a good time was had by all.......

we did a very untraditional Christmas eve  this year, since my daughter was working, and couldn't be with us, my hubby desided we would go to the casino to play a bit and have the sea food  buffett, he gave me and our son each a hundred dollars to play on, but mine didn't go very far, it just wasn't my day to win.  But my son did really well, he won a  950.00 jackpot! I was really happy for him, since he doesn't have a job yet, this will keep him going for a while,  my hubby did ok too, leaving a few hundred dollars over what he started with!  Dinner was wonderful, this place has the best buffett food I have ever had, the sea food is so fresh and yummy, salmom done about six different ways, the same with shrimp,  oysters on the half shell, and pan fried, mussels, steamed clams and fried ones, crawfish cajun style several different types of crab legs......prime rib, and rib eye steak, and a desert bar to die for......
   I did a traditional Christmas dinner, and it was so nice to have both kids home to share it with, its been a very long time since we have had Christmas as a whole family
  My daughter works for a very up scale grocery store, so she bought my christmas gift with a  gift certificate she got from her work, a big basket of gourmet goodies, including some Belgian fruit beers in bottles that look like small champagne bottles, they even had corks in the bottles, under neath the  metal caps......I has one with dinner tonight is was Pomme Lambic,(apple beer) it was so good, it was amazing, can't wait to try the other two .......one is peach and the other raspberry........its cool getting to try things I would never other wise try because of the expense, she got to use her employee discount on top of using her gift card so it didn't cost her anything, and it was a very nice gift!  And she was very happy with her goodies as well, she had hinted she was wanting a toaster oven, so that was her main gift, then I shopped all year long looking for small goodies I thought she would like, and also made her some  jewelery (some thing she just expects) I think her favorite was a pair of earrings I made from some poly clay kitties like the figurines you see in chinese  restraunts, she has commented  that she would like a figurine the last time we took my dad out for dinner.........so I thought she would like them, and she did

Christmas came early at my house!

A few weeks ago Juli from Julsbeads ran a special, limited to the first five people to respond, if I remember correctly it was 30% off of her skills on the torch for one day..........well I responded in time to be #2, and these beautiful beads are the result..........I haven't made up my mind which are my favorite, the funky little birds remind me of the birds depicted by the northwest native americans in their totem poles and the like.....
And the cross focal is destined to belong to my sister inlaw, if I can part with it.......it just looks like something she would love to wear, and the tabular focal and accent beads on the right hand side are just so beautiful, I think they will be mine fore sure.........looks like I am in for some fun times beading real soon!
   I had a suprise yesterday, I got a phone call from my son in Las Vegas, he wants to come "home" he has lived in Vegas now for about 8 or 9 years, and he really misses the northwest, all our trees and rivers and the ocean.........it just finally got to him I guess, so at this moment he is layed over in LA but should be here some time soon, can't wait to see him, it will be nice to have both of my children close to home again! What a wonderful Christmas present!
  I hope all of you have as wonderful a Christmas as I have been lucky to have!!!

early Christmas present

my christmas gift from my husband was delivered today by UPS.........and it was exactly what I wanted, he got me a nook, and I love it , I've already downloaded close to 50 books into it, I bought a couple, but Barns and Nobel has a pretty big list of free books, even a few I have heard of, so I got a couple cook books, and a bunch of fiction, its amazing how fast they downloaded, I ordered them from an email, and they went directly to the nook........I've already finished reading the first book I bought, its almost 2:00 am, I should be in bed, but can't sleep, so guess I will start another book.....

old friends

a few months ago, actually back before my dad passed away, an old friend from my distant past, contacted me.......She was my best friend during my childhood years, and teen years.........we drifted apart as we moved in different directions, she went to Seattle, I moved to Portland........we got together once on thanksgiving at my moms house, when my kids were about 5 and 6, we haven't seen each other since, its been about 25 years.......So she was in town yesterday, and we got together for lunch, had a great time, and discovered we are both jewelery makers, she is more into metal work, chain male and the like, I am a bead weaver, but starting to branch out into a little metal work myself,(going to teach myself torch enameling) She brought me a strand of mauve pearls she had just hand knotted, they are beautiful.....and she picked out a pair of beaded earrings from my stock pile.....we went window shopping and had a wonderful time.........wish we lived closer, it would be nice to get together to make jewelery together.........I was amazed that we just seemed to pick up where we left off all those years ago........So I guess I got my Christmas present early........getting my old friend back!!!

I won't be able to submit a picture of the finished piece, for the jewelery swap, because I didn't get to do it yet, we have been working on my work space, I bought a complicated armoire thing called a scrapbox, its nice with lots of storage, but we haven't figured out lighting for it, and my room it is in has bad lighting, and my eye sight is failing, so need to use a mag light for beading, so haven't gotten my project finished yet, sorry
    As soon as my work area is well lit, I will get my swap project finished,  and put some pics up

Norma's zoo

I am beginning to feel like I am running a zoo........it started out with two kittens, back in August.......they were tiny black and white tuxedo babies. Now they are 1/2 grown cats getting big and sleek and beautiful, and very spoiled, then the day before halloween, my hubby bought me a Pom puppy, black and tan, he looks like a walking powder puff on speed, he is so hyper........Then last night he brought home a short haired tiny kitten that has obviously been surviving on its own for a while, it was almost hit by a car on his job site, so he rescued it and of course brought it home to me she is mostly white with dark gray and orange spots, I would have named her moo, because of the spots, but hubby insists on lucky..........let me tell you my original two cats are pretty pissed to say the least,(please excuse the language)but it fits they are very angry not only do they hiss and swat at the two new babies, they also hiss and swat at me, and these were my babies..........I am sad they are so upset, the puppy is driving me crazy......I never pictured myself with a foo foo dog, (old lady dog), but I guess its official now I am an old lady, I was at the casino the other day, and found out I an now considered a senior by them, I get the senior discount..........much to my hubbies delight, he thinks its funny, he told me it was ok to have an old lady dog, cause I was officially an old lady now..........I turned 55 on my last b-day.........I'm sure once the puppy is older he might calm down a bit     (I can only hope)......he is adorable, every where we go he gets all kinds of compliments, he smiles all the time.........and can he ever scream, he met my grandsons dog,.....a large mutt of some kind, and scared the poor thing to death, my puppy started screaming at the top of his lungs, so loud he had my ears ringing, we were all cracking up it was so funny. Ok........ I thank you for letting me vent, I'm sure things will improve in time, as the critters all start maturing, I need to take the two older ones in to be spayed and neutered, and I need to take the younger two in for their first visit to the vet, I guess it will have to be three trips, so as to not have a war going on in my pet carriers.........I asked my hubby last night, what he was bringing home next time..........with him, the thought kind of scares me

playing with clay

digging through some of my unpacked boxes, I ran across some poly clay, from about 15 years ago, when my son and I tried our hands at making beads (really ugly beads)......well I decided to see if it was still good, so I kneaded it for a while and rolled it out and used some of my new rubber stamps to put a textural design on it, then used a plastic tube that a pair of ergonomic tweezers came in,( it is square shaped with rounded edges) to cut tiles out with.....then put holes in to one corner of each tile, and baked them....they looked ok, the design  on them looked good, but they were just plain matt grey colored, not too interesting. so then I went to my local michaels and got some Rubn'Buff, in antique gold, and used some of that to high light the raised portions of the pattern, it looked much better, but then decided to cover the edges and back as well.
Now I am happy with them, and plan to use them as dangles on earrings, I even made a pair to try them out.
  I just got my beads from Juls from Juls beads, I bought her skills on the torch for a day, and all I can say is wow, wow, wow!!! they are so beautiful! I used one of the earring pairs I got from her to make the above mentioned earrings and will post pictures as soon as I get some taken......