We've moved!

Ten stinking, hot, humid and ridiculously exhausting days later, we are officially moved out of our rental property and into our newly purchased house! I do have photos I've taken of the little bits of reno work we're doing but lord knows where on earth my camera is in all this mess! I had it until about 3 days ago when my office got packed up at the other house- now, no clue, lol!

Anyway, I just wanted to drop a quick note and let you all know what I've been up to. When I can find my computer (I am on my old half busted laptop currently) and my camera, I'll post some photos and some commentary on the whole thing.

I am just so glad to be done, it of course, had to happen during the hottest part of the summer and while all 3 of my kids were home from school to complain at me about not going to the beach.

Tomorrow I am going to pull out the $5 sprinkler I bought at Walmart and let the kids run around the yard and cool off while I attempt to unpack the mountain of boxes in my dining room and living room.

Signing off as an very tired and achy but official resident of Narragansett, RI.

Tara :)

Annoying Purses Part II

Oh, so sorry to leave you guys hanging on my purse saga! I got busy visiting my mom for her birthday, and then Tara's beach post was so lovely I did not want to bump it off the front page.

Anyway, I cut the handles off my latest purse and then made little sleeves to hold the handles that were the same width as the handles. This seems to have solved the problem. Here is how it looks now:

It works so much better now, I love it!!

Life's a beach!

Another gorgeous day at Scarborough Beach in Narragansett...

Crystal clear waters couldn't even keep my normally resistant to the water Austin away...

Aidan's obsessed with wearing goggles, Avery playing in the sand and Aidan snacking on some goodies...



I think Austin's gonna be an architect when he grows up...
His humble beach house- I particularly like the sand bridge he made that spans the area for his moat...



A gila monster

New work and oh- I love my tumbler!

Some Seashell Pendants
Originally uploaded by mornindew2822

Some of the new seashell pieces I completed this week. I took the plunge and tried tumbling my pendants in stainless steel shot (I was so scared it would crack the shells!) I tried it on a "burnt toast" piece first and the shell held up, so I tumbled these pieces and they are super shiny and my hands are SO grateful! Polishing to a mirror finish by hand is pretty labor intensive. Polishing in the tumbler takes so much of that work out of my hands (pun intended) and cuts my cleaning time in half!

For those interested, I use a Lortone double barrel rotary tumbler. :)

These and other pieces are available at Most Naturally in the Pier Marketplace, Narragansett RI. :)

Annoying Purses and the Importance of Prototypes

Vacation season is coming up, and I tend to make a purse just for me to take on vacation. Often when I make a purse it goes onto my website or into a store, and I put a tag on them as soon as they are done, and wave goodbye. Sometimes that makes me feel a little meloncholy, as the last bit of a favorite fabric makes its way out of my life.

Tara and I many times talk about burnt toast- I think the saying comes from when the mom of the family eats the toast that got a little more done than anyone likes it to avoid wasting the food. I have a friend that used to always eat what she called "rescue fruit"- it was nearly rotten , with parts that needed to be cut off, but she ate the good parts to avoid the waste and leave the good stuff for her kids. Anyway, Tara and I use "burnt toast" to describe stuff we make that is ok and usable, but maybe not quite what we would want it to be if we were selling it.

I decided to make myself a new purse, this time using a fabric I love, and this one was not going to be burnt toast! As I was planning out the bag, I found a pair of handles that matched the fabric wonderfully, and decided to use them. Here is the bag I made, and I love it!Here's the catch: I should not have used little tabs to connect the handles! Those handles are now free to rotate and they are so annoying I want to scream! I was so sad, thinking, here I had these grand plans, and have made myself burnt toast! I have pretty much always kept the first bag made using every design I come up with (except where the design was for a custom, or someone saw the picture and wanted it badly!). I guess this experience showed me why that is a good idea- to make new designs and test them out myself before I send them out into the world. I would have hated for someone else to be as annoyed by this lovely purse as I am!

So this afternoon in my break between my son's football camp and his band camp, I am going to make a little sleeve that will be as long as that bottom part of the handle, and redo that part of the bag. Hopefully that will fix it, and I won't have to feel like I am eating that old burnt toast again.

Happy 6th Birthday, Noah!

Noahs Birthday Cake
Originally uploaded by mornindew2822

My nephew wanted a basketball themed birthday this year. Since we're moving into our new house in a little more than a week and are strapped for cash, I offered to make his cake as my gift to him.

I did his name (and all the other text) freehand copying the font that Wilson Sports uses for their logo in an attempt to make the ball look more realistic.

My poor son, Austin! This is a giant sheet cake with a 9" round on top for the basketball- just to give you an idea of the size. He carried it on his lap from our house in RI to my sister's house in CT- an hour and 20 minutes with the AC blasting on him the whole time so the frosting didn't get weepy, lol!

Noah selected his namesake as the portion for his serving. They demolished more than 2/3 of the cake by the time the party was wrapping up... oh yeah, my sister DID mention that her boys are "cake hounds" when I offered to make it, LOL!

Happy birthday, Noah, I hope you had a great day! :)

She continues to sell seashells... and some beach pottery too!

As a follow up to my original post, I have been uber busy working on seashell pendants bezel set in sterling silver. I delivered 6 pieces (5 made of seashell, 1 was a piece of beachcombed transferware) to a local shop for the store owner to try out over the 4th of July weekend. She called today to tell me she loves them and has sold 2 already and would like 5 more pendants and also some earrings- go me!


If you are local to the area, my seashell pieces are now officially available at Most Naturally in the Pier Marketplace (Narragansett, RI)

Woohoo!