Stopping to smell the flowers....

Today I noticed that we still have flowers growing, and our rose bush has not stopped blooming all winter. So of course I had to take some pictures.

Some new projects....

So I have found my creative edge again! I have tried the last couple years before christmas to make a beaded ornament cover. This was last years beaded ornament cover that was a white elephant gift.

This year my muse started when I saw an email from work that they do a holiday ornament contest. They have a "virtual" tree that people vote on. This is my entry....

Then Brenden comes to me that his friend wanted a red necklace for a dance coming up, I had a lot of fun with this one. I broke out my loom and had fun. Here is where it ended up. I hope she likes it.

Today I think I will start something new while I still have the inspiration to make things. Not sure, but I will post as soon as I get it done.

Sunrise in November

I woke up this morning came outside and this was the first morning that I was able to capture a sunrise from our yard. Still is amazing that in November that we have nice weather. Little chilly in the morning (around 60 degrees) and a nice 75-80 degrees in the day time.

Galahad is loves to just sit in the yard by the fence and just watch things that are going on in the neighborhood. Although sometimes he gets a little hair up his butt to run and play with Cleo.

Cleo thinks that our pine tree is her own personal "ball" tree. 

Well this week I have been doing some more wire wrapping, Uhaul gave me more hours this week, and I have been recouperating from our halloween party. Unfortunately I was so pre occupied with the party I forgot to take pictures :(. I always take pictures and we had some great ones this year. Hmmm maybe Ill make everyone dress up again and take pictures.

Long couple weeks....

So the beginning of october my work started cutting my hours down do between 20-30 hrs from the 40 hrs I have gotten used to. I was starting to get a little worried about the finances until I recieved a call from the lady I do beadwork for on the side every so often saying she needs me really bad. This job pays pretty well for what I have to do so the last couple weeks I have been technically working two jobs. On top of all that Brenden had his first homecoming that he wanted to go to, confrences and of course we are having a halloween party. Today I have a moment to be able to have time to write something on here.

Brenden and homecoming...so he was so nervous about dancing and for those of you that know him its not something you think that he would do anyway. Well he came home with a big grin on his face and apparently danced his ass off!

His date...they went as friends.

It is so strange here, now it is getting to be the nice season here and the flowers are starting to bloom. 

Well next week Ill have some pictures of halloween costumes and our decorations. We are having a kid friendly beer approved party on saturday, so my attention will be on the party this week. 

Few critters...

I decided to organize my picture files today on the computer and found some pictures of a moth and a type of beetle I have been holding on for years thinking maybe someone would know the species. I took these when we were living in Lacey in 2006. If anyone knows I would love to know what type they are, I thought they were beautiful, especially the moth.

Here is one picture when it landed on my friend Steph.

We got better pictures when it landed on the screen window.

Now this bug we found outside on the trash can, the only reason why I took it was because it was so large.

This shows how big this sucker was. At first from a distance thought we had a huge cockroach on our trash can.

I know this one is a Praying Mantis, this was the first one I've ever seen up close. I was outside on my break and had to take these.

I just think they are so beautiful.

Jewelry and kitty routines

So I actually did what I wanted to do today, and I got some pictures of jewelry I've made. 

I made this as one of my lanyards for my job down here. It is out of antique brass chain, chinese crystals and swarovski accents.

Total length is if I remember correctly is 34-36 inches long.

The idea for this started with the 5 strand marcasite connectors, then I used labradorite in different sizes, and glass pearls.

Her is another lanyard I made. This one was out of the clear quartz that friends gave to me when I left Beads Galore.

I used also Precioca Crystals as an accent to the quartz.

This necklace is also with the quartz that I made to go with the lanyard. 

This one was my christmas present to myself. This is out of real sapphires, and a large Swarovski pendant.

MISS KITTY talks to us every morning, she guides me into the bathroom to yell at me if her litter box is full, or she thinks that its the place for Nate to rub her belly when he is sitting on the toilet. Originally this was Brenden's cat but recently she has become Nate and my cat. 

After our bathroom session she will tell me whether or not she has food and water, if she does not and I'm filling up the water dish she decides this way is better. I thought this picture was great because it looks like the water does not follow normal laws of gravity.

Spider Solitare work....

So I am having what I call my "Spider Solitaire" days. The last few weeks has been pretty slow for the calls coming in, in fact my hours have been cut because of that. So on those days I know how bad it really is when I am playing many games of solitaire in a work day. Although some days I will switch it up and give myself a Mani or pedi in between calls. Not a bad day if I do say so myself, but it does get quite boring though. So today, I am actually so sick of solitaire I realized that I can BLOG!

Besides my boring work days, tomorrow I have off and I think I will be going outside and taking some pictures of some of the jewelry I have made since I have been down here. Hopefully Ill be able to have the camera most of the time, my lovely husband (he likes to be called Mr Clean) is now on a blog kick which I am happy about, but he does like to hog the camera now that we have it again. I am hoping taking pictures will actually give me some inspiration to make some more jewelry.

This is something I had made before we left. I made this for "Mr Clean's" mom (also my mom) for Christmas. I had just recently found this picture on my phone that I had taken. I wish it would have been with a better camera it would have turned out much better.

This is a project I had worked on for a dear friend from Shipwreck Beads, she is the pearl knotting teacher there. This is an antique bead woven necklace that had huge knots and holes in the weaving. This is what it looked like when I got done with it. Below is some of the pictures of what it was before I fixed it.

Here is one of the areas that was completely thrashed and broken.

This was another area that in this picture you might not see but there is some knotting, missing beads, and very uneven parts on the necklace. I did have to completely take this apart and restring the entire thing. You would think it would take hours luckily since there is only 2 colors the pattern was easy and only took about 5 hours to complete, where as other woven ones I have done have taken more like 15-17 hours to finish.

Tomorrow when I do take some more pictures they unfortunately will not be as intricate as these but they were fun to do!

My Job....

So I currently take calls all day as a customer service and sales rep. I tell you what, there are some interesting people out there. I have had calls from a sobbing women from breakups, angry men that think I'm an ignorant female, blamed for their reservation gone wrong, angry because their vehicle was not at the specific location they wanted it at, hit on to get a good deal (hit on even more WHEN I got them a good deal), but I have to say I love the nutty phone calls where they make no sense, (you know when you have such lack of sleep and you have finally hit that looney tunes mode) those ones make my day, or when people actually appreciate what you do for them.

I did actually talk to one person though that got me thinking about how I go about my normal life and made me actually want to change how I do things. It was two brothers that a couple years ago had lost a bunch of weight not by pills, or some new diet plan. They just changed a few ingredients in a few dishes they loved and stuck to it. Now I know that isn't exactly new news there, but these brothers got out of the habit and of course gained back the weight. Well since they loved it when all the weight was lost they of course want to get back to that weight again, so they came up with a website kind of like facebook but for people that actually want to loose weight. In the end of October they are going to do videos of them cooking in their kitchen and sharing their receipts that they use to loose weight with. The reason why this suck out in my head was the name of their website, "Finally I Got Off My Ass" www.figoma.com. I have already signed up on there, and cant wait till they start their videos. So I think I am going to finally get off my ass, and maybe it will feed off onto Nate so we don't look like this-

So now when I talk to a customer service person on the phone I now have a new understanding of what they actually have to deal with. I definitely thank the person now for great customer service if I was provided with it.

Our first summer....

Well it seems we survived our first summer here in AZ. August was a record breaking month for heat this year. So I guess you could say now we know what to expect. The monsoon season is wonderful to watch. I wish I had a good camera to take some pictures to show (maybe next year). I'm not sure if you heard about our sand storm on July 5th this year, but here is a picture I found that would show how big it was.

This is south Phoenix, luckily it did not hit us as bad but we did see some little bit of it. Some friends of mine at the old bead store I worked at here said that even with the window slightly cracked they got a coating of sand in their house.

This is some of what we can actually see from our back yard during monsoon season. Most of the time it does not even strike ground, it is absolutely beautiful.

Most of our summer has been seeking AC and staying indoors, now that it has started cooling down where we can actually use our blankets at night (which we missed dearly) we cant wait to go exploring.

It is strange coming from Washington where you cheer when you see sunlight and most of the time is expect rain, to come to a place where you can plan your outing because 98% of the time it will be beautiful weather, and people dance in the rain because they love the rain.

Soon I will have a new camera and be taking photos like crazy!! I can't wait.

Its been a while...

I figured that I would try and keep up on this more now that we have been in Arizona for a while now.

This is my last beading project I completed before I started working from home, I am hoping to work on some more soon, just waiting for the inspiration to come.
Nate has started making "refurbished" motorcycle seats for the guys at MMI. He started with his cycle in Snohomish and decided to start doing the leather seats down here for guys. He has his own blog for that too at http://motorcycleseatscheap.blogspot.com.
My goal is to start taking some pictures of this country down here in AZ for everyone to see. It is absolutely amazing. I know the summers are hot but I cant wait because I get to wear flip flops in January here!