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.

Pliers and plants

After destroying 2 pairs of pliers ,Nick, my tool obsessed and loving husband gave me a stronger pair. But those left a nasty burred edge on all the wire. So he went off into his shop the other day and emerged with these newly modified heavy duty pliers that now give me the almost perfect cut. I say "almost" only because it still leaves the tiniest of raised lines but it is really a huge improvement and a pleasure to work with. I love that guy!

Here it is in action.

The results! Notice the clean edge.

What the old pliers used to do. See the pointy angled edge. Well good bye jagged ugly edge.

More hot plier action

A clean finish.

And now for some fall photos from around the homestead...

Sweet Max

Henry emerging from the barn where he goes to escape from his brother and play with the big boy trains.

Happy Max

A typical bramble of honeysuckle berries,poison oak,blackberry brambles,roses and other assorted weeds. Yummy goat food.

This beautiful bright red and shiny plant is the evil poison oak which flourishes on our land.But it's so pretty.

One of the flowers that continues to return each year despite my neglect. A carnation of some sort I believe.

Fidel relaxing

Fame and fun

So I think I'll just shut the heck up and the next time I am whining about lack of sales y'all can come kick my butt. Really.
Things slowly picked up in online sales through Etsy after that last weekend and then we had a record breaking weekend at the Church Fair at the Fall Festival.
One of the best things that happened was when dear friend Amy brought over her out of town visitors to say hello. Her friend (whose name I sadly can't remember) said " Do you sell on Etsy? I recognize your jewelry."
I felt so famous! Someone actually shops and browses on Etsy and recognized our jewelry! My ego has been sufficiently stroked once again.
It was fun selling in our hometown ( the biggest town we live close to) and seeing all the friends and acquaintances we've acquired. The park in the middle of the festival was overcrowded with kids including mine and it was quite the challenge keeping an eye on both my tasmanian devils spinning off in opposite directions at all times while Nick was selling in the booth (or the "tent" as Henry calls it.) At one point Max had yakisoba noodles hanging out of his mouth and was swinging them from side to side slapping his big chubby cheeks while coming towards customers and telling them he was eating "noonoos" . He later rolled around in the sand at the park using the noodle slime as an adhesive.

These are my latest creation-Tangle Dangle Vining Spirals Earrings. Another design that came to me as I was laying in bed waiting for Henry to fall asleep.(Yep, I'm one of those crazy lunatic parents that still lays with her kid in his bed until he falls asleep. I won't reveal any of our other coddling parenting techniques that will damage our children forever.)
I sold the first pair I listed this morning on Etsy.
I didn't go to the Saturday Market today. I started coming down with a cold on Thursday night which is still draining all my vital energy. I knew it would be cold and miserable and probably kill my feeble old body if I did the market today. Also there was some sort of big deal football game in Eugene today that involved the entire ESPN network setting up camp at the stadium and broadcasting all day from there. That meant the entire town would be either at the game or watching it all day long making sales likely to be poor at the hippy craft market. It was very liberating to not go and sleep in. I put a lot of energy into Etsy and we made a significant amount of sales today anyway- so there!
All is well.... until the next hormonal fluctuation.

Doubt and stuff

This weekend has been a reminder not to get too cocky and expect success. The weather was perfect, the football game had a perfect late kickoff time of 4pm and it seemed like it would be a good weekend at the market. Wrong wrong wrong.
I've done better in the rain. Then to top it off and push the self doubt to completion we sold absolutely nothing online for two days all weekend. nada, zilch,big fat zero. Big losers. The self employment and self esteem roller coaster took the downhill plunge. That's like a "self" sandwich between employment and esteem all rolled into one tasteless bitter disappointing snack. Perhaps I'm being a bit dramatic.
So I am holding off on the giant glass supplies order I was about to make until I feel confident again that I will indeed be selling lots of stuff soon.
This upcoming weekend is the Corvallis Fall Festival. We will once again be selling in our regular pretty good spot across from the "real" Fall Festival at the First Christian Church Craft Fair that cleverly takes place on the same weekend and much to the ire of the "real" Fall Festival is almost impossible to discern from the "real" Fall Festival where the participants pay significantly more in fees for the privilege of being juried "artists". (The word "artist" said in snooty, self righteous tone.) My expectations are now properly lowered for the weekend sales.

We added the Aluminum Widget Pendant and these Black Stone and Fresh Water Pearl Swirl Earrings to our Etsy shop .

And now on to the real purpose in living and the reason we try to sell all this stuff so we can have money to buy our little imps more crap.

Torturing your brother!

Yikes!

Loving your brother!


The girls are back!The brown one is Grover who is actually a boy.

Mama Llama ,their serious protector.

The amazing path that our neighbor Chris made through our jungle. The goats are doing an impressive job destroying all the blackberries,poison oak,and general overgrowth of our poorly maintained property.They are like little tractors tearing it all down and we love them for it.

Henry the grape picker. The only fruit he will eat and only if it is from our vines.

This is what happens when you let a pumpkin grow throw the chicken wire fencing that we put around the bed to stop the deer from eating it.

The end of blackberry season. I was wrong. Actually henry will eat blackberries too if he picks them or demands I pick them for him.