Chloe's dream come true

Chloe has begged me for years to have her ears pierced. I've been saying that she can when I feel she was responsible enough to take care of them herself and be diligent about cleaning,etc without me staying on her about it.

(But if I have to admit it: part of me wouldn't let her do it younger than I did-weird? Maybe...but I can live with that)

waiting......

After the first one.....


I love the continuous shutter on my camera
Click*click*click

She did SO much better than I expected. Only made a couple funny faces and that was it.

No tears-yea!

Some pretty little cz chips to show for her bravery. And at Target today she beelined it for the earring section and found a cute Christmas set for next year-her first danglies. Teeny little jingle bells and snowflakes. (and on clearance now dontchaknow) ;)

Merry Christmas

From our home to yours

image from here

Floridians in the cold

I mentioned before that Trav's aunt and uncle came to visit for the week leading up to Thanksgiving. Well, the week or 2 leading up to their visit not only did the 24 hour flu hit our house but headcolds did as well. Which to an asthmatic mom and 4 yr old it hit us the hardest and ended badly for moi seeing as I had an adverse reaction to an antibiotic I'd never been on before.

* That makes Thanksgiving F.U.N. when you can hardly eat or stand up straight d/t the pain...

Anyyyhow...I am finally feeling pretty darn good and will end up having to backtrack a bit to get all caught up.

They got lucky the day we chose to hit Abe Lincoln's home and walk around downtown it was a record high of over 70 that day. Not too shabby for Illinois at Thanksgiving.

{we're paying for it now!}

No, I don't let my kids run the streets...the neighborhood is blockaded.

Chloe and Bernie outside of Lincoln's home.

Lincoln's home. I don't think I'd been there since a 5th grade field trip.

I had to take a picture of the kitchen inside the house. Amazing how different things are now.

The fence outside. Had to get a few shots of the kids out there.



It was really so pretty out! if only the sun would have peeked out for a bit.

Too bad our last name isn't Robinson!

This was Lincoln's neighbor I guess.

Reflection on the walk downtown. I regret not getting the whole group in it now :(

{Maybe I couldn't think because I was lugging 40 extra lbs on my hip at the time...}

Down by the old state capital there are these bronze statues of Lincoln and his family. The kids are forever posing and wanting photos each time we go by there so they can see themselves growing against the statues...

The plan was to hit the Feed Store for lunch but sadly, they were closed :(

Bummer-love that place!

We ended up at Cafe' Moxo-a first time for me.

Note to self: don't go to a downtown cafe' on a Saturday right before they close-they'll be out of everything you try to order-lol.

Those were the best chocolate chip cookies though!

More photos tomorrow...

Scenes from an open house

This past Friday I held my (1st annual?) jewelry open house.

I was surprised at how many people came and found multiple Christmas gifts!

I decided to try an "island" formation to walk around. I'm not sure if I'm sold on that idea now... It felt like I had much less than when I'm set up how I am at art fairs...But it worked. I may tweak that in the future though.

A few different views...

All of my rooms got the switcharoo. The dining table moved to the emptied playroom. Photo taken before all of the wine came out ;)


Can you see a little hand resting on the corner of the table just waiting to snatch another cookie?

I decided to try something a little different and "group" like things together.
I usually just use the earrings stands as filler in gap areas but was told at the last show people didn't notice them as much. I grouped these and just as I suspected: they look like little gravestones all lined up-LOL.
(at least to me they do)



A few necklaces....

I worked alot this fall with heat treated copper and loved the results. I made quite a few copper pieces and they flew out of here. This was all I had left at the end of the evening. With silver prices at a crazy high right now I think working more with mixed metals is in my immediate future.

I want to thank each of you who came that night. You made the evening a success and made me happy to see so many friendly faces in our home :)

Thank you *Thank you *Thank you!