With all of the snow days lately (my kids have had exactly one full week of school since mid-December!), I haven't gotten nearly as much work done on the shop as I'd like.  But things do keep moving along.  Today I was fortunate to have my "Wisdom Listens" necklace included in a wonderful Etsy treasury titled "Pearls of Wisdom"!

'Pearls of Wisdom' by thatotherrabbit

Pearls of Wisdom for your day, wisdom comes in many shapes and sizes and when you find it in pearls? Celebrate!

Pearls of Wisdom, medium insidetheboxar... $16	Foster Parent, Foster Care, ... SoulCysterCrea... $13.25	Pearls of Wisdom - 6x6 Paper... AllThatScrap $25
Antique Chinese Sterling Dra... TonettesTreasu... $375	Pearl of wisdom - Wisdom lis... FairietaleDesi... $18.99	Bookmark - Gold Eastern drag... CaryeVDPMahone... $3
Pearls of Wisdom and Grace,P... byGraceandWisd... $30	Pearl of Wisdom Bronze Penda... dragonstreasur... $19	Philosophy quote art: Unders... InstantQuotes $5
Thank You Cards, Handmade Th... Aloewishes $4.5	Pearls of Wisdom rochellemybell... $30	Wisdom Cat - Virtue Kitty - ... HeatherBuchana... $22
Pearls of Wisdom: If it is t... sophandson $35	natural brass winged words o... Heartswhisper $15	Pearls of Wicked Wisdom--bla... DivineIguana $3.5

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Seeing my work beside that of other talented artists definitely motivates me to keep coming up with new ideas, and test my boundaries.  I have a few techniques I'm interested in trying out and a lot of Mothers Day related ideas floating around in my head.  Hopefully all of that will translate to some new and exciting things for the shop in the next few weeks!

Wah wah wah wah wah...

Yesterday was a big day in Fairietale Land.  I wrote this the night before, and for some reason it never got published so I'm doing that now.  :-)

I've been taking a little time off from the jewelry because I'm starting a new (part-time) job.  The kind you get paid for.  And unlike my last they-give-me-money-in-exchange-for-work situation, I can't wear my PJs and bunny slippers for this one.  It requires actually leaving the house.  Looking presentable.  And like I know something more interesting than how to make a PB&J sandwich or get dirt stains out of someone's favorite pants after a dust up on the playground.

In my pre-Big and Little life, I was a teacher.  A college professor, specifically.  Just about 12 years ago, when I was pregnant with Big, my husband got the job of his dreams and we ended up moving to another state.  The husband moved first since I was mid-semester at the time.  We'd talked about me being a stay at home mom, at least for the first couple of years, and I was looking forward to that.  Which worked out, since once I'd finished up and followed him to the new abode, I looked sort of like I'd swallowed a large basketball and wasn't really in top interviewing form anyway.

Years later, a good friend asked me to be her "Discussion Leader" for an on-line class she was teaching.  Basically I helped out with grading, facilitating the required on-line discussions as needed, answering questions.  All from the comfort of my home office (hence the PJs and slippers!), with most of the heavy lifting related to course design and content on somebody else's plate.  Did that a few times and it was a great experience.  Different from traditional brick and mortar teaching but not in a bad way.

Now that Big and Little are actually becoming independent human beings instead of blobs requiring constant care and feeding growing up, I had some free time and decided to explore my options a little.  Found a job posting at the local community college for adjunct faculty in my field and submitted an application.  Got called in for an interview (the strangest one of my life, but that's another story!).  And tomorrow, for the first time in over a decade, I'm setting foot in an actual classroom.  With real students.  Whom I need to amaze and entertain for 115 minutes twice a week over the course of the next 12 weeks.

I have nightmares in which my classroom looks something like this -

I'd forgotten how much work goes into this.  Creating a syllabus.  Coming up with assignments that actually teach something but don't bore the students into a coma.  Timing.  I have no idea how much I can/should pack into 115 minutes.  How much will they talk?  What do I do if they don't talk?  That means *I* have to talk!

Now I have a headache and am definitely freaked out.  The good news is that means I've got nowhere to go but up.  Wish me luck!

Friendship

Friends forever.
Maybe longer.

Big came up to me the other day and said "You were in college 15 years ago?"  After a bit of confusion, we eventually we figured out she'd been looking at my diplomas on the office wall and hadn't been reading my bachelor's.  If she had, the number would have been a bit bigger, which was what threw me off at first.  I'm old.  That thing is practically written on papyrus with an inked quill.

Which made me feel a little nostalgic.  Grateful that I can still remember that many years ago, too.

Do you have any friends dating back that far?  I'll admit that I really don't.  Between my undergraduate and graduate degrees I went to four colleges in four states.  I've also moved four times since finishing that last degree.  They say things come in threes so I wonder what it means that I've got so many "fours" in my life.  Apparently I just need an extra whatever it is in order to get the job done.  But I digress...back to my lack of "knew you from the cradle" friends.  My friends these days are "mommy friends", people I've met through play groups and school and whatnot since moving to my current state while pregnant with Big.

My last custom order, though, was four necklaces for four women who have been friends since college.  One of the ladies ordered them to give as gifts during a girls' weekend back at their alma mater.  I won't give too many specifics (since they're my age!), so as not to be forced to admit that not all of my gray hair has been caused by my children, but I will say that I don't have enough fingers and toes to count all those years.  Besides, if you've managed to retain more brain cells over the years than I have, you can figure a couple of things out from the pictures anyway.

I was given pretty much free reign with these, and the end result was different from my original design.  Better, in my opinion.  And from what I've been told, they went over well.

I love custom orders.  The items I make for the shop still let me be creative, but there's something different about coming up with an idea that's tailored for a specific person, to reflect their personality and history, and then experiencing their reaction to what I've done.   That adds a little extra magic to the process, at least for me.  Next up on the custom order train is a cuff bracelet for my mom.  It'll let me play a bit more with my new favorite toys, a set of stick figure people.  Not today, though...today I'm planning on doing nothing more than making and eating some homemade pizza and enjoying the (hopefully good) commercials in between downs of some pesky football game.  :-)

Once (again) upon a time...

I am many things.  I'm a wife and mother.  I'm a daughter.  I'm a teacher.  I'm a coffee-addicted Type A personality who is also a picky eater and a regular but extremely reluctant exerciser.

What I am apparently NOT is a blogger.  Because if I were, it wouldn't have been so long since my last post.  This almost feels like I'm starting the blog all over again.

As part of my grand Plan for 2015, I'm focusing more on some of the things that I let get away from me last year.  It only took me 27 days to get around to the "blog more" part of that.  I haven't stopped writing 2014 on checks yet, so I'm still ahead of the game in my opinion.

Schools here had a snow day today, a whole 1 1/2 inches on the ground which around here could potentially keep my girls home for a week.  Never let it be said that our schools aren't serious about protecting students in cold, snowy conditions.  A snowflake?  Keep them home, they might get cold waiting for the bus!  So instead my girls stayed home and spent an hour outside making snow angels and freezing their behinds off.  They'd have been warmer and safer in school, if you ask me.  Plus the whole learning thing.  I made them do homework this morning which earned a comment of "grown ups are annoying" from Little.  My response was "yes, that's our job, so apparently I'm doing it well today."

(Note - while I don't necessarily agree with a lot of the calls made by our school board members and occasionally joke about them, I really do respect that their goal is the overall safety of thousands of students throughout the county and it's got to be a tough job...I know certainly wouldn't want that responsibility.)

I got some work done myself while they were playing.  Since I sort of had to sit where I could see them, in case somebody licked the swing set and got their tongue stuck or some such nonsense, I figured I might as well stamp something.  My work bench is out in the garage, but for the winter my husband built me a few goodies that allowed me to move into the family room, from where I have a full view of the yard.  Win-win.

I set myself up with my adorable new stick figure family (thanks to my parents for the amazing holiday gift!) and put this little bracelet together -

Big was glad to see that I stamped her as the "teen girl" instead of the "little girl".  Because she's "a pre-teen now, Mom!" (complete with obnoxious, pre-teen tone when spoken!).  Little doesn't much care either way.  The "little girl" has a bow so it's all good as far as she's concerned.  Oh, and I can't forget a shout out to my in-laws, givers of the amazing font stamps I used for the "MOM" charm.  It was definitely a "jewelry making" sort of holiday for me!

Hope all of you who got more snow than we did are safe and warm.  Those who didn't get any snow (and/or whose kids got to leave the house today!) are welcome to any more of the white stuff that might want to fall here for the rest of the winter...just let me know, and I'll send it your way.  Personally, I'm ready for Spring.  :-)

A Picture is Worth 1,000 Words

You don't take a photograph, you make it.
- Ansel Adams

I've learned lately that there is definitely a difference between "taking" a photograph and "making" one.  The latter requires a lot more work than I ever dreamed.  I've never been a great photographer.  Oh, I've read books like Digital Photograph for Dummies, and even took a half-day hands-on course.  It all went right over my head...terms like depth of focus and white balance and shutter speed went in one ear and out the other.  Things got much better once I embraced my camera-illiteracy.  Compensation comes in the form of a fancy-shmancy DSLR that is decidedly smarter than I am, and on which I rely to make up for my many shortcomings.  For a long time, things were good in picture-land.

That's because with kids, the combo of ignorance and good equipment works pretty well for me.  Big and Little never stand still for pictures anyway.  So the fact that I didn't know an f-stop from a truck stop was never a big problem until I realized that a jewelry business wasn't going to work out too well if I couldn't show my pieces to potential customers.

This was one of my original attempts.  I was all about the backgrounds, and props.  Notice the pinkish white blob in the upper right hand corner - that's the petal of a fairly ugly silk rose.  And the lovely, crinkly purple paper I let Big and Little talk me into (in their defense, it didn't take much convincing...I was thinking my business color scheme, sparkly like fairies, all that jazz).  Would you buy this piece?  I wouldn't, and I 1) made it, and 2) consider it one of my favorites!  But this was the look of my entire Etsy shop when I opened it and I thought I'd done this amazing thing, finally getting everything photographed and cohesive.

After a couple of weeks, during which time I actually managed to sell a couple of items in spite of the photographs, I realized I needed to step up my game.  A lot of Googling tips and tricks helped me decide to simplify things.

Round two turned my dining room table into a photography studio. Immediately I noticed one thing...the background made a difference. Without the deep purple and the sparkly glare, my pieces stood out more.  I still couldn't let go of my prop obsession, which had me painting twigs I scavenged in the yard and using them.   You know, because of that princess in the woods thing (I mean, the company is called Fairietale Designs, after all).  Sleeping Beauty lived in a cottage in the woods, Snow White escaped to them, Merida followed the will o' the wisps through woods, Rapunzel's tower was hidden in the forest.

Well, it sort of made sense and seemed appropriate at the time.  The shop still didn't have that clean, as-close-to-professional as I was going to get look that I wanted, that I saw in so many other shops.  I decided to try again.  This time I used a new approach...clean, simple, outdoors in natural light.  Nothing fancy, just me, my camera, and the jewelry.  What I didn't realize was just how much went into this "simple looking" way of making a picture...the right time of day, knowing where the light was coming from, the dreaded "white balance" (which I'm honestly still faking any true knowledge of!).

This is where I am now.  Perfect? Far from it.  But light years from those original photos!  When I look at my shop, I'm happy with what I see.  It's cohesive.  It's clean.  What jumps out at you is the jewelry, not the colors or the staging or the props.

I'll still never be a pro.  I trash far more pictures then I keep, and I'm grateful if an hour's work yields one or two decent pictures.  But I'm learning.  And as I try to teach my girls, that's what life is all about.  You can teach an old dog new tricks (or, more accurately, the new dog can teach herself as long as she wants to learn).  I hope that Big and Little eventually understand and embrace that idea for themselves.

The Three R's

Reduce, reuse, recycle.

Millions of people switched off their lights on Saturday night (3/29) between 8:30 and 9:30 PM, local time in celebration of Earth Hour.  Organized by the World Wildlife Fund, Earth Hour is a grassroots movement to raise awareness about protecting our planet that started as a small-scale lights out in Sydney, Australia in 2007 and has now grown to include over 150 countries on all seven continents.

While we didn't participate this year, Big and I did take part in Earth Hour 2013.  It was an amazing experience to experience life without electricity, and to sit in the quiet darkness with my daughter.  At first we never thought we'd make it an entire hour, but within just a few minutes we were playing word games and sharing stories, and the time went by so fast she didn't want to turn the lights back on when it was over.  I'm sorry to have been otherwise occupied this year and can't wait until March 28, 2015 to try it again...mark your calendars!

Things like that tend to be Big's idea.  This is a kid I have to hold back from collecting garbage along the side of the road.  On one hand, I so admire her dedication to the planet, but on the other there's the whole germ factor when your 10 year old tries to pick up used cigarette butts.  It's so different from when I was Big and Little's ages, when the three r's were reading, writing, and 'rithmetic.  Now it's all about sustainability and the environment (and Big isn't complaining...she's much more interested in the damage we're doing to our planet than she is in long division or parts of speech that don't involve Mad Libs).

My two most recent projects would make her proud, because both involve recycled/upcycled material.  I'd like to take credit for being green, but let's be honest here.  It's as much about my fledgling business' budget constraints as it is about being kind to Mother Earth.  I can't afford to waste so much as a jump ring if I can help it!

The first project was inspired by a conversation on a Facebook group for jewelry artists that I follow.  There was some talk about good sources for wire, and someone mentioned that they get theirs from, of all places, the hardware store.  Forget craft shops, jewelry-oriented on line sites...who knew that there's treasure to be had in the aisles of Home Depot?  Or, if you're married to my husband (oh, wait, I am...yay!), in the corner of the garage where he collects scrap metal left over from his many projects requiring a "Home Depot run" until there's enough to take to the recycling facility.  He did all of the electrical work for our home addition/renovation himself which means there's lots of odds and ends lying around.

So I scavenged a bit, dug into my stash of blanks for some things to go with it, and this is the end result -

The infinity symbols are made from the upcycled copper, which I formed, hammered, and added patina to for a rustic look.  Did you know you can do that using a hard boiled egg?  I didn't, either, until I started looking on line for ways other than the toxic, icky smelling chemicals I didn't own anyway.  And the sources I found weren't kidding.  A hard boiled egg, a zippered baggie, and voila!

It was quick, easy, inexpensive, non-toxic, and actually sort of therapeutic when I smashed the egg.  Plus I made some extra eggs at the same time for Big and her dad to snack on.  A win all around, I'd say.  I put the antiqued pieces on some copper chain, with hand stamped brass tags for "mother" and "daughter".  

Those were finished and posted to the shop just the other day so it was time to move on.  On Saturday morning, I was itching to start a new project but couldn't get outside to my work bench...I had to drop Big off at her Tae Kwon Do class, then come home to take Little to her Girl Scout activity.  Something I could do at the kitchen table in a narrow window of time was called for.  Then I remembered that I had pieces lying around from a steampunk-inspired necklace I'd made.  The customer who ultimately bought it asked me to re-tool the pendant into something appropriate for a man.  Not my typical target audience, but girls on a budget can't be choosy, right?  A few tweaks here and there, and it transformed from a necklace fit for a modern-day princess to a keychain.

That had left me with the "imagine" plaque lying around (and I won't tell you how many tries it took me to get it right in the first place so I was determined not to waste it!) plus some extra gear pieces from the original package.  A little brainstorming (and a major need to use my riveter!) left me here -

Brass cogs, with recycled copper swirls.  The Swarovski crystal is purple, the color of imagination.  Needs a few tweaks, I think.  I might redo the copper swirls attaching the imagine plaque since the one on the left in the picture shows a tool mark, but that's also part of the charm.  It's perfectly imperfect, all done by hand, and still has possibilities.  What do you think?

Advice from a Dragonfly

Zoom in on your dreams.

For some reason, I have always loved dragonflies.  I can't explain it, but when I see something depicting one, I have to bring it home.  I have wrapped wire dragonflies on one bathroom wall and a dragonfly themed tooth brush holder in another, a candle holder and small plate in the kitchen, hooks for our car keys in the front hall.  My jewelry box holds a pair of earrings, three necklaces, a bracelet, and anklet.  There's a dragonfly on one of my t-shirts and a gorgeous pin on my winter coat (thanks Mom and Dad!).  There are more scattered about, but you get the picture.

Ironically, now that I'm making jewelry aimed at encouraging young girls to dream and succeed, I've finally looked up the symbolism of the dragonfly and found that it represents strength, self-realization, happiness, transformation, peace, harmony and living in the moment.  Basically everything I'm trying to teach my children and, by extension through my jewelry, every girl out there I can reach.

All of which boils down to the fact that I can now justify putting dragonflies on my jewelry.  Yay!

So I just got my fancy-schmancy new dragonfly stamp (thanks so much to The Urban Beader...they have an amazing selection of stamps and it was hard to control myself!).  Now I'm on a tear, stamping this bad boy everywhere I can.  Here are a few pieces in progress that will be hitting the Etsy shop soon.  Heck, I'm so in love with this thing I'm considering having an entire dragonfly-themed section in the shop.  What do you think?

I'm planning on a leather cord for at least one of them, maybe a crystal or pearl dangle on the "dream" one?  The other charm is convex so I doubt one would lay well against it but I can try.  And I have to say that the "Brave/Strong" one was designed by Big...she got hold of my design notebook one day and this is what I found -

I made a couple of changes, as you can see, but overall the idea was hers and I love it.  Could it be that I'm running a future mother/daughter business?  As long as we avoid glue sticks and/or trifold boards we should do just fine!

Happy Spring!  Today finally feels like it's really here (I'm ignoring the forecast for possible snow tomorrow into Monday!).  If you see a dragonfly, may it bring you peace, harmony and joy.

Science: It's a Girl Thing

Girls can do science!  Putting together a tri-fold board presenting your results, on the other hand, is something of a challenge.

- me, last night (and in reality, probably more rudely put than that)

Big has a science project due next week.  She came up with a topic, made hypotheses, came up with a workable procedure, and conducted the experiment itself just fine.  Now it's time to summarize the results, type everything up, and put together the presentation.

This process was accompanied by much growling and complaining and gnashing of teeth.  And that was just me...I'm not sure how Big felt about it.  I assume close to the same since the evening ended with a mess in my living room and a kid who locked herself in her room far, far away from anything resembling either the experiment or her mother.

It's morning now.  Just after 7AM on a Sunday, which is an hour no one should ever have to see, in my humble opinion.  But here I am because my brain didn't get that memo and has been racing all night.  Major thoughts about the science project debacle, minor ones about a custom jewelry order I had all ready to ship out today but decided wasn't quite finished.  So I had to completely unpack it, make the change, and box it all back up.  Shredded packing material is nice and cushy, but gets EVERYWHERE, by the way.

Mission accomplished on the shipment (I like to get the small jobs out of the way so I can focus all of my energy on doing my best worrying about the big ones!) so now I can get back to telling you about last night.

We left off with Big locked in her room.  I was sitting on the living room floor, surrounded by various pieces of paper that somehow had to find their way onto a display board.  The gold standard trifold (the mere mention of which strikes terror in the hearts of most of my mom friends!) was too large for what Big had planned.  She hated having all of that empty white space so we'd tried something different, and basically it backfired.  As the architect of that particular plan, the outcome was obviously all my fault, as was everything else from her hatred of broccoli to the melting of the Polar ice caps.  When I screw up, apparently I don't mess around according to my kid.

Slowly it occurs to me that my child's love of and aptitude for science was being overshadowed by the fact that she fails Glue Stick 101.  A perfectly good experiment about which she'd been completely excited just five minutes prior was in pieces around me because she's can't attach one piece of paper to another piece of paper and make it look pretty.  Really?  Not on my watch.

I'm not proud of it, but what I ended up doing was reprinting the messed up pieces, fixing a few poorly cut and/or glued spots, and laying everything out so that it sort of filled the board.  All Big needed to do was actually glue everything in place.  Which I then went up to her room and told her I would help with in the morning.  Earned me MAJOR mom points, I even got hugs out of the deal.

It's done now.  Looks good, if you ask me.  But more importantly, the science part is solid and she still wants to work in a related field - marine biology - when she grows up.

I'm working on a custom piece right now, a charm necklace celebrating a young lady who, to quote her mom, is "a viola playing fencer who wants to be a malacologist (they study snails) and play with the National Symphony."   I'm having the best time working with that!  Who wants that kind of creativity squelched by a two inch tall tube of glue?  So keep on doing science, and all of those other unique things you do, girls...Mom's got your back when you need it!

Since I'm not even ready to give a sneak peek at that necklace, I'll leave you with another charm I just shipped out (not the one that had me up all night!).  This one shares more of those positive vibes I'm constantly sending my girls' way, hoping they'll sink in via osmosis or something.

Wishing you a day full of dreams, life, hope and love!

You Are My Sunshine To the Moon and Back

There's a party goin' on right here.
A celebration to last throughout the years.

Speaking of celebrations, it seems to be making the rounds on Facebook that this is "National Daughter's Week".  I've never heard of it so I did what any self respecting truth-seeker would do...I Googled it.  While singing Kool & the Gang in my head, something I will now be doing for at least the next few hours.  There's a reason so many weddings and parties end with that song...you take the party with you.  But I digress, as usual.

Google had nothing confirming this "Daughter's Week" business as an official thing.  Which is good when I think about it.  First, I've got enough Mommy Guilt about other issues...I am, after all, about to serve baked potato wedges to the only two children on the planet who don't like french fries (HOW are they mine again?).   I don't need to realize I've been neglectful of my daughters' special "holiday week" on top of that.  Second, why only a week?  Why not a month or a year or a lifetime?  There's supposed to be a starting and stopping point for celebrating those always amazing, often annoying, children of mine?  But what if  I want to do that every.single.day?  Because I do.  The girls would certainly be thrilled to hear that.  When you're their age it's not a REAL celebration unless there's cake, so if I'm celebrating then we get to have one.  Every night.  Right?  Um, yeah, that's not going to happen.

Instead, I avoid the sugar coma and dental bills and celebrate them in my own, non-cake dependent, ways.  The kids see them as just "regular stuff we do" rather than as celebrations, but to me each of them is worth treasuring.  We read stories at bedtime and go on weekend "working breakfasts" at Wegmans (world's best grocery store, for those of you not lucky enough to have one where you live) where we catch up on reading and homework and each other's lives while we nibble.  I put notes in their lunches on big test days or other special occasions and sneak kisses and hugs whenever I can manage.  Big, especially, is in a major "NO KISSES!" phase but if I ask nicely she might deign to allow me to fake it.  Both of them took fifth birthday trips to Disney World with me.  We do breakfast for dinner when their Dad is out of town, have tea parties on weekends, and flash each other the ASL sign for "I Love You" across crowded rooms.  Big is "my sunshine" and I love Little "to the moon and back", songs and books and sentiments that go back to when each of them was an infant and have lasted ever since in our day-to-day lives.

Developing all of those little traditions that help define my relationships with my girls has made me realize that my parents did the same in their own ways, way back when.  We had Wednesday dinners out as soon as my dad got home from work (ahhh, I miss the York Steak House!), Dairy Queen sundaes on hot summer nights, the annual vacation to Disney World.  Does anybody else remember E-ticket attractions?  I never thought of those as rituals that made four people a family but that's exactly what they were.  I'm constantly amazed at how much I learn about being a daughter the longer I spend being a mother.

In honor of National Daughter's Lifetime, which is a holiday I can get behind, here's a little something inspired by my girls, an aluminum crescent moon riveted to a brass cog and hand stamped "To the Moon & Back" -

A "You Are My Sunshine" pendant is tops on the to-do list, and I've got an ASL "I Love You" stamp that has definite possibilities, too.  Just so that they never, ever forget they've always got a cheerleader named Mom in their corner.  Even if she does serve them glorified french fries with dinner.

Girl Power

I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge.

I guess I've developed a habit of starting my blog posts with a quote.  Not shocking to those who know me.  I've been collecting quotes, mostly about love, for years.  I'm a life-long reader (I learned when I was three, and my third grade teacher told me once that I was the only student she'd ever had to ask to *stop* reading!).  My bachelor's degree is in English with a focus on 19th Century British Literature.   When you think about it, not only the quote business but the whole interest in love and gender issues definitely tie in to my background.  Makes sense that one of my passions would be empowering young women to start with loving themselves, and to break some of the gender issues that have faced them throughout history.  To put it simply..."Girl Power"!

It's coming soon to the Etsy store!

Anyway, getting back to the quote I used to introduce this post.  It's from the book All I Really Need To Know I Learned in Kindergarten by Robert Fulghum.  And I think it's so true!  Fulghum reminds us that when we were back in that sandbox, it wasn't all fun and games.  We learned some important stuff while we built castles and pushed around dump trucks, things like share everything, say you're sorry when you hurt someone, be aware of wonder, live a balanced life - learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.

Those lessons apply just as much when you're 60 as when you're 6.  I love the idea of reminding our kids about these basic ideas, keeping them part of their lives as they grow up.  It seems that so many adults I've come across have forgotten the simplest ways to be happy and live that balanced life.  I'll admit right up front that I'm one of them.  I mean, Fulghum reminds us to take a nap every afternoon...where did that one go????  Got to get some of that back on my daily to-do list!  Maybe I should make a pendant reminding us all to take the occasional time out (does anybody else call it that when they lock themselves in the bathroom to escape the kids long enough to take a deep breath?  Does anybody else ever lock themselves in the bathroom, or is that just me?).

If a piece of jewelry that I make reminds just one girl to remember those things, to feel loved and brave and strong and happy, then that's all I need.  I'll consider my "little business" a huge success.   My own bit of Girl Power!

Love and Bravery

A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave.

- Mahatma Gandhi

The bravest person I know lives next door to me.  You wouldn't think it to look at her.  She's a petite, well-mannered, white-haired mother of five, grandmother of twelve, who walks with a cane and has a soft-spot for Starbucks.

Long story short (since it's not really my tale to tell), she's quietly and with great strength been battling cancer for the past few years.  At this point, her doctors say there's little they can do.  They might be able to give her a little more time with treatment, but she wants her remaining time with friends and family to be quality rather than quantity.  And there's that "prerogative of the brave"...she loves those around her enough that she can face the end bravely if it means having even that little bit of time with them.  Let me tell you, from the traffic in and out of her driveway these days, they love her back in equal measure.  Her children and grandchildren are taking time out of their own lives to visit her in droves.

It works the other way, too.  Not only does love make us brave, but we must be brave in order to love.  Because loving someone puts us in a position to get hurt.  We become invested, and face the very real possibility of losing that person.  My children are in this position right now although they don't know it.  My neighbor and her husband have nicknames; they are my daughters' "next door Nana and Pop Pop".  The girls have no idea that she's sick (they think nothing of her greeting them at the door in her pajamas at lunchtime; pajama day is something to aspire to among the elementary school set) .  At some point I'm going to have to explain, and I have no idea how.  It will be the first time their little lives have been touched by the death of someone they love.

But for right now, I'm trying to focus on the positive.  I'm trying to learn from her grace and bravery and love.  Appropriate given that it was just Valentine's Day.  Despite everything else she is facing, she had the usual bag of goodies for each of my girls.  There hasn't been a holiday or birthday in the four years we've lived next door to them that she's missed.  We brought them gifts, as well.  Chocolate heart-shaped cookies with icing and sprinkles for Pop Pop, who is also known as "the Cookie Monster", and a little something special for Nana...

It's a textured copper circle stamped NANA with two rosebuds.  Twelve pewter bali beads represent her twelve grandchildren.  When I made it, I wanted to honor the garden that this amazing woman had grown and cultivated with such love for so many years.  She cried when I explained that.

She convinces me every day that Ghandi was right; bravery is intertwined with love.  It's a lesson I hope I've learned, and that I am determined to teach my daughters.  May they grow to have that much grace and strength every day of their lives.  Let them be brave enough to love, and love enough that it gives them bravery.

Deer in the Yard!

Walking in a winter wonderland...

At least, that's what two deer were doing in my yard at 12:30 this morning.  I, personally, will not be walking anywhere any time soon.  Stuck a ruler in the snow on my front porch...we're at 10 inches so far and it's still falling.

This is the view out my back door right now (or, more accurately, after I had to rush to deactivate the alarm because I forgot to turn it off *before* I opened the door!) -

      


Beautiful.  Peaceful.  Truly a winter wonderland.  You can't see them in either of those shots, but the tracks left by those early morning visiting deer are visible in the back corner of the yard as a reminder that nature survives and continues on.

And then the deer put their little deer lips down to the cool clear water...BAM!

Let's not forget, deep down I am and forever will be a Jersey girl, often accused of having a New York-strength accent.  I've got no problem channeling my inner Mona Lisa Vito (and if you don't understand that reference, get yourself a copy of My Cousin Vinny and watch it RIGHT NOW!  Or as soon as you get shoveled out.).

What a snow day really means to me is two kids who originally cheered about no school but still have homework to finish, who will have cabin fever by lunchtime, and who will eventually realize that they have to make this up in June when they'd rather be on summer vacation.  It means digging out the car and shoveling the driveway, which is probably not what my physical therapists had in mind when they discharged me with orders to "ease into" activities "in moderation".  It means freezing all day because I'm always cold anyway, and I live in a house with a heat pump that's great in moderately cold weather but starts failing miserably below about 20 degrees F.

How does all of this relate to jewelry, you ask?  Because fortunately, I just received a new supply order consisting of a much-coveted pair of stepped-nose pliers and these -

Copper, aluminum and brass petals.  You combine these with my new riveter (amazing tool!) and you end up with flowers.  So that's how I plan to deal with this winter weather.  I'm going to start planting a Springtime garden in jewelry.  That will keep me wishing and dreaming and feeling strong today, which is what I'd like the result of my jewelry making to be for people.



Hope everyone out there stays warm and finds something to bring them happiness today.  For me, that's going to be wishes for warmth and sun and growing things.

Throwing like a girl.

Fight like a girl!

A friend from high school used to tell me I "threw like a girl".  My response was "sounds good to me, since I am a girl!"  Besides, why is throwing like a girl a bad thing?

My last post got me thinking about that, and a few other things as well.  One was the fact that I'd mentioned not being sure why I tried jewelry making as a hobby, other than that it seemed like a good idea at the time.  But looking back more closely I've remembered that's not entirely true.

The process started a little over a year and a half ago, with my older daughter.  When people ask what her hobbies are, they're often surprised to hear that Tae Kwon Do is up there at the top of the list.  They're even more surprised to find out that she's a first degree black belt.  Yep, she could take me down in five seconds or less if she wanted to...makes me think twice before asking her to take out the garbage or do some other icky chore.  :-)

Here she is at black belt graduation.  Not the greatest picture, I know.  But hugely important to me.  She's bowing in respect to a fellow student, the pair having just sparred for two minutes.  She'd probably use some of those skills on me if she found out that 1) I'd posted her picture here, and/or 2) I mentioned that her opponent (who was a good six inches taller and two+ years older) knocked her on her butt twice.  I was never so proud as when my kid stood right up each time and got back into it.  She held her own.

This is a kid who, in general, is the shy, quiet type  She rarely calls attention to herself if she can help it.  Put her in the dojang, though, and she's a different person.  I wanted to recognize that when she graduated to her black belt by getting her a necklace listing the five tenets of Tae Kwon Do:  courtesy, integrity, perseverance, self-control, indomitable spirit.  All of the qualities that were emerging in her as a result of her participation in martial arts.  But I couldn't find anything like what I wanted out in the marketplace.  I even contacted a few jewelry vendors asking about custom work.  While their initial response was "What a great idea!", in the end nobody ever followed through with a workable design.  I ended up giving my daughter a collage of photos from her various colored belt graduations, and making her a photo book of the black belt graduation afterward.  She loved them, but as she approached the time when she'd be ready to start preparing for graduation to second degree black belt, I still wanted that necklace.  I decided I had plenty of time, so I'd try to make it myself.  I ordered a stamped metal starter kit and had at it.

Stamping turned out to be more fun than I'd thought, and I ended up making a lot of other things.  Initial necklaces for my cousins, charms for my girls in the shapes of their favorite animals and accented with their birthstones, bracelets for my mom.  And I enjoyed every minute of it.  So much so that I gave myself a rotator cuff injury before Christmas, from repetitive motion (in other words, too much hammering!) trying to finish up a bunch of projects.  The bad news is that I haven't been able to make many new pieces since then.  The good news is that I graduate from physical therapy next Friday and get the go ahead to work as long as I'm careful and don't over-do.  That means just over a week until the jewelry-making will be gearing up.  Hooray!

Every dream begins with a single wish.

Every dream begins with a single wish.

When I was growing up, it seemed like all the girls I know (yep, even me!) wished to be Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty.  Someday, our Prince would come and give us a kiss of true love.

I'm a stay at home mom to two amazing girls.  Their heroines are Mulan, Merida, Rapunzel, and Elsa.  Modern-day princesses who are strong, and brave, and self-saving.  And my dreams for them starts with the wish that they, too, will have such determination and independence.

That independence has been showing a lot more these days, as the girls need me for less and less.  It's a double-edged sword.  On one hand, I'm sad that my babies are growing up and can do so much more for themselves.  On the other hand, I'm so proud of their strength and the fact that they're becoming these amazing young women.

They're still young, though, and I need to find that balance between providing both roots and wings.  I started to think about finding a new way to teach not only my own girls, but maybe others as well, that they *can* be self-sufficient.  That they should continue to have faith in themselves and believe in the power of their dreams.

And, of course, now that I've got this extra free time on my  hands, having a hobby I enjoyed wouldn't hurt.

So I decided to make a few pieces of jewelry for fun.  Don't ask me why I settled on that, it just seemed like a good idea at the time.  I ordered a stamped metal starter kit and things just kind of went from there.  My first piece sort of summarized what was driving me -

That was about six months ago.  A lot has changed since then and my little hobby has taken on a life of it's own.  Landed me in physical therapy, too, but those are stories for another time.  That's why I decided to start this blog...to have a place to talk about the evolution of a dream (if only so that some day, my girls can read it), find a place to share some ideas, and make sense of what my ultimate goals really are.   I can't wait to see where it leads me.