Quick Reminder

Today is the last day to take advantage of my website sale!

Halloween

I hope you all had a wonderfully frightful Halloween!  We had fun passing out the candy to all the kids in their cute little costumes.  Also as you can see from the pic above, Mozzie got both of his wishes...he got a fancy mask and got to pass out (in the) candy!

I apologize for these two pics because they were taken with my small camera which obviously I should set aside some time and figure out how to use.  But we had fun pumpkins again this year.  R carved the one on top.  He always does fancy ones, and this one was a haunted house.  I decided to forgo my usual cutesy-Hallmark style and made a scary one based on the pumpkin scarecrow in the movie Sleepy Hollow with Johnny Depp.  The bottom one was inspired by Martha Stewart.  They looked great all lit up, but unfortunately I couldn't get a pic of it with that camera.

I found it a bit curious that only one other house in our neighborhood had any decorations out.  I always like to do it up right and decorate outside.  I think it's more fun for the kids...ok and me too.  I do love holidays!

Saturday night we decided to engage in something a little more on the grown up side of Halloween fun and went ghost hunting with a professional paranormal team.  We didn't find any ghosts (nor did I expect to) but it was fun and we got out of the house on a nice night...45 degrees, which for this time of year is rare.  Plus I got to wear my new coat.  R was really happy about that part.  He couldn't have cared less that I bought something new, but actually getting me into a coat is next door to a miracle.  He nags me constantly to wear coats and scarves and socks and shoes and all sorts of unnecessary articles of clothing.  Men and their kooky ideas!

I also managed to get a whole lot of work done around the house, do a mountain of laundy, bake a chicken and brownies and just basically work my keister off all weekend.  This week, I need to do some prep work for his painting the living room while I am gone on my trip.  So it's going to be a busy week for me.   I have also been toying around with a new design for a brand new animal.  But that will have to be put off until I come back from Montana.

Lastly...the first wave of pieces sold from the sale will be going out tomorrow.  Remember you have through Friday to take advantage of the sale!

Hugs, Kelly

Treats For You, Tricks For Me

Hi Mozzie here!  I had this great idea, since this is my first Halloween I wanted to pass out treats, but I was told I was too small to give out candy.  *Sad face*  But then I thought we should have a sale so that some of my buddies could find good homes.  Can you think if a better treat!?  If you want to adopt one of my pals, just e-mail Kelly using the link at the right, and she will send you a paypal invoice with the adjusted price. 

What I didn't know is that I was going to get tricked into wearing this silly pumpkin hat!!!  BOO for me!  I really wanted a fancy mask!  *Frowny Face*

Happy Halloween & bear hugs, Mozzie

And The Winner Is...

I reached deep down into the jack-o-lantern and pulled out a number!

Are you wondering if it's you?

It might be....

Ok actually I used random.org to get the number...there was no jack-o-lantern...

the

winner

is...

yes I am making you wait for it...

but here it is....

Which means Tyler from Teds 'n Such  is the winner!  Congrats Tyler!  All I need now is a mailing address and he will be on his way to you!

Thank you all for participating.  Watch for another give away near Christmas!

Hugs, Kelly

Happy, Grumpy & Reminder

Despite what you may think, this is not a post about dwarfs...Snow White is no where in sight.  But lets go ahead and start with grumpy and get that out of the way.  Then we can move on to happy things!

Ok so I am feeling a bit grumpy about Etsy.  I haven't made a post about Etsy in years, but I really do need to get this off my chest.  I don't rely on Etsy much, but I figure for 20 cents a pop, it's worth it as an online portfolio to reach people who might not see me otherwise.  I like to shop on Etsy sometimes though.  They implemented a feature a while back where they had suggested items from your favorite shops on the front page.  It was great.  I really liked seeing what people whose work I like and buy, have made recently.  It certainly prompted me to buy a few things that I might not have.  It was also handy for the girl on the go.  Plus my own page views have dropped by about 95%.  But with this new person in charge they have removed it.  Apparently the thinking is that people should pay for extra advertising. Money hungry little buggers.  They also removed the pounce and a couple other features that were effective.   On top of that they have removed the just listed section!!!  This seems so counter intuitive to me.  They were still making a profit from the items sold, probably more than they will on the items sold through people who will pay to advertise.  So why...why Etsy...WHY?  I am not going to pay for advertising through them.  I just do not understand this cut off your nose to spite your face line of thinking they constantly employ.  Ok small rant over...now on to the fun stuff!

Now for the happy!  YAY!  As you see I have posted a pic of my dining room.  (Penelope snuck into the pic under the chair...I didn't even notice.)  This weekend we finally...FINALLY started redoing the house.  R painted the walls.  Isn't it lovely!  He also bought me a new china cabinet which I need to put the stuff back into.  But that's for tomorrow.  Today I have to put up Halloween decorations.  I also want to repaint the painted part of the chairs white. 

When I used to live in a condo I dreamed of the day when I had a house and could decorate it any way I wanted.  I had a million ideas.  But when we moved into this house 12 years ago the trouble was I had a million ideas!  I couldn't settle on anything.  So a while back R put his foot down and said pick something woman it's time!  I am so glad he did.  I had forgotten how much I love color.  Of course we are both Leo's so naturally we have to have warm colors.  I don't care for cool colors in my home. 

When I go to visit my parents in a couple weeks he is going to do the living room and kitchen.  I can't wait.  It's going to be beautiful!  I already have ideas for the bedroom and the downstairs too.  My house is going to be fabulous!  At least I think so.

Lastly I want to give you a reminder...tomorrow night is the drawing for Caution Mouse so be sure to enter if you haven't already!

Have a lovely day!  Hugs, K. <3

Edit:  One trip to World Market later and we have new chair cushions, lantern and placemats!

~*~ Autumn Pumpkin ~*~

One of my favorite quotes is by Henry David Thoreau;  "I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion."  If only Henry had a velvety mohair pumpkin to sit on, he could have had the best of both worlds!

I normally don't make things without a face, but just for fun I wanted to do a little pumpkin.  I really like how it turned out.

My Autumn pumpkin is available on my website at http://www.blondheart.com/

News Worthy

When I was a kid, every evening we sat down to watch Walter Cronkite deliver the news.  For a child, this was pretty boring.  But I was always fascinated by Mr. Cronkite.  He seemed like such a kindly man.  Even when the news was terrible he gave the impression of being a member of the family who had a reassurance in his demeanor that everything would be alright, behind the words he spoke.  He had something that is desperately lacking these days.  He had grace, and he was able to maintain it even in the worst of times.

Back in those days even though nearly every American watched the news religiously, it was still a personal choice.  You could watch the evening news or read the paper...and that was it.  Those were the only two ways to have the news delivered to you.  If you chose to take the day off from knowing the evils of the world...you could enjoy a blissful day.

I stopped watching the news about 20 years ago.  We lived in Connecticut and many of the stations we got were from New York City.  They had a way of over sensationalizing everything.  My cut off was one day when I watched an anchor woman tell a story about a horrific incident that had happened.  She was smiling.  I mean like beauty pagent smile type of smiling.  I felt sick to my stomach.  I know that reporters are supposed to detach themselves from what they are reporting...but really...smiling over a crime so horrific I that I won't even tell you what it was on my blog?  I couldn't watch anymore.  Knowing things too horrible to imagine on a daily basis, and knowing that you can't do anything to stop them just wreaks havoc on your psyche after a while...especially when they are told with a smile.  As a bear maker I have to be a little bit on the happy side or the bears look depressed.

I have been avoiding the fact that I am sick all week.  Sometimes I think if I ignore it, it will just go away and I will feel fine.  Today I had to own up it.  I had a sore throat and an earache that progressed pretty far.  As a result of finally admitting to myself I am sick, I was in a differnt kind of avoidance mode.  I have one last little Halloween piece I want to do, and I did get it cut out.  But I didn't feel like sewing.

Part of my avoidance of work today was to read the news online.  Like I said,  I don't watch the news unless something specific happens that I really want to know more about.  I never read the paper.  Ever.  R tells me what he thinks I need to know.  It's not that I want to go through life with rose colored glasses on or that I don't care what's going on in the world.  The problem is when you have the type of memory I do and remember huge amounts of what you see in print, you don't read the paper because it sticks with you forever.  Again..happy bears...

In our computerized times it's hard to avoid the news though.  It's on the splash page of our server every time we log in.  It's almost impossible to turn it off too.  It's on our smart phones.  It's everywhere.  Part of the fallout of all this constant bombardment of news is that sometimes the media seems to run out and things are reported that aren't really what I would consider news worthy.

While going through the 20 pages of news on my server, there was the usual stuff of course.  But most of it was just blather...among other things, there was something about a child who has a rare medical condition that causes her to eat glass, something about a movie star who is suing Amazon for revealing her actual age, and some nonsense about a family with 19 kids who have banned TV and pets from their home...um ok.  Then I came across another headline that read that the First Lady wore pink twice in one day.  I didn't bother to read any of those articles because I don't consider that news.  My reaction was so what?  I wore two pair of grey sweats back to back...stop the presses!  Ok so maybe I don't have the same mass appeal that the First Lady does, but still...who cares?  Is this really news?  It isn't even a human interest story in my book.  So she wore pink twice in one day...maybe she was in the mood for pink, or maybe it was because it's National Breast Cancer month.  I don't know...and I don't need to know.

Do we benefit from all this pointless information that is passed off as news?  I don't think we do.  I think it's just cerebral litter laying on the side of the information super highway.  My new rule of thumb is this...if Walter Cronkite wouldn't have reported it...I am not going to bother to read it.