Meet Ruby!

We have a new member in our household.  We brought Ruby home with us last week and have all been adjusting to each other quite well.

Ruby is the sweetest boxer and we are so glad we were able to rescue her.  Her previous owner moved to a location that didn't allow dogs.  Rather than surrender Ruby or find her a new home, Ruby was walked into the woods and crated before being covered up by a blanket throughout the summer.  She lost 12 pounds and got very sick as a result.  So now she is on the mend and regaining weight quickly.  

Ruby is two years old and does a good job of acting like it.  She doesn't realize that she weighs 58 pounds now and isn't the ideal candidate for being a lap dog.  She also doesn't realize that she looks pretty silly squeezing herself into the kids' car seats when we go for rides.  Ruby is very smart and learning quickly that lack of manners do not pay in this household, so she is pulling less on her leash when we go on walks, doing better at staying off the sofa and beds with fewer reminders to get down and sitting to say please before eating meals or getting attention.  Last night when she emptied the water bowl in the kitchen, she picked it up and brought it into the family room to let me know it was empty.  And she mastered the pet door to go out to the backyard in no time.

Little Horse is feeling out the position of alpha dog and has growled at her a few times, which has been interesting.  He was always the dutifully submissive hound when Maggie was with us.  I think these two dogs will become fast friends.  They attempted to play together this morning and that was funny.  They both looked awkward as they tried to jump and bounce and then backed off from each other.

I am taking Ruby into the vet in a little bit.  Her left eye is red and swollen and I'm not sure why.  Want to get that taken care of before we have two one-eyed girls in this family!

How Is It?

That I left corporate America and life is getting even more crazy hectic?  How did I fit it all in before?  I'm not sure, but I can tell you I like THIS pace much better as so much of it is being spent with my family.  Friday morning, I hopped on the torch and made these beads.

Before I shot this wedding.

Saturday morning, I drove up to Durham, North Carolina with my Mom to attend this wedding.

We drove home Sunday morning and had a surprise stop with LeAnn of Summers Studio.  I think we chatted and laughed for close to an hour and a half.  I was sad when we left.  I wanted to stay and talk and laugh the day away with LeAnn and her husband.  They were so lovely.  Just as wonderful as I had always imagined she would be in person.

This morning was spent cleaning up the kitchen, packing up beads and headpins to ship out around the country and then making a few pieces of jewelry.  And now it's just about time to meet my kids at the bus stop.  We will be working on homework, heading to the library and then testing for new color belts in Tae Kwon Do this evening.  Once they are in bed, I will be cozying (yes, cozying is a word) up with my laptop to start pouring through the 1500+ images I took at the Friday wedding.  I'm so excited.  I feel so fortunate to be following my dreams and know that I'm in the midst of big changes in the course of my life.

I will be back on the torch tomorrow and will be making more beads and headpins in preparation for a shop update this Thursday afternoon.  I hope you all had a fabulous weekend with perfect weather!

Beads Coming Soon

How did a week go by without me blogging?  Somebody is stealing my time and it was not approved.  I have had very little time on the torch over the last week, so not much is going in today.  But here are the two sets of headpins and new sets of beads.

These will all be going into the shop in less than an hour.

Wednesday Beads

Here are the beads that came out of my kiln last night. 

How wonderful is that purple???  I am loving that glass.  It's a new one.  And I'm loving the swirly pink glass, too.  Another new one.  And that yellow?  Yep, that's new, too.  In rod form, it was a transparent dark amber.  But it turned opaque and reminds me of honeycomb.  Finally a yellow I can love!

I also made a few headpins, but don't have any pics as they aren't clean yet.  Seriously Kelley?  What do you do with your days?  Thbbbt.  Can't even clean a few headpins!

Random Wednesday

Today is being spent cleaning up the house, doing laundry and playing with fire.  Headpins will be going into the kiln, in addition to beads.

I just found out my in-laws have decided to come a little earlier than previously planned, which means they will be here in time for my birthday.  Over.  The.  Moon.  Happy to know the people who mean the most to me will all be at my dining room table for my birthday.

There are already a dozen beads in the kiln and all of my new shipping boxes have been stacked neatly on my shelves.  Most of my new glass has also been put away in my glass cabinet.  My supply of boxes had severely dwindled to just a handful, so I ordered a hundred new boxes last week in three different sizes.  I think that will help with holding smaller amounts of beads better and it is also spurring a change in shipping pricing (I'm eliminating the additional $0.50 riding each extra item.  I will still waive shipping fees for purchases $40 and up).

Faith is an easier concept for my children to grasp than death.  Thank you for all of the kind comments and emails you have sent my way regarding Maggie.  The house feels empty without her, especially at meal times when she would have been the first one lined up and waiting at her food bowl.  Or her nightly ritual of making two rounds around the downstairs before heading upstairs to her crate.  Her protective presence is greatly missed.

I am getting made fun of for my love of the papyrus font.  I'm waiting to hear suggestions on alternative fonts that I would like just as much, but so far those airwaves are silent.  I am still snickering at this website that was shared with me, though.

Jezzie is still just as much of a snuggler and company keeper.  She was on the arm of my chair while I was melting glass.  By the time I got my camera app opened, she was climbing the back of the chair and giving me a kiss on the nose when the shutter closed.  And this picture freaks me out because it flipped everything from right to left like my office/studio is laid out completely different than it is.

Today, I am replacing toilet seats.  Exciting stuff.  I also cleaned the half bath from ceiling to floor.  Walls and baseboards included.  Before I left the phone company, I hated cleaning.  But now I am embracing it and finding a strange sense of accomplishment in my days.  No, this is not your opportunity to invite me over to your house to clean.

I will be photographing a wedding in a little over a week and am very excited about this.  This weekend, I will be going back to the location just before sunset to better scope out perfect spots for the bride and groom.

I love these boots, but think it may be awhile before I can save up for them.

Due to not being on the torch at the end of last week or beginning of this, I have moved my shop update from tomorrow to next Thursday.  There are reminders of the date/time at the top of this blog and my shop that show the next update, too. 

My hair is growing out and is now past my shoulders.  I've got an itch to cut it, but don't know what I would do with it.  Plus my year from the last hair cut isn't up yet (cause I typically only get my hair cut once a year).  I'm just thankful that it's not giving me headaches.  Yet.  Cause I'm a wuss with my thin hair.

That is all.

Good Night Sweetheart, It's Time To Go

Today we said goodbye to our Maggie girl.  We rescued her when the boy child was barely six months old and he is now nine.  At the time, she was 2-3 years old and had boobs hanging down to the ground from the six puppies she birthed days after being pulled from the pound by the rescue.  She went through mastitis (I could relate painfully well, as I was dealing with that at the same time) after we brought her home.  She had seven BB's under her skin from being shot at by who knows what hateful person.

Maggie was a boxer bulldog, but was routinely mistaken for a pit bull with her brindle coloring and distrustful growl/bark, although she was good with the cats.  She assigned herself the post of guardian dog and took her job seriously.  When Owen was first learning to crawl, she repeatedly moved herself between him and the stairs so he could not go down them.  After Chloe was born, Mags routinely kept post in the hallway just between the two kids' rooms.  Rarely did a day go by where she didn't bark at someone walking by the house to make sure we knew who was around.  

Maggie had manners.  She was rarely a crotch sniffer.  She stayed out of the kitchen or dining room during our mealtimes.  She sat before she was allowed to eat her meals.  She was smart and knew hand commands to sit, stay and go (finger pointing OUT of the room).  She loved car rides and walks.  Maggie was also the stinkiest and noisiest hound I have ever known.  If she wasn't barking, she was farting (in her younger days, her gas would wake her up and she'd take off running like someone shot her in the butt, but slept through it in her later years).  And if she wasn't farting, she was snoring.  She has kept me company for a good nine years while I worked in my office every day with her sweet disposition and all of her noisiness.

Last night, she was unable to get up from her pillow and didn't make her nightly 7:30pm trek upstairs to the crate she so loved.  She was on the pillow, unmoved this morning.  A simple check by the vet found that there was a problem with her mid-spine.  X-rays confirmed that, but also showed a large mass on her spleen.  This last year has not been easy for her to get around.  Our stairs and hardwood floors have caused her to struggle and slow down.  And so this morning, we made the decision to have her put to sleep and we said goodbye through tears streaming down our cheeks as she laid in a patch of sunlight on a thick blanket.

Good night sweetheart, good night.

Friday Came (and went) So Fast!

Much was accomplished this last week (this was written Friday morning, but the post got derailed when my card reader died and corrupted my camera's memory card in the process, losing many photos.  boo.  hiss).  I made close to 250 beads in three days last week.  Even more miraculous, I cleaned all of those beads in three days.  My dremel died and was replaced.  I removed multiple snakes from the house.  I saved multiple chipmunks.  Or I saved the same one three times in one day.  One was being carried around upside down with his heinie in Jezzie's mouth.  I aided in the completion of a diorama.  I received a shipment of glass...the first one in well over six months.  Sigh of contentment.

I made a couple more eggs and this time shipped some off to Canada.  So exciting sending my beads off hundreds/thousands of miles away when I apply shipping labels and postage.  

This weekend, we celebrated the girl child's 7th birthday with a few friends at the tennis courts (she asked for a tennis party and we were lucky enough to have my Dad up visiting and helping with feeding the balls over the net!). 

Amy of Copper Diem is coming close to celebrating the end of her bead fast.  You can read about it here and how I (along with other bead makers) have been torturing her during this fast.  I can relate to bead fasts and other fasts that have my check card under lock and key.  I apologize for teasing you with my beads.  But thank you Amy and so many others for not only blogging about my beads, but to those of you who have shared links to my beads/blog/shop on facebook.  You all are just the best!