HaPpY NeW YeaR!!! Finally, the year that was 2009 is almost over. I say do let the door hit you in the butt on the way out, 2009! It has been a challenging, troubling, rewarding, interesting, never boring year. I learned that I can not control everything, even my health and that is alright. I learned that business never follows a straight, true path to prosperity, that it is like a child that must be nurtured and encouraged. Much like me. I learned that the things that used to bother me, anger me, make me impatient are, as older relatives used to tell me; receding into the background. Family matters. My children matter, even the grown up one. My husband matters. My artwork and jewelry matter in many ways from making a living with me to supporting my family. Lots of little things have fallen by the wayside and that is just where they belong.

I am wishing for you and yours and mine, a year and decade filled with good health, prosperity, peace, family and time to be creative.

May the Blue Moon be a sign of a good year all around to come.

In the studio today, I made samples for the shop from items I currently sell. I am crazy for the Art Girlz charms and I have always had much lust for wool felt.

This jangle of color, charms and noise is a charm bracelet also made with Art Girlz parts. Doll parts do not have to just be for dolls, you know.






This is a beaded and embroidered doll brooch created with wool felt, glass beads, shell flowers and ArtGirlz parts. She is about four inches tall overall. I just need to sew a pin back on her. All through her creation the name Angela kept running through my head so maybe that is her name or I have angels on the brain from Christmas!

Do you want to know something that I love? I love spending the day at home. A full day. No place to go. No place to be but right here. I bounce between the house and the studio. I do a little of this, a lot of that, a few chores. I make dinner. Tonight, comfort food, macaroni and cheese. Homemade with love and care, like my mother used to make and I think of her now. I am feeling at this moment content as I look around at my son, the dogs, my knitting, smelling the wonderful scent of melting cheese in the air. Still the Christmas tree is up and fully decorated and even that makes me feel that all at this moment is well and good and loving and fine.

Christmas day found us at home, a quiet day, just the three of us. Enjoying each other's company, games and a wonderful dinner.


This child of mine without any savings to his name; needed to create Christmas gifts so this is one of three certificates he made up for us. This promises to " work hard ". We just had to laugh. Pretty imaginative!



The joy on a kid's face on Christmas morning reaffirms the love in us all.



Jacob with his framed Seahawks signatures. He had collected them at a bead show while the hawks were coming and going from breakfast. He loves it so much that Phil had them framed for an unexpected gift.


This is the view that greeted us at 7:30 on Christmas morning; a landscape covered in thick white frost. Nature's round about way of blessing us with a white Christmas.

Merry Christmas Eve and with this merry wish, I also ask for the blessings of the season to extend to you and yours. This is my Christmas tree charm, showing the love I believe is in each Christmas day!

This is Beckett Point where I lived for a long time in a very small cabin with my son Michael and when he was home from the sea, my ex husband. I loved my little 400 square foot house right on the beach. Small, cozy, cedar lined interior walls; I loved that place. I let it embrace me even as I lived my days there. I learned to love the wind as it blew year round across the straits and then over the spit. I grew up there, became an adult there. Fell in and out of love there, met my friend Bud there, whom I miss terribly even to this day. I painted, knitted, gardened, fished, chopped wood, read, crafted and wrote about my days there. Even now when I dream of home at night; it is to Beckett Point I return. Do we ever forget our first home away from home, the place we left our childhood?

May this holiday season, which feels gray and lifeless to me, find you nestled in your home in the loving arms of family doing the things that make you happy and content.

This is my Christmas present from my sweet, growing up too fast Jacob boy. He could not wait until Christmas to give it to me. The frame is his masterpiece, a school project that he accented with cats, of course. I just LOVE it!

Phil & I went to town today to meet up with Libby and while we were gone; the spirit of Christmas entered Jacob ( so he says ) and when we walked in the door, he had made a Merry Christmas banner and hung sparkly lights everywhere he could think of. I just love colored lights and how innocent he still seems when he says he " got into the spirit". Long may that spirit live!