The Leaves they are a changin'.
And the weather is getting cold...bah! We managed to move up to NY just in time for winter, my LEAST favorite season.



On a completely differant note, I have been thinking about my jewelry lately. Since we've moved up here, I have been making some pieces, and as I was taking pictures the other day to update my ETSY store, I realized I was profoundly unhappy with the direction my jewelry has been going. They are not BAD pieces, mind you...just not what I picture in my head when I think about my "style" of jewelry crafting. After some thinking I realize what the problem is. Back in PA I had my own glass studio. If I needed a bead in a certain size/shape to complete a piece, I could just go make it.



Granted, even after a year, I was still a VERY beginnner glassworker. Glass takes a very long time to learn and become proficient with. But still, now I have very generic beads, and in turn I am putting out very generic jewelry. Obviously, right now I have neither the time nor space to recreate my studio from PA.


I happened to be browsing some of my favorite bead websites when I saw this catalog cover piece:





THIS looks like what I want to be able to put out! Something COMPELETELY unique, stylized and vibrant. I found out this is mostly made with polymer clay...so I've ordered some lol. I know that I'm back to square one, learning a new medium...but I need to be able to express my own style in my jewelry if I am ever going to be happy with it. Plus, clay is much more space and time friendly than glass. Now comes the hardest part, waiting for the delivery from the beadsite! (always the worst part!)

Oh, and I forgot:

For ANYONE who reads this and has a Nintento DS you MUST get Scribblenauts!
http://games.kidswb.com/scribblenauts/index2.html#/?cc=en&page=home

No matter how cool it looks on the site, I can tell you it is infinitely more cool! We're fighting over the DS to play it lol.

The truth about kittens.....

So my mother runs a cat rescue group called wayward paws (www.waywardpaws.org). A few weeks ago she got a group of three kittens who were very young, and needed round-the-clock-care. So, since she's working, driving out to see grandpa at the nursing home everyday, and generally running around like a chicken with her head cut off, I volunteered to take care of them. The first week was rough...we had to bottle feed them every two hours around the clock. Plus, while cats are very tidy and clean creatures, young kittns poop on everything, including themselves..so we were scrubbing poop off them several times a day, too. They're down to a few bottles a day, supplimented by canned food ( which stinks, and makes their poo stink, too). I don't remember where I read it, but I remember hearing somewhere that young animals are cute because otherwise their parents wouldn't put all the effort into taking care of their needy-arses. Man, I agree with that! Plus, after seeing how they crod and bite and claw at my hands and bottle at feeding time, I have decided that the worst job in the world is to be a mother cat!

Goin' to the Fair.

So Last tuesday we went to the Great New York State Fair. Matt and Sara had never been to a state fair, and it was LOTS of fun (though Matt complained about the overpriced food and games...I probably should've warned him).

We decided to park and ride from Shoppingtown Mall rather than pay 10 bucks and fight traffic by parking at the fair....if you look closely you can see the line wrapping around the parking lot for everyone waiting for the bus behind Matt (we're at the end of the line...of course!)

Matt and Sara in the Dairy building (where we got some NUMMY ice cream).

We saw a lot of livestock. Sara loved the rabbits and chickens, and I was happy because it was Draft Horse day at the horse show ( I LOOOVE draft horses!)

Sara got to hold a chick at the Youth building (Where we also picked up some info on getting her into 4-H if she wants to).

Sara was upset because we missed all the Duck Races, but she liked the birds of Prey exhibit near the center of the fair. We looked for Jen's work in the arts and crafts displays but all we saw were quilts (Jen later told us we had to go up to the 3rd floor..we'll know for next year).

After some really good, really greasy, and really expensive food we headed over to the midway where Sara had a ball spending $15 to win a small rubber ball and a tiny stuffed fish. Then she went on the rides :-).

Her favorite was the Giant-Plastic-Slide-you-Ride-on-a-Carpet-Down. She also wanted to go through one of the funhouses..I was surprised when she went all the way through all on her own.

Some Fried-dough-with-apples and a short walk later and it was back on the bus to go home. We had a great time, though next year, I want to spend more time watching the horses, no matter how muh Sara and Matt complain.

Big Ol' Update

I know it has been a long time since I posted. In my defense, we moved up to NY and just got our internet up and running this week. Matt has started school, and I'm still in the process of looking for a job. Luckily we FINALLY started getting unemployement, so that's helping a lot.

Here are a few pics from our camping trip on August 8-10 at buttermilk falls in Ithica. We had to cancell 2 of our planed trips after Matt lost his job, so once we got up here and unpacked I figured we'd do one small trip before the summer ended. The campground was very nice, though the campsites were far off on one side of the park so we had to drive to get to the swimming areas and walking trails...plus a few of the access roads to get deeper into the park were gated off, so we couln't get to the remote trails we wanted to do.

The swimming area is the coolest part of the park..it's a man-made pool, cut from the shale under the Buttermilk falls.

And this last picture is of some flowers we saw along one of our walks..they were very pretty and EVERYWHERE.

I'll have to see if mom can ID them for me.

I had a bunch more pictures of the trip, but I had to delete them, because we couln't find the camera cord to transfer them to the computer, and we needed free space for the pics of our state fair trip (which I will put up in the next post).

My next goal is to get all my new jewelry photoed and my etsy store back up and running.