Nice Start To The Week

Well its Monday again.  Wow!  it comes quickly and I am very excited and lucky to be guest posting on A to Z Challenge blog today.

Click here to go over and visit and see what I had to say about fitting into the blogging world.

Another great start to this week is how far I have gotten with the key chains.  I am designing them for the  Round Lake Arts and Craft Festival that I will be participating in August.  Since I am a huge lover of purses, I was inspired by all the fabulous purses there are to choose from, hence my purse inspired key chains.   I use Swarovski crystals  beads, chains, and ribbons to enhance my mini purses.

Some blue tones

Reds and greens with an added pair of sunglasses to some.

Pinks and purples and black with yellow trim

I like to make each one unique since I hate to do the same thing over and over.  Purses are not the only design that I have done.  I will leave some others to show for another day.

Mary Ann

A Hole Lot Of Something, Hopefully Nothing

Sometimes a hole in things could be a good thing.  Like a doughnut hole. or a hole in one in golf, or getting the hole in the side pocket in billiards.  Hmmmm but a hole in the side of your house can never ever be a good thing.

My story starts one day not long ago when I found a small piece of my siding laying on my front lawn.  It had been really windy so I assumed it has blown off of my house.  I walked around circling a few times but could not see where it belonged anywhere.  So I put it to the side hoping that its rightful place would be found soon.  So last week I had a contractor come to give me some estimates on a few things I needed done.  I remembered the piece of siding and asked him if he could locate where it went.  With his eagle contractor eyes he located the place where it belonged way up in a corner of one of my dormers along with a perfectly round hole.  I immediately called an exterminator to try and determine the origin of the hole. Hoping that it was just a fluke.

Well after few seconds of dangling on the steep side of my house he determined that it was a hole could have been  made by a squirrel.  Whoo hoo actually it was more like Boo Hoo.  I hate woodland creatures,  I am a city girl.  I especially do not like woodland creatures that may or may not be living in my home, above my head.  I have to say I have never seen nor heard anything that would make me think that I had any issues except the hole.  Which I am told is a good thing.  Not the hole, but that I have heard nothing.

So he is coming back today to put on a swinging door on my house hole that will let the little critters out but not let them back in.  Hopefully there are no disabled, old or senile woodland creatures in the bunch who cannot find their way out of the house hole.  

Your cute but stay out of my house hole


Mary Ann

Gearing Up

Got some good news on Friday that our items were approved through a jury process for the 2013 Round Lake Arts and Crafts Festival in Round Lake, NY.  Its a two day event Sat. August 17 and 18.  Its track season in Saratoga, NY, which is only a few miles up the road, so I am hoping for good weather and a good turnout.  Since my daughter and I are relatively new to the whole craft fair thing we are planning our space to try and draw buyers in.  Our first craft fair experience was not so good since we honestly had no idea what were were doing.  Our booth set up instead of drawing people in kept them away, I think.  We just had too much stuff crammed into one space.

This is how not to set up your booth, way too busy and we sat in the front because there was no other room for us inside.  We probably scared people away.

 So this time we are brainstorming ideas and colors.

Since one of the things that I do is design and make jewelry I have been rolling around ideas how to showcase them.  Our spot at the Round Lake Craft Festival is much larger then this one so we will have some room to spread out but that also means we need to make sure its eye catching from a distance.

This is what I came up with early this morning.  Its only in the planning stage so we will see how it progresses.

I stated by drawing a sketch of what I wanted to do.

I thought if I could cut heads out of heavy cardboard, paint each in a coordinating color and them attach them to each other.  Each head would display one of my necklaces and then on the table below would have more of my jewelry.

I even created a cardboard head that I could use as the template.  It needs a bit of refining but the size is exactly what I was looking for.

Because of my obsessive personality I will need to take a trip to Michaels in a bit to get my supplies.  If it turns out the way I am thinking it should, I will share.

Mary Ann

Saying Goodbye To Miss Kitty

Well I have blogged before about my odd cat Kitty.  She had a really sad start to her life but in the last year or so she seemed to be coming around.  Well yesterday when I woke up Kitty was nowhere to be found.  This was totally unusual because Kitty really only lived in a few rooms.  After a thorough search of her usual spots I ventured downstairs and found that my poor girl had died during the night and there she laid in the basement, a place that she normally would never ever go to.

I was devastated and sad in addition to being really scared that I would have to get her to the vet to be cremated.  I am really not good with anything dead not even a mouse or bird that I may find outside but I knew I had to do it. So after the initial shock, I carefully got Kitty into a box lined with her blanket and took her to the vet and where I said my final goodbye.

I am still feeling her loss this morning.  She would always get excited when I opened the blinds in the morning and immediately demand a pet to start her day.  I miss her doing her crazy laps around the kitchen when it was time to eat.  I will even miss her hogging my blankets in bed on a cold winters night.

I will never know what caused her death but I am hopeful that the years that she spent with me were happy ones.  I know they were for me.

I will miss you Kitty

Mary Ann

Back In The Swing Of Things (I Hope)

So I have been away from blogging for two weeks.  I think the back to back month long challenges really did me in, along with trying to do some updates and decorating to my house.  I have mentioned before that my husband has Parkinson Disease and at some point we will have to move to a one floor house.  Right now our bedroom is upstairs.  I have to say I will not miss the stairs either since my laundry is in the basement and there is lots of stair climbing for me on wash day.  So I am trying to take it room by room.

I started with our forth bedroom which before had really bad old stripped wallpaper.  I decided it would make a perfect office space. I did not take any before pictures so you will just have to take my word for it that it was really, really ugly.  Pulling off that awful paper was my first step and it was a bear.

When I was done I decided to go with a textured paint which had not done before but had seen it in a few open houses that I had been to recently.  I used Valspar paint in a gray color call Beachstone.  Applying it was worse then ripping off the wallpaper.  You could not roll over it at all because it would take off the texture that you just rolled on.  Its a small room and it took two gallons of paint.  I hated every minute of it but when it was done I do like the way it came out.

Its a bit hard to capture the texture on camera but you can see it a bit in the middle. The gray is a  bluer then I had wanted but that is kind of what happens when you pick a paint color. Its not always what it seems on the paint chip.

I also decided to paint an old desk of my sons yellow using Valspar Tea Room Yellow.  The stool is a grey plaid and I was excited to find it on clearance in Target.  Love a bargain.

Still need to get some curtains, a chairs and accessorize but the worst is over and I will soon be on to the next room.

Yikes I am really too old for this.

Mary Ann

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