5th Bead Soup Blog Party!

One non-birthday and family thing that I did manage to do over the weekend was to enter the lottery for Lori Anderson's 5th Bead Soup Party. She's running it as a lottery with no more than 200 participants this time round to keep it all manageable, and if you'd like a chance to take part follow this link before the end of today - I can guarantee that you'll have lots of fun!

My Birthday Boys

My little boys are growing up. I know that's only to be expected, but it is still a bit of a shock to the system to realise that my baby is now one year old and my big boy is six! The problem is, you see, that I'm certain that I'm still 27, and T says he's sure that he's 31. Never mind!

It was Jamie's first birthday on Friday, although in many ways late Thursday night and early Friday morning when I went in to his room to feed him were more special to me as I kept thinking about that time last year. I had a very quick labour with him - contractions started about 11pm and sped up dramatically, we got to the hospital about 1am after phoning a friend to come and look after Ben as we realised that there was no way that my Mum could get over here in time. I was holding Jamie in my arms by 1.40am, and then we were able to get home before Ben woke up for school! Jamie and I had quite a quiet day on Friday as it was a school day, so Saturday felt more birthday-like with family over for a party. Both boys had a great time with both sets of grandparents and my brother over to make a fuss of them! Jamie, of course, didn't realise what was going on, while Ben had been excited all week. They are so wonderful together - Jamie adores his big brother and definitely saves his biggest smiles and laughs for him, and Ben is so patient and loving with him. How long that will last is anyone's guess, but I'm making the most of it!

We're definitely going to have a quieter weekend next weekend. The last four weekends we've either had visitors or been visiting family for Christmas, and we had T's Dad here between the Christmas and New Year weekends too. That's what happens when you have two children born so close to Christmas! Lots of fun, but I'm definitely more relaxed now it's over!

BTW

I've been busy today - lots of shiny silver just out of the tumbler! This is a mix of etsy orders, bits and pieces for new designs and some new designs for my etsy shop.

Thank you for all the orders of clasps during my sale - it's on until the end of Friday, and I've got new designs to list tomorrow.

Happy New Year!

I know, not the most imaginative of titles for a post at this time of year is it? The sentiment is true though, I wish each and everyone of you a very happy and healthy New Year. Did you stay up to see the New Year in? If any of you have read far enough back in my blog to reach this time three years ago, to this post, you'll know that I tend to find New Year's Eve a bit of an anti climax and my favourite way to spend the evening is to invite some friends over, cook them some good food, open a few bottles of wine and have a great evening of chat and silly games. This year my friend Kate and her family came to visit us from Suffolk and our friends from across the road came over too. The children were great - Jamie and Kate's Emma settled down really well and the three older boys were settled down with a Scooby Doo video and snacks for a sleepover.

No resolutions this year (there's no point, I always get stressed about them and then break them!) but lots of aims. The main aim for the house/family is to finish the work on the sitting room. We've painted, got new sofas, bought a new rug, and the room loks completely different and much bigger, but the new shelving needs finishing before I show you what we've done. I've got lots of aims for the business, but the three I'm going to concentrate on for now are getting the ideas I've got sketched out into my etsy shop, getting my jewellery into three more galleries by the end of this year and spending more time working on one-off pieces of jewellery. This last one is partly because I absolutely love making one-off pieces, and also because I have so many lovely stones and lampwork beads that I really must use!

The ones I've bought most recently are below. The lampwork is, of course, from Mindy Macgregor. I had thought that her poppy beads were my favourites of all time, that she would be hard pressed to improve on those, but these beauties are just amazing! The colours are absolutely gorgeous, so jewel like. I can't quite decide which out of the three beads I've shown closeups of are my favourite of the set. These are big beads too - nearly 2.5cm in diameter. They're destined for long necklaces, hopefully before the end of the week.

And these are the stones I bought from my friend Brenda when I saw her just before Christmas. I had promised myself that I wouldn't buy anymore, but I couldn't resist! Afterall, they are unique - once they're gone, they're gone! the labradorite pear is my favourite - the electric blue flashes are some of the best I've seen, and I'm so pleased I could get them in the photo. I haven't decided what I'm going to make with these stones yet, but I do know that I'm going to set the emerald-cut green onyx upside down. The faceting on the back is too good to hide and I just like the idea of setting it in a different way than might be expected.

deep purply blue iolite, an amazingly flashy labradorite, rose-cut black onyx and emerald-cut green onyx

Well, those should keep me busy for a while! What are your hopes and plans for the New Year?

Thank you

Thank you to all of you for your support, your love and your encouragement this year. It truly has been a year of ups and downs. Jamie's birth at the beginning of the year was obviously the biggest blessing, and he and Ben have continued to be an absolute joy. Finding out that I had cancer 6 days after giving birth was not, however, part of the plan for this year, or for any year for that matter! The surgeons and all the hospital staff who continue to care for me and who got all of the tumour out (hurray!) are amazing, but I know that the only way that the family came through it all was with the support of our friends - and I include you in that. Thank you for your comments, for the emails and letters that I was sent while I was ill, and the prayers.Thank you for continuing to read my rambling posts!

Thank you too to everyone who has bought my jewellery on my main website or my clasps in my new etsy shop (64 sales in my daisychain extra shop in 7 months! So much more than I hoped for!), everyone who has come to a class or for tuition, or has tried one my magazine projects or downloaded one of my tutorials.

I have more plans for 2012, but in the meantime there is 

a thank you sale 

in both the daisychain extra etsy shop and on my jewellery website - 

10% off all clasps and findings and 15% off all jewellery. 

The jewellery website already has the discount applied, but to get the discount on etsy 

you will need to enter the code "XMASEXTRA"

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone!

I haven't been hiding away in the workshop making jewellery orders all this time - I was allowed out for good behaviour every now and then. Well, seriously, I have been busy with lots of lovely orders (quite a few last minute ones!), but there have also been lots of family things going on too. And to be honest, I've also found it quite hard the last couple of months. The last operation I had at the beginning of November brought back a lot of bad memories that I didn't even realise I had from my big op and stay in hospital in February, and I've been hiding away a bit. But enough of that for now - this is some of the more fun stuff we've been up to!

• Ben is now 6! I know every mother says it, but where on earth has the time gone?!? He had a fab birthday weekend. His birthday was last Saturday and the school PTA had organised a trip to Peter Pan so we had a family visit to that, along with the families of his best friends. He had a swimming party on the Sunday. I'm not sure who had the better time there - Ben and his friends or T and the other dads who went into the pool and on the inflatables with them!
• Jamie is now crawling - and boy can he crawl! He had been bum-shuffling for a while and the week before last he just decided he could do it - and that he wanted the toy that was just out of reach badly enough. He is so pleased with himself.
• Ben was a wise man in the school play. He was so confident and thoroughly enjoyed himself, which I'm sure has alot to do with how encouraging his school and teachers are. Jamie got so excited when he saw his brother!

Add to that three more birthday parties, two sleep overs and a trip to the inlaws, and you can see why we've been busy! At least everything is ready now, Father Christmas's progress has been checked on the NORAD satellites, milk and cookies has been left out for him, raindeer food (oats and glitter!) has been sprinkled on the lawn, and both boys are finally asleep. I expect to be woken up very early tomorrow morning, for Ben to get over excited and for Jamie to think that the boxes and wrapping paper are the best things ever. I hope that you and your families have a wonderful day.

Counting down....

Just a quick note before I hide myself away in the workshed to get some more orders finished! Thank you for all the lovely comments about the challenge pieces I made last week. I've had lots of fun looking round all the other blogs taking part. It was great to see what everyone else made with my oak leaf clasps, and I've seen so many lovely designs on the Challenge of Color blog hop. The palettes that Erin sent us were gorgeous, and the good news is that she's got more challenges planned for the new year. I've got another couple of challenges up my sleeve too!

Before then, though, I've got to finish getting organised for Christmas and Ben's birthday. November is always so busy with Christmas commissions and orders, family events and Christmas craft shows that the start of December always seems to surprise me slightly - and then starts to panic me slightly as from now on until the end of the year it's a bit of a mad rush! Ben and so many of his friends have December birthdays, so this month we have as many birthday parties to take him to as he gets invited to in the whole of the rest of the year put together. The general theme for this year's parties seems to be sporty. One of his best friends had a party at St Mary's, Southampton FC's stadium, last Saturday. T went along with him as I was sure he'd appreciate the venue far more than I would! His other best friend is having a swimming party next weekend, and Ben is having a swimming birthday party the following Sunday, and then there are mid-week teas and a couple of sleepovers in between as well.

Right then, off to the workshed! I put the heater and the pickle pot on before I came on the computer so hopefully everything to ready to go! I've got photos to edit this afternoon as well, so I'll be adding more pieces of jewellery to the website this evening. There's still time to put in Christmas orders. The last date for UK orders for pieces that are ready for immediate dispatch is Monday 19th December, and for made to order pieces the last date is Friday 16th.