The Request Line is Open! Gem Show Time Again!

I will be heading to a gem show on Jan. 6 - yippee! - and I'll be happy to take your requests with me! If you will kindly leave your requests below in the comment section that will help me keep everything together in one location and I will add them to my shopping list.

On the list so far I have Sunstone briolettes, Peruvian Opal rondelles and Kyanite ovals. Anything else you want or need just let me know!

Thanks so much! =)

UPDATE - I'll post Tuesday night/Wednesday morning with a list of all the goodies I uncovered. So please check back here to see if we had any luck with your requests =)

Weekly Scoop

I've been a bit lax in my posting the last couple days but I assure you it's not because I'm lounging around sipping away on my hot cocoa ;). And it's been 70 degrees the last 2 days and again today so not exactly hot cocoa weather - at this rate I'm going to have to will that big o' tub of hot cocoa to someone.

I've been busy retrieving cat toys ;), making and packing several last minute orders I've received, making trips to the PO, taking care of all the "kids", cleaning this house from top to bottom because I can't function properly if things aren't clean and trying to wrap up some last minute prepartions for Christmas next week. I can't believe it's almost here! "Slow as Christmas" is absolutely inapplicable these days - I swear it gets here faster and faster every year! Aside from that I have Dan's school's graduation tonight and the staff Christmas party get together afterwards at Depalma's - yummy Italian food! That always makes for a good time because we do the White Elephant gift exchange where everyone brings a gift valued around $10 and you draw numbers, choose a gift or steal a gift from someone else based on your draw. We ended up with a bird feeder last year - which I loved - but someone else ended up with a used candle. The year before we had some sort of musical snowman that played the piano... shhh! Don't tell anyone but I have no idea where that thing is now. Hopefully I'll have good news on gift front to share tomorrow. And now that I've reminded myself I need to get in there and wrap our gift for the party... I can't tell you what it is because someone might read this that will be there tonight and ruin the surprise! ;) And I need to go get cracking on two more orders that have to go out first thing in the morning too!

Hope you're about ready for the big day next week! Happy Thursday! =)

Hmmmm..

Someone's kitty toy is stuck under the stove AGAIN. And someone is giving me the "aren't I adorable and you know you want to help me face" AGAIN. This scenario plays out at least a half dozen times every day. But who can resist THAT face? I think he does it on purpose now.

And sadly I couldn't get any decent photos of the full moon Friday night to share. Hopefully you had a chance to enjoy it because it was absolutely beautiful! A bit chilly here but that just adds to it!

Saturday we spent the day in Atlanta finishing up our Christmas shopping and I'm happy to say that I am done! Now to get everything wrapped up which may be tonight's task! Hope your weekend went well!
Now off to retrieve kitty toys... AGAIN! ;)

Moon Shine!

Tonight is the biggest and brightest full moon to be seen in 15 years so be sure to get out and take a peek at it! The next time the moon will be this close won't be until 2016!

It was positively lighting up my house this morning when I awoke to let Debbie out. I thought someone had left a light on! And it should be clear as a bell tonight so hopefully I can get some great photos and share them tomorrow =).

Have a great weekend!

Blue skies again!

The rain has finally stopped! And as I was walking to the mailbox I couldn't help but notice how beautiful it was to see the little blue sky peeking out from behind the clouds. So I thought I'd share it =)... Is it just me or does that field not make you want to take off skipping through it? I guess the party's over because the cows are home. I haven't seen them for a couple of days or Buster either. Hope he's ok and his little self didn't get washed away.

And I stopped working to get up and see what all the loud chirping outside was about. I look out the window and our entire field and the neighbor's too had been taken over by thousands of black birds. I guess they were making a pit stop on their flight further south. But they're the reason I ended up taking a little break to get the mail and share these photos with you =).

Rain, rain

I would say go away but the lakes around here need it! I love the rain but this is a little excessive. We've had nearly 5 inches of rain in less than 24 hours and we're forecast to get another 1 to 2 inches today. So it's no wonder Oglethorpe county is in a flood watch.

Thank goodness my rain boots come almost up to my knees because I've needed it on my daily treks to the barn. At least the geese are having a blast!

Hope you're enjoying decent weather and if not be careful out there!

Ummm...

Who is this and why is he wearing my crown AND giving me a dirty look?!

It is cloudy, rainy and we're under a tornado watch until 3pm today so I let the little chick-a-loos out for a bit before the really nasty stuff gets here. Chick Pea, who you might recognize from my custom item listings in my little shop, doesn't seem to remember Mr. Toad who she has "met" several times before. I think it's the dirty look that's throwing her off ;).

Hopefully none of us will have to duck in the closet today but we could very well get washed away! It's pouring!

Hope you're staying dry and cozy! =)

The Best Dog Ever

Debbie (the snoring dog in my studio). And her favorite octopus toy. Who can resist the octopus face? Not me! Dan teasingly calls her "Road Kill" because I literally scooped her up out of the middle of a rural highway on my way to work one morning in November seven years ago. It's one of those things that I just think was meant to be. I barely noticed her as I was driving closer because I just saw this little pile of red fur in the middle of the opposite lane and assumed it was some poor creature that didn't quite make it across and didn't want to see much more of it. But as I got closer a truck in that lane straddled her and I saw this little head pop up. I immediately slammed on the brakes, pulled off to the side, jumped out and scooped her up. I had never smelled anything that smelled quite as bad as this tiny little thing and I could see she was missing most of her hair from mange. Which I'm guessing is why she was laying in the middle of the road - trying to soak up some heat from the pavement... either that or trying to put herself out of her misery. She was pitiful!

As I sat her on the floor of my truck and she looked at me with those tiny little pitiful puppy eyes I started formulating a plan of what to do next. I would stop by the local vet's office and ask where the nearest animal shelter was. I worked in Jackson county which is 2 counties over and 45 minutes away so I wasn't very familiar with where anything was other than where I worked. The vet informed me that there wasn't an animal shelter in that county and even if there was they wouldn't adopt out a puppy in her condition. They said I could leave her with them and they would euthanize her. Well that just wasn't option. Especially after I saw the desperation in those tiny little eyes. So I adopted that tiny, smelly, mangy puppy that cold day in November. I left her at the vet's office, told them to go ahead and treat her and I would be back to pick her up at 5:30 (which I'm sure they were all thinking "Yeah. Right"). Well that treatment turned into months of weekly trips to the vet for dips and daily oatmeal baths to cure one type of mange and keep the other genetic type she had under control. I remember calling Dan on my way home that day and telling him "It looks like we have another pet". And he said "Oh lord. What is it?" Because I'm known to bring home all sorts of critters. I told him it was a puppy and she had some "issues" but it wasn't anything that we couldn't fix right up ;). He wasn't exactly thrilled when he saw her "issues" and he honestly didn't think she would make it but obviously she did and now he is absolutely in love with her. I don't think a day goes by that I don't hear him saying "I love this dog! She's the best dog ever!" =)

Mandy says...

"Thank you" for her hay! And this is why I do what I do - well besides the fact that I love it but if it weren't for them I probably wouldn't do this on the scale that I do now. My work supports all the critters here on our little farm including vet bills, feed and the occassional treat which can add up to quite a bit this time of year. Hay has been steadily increasing in price due to the drought we've been having here in the south and the rising fuel costs we experienced this summer. I bought hay this past fall at $6.25 a bale and when you need 100 bales to get through the winter well that's quite a bit of green they're chewing up out there! But I wouldn't trade them for anything. I love Mandy (aka My Woman) and all my "kids" more than I can express but she and I have a special bond. I bought her when she was 6 and I was 19 and that was nearly 18 years ago. I had wanted a horse since I could actually speak the word horse - which my mom claims was my first word ;). I asked for a horse for every occassion I could possibly imagine getting a gift - I even asked the Easter Bunny to bring me a horse instead of an Easter basket. And when I was in elementary school I wouldn't wear any clothing (including socks, undies and pjs) unless it had horses on it. Drove my poor mom batty! Luckily Jordache was all the rage then and I think I wore the same 2 pairs of jeans with horses running across the pockets every single day. To be at least a tiny bit cooperative I would settle for unicorns too. I had the most extensive My Little Pony collection and I still have my Breyer horse collection. I would get extra credit from my 4th grade teacher, Mrs. Nash, because I used the word pony or horse in every single sentence that we had to construct with our daily vocabulary list. It didn't matter what the word was I always found a way to incorporate horses into it. For some reason I still remember the sentence I used for the word "quality". I wrote "If you own a horse and ride alot you will need a quality saddle." To say I was obsessed would have been an understatement.

Of course no one ever bought me a horse because we really didn't have anywhere to keep one. I begged my parents to let me have one and keep it at my grandparents (which my grandparents agreed to) but mom said it wouldn't be fair to ask them to take care of a horse. There was no way we could get over there every day during the week and deep down I knew she was right. So as a teenager instead of saving up for clothes or a car I saved up my money to buy a horse and pay for her board. Shortly after I bought her my parents closed on a house that had 8 acres and a barn and I was ecstatic! After months of trekking back and forth between my house and her boarding facility Mandy could finally come home and live with me! My boyfriend at the time was getting increasingly jealous that I was spending more time in the barn and riding than I was with him. So he bought his own horse, King (pictured above with Louis in the barn), so he could join us I suppose. Mandy doesn't much like human men and she never approved of him. If he even attempted to ride her she would immediately try to buck him off. I learned to trust her judgement in men and always introduced her to my dates - call me crazy but she was and still is an excellent judge of human character. And when she said Dan was a keeper well he's a keeper ;). Anyway the ex-boyfriend and I obviously parted ways but I couldn't bear to part with King and neither could Mandy so I acquired him on a trade out deal of sorts. We had bought a horse trailer together so the deal I proposed was that he keep the trailer and sell it and I'd keep King. So 18 years later and a move to the other side of the state here we are. We don't do much riding any longer because King is nearing 30 and has arthritis (he did alot of barrel racing in his younger days) and I don't think his sight is anywhere near what it used to be because he gets startled quite easily now. These days our riding is pretty much limited to a leisurely stroll around the lake here and that's perfectly ok with me because I enjoy their company more than anything else. So again all of us here at the little farm say "Thank you" to those who help support us and those wishing us well too! =)

This is why...

I should never be allowed to go to Sam's Club at certain times of the month.

I think I have enough hot cocoa and Tootsie Rolls now to last me into the next century. So if you don't hear from me tomorrow it would be safe to assume that I'm in a sugar induced chocolate coma ;).

And on a happy (not sugar induced note) my desktop computer is finally well again! Yea! After many, many hours on the phone with Microsoft and McAfee, some new anti-virus software and a little chunk of change it's back to normal! Thank goodness! Now I should be able to list some new work this week =).

Hope you're having a good weekend! And if you ever need to borrow any cocoa mix you know who to call.

My Neck of the Woods - The Neighbors- Part 3

This little (well it's not exactly little) piece of history belongs to Mr. Norman and Mrs. Linda our next door neighbors. And when I say next door neighbors what I really mean is the property that directly adjoins our property. They have 75 acres so I don’t really have a view of their house from where we are. I can see their horse pasture, complete with the white wooden fences, 2 of their barns and in the winter if I squint just right I can see the back of the house and their patio from my back yard.
The house itself was built prior to the civil war sometime in the 1820’s or 30’s and it has survived 2 fires and obviously the wrath of time. It’s also on the national registry of historic homes. Some of the original outbuildings are still standing too including the carriage house and the slave quarters. Mr. Norman and Mrs. Linda have been working hard to restore it for the last 8 years and they’ve said they plan to retire there.

They don’t actually live there now- it’s their “weekend home”- so we don’t really see them on a regular basis. They live and work right outside of Atlanta and come visit on a semi-regular monthly basis. They have a small crew of people who work there daily feeding and caring for the horses and keeping the property up (must be nice right?;). They’ve also hosted several weddings and most recently a memorial service for one of our neighbors that passed away. The last wedding was a couple of months back – I think September – and Dan and I laid in our upstairs bed making wagers about what typical wedding song the DJ was going to play next. We sleep with our windows open in the summer and into late fall so it was almost like we were at the wedding ourselves. We both started laughing when we heard “Brown Eyed Girl” because we kept saying that it had to be next. But mostly it’s pretty quiet around here and that’s how we like it =).

See you next time!

Irony

Apparently whatever I had last week was contagious to computers. It decided to get sick Sunday night right before Cyber Monday. I just had to laugh because honestly what are the odds of that happening on the busiest online shopping day of the year and in conjunction with my first ever sale? In the 15 or so years I've owned a computer I've never had one contract a virus before. I guess you could have called me lucky up until Sunday night. So after multiple phone calls with lengthy conversations with folks at AOL, Dell and Microsoft and multiple several hour computer scans it's still sick. I guess we'll be taking it into the computer hospital this weekend. Thankfully I have a laptop otherwise I'd be up the creek without a paddle as they say!

I almost felt like I was back at my days as a head of store working retail on Black Friday. It seemed like whatever could go wrong on that day usually did. I always tried to have back up plans but when the computers and registers crash on that day and you have to write every receipt up by hand and key everything in later... well there's just no plan in the world good enough to keep things running smoothly then! Oh I could tell some tales about managing a high volume/high traffic store on the day after Thanksgiving... like the time someone decided to use the floor as a restroom (and I'm not talking about a little tinkle either - and I cleaned it up because I just couldn't bring myself to ask someone else to) or the customer throwing a shoe and hitting one of our sales clerks in the head or the old man walking down the side of the road dressed only in ladies underwear that I passed at 4am on my way into work the last Black Friday I worked ;)... yes I'll take computers with viruses on Cyber Monday any time!

Me, some wire, a hammer, pretty gemstones...

Several pairs of pliers, 3 cats, a snoring dog and 2 chirping chicks. That pretty much sums up my day in the studio today=). The "sale" continues to keep us busy (and by us I mean me, the cats, the dog and the chicks) although they aren't really much help but they sure are cute to look at and I guess they did keep my lap warm ;).

Hope your "Cyber" Monday went well whether that means lots of sales for your online business or finding that perfect gift for someone special! =)