Variations on a theme

I sold a Treble Clef Shawl Pin last week and it suddenly dawned on me that I should make other shawl pins. My Celtic Budding Spiral designs lends itself perfectly to this so -ta da! I love that.

Here is the Celtic Budding Spiral Shawl Pin. And I already sold one too!


This is another old design I resurrected for a pendant. The Big Aluminum Spiral in a Circle Pendant. It sells well at the Saturday Market.

These are our pet caterpillars that we orderd with our butterfly house. They arrived about 10 days ago as tiny little 1/2" caterpillars. They grew and grew and then hung themselves upside down and started making their chrysallis.It took a lot of convincing and explaingin to the boys not to touch and move them around or they will fall and die. More updates to come...

We opened the door to our bedroom yesterday and this is what we saw.

New photos and nerdiness

We had a temporary slowdown for a couple of days of our Etsy sales which gave me some time to take some new pictures of stuff. I had been meaning to take some better pictures of these Sterling Silver Celtic Hearts and Swirls Earrings. While I was outside on our backporch taking pictures the kids came out. Henry starting picking flowers and laying them around them jewelry and said I should take the pictures with the flowers to "make the earrings more beautiful".Once again the boy was right. Usually I find these types of pictures too busy but I think it works! And it has gotten a lot more views than it used to with the old pictures.

What is this industrious man doing? Mixing up his peanut butter of course with his Ryobi cordless drill .

And why,you may ask as others have asked of late who have gone to into our bathroom, is this ancient calculator in there?

Well our nightlite bulb burnt out and we didn't have any replacements. So Nick pulled out this calculator from his collection of old calculators and plugged it in and put it on "88888888888888" to get maximum light. We have finally bought replacement bulbs but we kind of like it now and haven't removed it yet.

Nerds!

It's like a heat wave.....

We have had a few days of unusally hot weather for this time of year. The underzealous weathermen were completely wrong however about their Saturday prediction of it going down by 10 degrees to a more comfortable 80-85. So I was not quite prepared to be tortured at the Saturday Market yesterday . It reached a high of 95 in the shade. I know this because my reserved booth space is across the street from the time and temperature sign . It was brutal but luckily the crazy customers did a lot of shopping. So it was at least worth it to sweat like a pig and sit in a coma all day long.
We knew the heat was coming so I made the wise and exciting purchase of this silly rainbow double kiddie pool with slide (that I daydreamed about all day yesterday). Luckily my tool nut husband had the electric airpump to get that sucker blown up easily. The kids have been having lots of fun but I thought I'd share some golden moments of them fighting at the end of the day :

Henry gets in a good wack.

But don't worry Max got in a few good shots too! They were both crying and screaming hysterically while Nick and I watched as they worked it out.

And here they are back to playing peacefully side by side, their shiny black heads burning in the sun. I didn't fully realize that Legos can float and the potantial for kiddie pool fun that entails.

This is my new friend "The Lounge Chair". I intend to spend a lot of time with him.

I bought two and Max is enjoying lounging with his popsicle. Luckily they clean up easily. (Both chairs and kids.)

On a cooler day Max was enjoying the new used Bubble Mower we got for $1 at the thrift store.

Max really got into painting his favorite toy, the blue beatle. Sadly he is lost right now and we cannot find him anywhere.

The rhododendron I planted about 10 years ago i9n front of our house has finally bloomed for the first time ever. It's a boring pale white but I'm still happy to see it. I have done nothing to take care of it so I don't blame it for not blooming sooner.


The wild purple iris' are popping up all over our property now.

Messy Mayhem Mother's day

Life has been hectic. Pre Mother's Day sales have been pretty crazy the past two weeks. Our normally messy house reached some new levels of insanity.

Here are some examples:

Of course the kids don't care. Henry is happily playing with his Legos amidst the clutter.

Another view of the stuff all over the place.

Here is his "mummy car" that he insisted I photograph.

The past two weekends have been pretty successful at the Saturday Market. Lots of hanging vases were sold.They make a great Mother's day gift.

I saw a funny snarky T-shirt worn by a customer:

"If I want pointless conversation I'll let you know."

I made sure I did not say anything to the fellow.

We were so busy with the market and Etsy orders last weekend that I screwed up 3 orders.
Two international sales that I quoted First Class shipping rates on got packaged in Priority boxes. It was too late when I got to the Post Office and realized what I had done to go back home and repack and it wasn't worth the extra effort. So instead of a $7.20 rate it was $25.50. Oops. I'm going to have to reprimand the employees. (ME!!!)

But the biggest mistake was sending out an order to the customer instead of to her Mother as she requested and we said we would do. we received a very disappointed message from the customer when the package arrived at her home a few days before Mother's Day instead of at her Mother's home. I apologized profusely and sent out a new package with an extra free item in it and sent it express so that it could get there before Mother's Day. I told the customer to keep the earrings that went to her home too. Now they can have matching mother/daughter earrings. Not what she intended. She was very good about it all.

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!!!!!

I love you MOM!