My "Left Brain" Day

Feeling great today. I simply had to leave my creative right brain for a little while this morning to learn about how to sell some things on Ebay. Beverly is helping me. She and Shirley have a store and they are doing very well. I'm so thankful that she will be coaching me every step of the way. All of those little details of even signing up is not for the creative...not yet anyway. Those important details will need to be evaluated, checked and rechecked before I can be good at it. Learning curves can be very frustrating. So, it's time for my patience to kick into gear, reading everything carefully and thoroughly, and getting over my first listing. Then, it'll be a breeze. At least that's what I'm counting on. This is just another step for my Plan B, and I'm actually excited about starting this new adventure! So my morning is totally gone and I must get ready for work this afternoon. I'm exhausted - well my brain is. I have to figure out how to make this more fun and more rewarding. Oh, I know!...when I sell something!





So here's my featured jewelry. I know, they are not earrings. I had to deviate a little today. These are simple wire pins that I made a while ago. (I left my photo card at Beverly's so I had to rely on an older piece of jewelry). I love these whimsical pieces and the beads are lamp worked, hand crafted.

Ugly, Nasty, Crazy Day Turns Around

Do you ever have one of those days where something happens first thing in the morning and it has the potential to ruin the rest of your day? Unless you back off, slow down and turn it around yourself.

I woke up this morning, got dressed to go for my morning walk and stepped outside. Hey what's this? My sprinklers were going, the ones that I had turned off months ago because I didn't have anything growing there. What were they doing on? Oh well, I'll just deal with it when I get back from my walk. Then I noticed that the water was all the way down the street, I decided to follow it. Oh my, it had been running for a long, long time. So I cut my walk short, half an hour instead, and came back to the house. I unplugged my timer, that didn't work. I turned off a valve, that didn't work. But I saw another one and turned that off, that did work. Then I didn't have any water in the house. I remembered that I had turned the first valve off but not back on again when it wasn't the sprinkler. My next chore was to bag some yard trash and the bag broke. I wanted to hang a wind chime and my drill wasn't charged, tried by hand, but that didn't work. Okay. Time out! Sit down, take a deep breath, and change my day...

I fixed myself some steak and eggs for breakfast. That turned out well! I created my featured pair of earrings for my blog. Hey that turned out well too. Got a call from a patron and she stopped by to purchase a pair of earrings. Now THAT was an awesome thing.

I'd say, this IS a GOOD day!


My featured earrings are made of mixed metals, bronze and silver, on a niobium earwire. I'll be wearing this today when I'm out and about.

An Early Morning Firing

Early in the morning is a great time to fire up the kiln for a long 9 hour firing. That's what I did yesterday after the Friday night class in Bronze clay. It was Diya and I and we created pieces one right after the other. Bronze Clay has small particles of bronze in an organic compound and when fired becomes pure bronze. All the organic stuff burns away. It's a fairly new product, much like the Precious Metal Clay that I use for my fine silver pieces. The bronze is beautiful and I must say that I wasn't too enthused about it in the beginning. But the more I work with it, the more I like it. Since the firing is such a long time, I like to have a full kiln load and it isn't very often that I work with it, so we use up the whole 100 gram package. I made a couple of "test" pieces among these. I wanted to see if PMC silver paste would adhere to the bronze during the firing. And, I also wanted to see if decorative balls would adhere, as well as a cubic zirconia gemstone. This is what we came up with.



Our pieces get put into the carbon standing up on its end...


Into the kiln it goes to be fired...


And, nine hours later, the firing is complete.


The result of my testing was that the PMC Silver did not adhere at all on the bronze, but the cubic zironia gemstone did make it through the firing and stayed on my pendant. I'll be finishing that up in a few days!

My featured jewelry piece is the shiny bronze "Peace" pendant laying on top of the just fired piece. I call it my "Peace" pendant because it resembles the Native American symbol of an arrow, with the head of it pointing inward. Very Cool!

I did my walk this morning...am eating my oatmeal to which I added some Cheerios...and I'll be working this afternoon at the House of Rice, where I'll get my ingredients for the next green tea cookies that I'll be baking this week. I'm having dinner with the family tonight. It's going to be a good, good day...

A "Getting Grounded" Kind of A Day

I have great friends!

My 6th Day of working out, and...I passed. Oh No! I didn't go out and walk this morning and I'm not sure why. But I'm giving myself permission for it to be okay. The downside is that my day was a bit discombobulated, and not quite focused and on track like I had been all week. So, I think I'll go for it tomorrow. I just have to remember how good I feel when I do work out! I decided to do some grapefruit hunting instead. Ha! Don't know what that is? It's the old grapefruit that should have been picked earlier before the 100 degree weather came around, and it's still hanging out in the trees. Now, it's "hunting" season, picking them off with the other end of the grapefruit picker and just hit them so they'll fall from the tree. Time to celebrate! I finally got them all. It's too bad I can't think of any good use for them while they're in this stage - really soft, really mushy. Face mask? Ahh... No! I will make sure I pick them all next year!









Dawn, my niece, and her friend, Alex, stopped by to drop off some batteries so I could finish taking pictures for my blog today. They were up for doing a taste test of my green tea cookies. Remember them? So they were all for the taste test. At first, Dawn was a bit hesitant because they looked "green"(?). I guess they didn't look like cookies. But she and Alex did the tasting and they both agreed that they were delicious. So far, I have five people doing the taste test and they all concurred that it was a very good cookie. And, good for you too, with the green tea! I have another cookie recipe to try next time. Thinking of packaging too, maybe incorporating a little origami! They would be perfect together.

My day was very relaxed and unhurried, and it felt great to not have to be somewhere and not have to really do anything. Getting grounded is a good way to spend the day. It allows for fresh ideas to enter into my head. One idea I had was to feature one of my "creations" every day, every time I write my blog. Feedback is always welcome!

This pair of earrings are made of Swarovski crystals. It was a quickie pair of earrings that I was inspired to make. I like the bling but in a subtle way!

Finding Time To Be Creative

I believe my chocolate stash is complete!




This week has been very hectic and in a very good way. It's Day #5 of my working out first thing in the morning and it's going well. It hasn't been too hot and my walking has in fact been very pleasant at 5:45 am!
I went to Dozo last night. My favorite sushi restaurant. Mr. Robert-san and his wife Risa, always make us feel welcome. I was treated to a special birthday dinner from Valerie. We had oysters on the half-shell, yum, among other luscious foods, like aji, calamari cocktail, taro chips. Their happy hour specials are awesome. A great time, good food and good conversation makes for a great evening.










With all of this running around, going here and going there, celebrating and getting together with friends seems to sidetrack me from spending time with myself creatively. It grounds me and soothes the beast in me. So today, I took some glass pebbles, and made some earrings. Since the price of silver and everything else is going up in price, I like to make some earrings with a lower price point. I think these will retail for $15.



I like to make my own sterling silver ear wires. That way I can change the length of the earrings, add different details making each set of earrings different. I used a couple of different sizes and I love the colors. This is just the start. I will make more. And, as always, I am looking to sell these fast. So I'll post these on Facebook and those of you who read my blog, know that they are for sale!




Since I don't have a professional models at my beck and call, I am forced to find creative ways of taking pictures of earrings on my own ear, in a mirror. Ha! I think it turned out, don't you?


ALWAYS EEK OUT A LITTLE CREATIVE TIME IN YOUR DAY!

My Test Kitchen!

Today I tested out a new recipe for cookies. Green Tea Matcha Cookies! I love the taste of matcha green tea and what a great idea to combine them with a simple sugar cookie.

For years, I have wanted to bake a variety of things and be able to sell them at the local farmer's market - Another avenue of income! - but was stopped dead in my tracks when I learned that you have to have a commercial kitchen for any food prep. Pammy, my friend, called me one day to let me know that the Arizona Dept of Health Services just opened a branch for baked goods. I can bake cookies now in my home. I just have to have a food handler's card which I do, and keep my baking simple with my name, ingredients, and baked in a private home. Hey, that's do-able!

So today, I tested out one recipe. This is just the start. I want to come up with a fantastic tasting cookie, and I think this one is very very good! So in order for it to pass the taste test, I most definitely have to have some tasters. Hmmm, I am going to dinner tonight with Valerie. We're going to DOZO for sushi. Perhaps I'll be brave and see if Robert-san would like them. Be bold and mighty forces will come to your aid. I know Valerie will be my guinea pig for sure. And, I'll see another friend tomorrow morning, Billie. She'll be up for it too!

I took this picture, quite proud of my uniform shape. Notice I just had to break a cookie for my own pleasure!

Today is My Birthday!

So, today is my birthday and I wanted to do something special. This is day #3 of my working out in the mornings. I actually decided that I have to have a workout routine in place by the time my birthday rolls around this year. Thank goodness, I started two days ago! Whew! I get up at 5am and do an hour of walking. But today, I thought I would go to the Desert Botanical Gardens. When I got there at 6:30am, I turned my music on...thought about something raucous, with a heavy beat, but then I passed "Beethoven for Relaxation". Well, it turned out to be quite suitable for my mood I think. It's quiet, peaceful, early morning, just me and the birds, and the lizards and jackrabbits - perfect. On low, as background music, so I can hear the birds and whatever else jumps in my path.



Taking pictures throughout the trails in the garden was great fun. I posed in front of the photo opportunity place for tourists, did the Desert Loop Trail and the Sonoran People trail twice. I was pleased with myself for thinking of taking pictures of me as the tourist and had some laughs - to myself - of course. No makeup, dressed like a bum, but what the heck...Dance like no one is watching, right?

I visited with my friends in the Call Center (still looking like a bum and no makeup) and it looks like they didn't hold that against me and I'll be back in the fall for their seasonal work. Yay!

It fits right in with my PLAN B outline:

Increase my income by working part-time until I get a full time job, or . . .
I become wealthy beyond my wildest dreams doing what I love! (Which is my Plan A).



Good Bye Mr. Lizard. Watch over the Garden til I get back there!

On to visit my mom. I bought a gi-normous cupcake to celebrate my birthday with her. She was a good sport even though she wasn't feeling all that well. But we had some laughs, she helped me blow out my candles and sang Happy Birthday! It was a good day! (Ah hem, still no makeup!)

I'm home now and writing my blog today. I'll be writing more frequently because I've got alot to say these days. I'm picking up with pieces of my life and want to share my PLAN B.

Tonight I'm sharing my birthday with some friends and I WILL have makeup on!