A months worth of blogging on a Monday.........

thank you from bing pictures- click to link to the site

First of all, I want to say THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart for making the fundraiser successful.  It is still open, and goes until this evening.  I will let everyone who donated know how much we raised, and how I gift it to the Sirianni's.  I will also surprise each one of you that donated, with something, sometime this year, as my way of saying thanks!  You guys rock, and I cannot even begin to tell you how much your friendships and encouragment has meant to me, and then to go a step further and see the depths of your hearts for others, it just overwhelms me with happiness to be a part of such a wonderful community.  (yes, I am sure thats a run on sentence)

So I feel like I've been really absent on here.  I thought the winter would bring more blogging time then the summer, but I guess I was wrong.  I am really busy making beads for the Berks show, and I feel like I have a million things in the "almost done" category, and none in the finished. 
Here is a picture of my "to be painted" polymer  bin. It has almost doubled in size since I took this picture.

Here are the beads my younest and littlest son made (collin AKA bubba)- he begged to make some, who am I to deny him?  He picked out his own stamps and everything.  I think he did pretty good.

Here is a tray of copper hearts that are actually done.  The little ones are double sided charms for bracelets.  I will be listing some of these this week in my artisan accents shop.  A must have for V-day!

I also made some more wire heart pendants that everyone liked so much last year, though this year they are in copper.  I will be listing these this week too.  This is it, limited edition this year.  NO special orders.  Sorry, no time.  There are some in antiqued copper, red and peacock blue.

Here are blocks and blocks of copper squares waiting to be etched.  I had a blast doing these. It took an entire afternoon to measure and draw them all. Now they need to be heat set and then etched.  That's gonna take awhile since I can only do a couple blocks a day.  (it takes about 4-5 hours to electro etch each set).  I have some new designs, including sugar skulls, which I just love.

One day the other week, we decided to make "Marcel the Shells" as a fun project with my sister in law and the cousins.  We all had fun, and us growns up even made some.  Here is the link to see Marcel the shell with shoes on (which our craft was based on).  I highly reccomend it.  Make me laugh every time.  So stinkin cute.


And here is Marcel the shell with shoes on II. 

And here are our Marcels. 

Quite the quirky bunch!

Then of course, I have been washing dishes, doing laundry, making meals and trying to keep up with the kids along with visiting a sick Poppop.  So taking time for this stuff (below) is important.

Julia is reading to everyone here.  We took the day off Sunday to just relax, since Justin threw his back out hunting (our version of grocery shopping;).  He is pretty laid up and heading to the chiropractor tomorrow.  In the meantime, its a chance to slow down with the kids, and it warms my heart to see them piled all togther!

Whew!  Is that it?  Are we good and caught up now?

Stay tuned later this week for a mini-novel based on a true story.  It's called "The Mystery of the Missing Spiral Pop".  It was almost a cliffhanger until the........well, I don't want this to contain spoilers.  TTFN!