little something something for etsy

i was working on a sewing project today for an artfiberfest charm swap and had a brain freeze!!

i am always on the hunt for something to hold my starbucks card in my purse, since i use it everyday, so i came up with a little fabric holder that will hold a few bills, id and a starbucks card or credit card....so anyway, i made up 5 of them..

~hope you like !!!~

tuesday news

we are back home from our trip to seattle and what a trip it was! i will update everyone later this week..

i wanted to tell you all about something that happened on saturday while we were gone....my daughter and her boyfriend loaded up our dogs and took them all to the dogpark, they were there until dusk and when they were leaving, they noticed that there was still one dog left and no owner around! so my daughter called me in tears, which made me cry(shocking! i know) and she didnt know what to do, i said what can you do but load him in the suburban and take him home too..so she did!! he is the sweetest boy, neutered, nice teeth, long toenails which he let heather trim and a coarse coat....he went with het to the animal hospital today and he is on some meds for his itchy skin as he has been rubbing his face and self on the carpet. the vet also think he is an older dog...he just lays around and sleeps and doesnt move from hets side of the bed at bedtime..

here is my beef~why would someone dump their dog, it just makes me soooooooooooo ANGRY! probably because they knew a tenderheart like my daughter would take care of him...ugh!! it just angers me, but in the same thought i am sooooooooooooo GLAD she was there to rescue him!! look at his sweet face..we named him parker,

since he was found at the park.....

xoxox

i love this sweet boy...

another road trip by air~

i write this post with a knot in my stomach and an ache in my heart...we are leaving thursday morning for seattle to have a test drive of the city....julie is being asked to take a job in seattle with her current company..she is perfect for the job as she does her job extremely well and it is not that i am biased but i used to work at this company and have seen her in action, she is amazing in her job..anyway, of course i do not want to move it is far, far away from my family, it is far from my chicago gals, etc...i feel we are centrally located here in ohio, and just a drive away from many things...i know i am being totally selfish but it will not be my call, it will be julies especially since i am still jobless...so we will give it a whirl and take a look see..we will arrive thursday and drive to port townsend to send the day at our favorite B&B and see old friends and the bead store...then friday back to seattle to hangout with our faerie friend~dji, she will show us around seattle..of course we had to see where the closest starbucks was in relation to our hotel and get this..there are 163 starbucks within a 5mile radius of our hotel, is that crazy!!!! there are 65 with a 2mile radius...well we are in the hometown of starbucks......so i will be gone until monday but we are taking the laptop and i probably will post some things as i cannot be gone that long...

so ciao for now...

xoxox

not a good day!

you wouldnt think these sweet faces are the faces of destruction, would you??

i have been trying to let ruby and nelly stay out of their cages during the day, well

that hasnt been going to well..i am at my wits end today and am spitting mad at these three!!
isnt this a fine mess those three did??? today, i left to go to starbucks and hobby lobby, i was gone maybe 2hrs max, well they found the paper towels rolls from costco and decided to shred them, so the dining room was littered with paper towels, needless to say, ruby and nelly spent the rest of their day in their cages..and biggie hid ..i am still pretty livid about the whole thing and we are thinking about taking in a 1 1/2 yr old great dane...i am really nuts!!!

weekend recap~

seriously busy this weekend!! friday night, we went to a friends home for a cookout and ended up staying until 2AM!!! he works with julie and is one of the happy hourclub originals...had a blast sitting around the fire pit just talking ....

saturday we celebrated the august birthdays at my cousin~sissy's home...it was a gasssssssss! her sister~jen is back into the state, her hubby is in the airforce and they move around alot and we are ecstatic that they are back in ohio, their brother~jason and his family were there also, my niece ~sam basically watched all the kids in the pool which was so great for the adults we all sat around poolside and talked and ate and i so love to be around my cousins~sissy & jen, they are much more than cousins, we are more like sisters, seriously!!!!!

as our her brothers like my brothers, we all grew up together and lived around the corner from each other......... when heather was born they were so protective of her and really still are to this day!!!

sunday~today we were at the steak fry, this is my uncle's event that his club has every year in august...all the steak, tomatoes and corn on the cob you can eat!!!! yummy!!!

here is our group at the steak fry from the left: julies mom, julie, my cousin jason, his sister sissy, me and finally my sweet mom.....

we are big board game people~mostly scrabble who jasons usually ins, but recently we are so heavy into dominoes....it was a perfect ending to a wonderful weekend..i so love hanging out with my cousins at their home, it remeinds me so much of my grandmas home(my moms mom), my cousins mom is my moms sister and my cousins dad is my dads brother(got all that)..anyway, all in all i had a groovy weekend...................hope you all did too!!!

xoxo

life in the front beds...

okay, i couldnt wait until tomorrow to post this, julie and i were out in the front weeding tonight and cleaning up the flower beds..we have been gone most weekends this summer and the weeds are out of control..embarassingly out of control..anyway, i was cleaning out around my hydrangeas and lo and behold there was an amazing praying mantis right on the hydrangea bush..i squealed with delight as i havent seen one in ages..so i yelled for julie to get the camera ..the mantis was watching me watch him and moving his head like he was trying to figure out what i was doing, it was very cool..here are the pictures..........

a night in the er..

well, we went to the ER last night with my daughter, she is still feeling like crap and getting no answers...this time she received a triple CT scan, another pelvic exam and a blood draw...the CT scan came back clear, so that was a little frustrating as we were hoping for some answers to her mystery pain....so now after reviewing the results from the ER, our family doc is setting up an appointment with an gastro doc, family doc is leaning toward irritable bowel syndrome...no one in our family has ever had anything like what my daughter is experiencing.....sooooooooooooooooooooo, i will keep you all informed..this picture is my most favorite picture of my daughter~heather and my niece~olivia..this picture sits on the fireplace mantle..oh, how quick life flies by.....i wanted to share this with you as my eyes get all teary, whenever i go to the doctor with heather or she isnt feeling she always asks to hold my hand and that just melts me....if you ever get a chance read the book called i'll love you forever by robert munsch, it is a childrens book, but it is a treasure and i cannot get through it without tearing up(shocking, just call me the weeping willow..)read it if you can..okay need some tissues...good gawd, get a grip girl.....

xoxox

blog banner faerie was here!

okay, what do you think about my new blog banner, i ADORE it!! that talented heather bluhm aka the blog banner faerie was at it again...i had asked her to create something new, not that i didnt love my old(she created that also) but just wanted a new look and she told me she was just messing around with stuff and that it was just

something simple.....it is GORGEOUS in my best singing voice!! if you need something spectacular, give heather a LOOK SEE!!! i swear you will not be disappointed!!! vintage buttons

are the best, i love to hold them in my hand especially the ones that still have the threads attached, i just wonder where they have come from and how they ended up separated from their article of clothing and into my hands....someday i will share how i house all my buttons that i have collected.......

okay, i just picked up this book called Stories in Stone by Douglas Keister.. it is a field guide to cemetery symbolism and iconography...it has all the hidden meanings depicted on cemetery monuments and shows lots of pictures..it is very cool and since i have been visiting many this summer, i had to have it!!!well, that is all for now...goodnight everyone...

xoxox

a new week....

had a couple of visitors stop by good manor for a visit..this beautiful little butterfly or moth got stuck on the sun porch and before i set her into the blue sky, i asked her if i could take her picture and of course she said yes!!!

when we opened up the pond for the summer, i was so worried that my frog friends werent going

to be taking up residence for the summer, well, they have been here it looks like as they are big so they must have been hiding amongst the rocks....

i have been lazy today and havent done a darn thing except go to starbucks and the grocery..

so hopefully tomorrow i will be more energetic..take care sweet people, see you tomorrow....

xoxox

home again, home again, jiggety jig~

well, we are home again, thank goodness it doesnt take that long to drive home!!

yesterday, i had every intention of going to the beaches after making a few stops but i never made it there..instead i was captivated by 2 old cemeteries and the next thing i know it is 6pm and time to head back to the hotel...the first one is the erie cemetery built in 1850 ....

the second one is called trinity catholic cemetery..this one had some of the most gorgeous monuments..i think this one was my favorite..i will now leave you with some pictures of my visits....time to feed the pooches!!

look at this hawk just sitting on the head stone..how lucky was i to get this shot!!!

ps...my daughter is hopefully on the mend, it looks like she has a severe infection in the female area, so her gyn double dosed her on antibiotics on friday..keep your fingers crossed that this is the root of her pain!!! and thank~you all for all the kind words, it really means alot to me!!

xoxox

another weekend road trip~

this weekend we are off to meadville, pa, home of allegheny college..this is where julie spent her college years and this weekend is the women's athletic sport reunion of sorts....i guess that is what you would call it..anyway, they will be doing sporty things on saturday, while i hunt down some coffee shops and browse through some thrift stores and then off to the beach at presque isle state park which has like 11 beaches....just waiting for me to find little treasures at each one....so i will report back STAT if anything cool happens as i will have the laptop with me..otherwise see you on monday.................so i leave you with some shots of presque isle..

tomorrows procedure...

some of you know that my daughter has been having flu-like symptoms for about a month now...she has been to the doctor, the gyn, the ER and she still is feeling bad! so tomorrow morning she is going to have a EGD or Esophagogastroduodenoscopy (EGD) with biopsy, also known as upper endoscopy, is a procedure usually performed by a gastroenterologist (GI or intestinal doctor). This test involves passing an endoscope, a long, flexible black tube with a light and video camera on one end, through the mouth to examine the esophagus, stomach and the first part of the small intestine called the duodenum.

she is so not excited at all about having this procedure as she doesnt want to have any anesthesia as she has never experienced going to sleep...so she is staying over tonight and tomorrow night just so i can make sure nothing weird happens..it is strange that no one can find anything wrong, i think it is an ulcer, but none of our family has ever had ulcer..last november after a trip to the ER-we found out she had kidney stones..>>> the only good thing out of this whole thing is she still needs her mommy and i so love that....so i will keep everyone posted ........

since she is sleeping then next few days, she brought one of her pups~her name is honey and she is 8months old and is of course a rescue!..we know she is part pit bull which quite frankly scares me a little but doesnt bother my daughter at all, but she is so tiny compared to all our dogs and she is so so sweet and will not leave me alone....she is almost ghost like in her appearance but has a honey cast to her....

i do love honeys face.....

ruth rae & kelly snelling*

last thursday & friday, i had the pleasure of spending time with one of my favorite jewelry artists and fellow blogger~ruth rae. she and her co-hort~kelly snelling were in cincinnati for a week putting together the how-to pictures for their upcoming fabulous book~a charming exchange...here is the front cover

i drove down thursday night and had a great dinner at a place called TRIO, my wonderful friend~shara was also there as i cannot go to cincinnati withoutgiving her a call..she is a elementary school art teacher and a brilliant mixed media artist....anyway, we had a great time eating and drinking martinis and of course talking about everything!!!!! kelly had
a bee in her bonnet to see the well known cemetery~spring grove, right in cincinnati, so we drove over and it was closed..well, i wasnt about to disappoint her, since who knows when she would ever get back to ohio, even though she is from kentucky and has this great accent and she is so matter of fact, i love her! anyhoo, i told them i would drive back down and we could go, so that is what i did and it was FRICKIN' awesome!! to say the least.....spring grove built in 1845 is the 2nd largest cemetery in the United States and is spread out on 733 acres, people 733 acres it was amazing and we didnt even see a fourth of it..it is also an arboretum and there are beautiful old trees of amazing variety..now lets talk about the cemetery markers~WOW!!! ...below is a sampling of a few of the pictures were snapped...

these 2pictures were obviously from a life long eagle scout, the eagle is perched atop
a tall obelisk and the owl is at the bottom..very cool....
this statue of the headless woman was vandalized..so sad and such a stupid act!celtic design on a cross monumentthis is a huge statue that had a beautiful patina on it, i am assuming it is bronze underneath the patina but if you look closely between the folds of her toga, there are a couple of wasp nests and between her feet under the toga rests another wasp nest.....not too many wasps were home but enough for us not to bother them to much!!when it was time to go and we were driving out of the cemetery, we came up this beautiful church-like mausoleum, it looked like a small, small version of notre dame in paris, anyway it is magnificent. it looked like the bottom of the structure held the crypts and if you look at the last picture behind julie & ruth, the crypts are behind the metal gate. i am thinking that when family came they could reflect in the church above..i do not know but of course will just find out next visit, which will probably be next month..i cannot believe that i have live in ohio all my life and never knew this beautiful cemetery was ever here..it really is a magnificent place and if you get the chance , go visit!!

from left to right: julie, ruth, shara, kelly and me sitting on the step............

more for etsy~ & a new necklace for me!

a new necklace i worked on today..it is so humid today, no reason to go out except to the postal office and starbucks....

this pendant is from stephanie lee, bought this at artfest 2007 at vendors night...

the picture in the pendant is actually of the officers housing at ft. worden

the speckled beads are ocean jasper purchased in chicago

please take a look at some goodies i just added to my etsy shoppe...
and as always, thank~you so much for stopping by....

!
xoxo~kim