at the color!!!!! Sweet Pea green in a tattoo shop! If it was anyone else but my daughter I would question the color but....a few years ago she decided to surprise me and paint my kitchen while I was at work. My kitchen is the biggest room in the house, the only room that is bright, open and sunshiny. She painted it Burgandy. Yup, ya gotta love her:)

Some things I need to think about

Hi everyone. Sorry I have not posted anything new since last weekend. I have to admit, I am feeling at the moment a bit like I am failing. I am starting on my 3rd week at my new job. I still love it. But, when I get home I am so tired out, by time I do the chores I have to do each day, I am not accomplishing much of anything else. I am spending less and less time on the computer promoting my new shops. I am getting very little new work done to list and now is the time to start listing for the upcoming holidays. I am now nervous since I just recently started the Zibbet shop but I have had no sales there sooo. I am also trying to do the custom order that I have for the 20+ keychains, I love the customer who ordered them and I am never this slow getting her custom orders done. While I know she is not worried because they are Christmas gifts, still it bothers me. Now I am trying to create a line of jewelry for my daughter, I have talked to you before about our involvment in a friends tattoo shop, He has given Heather a section of the shop to sell jewelry to not only help her paycheck along but bring more walk in traffic into the shop itself. Not getting far with it. She will be ordering a whole bunch of body jewelry but she really wants my handmade peices to create the atmosphere she wants for her area.
I guess right now I am glad my Avon business is still small enough where I can handle it on my day off. Any way, I know this will get easier with time, in the meantime please be patient with me if I don't post something more often than once or twice a week.

The picture at the top of this post is of the carousel in the park. As a teenager this carousel was part of an amusement park which was open for many, many years. Eventually the amusement park was closed and the land was sold. Of course they built condo's on it. The city of Saratoga Springs bought the carousel and stored it while they had each peice of it restored to it's original beauty and she now sits in the park still offering rides for 50 cents. Love it!

On one last note, yesterday the 8th anniversary of 9/11 I spent my day talking to my boss about it and reflecting. Of course there was no avoiding it because it was on tv all day. I lost several friends in this horrible massacre and I know many other people did too. So I give my prayers that the families of all the lost loved ones of 9/11 are at peace now and will continue to offer my prayers and keep them in my heart.

Happy last summer holiday

I just wanted to take a minute and wish everyone a great last holiday for the summer. I worked until 10 last night, getting ready to be back there at 10:30 this morning. Yes I will spend Labor day laboring. And last night they asked me if I was willing to pick up an extra shift tomorrow which is my day off. How did this happen so fast. I have already found I am neglecting my beadwork and my blog and all the other little things I was used to doing. I don't mind, I know it will get easier once I am more used to the new routine but I guess I just did not expect to get so busy so fast. Any how, have a great day everyone. I know in my part of the world the weather is already changing quickly so before you know it we will be cleaning up snow!

Wyndryder Studio's

I would love to introduce you to someone that I am proud to call friend. Her name is Debbie same as mine and she is one of those people that alway's have a smile on her face and kind word for everyone and exudes happiness even when she is having a tough day. She is one of the few people I have met in my life that I can truly say has a pure heart. So, I wanted to share a bit about her today. She moved away from NY a few years ago so we have contact through email and facebook. Some day we will get together somewhere in this world:) Any way she is a most amazing artist in my eyes. When I first met her she was doing these gorgeous native american inspired paintings with wolves and her paintings of nature, still life and animals is so awe inspiring. In 2003 I said to her, Deb, I want to do something special for my daughter for mothers day from my grandchildren. Can you do something on canvas around dolphins (my daughters favorite) that I can go behind you and add beading detail too. Well Deb said yes and a few weeks later came to me with this picture that you see above. I looked at it then looked at her then looked at it again and said....
Debbie, I can't touch this. This is so beautiful I can not put anything on to it, I framed it and gave it to my daughter as is. I would love you to know this beautiful person and if you would like to see some of Deb's awesome work, she has a great website. Go ahead and take a peek and I had better go email Deb and tell her I am talking about her behind her back!
www.wyndryderstudios.com