Christmas in July

I just this morning decided to join the Christmas in July sale on Etsy. Every shop that is participating, today through July 22 will have something special going on. For me, I will take 20% off every purchase. Just shop around in my store, choose and purchase, but wait, do not follow through to pay until I have sent you an adjusted invoice. Once I have made the adjustment go ahead and follow through with payment and please, share my shop info with your friends.
Thank you, Debbie
www.serenitycollections.com

A Sneak Peak

Well, I am feeling more like Debsparkles today. I am on a mission, I have to come up with a chunk of money this weekend and it "ain't" happenin by sitting around being miserable. Today, I finished another custom order , it's ready for the trip to the post office, got 2 Avon orders and started working on another bag, it has a long way to go but I thought it would be fun to show you my "Bloomin Berries". I think though, and I hate to say this, if I post it in my Etsy shop it will sit there. I hate to have to revert to it but I think I will have to do an Ebay listing. Don't want to but I must make money this week so I am going back to working on this and stay focused on working and posting as much as I can. Yup Debsparkles is in the house!

I hate being down

I haven't been on here in a few day's, truth be known I am so miserable that I don't feel like doing anything. I know, need to look at the bright side, stay strong and you know, I try very hard to do that . Most of the time I do a pretty good job of it. But there are times when my disability gets the best of me. I think I do really well controlling the constant physical pain, you do get to a point, you know it is going to be there and it's not going away and you figure out a way to carry on and ignore it. My biggest frustration is the financial crap. Learning how to never have enough to cover the most basic needs just really sometimes puts me over the edge and I just don't know how to handle it. I have worked so hard my whole life. If anyone had ever told me the day would come that I could not go out and get a job to take care of myself I would have said they were out of their mind. And now that so many people are out of work it has gotten worse. I have put so much of myself into the things I can do like my Etsy store and my Avon store, yet it gets me no where. While I keep telling myself to stick with it and when the time is right it is going to work but day's like today when I am once again losing everything it is really hard to beleive in myself. So when the emotional stuff gets to me, I can't deal with the physical pain and between the two I just want to give up. I just don't feel like continueing to push myself, what makes me think I deserve a roof over my head or electricity and just how do I justify spending money to be online?
I am not telling you this to say feel sorry for Debbie, I told you when I started this it was just my diary open to the public, that being said, I think it may be just as important to tell you when my life sucks as when I am feeling strong and confident and good about myself because you know what? In A few day's down the road I will be feeling better. And I know this and it is the reason I can carry on even when I just want to Lock myself in my room get into bed and not come out. There, I have unloaded all this crap off my chest. Maybe that's the first step to feeling like Debsparkles again.

Now they are back

Okay after I spit and sputtered and went about trying to re follow, I clicked around and kept getting error messages and then came back to my dashboard and everyone was there again! So I might be following some of you twice:)
I think I better get off the computer and come back tomorrow.

What happened to everyone?

Well I am mad enough to spit nickels. I am bored and just not in the creative mood and decided to read updates on the blogs I follow and I have been following a steadily growing number. I signed in to my account and scrolled down , nothing there, nothing except this notice that say's I am not following any blogs! Where did they go? I did not delete them, who did? How does this happen? Grrrr! I just want to sit and read and how can I possibly remember who I was already following to refollow? I know if I was computer savy enough I could probably find them somewhere but since I am not I have to start all over again. This is the kind of stuff that really aggravates me just because I don't know how to fix it. Okay, done ranting, now I have to go find you all again.

First Friday Art Walk

I don't know how many people are doing this because I don't think it got advertised as well as it should have. A group of us are doing a First Friday sale in our Etsy shops. Just like many towns have a First Thursday or First Friday of the month Art walk and sale in the town, we are doing it the First Friday of each month on Etsy. I decided it sounded like a fun thing to do and as people learn about it maybe it will turn in to a good thing. I think for me, it will be a good way to clean out some stock or at least a possibility of cleaning out stock because I have decided I don't like having so much just laying around the studio without having it up for sale. So, I just listed my first 2 items and hope to list one more before bed tonight then list a few throughout the day. If nothing else maybe it will get me some views tomorrow. I wish everyone a wonderful, safe 4th of July weekend.

A great change for a lousy week

This past week has been horrible. I told you about our illness in the house. Who gets a flu bug in the summer? We are over it. I was vacuuming my room the other day , stuck the vacuum under my desk and heard this horrible noise and my vacuum stopped working. Took it a part and there is something large and fabric stopped up in the handle part just up past the hose where I cannot take it a part. I have about 1" of dog hair in here, my bull mastif is shedding the winter coat. I walked into my kitchen to a huge puddle of water. My refrigerator died.
Only place that keeps anything somewhat cold is the very back of the top shelf. Who the heck has money for a new refrigerator? Not me so for a while we eat only what I can keep in the freezer or pantry. Anything that has to be refrigerated has to be bought and eaten same day. Okay now it gets better. Doing some laundry, my smoke detector goes off. No fire, nothing cooking but the vent hose came off my dryer, it is directly under the smoke detector which also detects heat. Okay, I am a big girl. I take all my clothes and hang them out on the porch. It is warm and sunny. Less than 1/2 hour later, it is pouring out!
Yesterday morning we once again had no phone, no internet and I got stuff to do. Yeah this is getting to be such a fun week.
On top of all this, I had a custom order for a beige Amulet bag. I have had it for a while for a July birthday. I haven't had the money to put a good seedbead order into Fire Mountain, where I usually get the specific brand of seedbeads I like so I decide I have to bite the bullet and go to the craft store. My sister picks me up and takes me to AC Moore, no Beige seedbeads. We go over to Walmart, no Beige seedbeads, now we hit the Northway to hit up Michaels. 2 small tubes of Beige seedbeads. This does half my bag. Now I have to bite the bullet and go to our one and only bead store in Saratoga Springs. All she has is some very, very small tubes of Beige seedbeads, in delica's and horribly overpriced but I have no choice, I buy them take them home and finish my bag. Now I am thinking that my customer is not going to be happy with this, she has already purchased some of my bags and the delicas make this seem so much smaller and "flimsy" any way I posted it in Etsy and sent her a message that she should take a look to see if it was what she wanted. Then I went down stairs to make supper. By the time I finished cooking, not only did she look she bought and payed for it and sent me a convo saying she loved it. Oh HOW HAPPY she made me. It was worth all the crap I have been through this week and now I am going to enjoy my evening.
My intent on writing this rant was to give you a smile, I hope it did cause I have one now..:)