be back soon

i am starting to have arting withdrawls.....hope to have pics of new jewels soon.....just sent my middle guy off to spend a week at mark twain lake with a friend's family, this will be the longest and furthest he has ever been away from home.  i am nervous but so far i am holding up better than i thought i would.  i have been  pulling weeds, pulling weeds, and rearranging perennials,and pruning trees.

 next week i will be painting bedrooms before school starts up again in a couple of weeks, wanting to give all of us a new fresh clean start for the new school year.  still have to do school supply shopping, this year i cleaned out the school supply cabinet and took inventory BEFORE we went shopping! we have hundreds of colored pencils, no 2 lead pencils, markers, pens and paper and when i told the kids this year we shop from home first my oldest who is going to be a senior looked at me with disgust.....you would think i told her she was going to have to dumpster dive for her school supplies!!!!!  she is a late bloomer when it comes to the whole teenage baditude thing, we have been lucky...she is the most wonder daughter any mom could ask for .......but i think she must have been a princess in her former life some days.

 i am also still doing some major spring cleaning, rearranging, reorganizing.  my foyer closet is now so clean and organized that my youngest hid in the closet for the first time in 4.....maybe 5 years, i should probably be embarrassed but it is so exciting!!!!!!!  i keep opening the doors and looking at how neat it is!!!  what can i say, it does not take much to make this arty girl happy!    i have probably 20 jackets to donate to charity in various sizes.  i am hoping my hubby will not realize a couple are missing until they are llloooonnnnngggg  gone.  keep your fingers crossed!!!!!    once the spring cleaning is complete....i am hoping in about 3 weeks......then there will be the dreaded GArAge sALe....after the last one we had i swore i would never have another, but with all the stuff i am clearing out it is going to be worth it.  right?  please say it will be worth it......

somewhere in there i will fit in some art.  i have notes upon notes of new ideas just waiting to be created and i am feeling like a junky who is in need of a fix big time.  if only they made an art patch for those tween times when life gets in the way of studio time!

right now i am off for some promised snuggle time and movie watching with our youngest who has had a very not so fun summer this year at all, and to make it worse his brother and sister have had the best summer ever with friends.  

we are back home.....again

hairline fracture of the left thumb this time.
the result of brothers rough housing
we watched it swell yesterday, and turn purple, and so we called his daddy home early from work, because i knew the minute i said
it wasn't broken that it would be.
typical of the male gender......he came home with a big smile on his face, x rays in hand, and splinted thumb,
within minutes he decided the splint made his thumb
hurt worse, ripped it off, refused an additional dose of motrin for the pain, and then he and his brother played video games......one that require use of his thumbs!!!!
as i walked by the boys room and saw him using his thumb and exclaiming 'ouch' with each push of the button all i could do is shake my head.  it is not a bad thing i guess when you think about it.  he learned to shake it off from his daddy who gets banged up a bit from his job and working about the house, or on a vehicle.  as a mom i look for a clean cloth, ice packs, sterile bandaids, neosporin, boiling water....just kidding, the water is luke warm.  his daddy uses the same old nasty garage rag to wipe the blood off a cut as he used to wipe the oil, dirt or other assorted gunk off of some motorized manly machine, then later finds pleasure in showing us girls just how deep the cut is!  blahhhhh....makes me gag and shiver!  
i am so glad i am not a guy!  i would be such a wimp......but then again maybe not....i 

did give birth to 3 nearly 10 pound babies.....ha.....come to think of it i would love to see the 

manly men in our household withstand bloating, cramping, plucking, tweezing, waxing, one day of pregnancy in the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd trimester, and even 1 hour of labor!   

ok, so maybe i am not a wimp.....it all just goes back to kindergarten, when boys were just gross and goofey!

home from the emergency room

you can lose many things in life....your keys, socks...or at least one of them, your mind, your pride, your house......but none of that seems to matter when you are terrified that you might lose something
that is not replaceable.
my youngest started having chest pains about 8:00 in the evening....he said he thought it was his heart burn, which he gets very easily and frequently, but he said it hurt a bit differently.
we tried a pepcid ac which has always worked in one dose. about 2 1/2 hours later the pain was worse, but he had been laying down and that can be a no-no with a bad case of heart burn, so we tried another does of the pepsid
and in less than a half an hour the pain was worse and my happy bouncy little guy was pale and looked scared.
aortic aneurysms run in our family, and though they are rare in children, they do occur.
i checked web md's list of symptoms, and he did not seem to have many of them
but something was going on that i could not find an answer to.
all i could think about was what if i did not make the right decision soon enough?
so off the the hospital we went.
the diagnosis: costochondritis. inflamation of the cartilage joining the ribs to the breast bone. it is not dangerous, but can be very, very painful. they see it quite a bit in teens according to the e.r. doc.

all i can say is thank you God that my little guy is ok!

so now we are home, it is 2:30 in the morning and everybody is wide awake, the motrin max was given has kicked in and relieved a bit of the pain, and i am sure he feels better knowing he is ok and as i type this i can hear the boys in their room playing video games and from the hooping and hollaring i would say they are having a blast......i have never been more thankful for all of that noise at 2:30 in the morning...............

just a bit of what i worked on today....

so here i write, wanting to sleep so bad, but my hubby, who had his stomach stapled more than 20 years ago ate something that his stomach fiercly wants to reject so i am hoping that by giving him the whole bed to get comfy in he can try to get a decent nights sleep. hopefully tomorrow he will feel back to his old self so that i can poke him in the arm and say 'how many times have you gotten sick from eating that?!?!'

today, i completed a turquoise and sponge coral lariat, i made a whole bunch of my own head pins on great lengths of wire by soldering balls on the end so that i could do some heavy duty nina bagely style knarly wire wrapping. i have the burn marks on my thigh to prove it! for some reason those little balls of molten metal wanted to just jump right off my work table on onto that same thigh time after time. if i did not learn my lesson that today was apparently not a good day for me to be making headpins, when i ran out of them i fired up the soldering iron and did it all over again! later, my well meaning sweetheart of a daughter who came to visit me in my studio tried scraping off the solder that had fused into my studio pants as we talked, and in doing so made the welpy blister right above my knee throb all over again.

a bit ago i started work on a very vibrant color combo that i am hoping to complete before the sun comes up, but when i am this tired i know i should not be using equipment that can give boo-boos.

as soon as i finish this post i will be listing the lariat on my etsy shop.
my studio looks as though WWIII is taking place right here in the middle of it.
but it feels good. now, now that i have just gone and finally done it i am excited.

i have been terrified of putting my work out there in the public.....for sale.
playing show-n-tell on my blog was no biggie compared to this
this is the judging.
i am not scared for me, i am so afraid that i will let my husband, my cheerleader, my supporter down.
whenever i tell him that, he says i never could, not ever.
i held off setting up my etsy shop because if i did not set it up, i could not fail......
but it took a kick in the butt from life, and the realization that if i never gave it a shot not only would i not fail, but i could not succeed either.
i don't think i would be quite as worried if i was what we call around here 'a beads on a string kinda person'......but...i like to be different, unusual, original, not what you would expect.
my sweet, sweet hubby always says 'either they will love your stuff or hate it'.
i always thought the reason he loved what i did, no matter what it looked like is because he loves me just that much. they say love is blind.

i was afraid i was going to be like one of those american idol people that not only get rejected, but leave randy, paula and simon laughing so hard they are in tears, while the delusional rejectee walks out of the building, truly feeling they were good enough, shouting profanities and declaring ' my momma always says i was the best in the choir, and you just wait and see i am gonna sell more cd's than the beatles sold albums' as we, the viewer, think 'why didn't someone just tell that poor person the truth....they are awful......


my husband has always loved my art, no matter the form it has taken, the media used....i always thought how lucky i was to have someone willing to lie through their teeth and do a darn good job at it out of love. one day he talked me into wearing a piece out in public, then another then another, soon i became brave enough that every time i go out i wear one of my pieces, and almost every time at least one person stops me to compliment me, and everytime my hubby gives me a punch in the arm....or a hug and a kiss and says 'see...i told ya'.
so here i am, exposing myself even more so, letting the world know that i want so much to make a living selling my art and this scared little girl inside of me having nightmares while my eyes are wide open that i won't even be able to give it away.


there.....i said it.


but, today, it did not matter that 4, 5 days into this i have only sold 1 piece. now i find i am turning into a monster....i want to add more and more and more. somewhere out there is the right person for the right piece. it's just a matter of the two of them finding each other. i just need to breathe....i have faith that it will happen for me, for us.

i found a lady who has sold over 2,000 pieces in about 4 months. her average price is 100, 150 bucks an item. so go figure that income!

so, it is now 4:22, 2 of my 3 kiddos are still wide awake, and i think i will take my daughter up on her invitation to come sit on her bed and lean against her wall and watch nothing good on t.v. until it is time to get her daddy up for work.

good night, don't let the bugs bite. mwah.

THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

THANK YOU!!!!!

I don't know if it is a reader from here, or someone who just happened to find my piece of ETSY but in less than 24 hours I made my first sale!

There is so much more to add to my shop today.  I suffered brain drain getting the hang of it yesterday. 

Want to see the goodies?   <- click there, or click on an item in my mini ETSY and it will take you to my shop.

My Etsy store is now open!

I have just officially set up my Etsy shop!   Click  here to view!  So far just one item added......it's is not hard....just not easy either......i am sure i will have the hang of it here after i have added some additional listings.

fred and manny, just hanging out together. two of our 4 parrots. manny on the right is about 10 years old? we have had him since he was about 6. he was the victim of an alcholic abuser and the foot he is using to hold the peanut he is eating is deformed, a birth defect. when manny sees someone he does not know he holds his poor mangled foot up and tells a very very long story about his foot and abuser.....for the most part you can not understand what he says, but we listen anyway and afterwards remind him he is safe.

bonfire/sparkler lighter

some wiggled and danced

fireworks in flight at the speed of light

some rained back down on us after their show was over

some stayed down near the ground

and some went up high in the sky

last 4th we were all so hot and sweaty, this fourth, my youngest set up a makeshift firepit in our driveway, of course i snapped this picture right after the fire had died down.
it was just in the high 60's outside....brrrrr.....
here my guys are consulting each other on the lighting of a particular air display.
i hate that the boys are lighting them, past stories from the e.r. that i have been told by my sister who is an e.r. nurse of the various body parts that are missing, or rearranged on people who have had fireworks mishaps.
but most of all i cringe when i see our neighbors letting their 5 year old HOLD the tube of roman candles as they are lit and exploding towards the sky!

fair winning

the 4th we headed to main street in historic saint charles to this place to pick up some diamond glaze. after that stop we found ourselves at the riverfront, cameraless, at the fair where just the three of us, bill, max and i snarfed funnel cakes, afterwards we had to shake the powdered sugar off our clothes that we ended up covered in from head to toe.....the lesson i learned- don't eat a funnel cake that has been drown in powered sugar facing the wind!

post funnel cakes, with stomach aches from eating way too much funnel cake, we wandered the fair and the boys spent who knows how much money playing a carnival game to win me my orangity orange orangutan....it even has a bellybutton!

my boys, my heros.

our drive

a few days ago we took a drive near a favorite place of ours to visit and saw this beautiful old barn surrounded by a crop of corn, picture perfect country calendar or postcard scene isn't it.......?

picture perfect until you see that this barn and crop are surrounded by flood waters.

while standing on the side of the road, my toes just inches from the water i looked down to see a small fish swimming, weaving in and out of corn stalks. this years crop ruined for this land's farmer.

to my left the ground was still nice and dry, but for how long, just how much further would the water level swell beyond its banks?

to my right families gathered whose homes and vehicles were underwater. the conversation was light and almost cheerful, i wondered if the reality had set in yet for them, maybe they were just thankful they were safe.

behind me, many cars parked without their owners inside.  some belonged to people like us who came to see just what mother nature is capable of up close and personal, not on the t.v. screen. some cars belonged to those displaced from their homes by the rising flood waters, and a couple belonged to workers, dressed in jeans and bright yellow matching shirts, not speaking english, workers who showed up as close as they could get to work waiting for someone to tell them to go home because there would be no work as long as the river was claiming this land.