beading: natural

This is one of my favorite "go to" jewelry sets. It is casual, chic, super light weight and can be worn with black and brown. I created it out of natural wooden beads in varying sizes, swarovski crystal rounds in light colorado topaz, black seed beads strung on .019 diameter soft flex beading wire in original steel tone and finished the design with a simple hook & eye clasp and ear wires.

kids art: pumpkin pals

Ethan and Hudson's completed pumpkin pals

To celebrate the season, I hosted a Pumpkin Pals Playdate with the East Valley Hip Mamas Meetup group. Just in time for Halloween, the kiddos (ages 2-5 years old) decorated their own pumpkins. EVHM provided all the art supplies for this event, including a pumpkin for each child. Since this event was around dinner time, we had a Pumpkin/orange themed potluck dinner and the goodies were cheese dip and chips, orange chicken and rice, homemade mac and cheese, pumpkin muffins and pumpkin cookies.

Hudson is in the zone.

Ethan contemplating what to paint on his pumpkin.

All 8 kids' pumpkin pals lined up to dry.

why i love to paint

Hudson painting at the Children's Museum of Phoenix

i love to paint because ...

• it makes me smile from the inside out
• i am at peace during and after creative expression
  
• i am able to create freely without the notion of "am i doing it right" that i feel in other mediums
  
• brush strokes, layering and color mixing are meditative and relive stress for me
  
• a finished piece evokes fond memories of the creative process, accomplishment and joy

beading: pendant gifts

This past weekend I met up with 3 of my favorite ladies: Erica, Laraine and Suzan. We are friends from high school who all turn 30 this year and decided to celebrate together in West Palm Beach, Florida. It is amazing that we have kept in touch all these years and even though we all live apart and don't talk to one another often enough it's like we haven't skipped a beat when we are together. I feel blessed to have them in my life. Erica was our hostess with the mostess and we had a fabulous weekend staying with her, Steve and of course Bella. I wanted to give these important women in my life a special gift. I picked out one of my original paintings turned resin pendant for each of them and then beaded a necklace to match the pendant design. Above is a photo of us on Saturday night all wearing our necklaces! (Laraine, Suzan, me and Erica) Check out each necklace below:

Erica's moon & stars necklace, as teenagers Erica was way into astrological designs so, choosing this pendant for her was a no-brainer.

Laraine's 3 daisies necklace, a long time ago I sent photos of my paintings to friends and family and Laraine commented on how much she liked this one so, I knew this pendant had to be hers.

Suzan's sunflower necklace, Suzan is a strong woman who is a lot of fun and this painting expresses that with its bold colors and sunflowers, which in and of themselves are cheerful so, this pedant was a natural choice for her.

Thanks for all the fun times in the past, present and future. I love you ladies!

beading: peach pearls

I purchased a beautiful strand of peach mother of pearl beads from Soft Flex Company's booth and the Glass Art & Bead Festival in Sonoma and lucky for you these can also be found online - 14mm peach mother of pearl rounds. Pearls are organic gemstones. They are formed when a foreign body becomes trapped inside of the shell of a mollusk. The pearl is a symbol of feminine wisdom, purity, and spiritual transformation.

I designed this bubbly necklace with 14mm pearls, small pearls as spacer beads, 3 swarovski cube beads in 2 sizes as the focal point, strung it on soft flex .019 beading wire wire and finished it off with a sterling silver 1 strand clasp.

beading: artistic stone

I based this beading creation off my good friend, Sara Hardin's free project idea featured on Soft Flex Company's web site. I made the design my own by choosing a different shape of artistic stone beads, using black accent beads instead of brown, and stringing with soft flex sterling silver extreme 925 flex .019 beading wire instead of soft flex beading wire in butterscotch and finish both the necklace & bracelet off with a sterling silver toggle clasp. This was one of my favorite designs to create and is so much fun to wear. Thanks for providing the inspiration, Sara!

sending love & support

Julie, a friend from my East Valley Hip Mamas Meetup Group, invited us over to her home for a wonderful event. She belongs to a Navy Moms online support group and found out about this website where you can "adopt" a serviceman / woman. There are many men and women who are deployed overseas and are living without many things that we take for granted. Last Friday, we put together care packages to send overseas.

Julie had group members drop things off at her home before the date and the 6 of us that got together to put the packages together all brought donations. We packaged up 12 boxes with food, tea, hot chocolate, condiments, toiletries, magazines, blank greeting cards, books, DVD's and beanie babies (soldiers carry these to give to children they meet while deployed). It was awesome. I am so happy to have helped. Thanks to Julie for getting this together and for all those in the EVHM group who donated time, items & money for postage!

obama mama

our anniversary

Yesterday, was our 7 year wedding anniversary. We spent the day as we do most days, working at home together. Our kids were with Nannie who agreed to keep the kids for dinner so, Bert & I could go out. That is a huge treat these days. We tried to go to an indian restaurant but found they were closed on m,ondays so, we instead went to an irish pub in downtown tempe called Rula Bula. We had been there a few times before years ago. The weather was nice so we sat outside in the courtyard and enjoyed each others company and some fabulous homemade fish & chips and for dessert, irish bread ice cream which was heavenly. Bert & I realized yesterday that we in fact spend on average 23 hours together every day! How sweet it is to be loved by you :)

homemade jam

Here's my second batch of jam. 2 weeks ago I made blueberry & today I made strawberry. I don't know how the strawberry tastes yet but, the blueberry was fabulous! I think it could use a little less sugar so I'm going to try the sugar free pectin next time and see if that helps tone it down just a bit. I used the freezer jam method and love it. It was super easy and because you don't cook the fruit it retains its natural vitamins. It feels great to have homemade jam made with fresh fruit and no added junk in it plus, it was fraction of the cost of gourmet jams. My kids inspired me to try making jam due to the sheer amount of pb&j's they eat!