Old new things and new old things

I've added some new items to our shop in the past week or so. This is a really old design I made back when I had time to sit and carve by hand in reverse our steel dies. We call this one:
Fertility Goddess Woman and Pearl Sterling Silver Pendant

and the matching earrings:

Fertility Goddess Woman Sterling Silver Stamped Earrings


This is another old design that has been made smaller and in sterling silver and just added to our Etsy shop:
Celtic Knot Infinity Swirl Sterling Silver Cross Pendant


And this is another old design that I reworked:
Celtic Loops Sterling Silver Earrings
I make this large and bold in aluminum and tiny and sweet with a little iolite bead in sterling silver. A customer asked for it to be larger but in sterling silver. Duh! why didn't I think of that?

On the home front our old friends,the neighbors goats and Mama Llama are back visiting with us for the summer to eat all our nasties.Welcome back girls! (or are they boys? I can't remember.)

We ordered caterpillars again for our butterfly tent this spring. They quickly made their cocoons and emerged as butterflys. Henry hates to say goodbye to them.

Here's another quick and silly barely crafty easy toy Max came up with for me to make. He says it's the terminator guy.Cardbaord, pipe cleaners and scissors and you too can have a quick crappy toy for your 4 year old little dude.

Henry and I are going on a short trip to Long Island NY next week to visit my brother and his family and celebrate my parent's 50th wedding anniversary. I haven't been back east in about 10 years. I can't wait to eat some good NY pizza, bagels and chinese food and see family I haven't seen in a very very long time.I'm hoping Max and Nick are not scarred for life.

Big Shroom

We've been living here for about 15 years (I think?) and have never seen these giant mushrooms here before under the tree right next to our house.

I told Max not to touch them so he went and got out his latex gloves, one our favorite play items.

the mushroom goblin boy

Nice mushroom!

Gogo and Yin Yang

Nephrite Green Jade Gogo and Black Onyx Swirl Earrings
Here's another new addition to our Etsy shop made from British Columbian Nephrite Jade beads I bought earlier this year. They call this shape "Gogo".
$14 in the Stone Earrings/Pendants section of our shop.


This is a brand spankin' new design I came up with a couple of nights ago, listed in our shop yesterday and sold today. Woo hoo! I love that! It's simple yet so balanced hence the name:
Yin Yang Harmony Aluminum Shawl Pin/ Hair Pin
$18

I was especially motivated to come up with a new design because we just discovered someone copying 3 of my shawl pins and selling them in their Etsy shop. While somewhat flattering to be "discovered' as successful and worth copying it was pretty shocking to stumble upon exact copies of my designs that I worked pretty hard to come up with. The titles were even strikingly similar. I normally don't believe most people when they say someone is copying them when the designs are pretty common with commonly used beads. But these are complex wire work designs that are clearly being ripped off.
So in an effort to stay ahead of the copycat, I'll keep creating (and give her some more ideas
to steal).
And so a lovely holiday weekend winds down with chocolate chip cookies and some playdates.

Presenting Mrs.CuteKitty

We have a new addition to our family. This is Mrs. CuteKitty, named by Henry of course.She is our big old snarky cat Fidel's new trophy wife. She started hanging around here a month or so ago. We thought she was our neighbors cat but then discovered she was not the same cat. We always thought we'd have to wait until Fidel died to get another cat because he is such a mean bastard to other cats. But this little girl won his heart. She started coming in through the cat door and he let her. The next thing we know she is sleeping in his special box and eating his food. When she took a crap in the litter box we had a feeling this kitty was not leaving. I tried hard to be mean to her because I didn't really want to have another cat while dealing with Fidel and all his medical issues and financial draining. But it's hard to be mean to such a cute sweet thing and the kids loved her. So we gave in . I took her to the vet and as soon as she saw her clipped right ear she knew she was neutered by the mobile local feral cat clinic which I never even heard of before. They go around and do cheap fixings of feral cats and then set them loose again to make it on their own. She's a survivor and made it here. Probably only about 1 year old.Fidel must have told her we're suckers and will spend ridiculous amounts of money on our pets.
Good thing she's so cute.

New Red Tiger Eye!

Little Diamond Red Tiger Eye and Garnet Sterling Silver Swirl Earrings

$12.50

New little earrings in the Stone earrings/pendants section of our Etsy shop.

We also just recently added the Exclamation Mark Sterling Silver Pendant to our Geeky /Science jewelry section of our shop.

$10.50

Happy post Mother's Day!

Wolverine claws update:

Max updated his wolverine claws idea by moving on to pens and pencils jammed into his fist.We've been trying to impress upon him to at least keep the pointy parts pointed into his hand. Safety first after all! He fell asleep holding onto his claws tightly.

Max's preschool had a sweet Mother's Day Tea the Friday before Mother's Day.
Max threw up all over himself and even had a bloody nose right at the very end.

They had some adorable songs prepared. This is "I'm a little teapot".


We've been really busy doing all sorts of stuff. Last week was Henry's Taekwondo Yellow belt test.

We also took a trip to the Alsea Fish Hatchery last week (or was that two weeks ago?) with our friends Aidan, Lauren, Amy and Bethie.

Follow me guys!

The last few weeks have been crazy with lots of Etsy pre- Mother's Day sales. Yay Mother's Day! I sold at the Eugene Saturday Market this past Saturday too and it was also quite busy. Our Hanging Vases make especially good Mother's Day presents.

The cheapest sort of crafty Wolverine claws boy toy ever

Max is obsessed with Wolverine these days. (Not that he doesn't still love all things Spiderman too.)He asked me to make him wolverine claws. He's been seeing the ad for them on TV. So he told me to make them out of paper and cut them out and use tape. Okey dokey then.


Here he is vogueing with his claws. Pay no attention to Wolverines pee soaked pants. He's still working on his potty training issues. I suppose it is sort of wolfy to be covered in pee.

Then he told me to upgrade them by making them with card board. he was right. It makes a much sturdier product. Henry wanted some too.

Henry lost his first two teeth this week. They are the bottom front two. The new ones were already coming in behind them so he didn't get the classic gap toothed 6 year old look we were going for.

New-Shimmering Moonstone and Fresh Water Pearl Swirl Earrings

I've been slowly adding new stone earrings to our Etsy shop from the beads I recently I bought.

These are lovely Moonstone beads that I swirled together with Fresh Water Pearl.
The name Moonstone is derived from a visual effect, or sheen, caused by light reflecting internally in the moonstone from layer inclusion of different feldspars.When light falls between these thin, flat layers, it scatters in many directions producing the phenomenon called adularescence.

The Moonstone beads measure about 7/16" (1.2cm) long and wide. The entire earring measures about 1 3/8" (3.5cm) from the top of the sterling silver earwire to the bottom of the earring. All the wire including the earwire is sterling silver.
$14

New Stone Earrings

Tiny British Columbian Nephrite Jade and Amethyst Sterling Silver Swirl Earrings

These are gorgeous deep green translucent British Columbian nephrite jade beads that we swirled together with 6mm amethyst.The jade beads measure about 3/8" (1cm) in diameter.The entire earring measures about 1 5/16" (3.4cm) from the top of the sterling silver earwire to the bottom of the earring. All the wire including the earwire is sterling silver.
$12.50


I had fun experimenting with photographing stone earrings on a crystal cluster



These are new too from the new stone beads I bought from my bead guy.
Tiger Eye and Garnet Sterling Silver Swirl Earrings

These are lovely Tiger Eye beads that we swirled together with 5mm garnet.Tiger eye is quartz that contains oriented fibres of crocidolite that have been replaced by silica. Tiger eye often displays chatoyancy (a vertical luminescent band like that of a cat's eye).The Tiger Eye beads measure about 3/4" (1.9cm) long and 5/8" (1.6cm) wide. The entire earring measures about 1 5/8" (4.2cm) from the top of the sterling silver earwire to the bottom of the earring. All the wire including the earwire is sterling silver.
$15

I sold yesterday at the Eugene Saturday Market. Brrrrrrrr - it was really cold and miserable with on and off rain. Sales were barely adequate and my toes were numb all day. Ah the life of the outdoor craft vendor. So glamorous.

Ahhh Spring- It's killing me...

Well not really perhaps.I'm being a little over dramatic.

The weather has been warm and sunny and wonderful here. (Don't believe the lies about it raining all the time in Oregon.) But this means that the trees and flowers have burst out with tons of pollen covering everything triggering an early allergy season for me. Today has been a little better and I just got my prescription filled for Flonase to take along with my generic Allegra (fexofenidine) so I should be a functioning human being again soon and not a snot covered, sniffing and snorting eye rubbing miserable wreck.

I have sold the past two weekends now at the Eugene Saturday Market. The first one was slow but last weekend was pretty good. We changed our display and made new display boards that have a white background instead of the same purple we had been using for the past 10 or more years. The white background seems to have helped make the colorful glass earrings really show up well and pop out of the display. I have finally been selling these cute glass flower earrings at the market that just never seemed to do well there before.

Max was sad to find out that he is too young to play T Ball on a team this summer. So we used some of Grandma's gift certificate for his birthday to get a T Ball set of his own to play with.He's going to be really good at it come next summer.

After stressing myself out trying to come up with camps and things for the kids to do this summer I've come to the conclusion that I'm just going to relax and enjoy spending time with the kids while they are so young and not book them up with activities. Max is too young to be in most programs available and Henry is a home body/mama's boy. So we'll be taking swimming classes and whatever convenient things come our way and make playdates and take it easy. Henry starts first gade in the Fall and will be gone all day at school. So I am going to try and remember to enjoy these special long days together.( Remind me of that when we are going crazy on one of those long days.)

New stuff and Max's 4th Birthday

I finally took some new extra geeky pictures of our ever popluar HTML Head earrings.


We also added the Alto Clef pendant to our shop. We had it as earrings and had been meaning to make a pendant too for a long time. The day finally came.



We also added the "Pi" pendant to our shop. Again, we had it as earrings but it was time to get the pendant in the shop too.


This is a new smaller version of our "Romantic Industrial Big Aluminum Cross" as earrings. Nick made them from aluminum extrusion that he tumbled and sliced .

I also added the "Mogan David' pendant to our shop that we have as earrings too.(Just in time for Passover.)

And now on to the cute kids...

Henry and Fidel.

Fidel looks like he had a stroke in this picture. He is actually doing pretty well for an old 15 year old cat although he was recently diagnosed with diabetes. I have now become one of those crazy cat owners that injects her cat with insulin twice a day and spends ridiculous amounts of money on fancy cat food and vet visits.I never thought I'd end up doing all this for the cat and sort of secretly mocked those that did but when the time came I just couldn't let the old guy suffer or be "put down" when he is basically fine and the kids love him. We are hoping it will teach the boys some compassion and to not put us down when we are old and in need of some special care.

Friday April 3rd was Max's 4th birthday. We had a small party with a couple of friends. I wasn't up for a whole big event so my apologies to our friends who were not invited and may be reading this.

Aidan is excitedly showing Max the very big and awesome birthday present he got him while Lauren watches with anticipation too.

The big gross Spiderman cake. No one seemed to really like it much. It was chocolate with strawberry jam like filling and a thick Safeway nasty frosting of spiderwebs. Large amounts of it are still in our fridge haunting me. I have a cake problem, especially when it's chocolate. It calls to me every time I open the fridge door. Felice!- come have a slice-no one else will. But you love me. You love moist cheap chocolatey cake. You will eat me.

And I do. I am throwing out the rest of it tomorrow!(maybe)

After the cake everyone went outside to play in the wet sandy yard. Ethan has on his creepy scarey army guy face mask.

Max loved his black spiderman costume I bought him for his birthday.

Look out Henry and Isaac!