Cyber Monday!

What a wonderful Thanksgiving break I had. The thanksgiving meal was absolutely delicious! The best was the homemade ravioli that my niece made. HOMEMADE butternut squash and sage ravioli! Wow it was so good.
Friday I got to be lazy and stay in my PJ's all day! What I treat. I did do a bit of beading. I made a pin, but I hate it so I'll be cutting that one apart. The nice thing is that I dreamt of a better pin design that night. I love it when I dream about beads. Beads, beads, wonderful beads! Saturday I spent the day with my Mom and sister and niece. We went to lunch and then to Art vs Craft to see my other sis and niece that were selling there. They had a great show. I'm so happy for them. Yesterday was pick up the pieces day, laundry, dust, vacuum, I never sat down, but I didn't get as much done as I wanted to. Seriously if I was rich I would have no problem hiring a maid service. I'm overwhelmed with joy just thinking about it. Really can you imagine NEVER having to clean your house again! Pure ecstasy! Forget the drug, give me the maids!
So on Thanksgiving we picked names for Christmas. $25 dollar limit and preferable handmade. I'm all over that one. And not to give too much away but I'll be making something for the person my DH was too.
And just to help all you non crafty people, if you go to etsy and type in free shipping in the search it comes up with a dollar amount that you can put in on the left hand side. I'm sure you'll find something for everyone. There's just a few things I found:


So sit back, relax, and go shopping! Most website are offering FREE shipping today Cyber Monday!!!

Beading and Books, Baby!

Just when I thought I had nothing to blog about StumbleUpon
comes through for me. First I went here
then here found this along the way, who wouldn't want an idea for a new book to read, or hear. Since I started beading so many years ago I really missed reading books so now I listen to books on tape/CD. I find that's true with most beader's. I'm not sure how but I'd like to start some kind of book go round, you know, send the book/CD to beaders who sign up that want to listen to that book too. Plus I wouldn't mind paying so much for a book knowing it gets passed along to someone else. I'm going to think about this more and see if I can get it to really work. I know Marcia and Jeannette listen to books. Oh and so does Gail. Knowing their such awesome artists, I know I'd like most of what they like to read too.








See I told you they are awesome!

Martha, Martha, Martha

I've been waiting all week to post this recipe.



OMG! These are sooooo goood!!! Sweet and lemony! They may be on the verge of being too lemony for some but not me! Or Eileen, so if I get her name for Christmas she'll be one happy girl.
Or maybe I'll just make them to bring for Christmas with a little blueberry jam sandwiched in between. Eeeeee, Lemon and blueberry, a winning combination! Actually you don't really taste the poppy seeds so you can omit them if your out of them.
Really you can't go wrong with a recipe from Martha, everyone I've ever tried was scrumptious!

Crafty!

I use to hate winter it was cold, rainy, cold, snowy, cold and more cold, yuck! Now, now! I enjoy it, because all winter long I get to be "crafty". I say crafty because besides beading I'm knitting and crocheting. Now mind you I still have to cook, clean and do laundry, but I no longer need to work outside weeding, weeding and more weeding. OK, there is some fun gardening thrown it there, but mostly it's weeding.
So last week I started knitting this scarf.



I chose it because I never did the cable stitch before and this had just a little in the pattern. I was having fun learning this new stitch but after finishing the first part it was very small. By small I mean it was 1.5 inches across! I read my instructions top to bottom to see if there was something I missed. There was one minor word I that I did not pay enough attention to... It's called a "neckwarmer". Silly me I assumed by the picture it was a scarf. So now I'm going to try to use the same pattern and make it larger. Me, with little experience with knitting! But the "neckwarmer" pattern is pretty cool (it's called Twig) so I'm going to try and make it work. Wish me luck!
In the beading world, I did make this awesome (if I do say so myself) bracelet.




It's not my pattern I got it somewhere on the internet (that I couldn't find again if you paid me).
I couldn't wait to make this, and since it's not my pattern I wouldn't sell it in my esty shop so I thought I'd make it for a raffle my uncle Paul is in charge of, the proceeds go to help patient's with prostate cancer.
I am more than happy to donate to this cause especially since my uncle is a cancer survivor himself.
Hopefully people will bid high to own that beauty.

Just asking..

Reading this makes me ask, is this the same government that wants to run our healthcare?
The United States Preventive Services Task Force. How can you "prevent" something if your not screening for it?
I also read that they say women should not self exam. And don't even get me going on the insurance company's!
This is the MOST unreasonable thing I have EVER read about our government. I can't imagine anyone disagreeing with me, so nuf said.
Ok so this isn't funny to me, but it may be to you. I REALLY want my Dad to make one of these for me.



Seriously, how cool would that be! You can see more here. Scroll down to Nov. 15th.
And at $79 a pop for the top one, well I know my Dad can make one much cheaper :-}
Maybe he'll surprise me for my birthday (fingers crossed)!

If you could...

In reality I have a love/hate relationship with the internet. I know, I know a few days back I said I loved the internet, and I still do. It's just that there's SO MUCH information out there you can drive yourself crazy! I'm not going to get on my soap box again today but after reading this article I am sure my decision to stop taking statin's is the right one. But in view of ALL the info out there I've decided to talk to a nutritionist. That should narrow it down a bit. Of course the insurance company's won't pay for that or vitamins. But I'm going for results not cost. Do I hear an amen!?
Now for something fun...
I got this video emailed to me today.



So if you could play any instrument beautifully what one would it be?
I'll go first, a violin! You could play in an orchestra, or more to my taste you could play back up in a band like Bruce Springsteen!
I'd want to play like this:



or this, but I'd wear a cuter dress:


Oh, and the other thing did you ever notice most violinists are thin, BONUS!

Did someone say Heart attack?!

This really makes my blood boil!
The BIG drug company's could care less about lying to people about the effectiveness of the drug their taking! The results of that being a little known thing called DEATH!

"Ultrasound images of neck arteries showed that Niaspan shrank buildups by about 2 percent, while Zetia had no effect on this even though it lowered bad cholesterol as expected."

Do you find that troubling? I sure do.
Do ANY of the cholesterol lowering drugs in fact work? Is it too much to ask to get a drug that actually works?

"Last year, a large study found that the combo pill Vytorin was no more effective than Zocor alone, a statin now available as a cheap generic. In August, Merck and Schering-Plough agreed to pay $41.5 million to settle lawsuits claiming they delayed unfavorable study results on the drugs because they would hurt sales."

So it's NOT about fixing anything, it's about making money and ALOT of money at that, while people using the drug (that I'm sure they pay doctors to prescribe) are told it's helping them is in reality giving them false hope. This is exactly why I stopped taking statin's. If you lower my cholesterol numbers but I still have plaque build up in my arteries, I'm probably still going to have a heart attack. Now some people such as myself can eat right, exercise, lower their stress as much as they can, they will still have high cholesterol because their bodies produce more that it should and all of the above-mentioned changes are never going to lower it enough. So we NEED the drugs the HUGE drug companys make... or do we? I for one will be looking into this Niaspan which is actually a time release version of niacin. Niacin, a vitamin people, ie. NO DRUG COMPANY INVOLVED! There are some side effects similar to the statins, but I can put up with that much easier knowing the pill (I'm taking to save my life) IS ACTUALLY WORKING!
OK, I'm off by soap box. Now for the happy thoughts!
Yesterday I swear I saw this in my backyard!!!!



I can't be positive because by the time I saw there was a" BLUE" bird and actually grabbed the binoculars, got them in focus the bird (birds) were gone! (sigh) I went to the bird book to look up what I thought I saw and It looked just like this one! I swear!
I've always wanted blue birds in my yard, and there they were stopping by briefly on there way down south. You better believe next year I'll be buying Mealy worms! (ugh)

Foodie Friday!!!

As you all know I love to cook, well actually I like to eat! I like to eat yummy food, and to do that I have to cook it :-)
So on fridays (from now on known as Foodie Fridays) I will share with you something sure to be delicious!
Today it a wonderful Spiced Apple Bundt Cake.


I only cooked it for 50 mins. but ovens vary so just keep an eye on it.
Also I would recommend after taking the cake out of the oven, turn the oven off. After 15 mins. poke the holes in the cake WITHOUT TAKING THE CAKE OUT OF THE PAN. Pour the sauce over the cake and put the cake bake in the warm oven until all that yummy sauce is soaked in! Serve with whipping cream or even better ice cream. But it really doesn't need it, it's very moist.
Don't be crying about the amount of butter or sugar people! It's CAKE, if you don't want to eat it eat a piece of bread, oh no that's fattening too, eat a crack.. that fatting too! Have a drink of water!

My Own Private Idaho!

Even though I'm more of an old school kind of girl I do love the internet! There is a plethora of knowledge out there! I'll go to one site click on a link on the side of that site, again and again. I get so lost I could not get back to where I was if you gave me BEADS to do it! You could lose a whole day! Trust me I know, we're so slow at work right now I don't know what I'd do if I couldn't surf the web all day. Seriously I have over 1 thousand bookmarks!
The other thing the internet gives me is gratefulness. You can see and read about someone's life half way around the world from you. Learn about people who live on $100 a month or less! People who have lost and are lost. Make's me feel very fortunate for what I have and what I don't have. Make me realize I really need so little to be truly happy.
I could lose myself all day at this site alone! And see what's happening around the world as I sit here in my own private Idaho!

Angels and...well you know

Guess I'm not the only one sick of vampire's.
This is Anne Rice's new book!
Angel Time

If Artist ran the City!

Marcia brought up a good idea on her blog. What if artists ran the city.
Can you imagine what the cars would look like, and all the houses down the street wouldn't look so cookie cutter! Wow then it would really be fun to house hunt! Everyone waiting for the bus would be dancing and singing! Schools and teachers would be more like what he's talking about:

(Thanks Kate!)
If your thinking it's too long at least listen from the 15:11 minute point.

Throw down!

Can I just be honest for a minute here. Beadwork magazine has knocked Bead and Button magazine on it's ass!
When I first started beading 18 years ago, B&B was "the" magazine to go to. I didn't even start subscribing to Beadwork till about 3 years later because it wasn't till then that they finally started having interesting projects.
Today the roles are completely reversed! My DH had to actually talk me into re-subscribing to B&B! That's how boring they got. While Beadwork on the other hand...well quite honestly I can't imagine how they could improve. They have 4 well known artist that give you a fabulous design every issue. On top of that they have something that they call Beadwork Master Class that is an interview with one of the country's leading bead artisan's where they talk about their work and show some of it off. There's also a project by them. Does it get any better than that?! Not at B&B it doesn't! Starting next issue( which will be in February, waaa) they will start the year with 4 new designer's. I will seriously miss Marcia. She is one of my favorite teachers. The things she makes using one basic stitch is beyond compare! Thank goodness she has a blog so I can keep up with all the wonderfulness of Marcia!

I won't be missing out on talent though, with Laura McCabe and Nancy Cain being 2 of the 4 artist 2010 is going to be a good year.

No videos or pictures today. Just click on these names to take you to their sites. I promise even non-beader will be amused!

Inspiration

Just finished looking at the latest Ornament magazine. What inspiration!
and Gail is in there. She got second place for PMC in the Saul Bell competition ... second place, come on people, everything this women touches is magic! And on top of that she is as nice and down to earth as the day is long. My heart is palpating over these pretties

I do own a few of her lampwork beads. I'm hording them, and really one fear of mine is that I won't live long enough to make something with them. Oh I'm not dying or anything (well we're all dying!), I should say I'm not ill, but I do have a desease ... it's called PROCRASTINATION!!!
And that's my fun/happy thing for today, just click on the links to let the fun begin!

Sleepy Head

I'm sleepy because I stayed up too late watching "So You Think You Can Dance". I don't watch much TV, but I do love that show. If I could of been anything when I grew up it would of been a dancer. I know, I know you can be anything if you put your mind and heart into it! I mean talented at, no GIFTED, if I could choose what to be gifted at it would be dance.
When I finally heard the alarm at 4:15am I was shocked! I usually wake up BEFORE my alarm goes off no matter what, what can I say I'm just crazy like that. To add insult to injury my DH programed the coffee but forgot to put the pot under it!!!!! Cleaning up coffee at 4:15 is nothing nice! And then I had to grind some beans to make more and, and, I know shut up it could be worse. I'm over it now and I learned a good lesson. Making coffee when your angry makes for a bad pot of coffee!
Ok now for the fun. Every post I will try to have something fun/happy. Because if you look for something fun/happy everyday it is highly likely that you will find more that one!
So this is my go to video on youtube when I need a little pick me up. Sorry it's a bit long @ 10 min. but it is so worth it!

Baby got Blog!

So here I go into the blog-osphere!

Wish me luck!