Vacation...

...Hey peeps!!!  Happy Halloween Eve!!!  We just got back from vacation and I'm starting my Holiday jewelry making marathon.  I'll be posting lots of new things over the next few weeks and I promise you will love them all!  I have so many ideas roaming around in my head, lots of new beads and charms and lots of holiday cheer!  So please be sure to check out the shop every day or so to see what's new.  Whew...sometimes you just need a vacation from the vacation.  We had a whirlwind of site seeing, family visiting and friendship makings.  We started off in Philadelphia, PA, went up to Boston, MA, back down to Philadelphia and then to New York City!  We had so much fun!  Neither of us had ever been to New York, or Philadelphia.  I guess the best part about Philly were these:

Philly Cheese Steaks!  We ate three while we were there ~ lol.  Of course, there were the "occupiers" with their signs and protests, but it was my baby sister's birthday, so I decided to "occupy" the art tent and make her a birthday sign:

And then we all stood beneath the "LOVE" sculpture and posted the photo on facebook!

Another awesome thing about Philly was this amazing mosaic artist named Isaiah Zagar.  He has single-handedly "mosaiced" almost a whole block of buildings downtown!  It is absolutely stunning!  I just couldn't believe it!  It was awesome!  This is just a tip of the iceberg:

And then it was on to New York...what more can I say...

...we had a great time, but I'm glad to be back home.

Hope you have a safe & enjoyable Halloween!!!  Don't let the spooks spook you!

xo ~ Kathy

P.S.  Check back Tuesday for an awesome Holiday discount coupon code!

"There are three things I have learned never to discuss with people: religion, politics, and the Great Pumpkin.” ~ Linus

Friends....

I just wanted to post a quick hello and a "Thank You" to all of my friends, old & new. I called my dear friend, Christine today. We've been friends since High School. She lives out in Los Angeles, but we can pick up the phone and just about start where we left off last. I love that girl! And, even more awesome than talking to her on the phone, she will be coming to visit me in North Carolina next Spring!!!! I can't wait.

And then I have my new friends that I've met on "Flickr" and "Etsy" that I just dearly love already and I've never even met them face to face. So, my little picture for today pretty much sums up the whole thing!

So now I'm off to return e-mails & convos and get some little pendants made that are off to new homes tomorrow. I hope you all had a wonderful weekend & I'll be back Tuesday with a review on some awesome teas I just got from "BloominTea". I'm going to fix me a cup right now ~ yum~

♥ & peace ~ Kathy

"Those who bring Sunshine to the lives of others,
cannot keep it from themselves" ~ James Barrie

Oh Happy Day ~

I just woke up in a really good mood today and feel like making stuff, doing stuff & listing stuff in the shop. Etsy has been really slow lately {site problems} and my sales have suffered because of it. It's not a bad thing though, because I know sales will pick up again and it's given me some time to do some other things, catch up on some things and visit with some friends. I had lunch yesterday with one of my sweet little friends, Jackie and then visited with one of my oldest and dearest friends, Pam. At the end of the day I realized how much I love them both and will miss them dearly when I move. And this evening we are taking my Mom & Step dad to dinner for a belated "Father's Day". I'm so looking forward to it. I hope we are not rushed out of the restaurant. I hate it when you are paying good money for dinner and feel like you are expected to jump up and leave as soon as you're done because there are people waiting for tables. So today, I'm saying "to bad". We are staying as long as we want and nobody is going to intimidate me.

This is one of the things I made this morning. It's another "Daisy Head Maizy" necklace. They are really popular and each one is a little different: I just love it! I also have to share my new shoes that I just bought from "Zappos.com". They will be most perfect for hiking and wading in creeks to look for rocks & "mud puppies". I can't wait to get them. I have an old pair of "Teva's", but they are getting a little worn and the new ones are supposed to have better arch support. I just have this thing about having my foot enclosed in a shoe. It makes me claustrophobic. So, I wear sandals all the time and in winter I mostly wear clogs, so I can get my foot out fast, in case it stops breathing or something. I know, it sounds strange, but I've already decided that I'm not normal:

I debated on getting them in one of the pretty colors that are available, but I decided that the black would probably stay cleaner & be more practical. After all, I'm not getting them to make a fashion statement. They will be here Monday, so I'll let you know how comfie they are.

Well all my little peeps, I hope you are enjoying the new look of my blog {another thing I finally got done while Etsy was being troublesome}. I'll be changing the music every Monday, so send me your requests. I'll be an on-line blogger D.J. of sorts. Have a happy, happy weekend and always remember to "Love One Another". xxoo ♥ & peace ~ Kathy

"Then give to the world the best you know And the best will come back to you"
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Happy Father's Day!

It was seven years ago today that we sprinkled my Daddy's ashes in Lake Maurepas {one of his favorite places}. He loved living on the river and being on his boat. Unfortuately, living on the river has a price, as you become one with the bad habits of living a life of leisure, which includes smoking, drinking and partying in excess. After years of living this way, it finally caught up with him at the very young age of 65. Cancer found it's way into his body and soul, leaving him a frail and painful existence. In his last days he lay in a hospital bed, pumped up with morphine and listening to "Pink Floyd". I brought all of his Pink Floyd cd's to the hospital and played them on his walkman until he crossed over to the "dark side of the moon". It seemed to calm him. He took his last breath to "comfortably numb", as my Sister and I stood at his beside and breathed a sigh of relif through a flood of tears. Not a day goes by that I don't think about him and wish he were here. I'm sharing this picture of him with you, just so you can see what I'm missing:

He and my Mother divorced when I was 18. She held a lot of bad feelings towards him and would always like to voice her feelings when I spoke lovingly and highly of him and she would always talk about how he "abandoned" us. Maybe he abandoned her, but he didn't abandon me. She would get upset because he would never hide his partying ways from us and we got to see him how he really was. Finally one day I pointed it out to her that she was the one that "picked" him, not me. It wasn't my fault that he was my Father, she had a choice, I did not. After I told her that, she never said anything bad about him {at least in front of me} ever again. Sure he had plently of "faults", but the good things he had outweighed them by far. He was the most kind, gentle and loving person I have ever known and I miss him more than anybody I probably ever will. So to him I say "Shine on you crazy diamond". He made me what I am today ~ a caring, artistic and loving person, and for that, I'm forever grateful.

And so today I'm wishing all those Daddys out there that have little girls that will always love them, no matter what, a Happy Father's Day!

"If one life shines, the life next to it will catch the light" ~ unknown

♥ xxoo & peace ~ Kathy

It's A Small World ~ After All.....

The Internet never ceases to amaze me. Just to think about it for any length of time blows my mind. Yeah Benjamin Franklin invented electricity ~ big deal! Especially when you think about what we have today. And to think that it has ALL been invented within the last 50 years! Unbelievable. And because of the Internet, the world has become a much smaller place, but a place that I love more and more every day. Just today I had somebody find my jewelry on "Flickr" and then track me down on Etsy to buy stuff and, she lives in Angola, South Africa ~ amazing! I think about some of my customers and the places they live and just want to go there and visit and see and touch and feel and learn about different peoples and different cultures. And when people buy my jewelry it just brings it all together and I realize, we are really all the same. We want to be happy, to raise our families in a world of peace and non-violence, with more love than war and I just want to hug people that feel unloved and tell them that somebody does love them and everything will be okay if they just let it be. And then I was looking through this person's pictures on her "Flickr" pages and just thinking about how it must be to live over there, miles away from anything or anybody I've ever known. She has some awesome pictures and then I ran across one that looked so familiar. It was a single dragonfly, just like one I had today in my back yard:
He was just sitting there, fluttering with no care in the world, just like he "belonged". But then I thought "wouldn't it be wonderful if we were free to travel & go any where we wanted any where in the world and belong" ~ what a wonderful world it would be. Why can't we be like the dragonflies...

"The words "peace" and "tranquility" are worth a thousand pieces of gold" ~ Chinese Proverb

Good night everyone - have a Happy Friday! ♥ xx00 & peace ~ Kathy