Felice and Henry's Big Adventure in New York

Last week I took our 6 year old son on a trip to Long Island, New York to visit my brother Steve and his family and celebrate my parent's 50th wedding anniversary.
We had a little journey through United Airlines circles of hell in which our first flight from Eugene was delayed due to "weather conditions" in San Francisco that looked sunny and delightful when we finally arrived with 5 minutes to spare to make our next flight. Apparently those 5 mintues where not enough to keep them holding their own flight and so they gave away our seats. We then stood on the customer "Service" line for about an hour and half with about 75 other disgruntled passengers with their own tales of airline woe while watching the plane we should have been on sit on the runway delayed for an hour. Henry behaved impeccably (I must be a great parent) the whole time on line. We managed to get stand by on the next flight and screw the next slightly late passengers out of their seats. I assume this process goes on infinitely as each flight takes seats away from those slightly late in a sort of Pay It Backward process of airline karma.We arrived at 1:30am in the morning at JFK and my loving brother and mom and dad were there to greet us.
The next day began with this lovely NY breakfast-the bagel and cream cheese with lox.

It had been about 6 years since I last saw my brother and 12 years since I was last In NY.

Now that's a pizza! Finally the pizza you just can't get in Oregon. It has the light thin crust and the oil dripping down your hand.

Sibling love

It was so great to meet my wonderful niece Jamie!

The next night was my nephew Matt's 12th birthday party that he shared with his good friend Jason. It involved 50 12 year olds and a large lovely swimming pool with a hot tub. There was an air brush artist making t shirts and hats and a movie screen set up outside and the grand finale of the Mr Softee truck in the driveway with free ice cream cones for all.Henry got to go in the truck with his cousin and play ice cream man. Unfortunately my little 6 year old thinks he can actually swim. So there he was on his little floaty noodle thing kicking out to the deep end constantly to join in with the all the big kids. I was left with the only reponsible parenting option of putting on my bathing suit and going in there too. So I was the only adult at the party baring it all in a bathing suit amongst all the kids.

Here I am in the hot tub with a bunch of 12 year old boys. Need I say more?

The next day we drove into NY and went to the Museum of Natural History.

Henry , Matt and Jamie taking it all in.

While sitting in traffic this just cracked me up for some reason. I guess I am just easily amused.

Henry and Jamie

The next day was my parent's 50th wedding anniversary. My brilliant sister-in-law came up with the plan of stealing Mom's photo album and having this board made for everyone to sign.


I got to see my Great Aunt Phylis. So this is Felice, Phyliss and Fran. Try saying that 5 times fast.We had lots of old family friends show up and a good time was had by all.

We all went out to dinner at Mario's for excellent Italian food the last night we were there.

Aunt Michelle getting some good hugging in with Henry.

Henry fell asleep on the last plane ride home. He never napped on any of the other plane rides. He later woke up screaming as we were landing with a bad dream and a headache but quickly recovered upon landing.

It was a great trip.

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.