for sale....very soon

atc mini albums. each album will hold 24 atcs. the outside is covered in paper that coordinates with the atc attached to the cover.  

home

i had a left over doll for a pocket doll atc, so here she sits in a feather lined nest. 

my daughter....quite the

seamstress......showing off one of her many purses that she will be selling on her very own blog very soon. we just set the blog up yesterday! we still need to do some fine tuning to it.

she is amazing....sewing is the one thing i was never able to master. the sewing gene must skip a generation! my mom does beautiful work...she made my wedding dress....

my daughter has made all of her purses without any type of a pattern....she just grabs her measuring tape and shears and tada....she even makes these purses lined! somehow she manages to make the lining fit beautifully, also with no pattern! most have an inside pocket. she made an ipod case that is way cute, after watching an episode of .....eeek what is the name of that darn show....i just drew a blank.....with the clothing designers......oh jeez this is gonna drive me crazy....anyway there was one episode with the barbie.....she pulled one of her my scene barbies out of her memory box and within minutes she made a pair of pants for this thing....again no pattern. it blows me away.

one thing that she is having a hard time with is failure......she has really had an easy time learning to sew....she just learned how in school this year.....since everything comes soooo easy for her and works the first time, when she runs into a problem she wants to quit. i could pull my hair out! blahhhhhhh! but, i know in time as she matures she will work this out....but until then i could scream!

i am so proud of her, and her motivation. she wants a sidekick.......ain't coming out of our budget we told her, so off she went to go sew her way to one! 

our backyard dinner guest

this hawk was HUGE, and so beautiful....but i have a soft spot in my heart for anything with feathers. sadly though, his dinner was a robin.

he stayed for almost an hour, taking his time to enjoy his meal and watch us. he was quite a slob and left a really disgusting mess behind....an no tip....hmphf! my youngest took the camera out back and played csi guy and showed us the left overs.......yech.....i will spare y'all those photos.
we were relieved though that he did not dine on our one and only squirrel...... 

the furry things in our life....

.....dust bunnies excluded! they were too busy conferencing under my furniture to have a photo taken........

found all kinds of things camping out in my cameras memory this morning! 

guess what i found......

on my cameras memory this morning. i am guessing my little guy was entertaining himself.....hmmmm i thought he was being awfully quiet yesterday while i was getting ready to take him out for our lunch date. today is his first day back to school after a 3 week cycle break......missing him a bit......what a little goofball he is! 

pocket doll atc's

the baby in the wagon for my yahoo group, and the moon in the cloud for redlead anything goes swap. 

wahhhhhh......

okay....okay...okay....so i wrote last thursday (make that whined) about all the stuff going on here, and i wrote i would get no studio time on friday because my wonderful hubby and i were suppose to go to uno's and shop.......alone.....for necessities......... at walmart.......ohhhhh how romantic you say.....jealous are you......well, lately that is about as good as it gets.......so any way.....ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ! yup that is what you would hear if you could hear my guardian angel....yup hysterical, pee running down your leg,laughter..........i am almost afraid to write anymore in fear of what my g.a. will pull next....eh but what the heck here it goes........friday morning i was getting my computer fix for the morning and checking emails and bit down and then jumped about 20 feet in the air.......i cracked a tooth i had a root canal on a few months earlier.......the one that caused me to temporarily loose like a huge amount of site..........what a gross running your fingers down the chalk board feeling that was....my birds thought i had lost it. so once i quit shaking i called the dentist, and yup wouldn't you know it..........the second time i have had a problem with this root canal on the same day as her day off. she told me she would call me later and send me straight to an oral surgeon to have the tooth pulled........whoa there nelly back that horsie up.......this tooth aint goin' down without a fight.........with all of the technology today why can't the tooth be cemented and capped or crowned or whatever the term is........we were waiting until my hubby got his settlement or the darn money tree started blooming out in the backyard to have the crown put on......but now i guess i am going to have to hope money will fall out of the sky...........i even entertained the thought of finding out just how strong the e6000 is......just kidding......not really..........so anyway i asked if there was anyway the tooth could be saved.....especially since i am on blood thinners and i am chronically anemic anyway........i am hoping to avoid uneccesary bleeding....ha, but that does not keep me away from a studio filled with sharp objects now does it??????? so she agreed to take a look at, that was suppose to be this morning, last night my little guy started in with the crud, and fell at the grocery story and has a huge ostrich egg on the side of his head.....no goose egg for this kid....nope he's gotta do it big.........his head is hurting and now he says his jaw on that same side hurts...............oh i am way beyond any relaxation scented lotion and bath gel.......give me a xanax-calgon-tequilla mixer....hold the lemon and salt cuz i wanna scream hi chewahwah after i gulp it..............make it a double........so tomorrow at noon i go to the dentist....i miss eating my morning oatmeal....what food i have eaten is in little itty bitty bites.....chewing slowly on the other side of my mouth.......lets hope my guardian angel is distracted and i am able to keep the tooth........if not, knowing how luck is running in our household the surgeon will yank on that one tooth and i can just see it, just like in the warped sadistic saturday morning cartoons we watched as kids.....all the rest of my teeth will come out connected to that one......through that one hole............you know, yank a almost 10 pound premature baby out of my body any day, been there done that 3 times, over having a tooth pulled.......ohhhh i tend to ramble when i am just a wee bit freaked out..........i am backing away from the keyboard now.......mmmmmmm now........okay.....now...........

ok......i have whined enough.....now i am off to check on a puppy who was given people food to eat by some unseen force and now has di-der-ritas (that is speech impared for.......well you know....blech) real bad, and the puppy has not yet mastered the.....excuse me but i really must use the facilities...would you mind escorting me.........bark yet.....then i will snuggle with my little guy........maybe the cleaning fairy will show up and do my housework............yeah right..........

P.S. I forgot in the midst of all my whining!

There was a bright spot in all of this yuck, ick, and blech over the last several weeks! I forgot to mention while I was feeling sorry for myself..........I was accepted as a member of MMCA!

this is such an exciting thing for me.........my school years i suffered from "RUDOLPH SYNDROM".........i was never invited to play in other reindeer games.......i was such a geek even the geeks did want me hanging around....... i was actually just a very shy girl.....so shy i can not even explain.........no self esteem......no self confidence......oh how i wish i knew then what i know now....but then i would not be the person i am now........ i feel so lucky to get to particpate in a group of artists i respect and whose work i love. i hope to learn and grow by being a part of this group!

SPT - life - stuff - ugh - breathe - breath

3 weeks ago this was this picture i was going to use for Self Portrait Tuesday.....i was so tired after getting my 3rd shift working hubby off to work, 3 kids fed, homeworked, showered, hugged, kissed, and sent to bed several times....i was on my way upstairs to litterally crawl into bed, it was 11:54pm....6 more minutes of tuesday was left and half way up the stairs from telling the birdies goodnight i remembered i forgot all about self portrait tueday....my committment to ME was to make sure i participated in groups like these...and to do so every week and on time. so i turned myself around halfway up the stairs....not a good thing for some one with balance and middle ear problems, and came back down, almost on my face from a case of the dizzies.......i wrote about how i had had enough! i had been having one of those days for about 2 weeks. it started out as a day full of little things.....ramming your toe into the feet of the iron bed, many times when normally that would never be an issue, dropping eggs on the kitchen floor, burning dinner, stabbing my finger with a brand new exacto knife blade, slamming my fingers in the door, a cat hair in my eye 3 days in a row, the 150 pound dog stepping on my foot and about ripping my arm off with her paw for attention while breaking up a brotherly disagreement over something totally stupid and then tripping over the 5 pound che-wah-wah, stepping on something sharp that had snuck its way into my houseshoe, imitation crocs....with little holes all over the place just perfect for sucking stuff in them, bending over to pull said sharp thing out of foot, hitting head on dresser and left breast falling out of brand new 'it lifts, it separates, it perkiates them its itchier than all the mosquito bites and chicken pocks put together cause it's lace ' demi cup bra.....and i almost fall on my face from losing my balance from bending over....get the picture......? earlier in the day 3 light bulbs blew.....when more than one blows in this house on the same day its not good......5 blew 2 days before my dad died.....its a long story but blowing light bulbs around here tend to foretell of gloom and doom around our household......so anyway, i type up my spt and hit the publish button and ****poof***** my spt disappears! well, enough is enough i surrendered, wondered why i was being karma-ized, and apologizing to the heavens above for whatever i have done i walk up the stairs, defeated, to put myself into bed. i can't sleep and watch tv, our 150 pound mastiff is laying in front of the front door guarding her post and just as i start to drift off there is some sort of noise that tells me something is not right, but my hearing aids are tucked in their cozy case for the night, and my ears are straining to figure out what i heard.....just as i get up and go to grab my handy 'kill the burgarlar' thing, no its not a gun, my hubby walks into the bedroom......i remind him he is suppose to call first before coming home unexpectedly....then i wonder why he is home, he has major problems with his stomach from having his stomach stapled 20 years ago before they knew what they were really doing, and he can end up so sick he has to go to the hospital, to my partial relief.......he scrapped a part....he makes airplane parts, when one scraps a part, well they get a 5 day unpaid vacation. money is already so tight that if we stretch the almighty dollar anymore it will snap, explode, and disinigrate into millions of pieces..... and now 5 days no pay. this of course comes on the heels of a totally rediculous offer from workers comp on compensation for what we have now this week found out is not a 'fixed' problem, but a permanent disability....this one is a really long story, so i will save this for a later date. this also came on the heels of finding out as we went to refi our house...something we stumbled on and were not out looking to do, we find out that there was a checking account with my hubby's name on it and a brothers and his mom, who passed away 12 days before my dad........someone wrote a check that bounced boing boing boing boing boing boing all over the freaking place........so with the check and charges it is over 500.00 that we could be responsible for, and it may have had my hubby's name forged on it........ugh...so the bank main branch is researching this mess and we can not continue with the refi until it is all fixed!

a couple of years ago i would have fallen apart and been inches away from having to be sedated from worry around the clock, but proud of myself i got through each day, one day at a time, and when that became too difficult, i took it hour by hour, then sometimes it was minute by minute.......i became very creative in the kitchen when need be, actually he did lots of the cooking! yeehaa! and i played in my studio. my hubby and i took advantage of the time and made the most of it we could. it was nice to roll over in the middle of the night to see him there next to me, ahhhh the snoring bedhog..........the two of us sharing the antique full size bed.......if he ever works first shift again, or when he retires we are getting a bigger bed!

i am a creature of habit though......i like routine, i can live without routine, but i prefer it.........i missed getting the kids off to school, the hubby tucked into bed, eating my oatmeal and drinking my green tea in peace, quiet, and solitude, and my studio time........i was starting to feel like my inner artist was suffering a slow, torturous, painfully suffocating death............my muse had packed her bags, packed a ham sandwich and road map and was on her way........in her place a substitute muse showed up, she is dislexic, a.d.d., cranky, smelly yet prissy little mizz thang not wanting to take part in messy hand staining art.....so art became a scattered here and there thing over the last couple of weeks.........

monday i was looking forward to getting myself back into my routine as much as i could with hubby have dr appointment. just as i was getting ready to take melvyn for a walk the phone rings...it is the school nurse for my daughter, who feels sick to her stomach, no fever but needs to go home....so i stop, get ready and go pick her up. on the way home she is feeling ok enough that we stop by a place i go to find peace, hope, and motivation, then we go home. my little darling starts to perk up to the point that i think hmmmmm maybe we can go back to school.......my daughter then explains that she did not eat dinner the night before, or breakfast, and only had 4 hours of sleep due to homework that should have been done during the weekend, not sunday going on monday! it was one of those walk away so you don't choke her moments.................once she ate suddenly she felt pretty darn good! UGH! so now it is time to wake my hubby who will now be sleep deprived for his doctor appointment..... for tests with a neurologist that bordered on sadistic torture to determine just how severe his disability is, the doc kept asking my hubby if he was ok and needed to lay down because this big old 300+ pound man passed out during the test.....so my hubby ends up tossing his cookies all night and stays home from work.......a combination of nerves, stapled stomach, and the torture he endured earlier in the day, i go to get myself into my routine in the morning....but i end up snuggling with the hubby all day. yesterday was a half day for the kids...so no studio time, today, my middle guy who ate buffalo wings last night stayed home with his stomach on fire.....all 3 of the kids have some sort of intestinal thing that 3 gi docs can not diagnose, but they have all had since birth......no studio time today. tomorrow my hubby and i are going to have lunch at UNO's and shop for the week in peace by ourselves.......our youngest goes on cycle break next week, the older 2 will be on spring break. you combine that with the fact that daily i have my hubby and daughter are sooooo a.d.d. it can drive you to the brink of insanity, we joke daily that my hubby, whose name is bill, frequently visits billville at the worst possible moment.....like when he is driving down the road! and my daughter at least once a week begs to get her learners permit and i say until you can walk through the house and not knock over everything in your path you are not getting behind the wheel of 4,000 pounds of metal and a motor....... my middle one may have a form of highly functioning autism, and he is very speech and language impaired.....add that in with my hearing impairments, and the youngest shares my learning disabilities and has homework most nights that can be frustrating.....

it is a good thing my drug of choice to make all right in the world is ART......

oh, and now that i published this i checked my blog and my flicker photos are not showing up and there is a box with a red x in it because something else is missing........bleeeechhhhhhh!