Some Christmas morning photos....

Well after working our tired butts off with our busiest holiday jewelry selling season ever, Nick and I managed to pull off a successful Christmas for the kids in an attempt to make up for all the days we convinced them that it was good parenting for them to watch all the Spongebob they wanted while we worked .Max is admiring the little omelette maker that Santa (aka Grandma June) gave daddy while Henry debates whether to go to the bathroom or look at the presents.

The awesome "squishy " fish Aunt Betsy gave Max. He is obsessed with fish.

Again the Omelette maker is admired. Henry was amazed that it had a "model egg" on it.

Again the squishy fish. Max held that chocolate Santa all day long.

A good view of the mayhem. They loved Kent's politically incorrect nerf ball guns that he wisely bought both of them.

Weeee! Henry levitates with joy at the giant Hot Wheels racing track set that Santa got the whole family.

Henry's 5th Birthday!

This is the long overdue birthday blog entry. Henry turned 5 on November 30th, 2007. We started off the day with presents from family in the morning.

Ewww! Daddy's gag gift of broccoli.

Hahaha my dad is sooo funny. Good thing i got all this Thomas stuff.

Then later in the afternoon we had the traditional birthday party with friends.

Henry had been planning the musical chairs event for quite some time. We played pin the tail on the donkey too.

He also insisted on having a pinata. Luckily Safeway provides the muy authentico rainbow guitar pinata in the ethnic food aisle. This pinata comes with many colored strings hanging from it that the kids take turns pulling until the lucky one pulls out the cardboard opening releasing all the yummy candy we filled it with. No smashing with sticks on this modern day safe pinata. No Funniest Home Video episodes here with some adult getting their genitals mistakenly smashed by the blindfolded innocent child.

One of our happy and cute party goers- Lauren

The blowing out of the candles on the Thomas birthday cake. Again, Thank You Safeway for giving me another easy way out of this parenting responsibility. Henry had been saving the bowling ball candles and pins all year for this event.

mmmm cake with Max.

We are slowly coming out of the holiday sales blitz and brutal winter colds/sinus infection. More blogging to come.

Top Sellers for a day!

This past weekend was better than usual for the opening Holiday Market weekend. It's usually pretty slow and it wasn't amazing but it was better than previous years so that's good. We had some orders on our Etsy shop too. Then on Monday we had our best day so far on Etsy. We ended up in a treasury that made it to the Etsy homepage. We sold more than we have sold on any other day and made the coveted Top Sellers list of the past 24 hours on Etsytools.com.Here is a screen shot of our name in bright lights or rather dim font on the bottom right column.

For those unaware of all this Etsy nonsense, http://etsytools.com is a site devoted to keeping up to date statistics of Etsy sales.

I spent a large part of the day packaging those 29 items and then more that came later. But now the rush is over and I can try to get back to making stuff for the Holiday Market. Our house is a filthy pigsty but I'm too tired and validated in other ways to care.

Happy almost Thanksgiving to all the Americans celebrating the feast of bloating relaxation. I can't wait to just sit down and eat for a little while with some friends and family and not hold a pair of pliers in my chubby little man hands for a few hours.

Not a good bedtime parenting technique-

This is what happens when you tell your two kids who refuse to go to bed that they have to stay in their room and can't come out. They were sort of quiet but I could hear them talking and moving around. An hour later Max opened the door and came out and said "I'm a tiger mommy!"

Feet too! I have faces on my feet!

As I started to clean up Max Henry told me to make sure I get behind his ears too. Henry had taken the marker and gone all the way around the crease of Max's ears like glasses.Luckily it cleaned off really easily.

Brother tigers-

new stuff

What's up doc?! We've been watching the Looney Tunes Collection that Grandpa Nick sent us. Whenever Bugs Bunny comes on Max wants a carrot and says "What's up Doc?"

He rarely actually eats the carror however. If it's not candy it's not worth eating apparently to this kid. Although he does like broccoli.

The ups and downs of being self employed in the jewelry business has been driving me crazy. One day no sales and then the next we are swamped. I've only been doing this for about 20 years but you'd think I'd get used to it.

I did manage to make, photograph and list some new items:

Little Unikite Wirewrapped Ball Earrings

Little Teal Glass Marble with Olive Green Earrings

and the matching Teal with Olive Green Glass Marble Pendant.I love those colors together.

Green Aventurine with Amethyst Ball Pendant


Ruby Red Glass Marble Pendant

This one really makes me think of the holidays.

and the matching Ruby Red Glass Marble Earrings.

A new design-Tiny Swirl with Fresh Water Pearl-cute and dainty

and Three Little Swirls all in a Row.

I came up with this link and can't stop playing with it.

This weekend begins the Eugene Holiday Market. I will be there selling every Saturday and Sunday and a couple of other days thrown in until Christmas Eve. I expect to be utterly exhausted and hopefully full of cash.

Now back to work-after coffee. Sweet wonderful ,life giving,blood pressure raising coffee.

Clutter Extreme

My crazy messy work area is out of control. I am unable to maintain any sort of order or system or just a simple clear space without stuff. There is one tremendous improvement that has been made. After living here for about 15 years and working in this corner of the dining room in the dark it finally dawned on me that we have an open unused outlet behind my desk. Nick had the perfect heavy base lamp and it is now perched above my desk (unfortunately blocking some of my father's impressive painting .) Now I just have to remember to turn that thing they call a lamp on. I keep forgetting it's there.

This is the very heavy stack of boxes that just arrived from my glass supplier -Fabricas Selectas. They are part of the Mega Marble conglomerate. They provide great prices, huge selection and had the most awesome deal on shipping. These suckers are heavy. Each box weighs about 38 pounds. Normally this much stuff would have cost $132 just for the shipping. They are running a special this year on all orders over $300 and the shipping was FREE. I'm really impressed and pleased with the service.

Here's just the tip of the iceberg of all the new goodies. I will finally have large turquoise glass cabs for the big glass pendants we do. And lots of other new stuff that I need to unpack and sort through and find logical storage so that I can know where it is.

I haven't made anything new but I did take new pictures of these Teal Frosted Like Beach Glass Earrings.

The frosted glass comes from the glass people I just mentioned.
New stuff will be on it's way soon. Time to get to work.

bloodblisters, halloween and pumkin slime

In honor of Halloween here is my newest icky bloodblister. Same thumb as the last time but a new postition. Part of the hazards of being a jeweler or wire smasher.

The traditional scooping out of the pumpkin being performed by Max. He kind of missed the point and started piling it all back in again when I wasn't paying attention.He also enjoyed just sticking his hands in there and squishing it all and smearing it everywhere.

Henry was very very serious about the job.

The farmer and the monster before heading out for our first round of afternoon downtown Corvallis trick O treating.

The nighttime gang including friends Logan the pumpkin and Hunter the ghoulish ghost .

I am unable to maintain any sort of control on the candy orgy going on here.I have completely failed inthe candy discipline and am just hoping it will all be gone soon. Luckily Max takes a bite or two and spits out most of it. He's mostly just covered in sticky slime. I guess that's lucky?

cheese and hair and family again

Well the guests are all gone but the bloated weight gain lingers on. Here is a picture of our wonderful cheese orgy. 7 different types of exotic cheeses, the blue cheese stuffed and garlic olives I had been eyeing for the past year at the new Safeway "gourmet"section that I could never bring myself to justify buying before, the Soyrizo (vegetarian sausage), the sliced pears , Betsy's sweet plate of honey, molasses and jam and of course crackers.

Betsy and I happily admiring the spread in between gorges.

I bought this at the Asian Food Store when it was Nick's birthday in September and I was buying stuff to make him sushi. I though maybe it would go well with the theme and it intrigued me. Well Nick wanted to have nothing to do with it but I knew when Betsy came she would join me in this culinary adventure. According to Wikipedia it is a root used in Thai cooking.

We were just about to open the jar when Betys noticed something. If you look in the upper right hand corner of the jar above the lable you might see it...

Here is the much better view- a long dark hair pickled in with the roots.

Yummmm

I think not. We decided to skip this culinary adventure.

More family visiting pictures

Henry arranged these pictures. Here is the great Prince Henry with Grandpa Nick and Nick(dad)

Then he wanted one with just the girls-me, Grandma June and Aunt Betsy

Crazy cuddling lovefest with the boys and grandparents

The Carters

Nothing new and exciting in the jewelry world right now. I skipped yet another saturday market and now am obligated to go next weekend according to market rules . Here is one of our newest lsiting on Etsy of an old stamped design of mine. I carved this die back when I had lots of free time to spend confusingly carving in reverse.

This one is called "Kneeling Woman Finding Her Bliss Sterling Silver Pendant with Turquoise".

It is a chubby belly and boob , not two sideways boobs which I just realized it kind of looks like when looking at it.

Pendants,chains and family

We hit an Etsy milestone this past week when we made our 1000th sale! It was a goal we hoped to reach by the end of the year and it came in mid October. We were put over the top with a huge sale to a lovely woman in California that really made our week.
I've been refocusing on pendants. It is a common discussion amongst jewelers as to whether to sell a pendant alone or on a chain. So I decided to sell some pendants that are just on the simple black cord that adds just about nothing to the cost of the pendant and have a sterling silver chain with our handmade clasp available in our shop as well that you can purchase if you want a chain too. Surprisingly the chain has been selling quite well on it's own and the pendants have been selling well without the chain. I haven't had a customer yet purchase a chain to go with one of our pendants too.



This is our Sterling Silver Celtic Heart and Spirals Pendant .

This is the Sterling Silver Flat Cable Chain with Handmade Clasp.

The Steaming Cup o Joe with Garnet Pendant...

and the Dragonfly Wirework with Saphire Blue Sterling Silver Pendant.


We have been having lots of family visit us the past two weeks. It's been a lot of fun.Here are cousins Peter, Victoria and baby Harry. Peter appears to be contemplating his empty beverage and Nick is trying to scare Harry.

SupermessyMax

Cousins hugging (Max and Harry)

Upside down swinging Henry who insisted that I take his picture.

More Harry and M.ax at the park

Grandma June and the boys

Nick the elder,crazyface Nick and cousin Peter

A slow haggard morning still in my Spongebob jammies with all the boys.

Max picking a winner, Henry picking his toes, and Harry wondering how he ended up in this crazy place.

We had Henry take this picture. He was sitting on the couch which increased the already skewed childsize angle and managed to emphasize all our middle aged double chins except for Nick's cleverly concealed by his beard.

Aunt Betsy in the middle of couch mayhem.

Max delighted over his pumkin "no man" (snowman)

Around the dinner table admiring Henry's large dirty feet.