Suddenly living in California doesn't look so bad!

Sometimes I really miss snow. Sledding, snowball fights, sitting by the fire and watching it fall...

This looked fun so I thought I would play too!

You are supposed to bold the ones you have done.

1. Started your own blog
2. Slept under the stars
3. Played in a band
4. Visited Hawaii
5. Watched a meteor shower
6. Given more than you can afford to charity
7. Been to Disneyland
8. Climbed a mountain
9. Held a praying mantis
10. Sang a solo
11. Bungee jumped
12. Visited Paris
13. Watched a lightning storm at sea
14. Taught yourself an art from scratch
15. Adopted a child
16. Had food poisoning
17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty
18. Grown your own vegetables
19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France
20. Slept on an overnight train
21. Had a pillow fight
22. Hitch hiked
23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill
24. Built a snow fort
25. Held a lamb
26. Gone skinny dipping
27. Run a Marathon
28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice
29. Seen a total eclipse
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset
31. Hit a home run
32. Been on a cruise
33. Seen Niagara Falls in person
34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors
35. Seen an Amish community
36. Taught yourself a new language
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied
38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person
39. Gone rock climbing
40. Seen Michelangelo’s David
41. Sung karaoke
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt
43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant
44. Visited Africa
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight
46. Been transported in an ambulance
47. Had your portrait painted
48. Gone deep sea fishing
49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris
51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling
52. Kissed in the rain
53. Played in the mud
54. Gone to a drive-in theater
55. Been in a movie
56. Visited the Great Wall of China
57. Started a business
58. Taken a martial arts class
59. Visited Russia
60. Served at a soup kitchen
61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies
62. Gone whale watching
63. Got flowers for no reason
64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma
65. Gone sky diving
66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp
67. Bounced a check
68. Flown in a helicopter
69. Saved a favorite childhood toy
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial
71. Eaten Caviar
72. Pieced a quilt
73. Stood in Times Square
74. Toured the Everglades
75. Been fired from a job
76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London
77. Broken a bone
78. Been on a speeding motorcycle
79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person
80. Published a book
81. Visited the Vatican
82. Bought a brand new car
83. Walked in Jerusalem
84. Had your picture in the newspaper
85. Read the entire Bible
86. Visited the White House
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
88. Had chickenpox
89. Saved someone’s life
90. Sat on a jury
91. Met someone famous
92. Joined a book club
93. Lost a loved one
94. Had a baby
95. Seen the Alamo in person
96. Swam in the Great Salt
97. Been involved in a law
98. Owned a cell phone
99. Been stung by a bee
100. Totally copied a post from someone else's blog to your own. (Just this one!)

Okay.. Your turn!!

Joy to the World

The Christmas Countdown!

Sisterly Love

I never had sisters until my brothers got married. I always wondered what it would be like to grow up with sisters. Would we fight all the time? Would we be friends? My girls are best of friends most days. I snagged these pictures the other day. Of course I missed the cutest one but I think you will get the idea.


Everyone loves E's hugs. When she hugs you, you know you have been hugged! Of course I missed the cute kiss she just gave K.


She will also have a yelling contest with you if you will participate. It starts with telling her you love her. Then she tells you a little louder, then you tell her again and on and on it goes, getting louder and louder. ;)
At this point in the photos everyone starts to giggle and we had to let K up so she could breath again.

A blog giveaway

Everyone likes something for free, especially when they are great stocking stuffers!

I am a part of a homeschool team that sells on Etsy. If you are not familiar with Etsy, it is an online marketplace for handmade items (and supplies). "The team" that I speak of, is a group of people that have something in common or a common location. This group joins together online to promote and encourage one another. So this is a team of parents (and teens) that currently homeschool or have recently homeschooled. You can see our complete profile on our blog.

So please visit our Schooling at Home Etsian Blog for a daily giveaway starting TODAY!

The Bell

THE BELL
I KNOW WHO I AM
I am God's child (John 1:12 )
I am Christ's friend (John 15:15 )
I am united with the Lord(1 Cor. 6:17 )
I am bought with a price(1 Cor. 6:19 -20)
I am a saint (set apart for God). (Eph. 1:1)
I am a personal witness of Christ. (Acts 1:8)
I am the salt & light of the earth ( Matt.5:13-14)
I am a member of the body of Christ(1 Cor 12:27 )
I am free forever from condemnation ( Rom. 8: 1-2)
I am a citizen of Heaven. I am significant ( Phil.3:20)
I am free from any charge against me (Rom. 8:31 -34)
I am a minister of reconciliation for God(2 Cor.5:17-21)
I have access to God through the Holy Spirit (Eph. 2:18 )
I am seated with Christ in the heavenly realms (Eph. 2:6)
I cannot be separated from the love of God( Rom.8:35-39)
I am established, anointed, sealed by God (2 Cor.1:21-22)
I am assured all things work together for good (Rom. 8: 28 )
I have been chosen and appointed to bear fruit (John 15:16 )
I may approach God with freedom and confidence (Eph. 3: 12 )
I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me (Phil. 4:13 )
I am the branch of the true vine, a channel of His life (John 15: 1-5)
I am God's temple (1 Cor. 3: 16 ). I am complete in Christ (Col. 2: 10)
I am hidden with Christ in God (Col. 3:3). I have been justified (Romans 5:1)
I am God's co-worker (1 Cor.. 3:9; 2 Cor 6:1). I am God's workmanship(Eph. 2:10 )
I am confident that the good works God has begun in me will be perfected. (Phil 1: 5)
I have been redeemed and forgiven(Col.1:14).I have been adopted as God's child(Eph 1:5)
I belong to God
Do you know

Who you are!?


Not sure who put this together but I thought I would pass it on to you.

I thought I was too tired to do anything.

I pulled out the beads last night around 9:00 pm even though I was already tired. I thought I was too tired to get anything done but I had not made anything new all weekend. I don't have these all listed in my shop yet (hopefully tonight). What do you think? I really love these beads. I just think they look so much like a natural stone with a surprise treasure inside when cut open. These are amazingly beautiful glass beads.


I find I can't get away from working with the blues, greens and aqua colors. I did a search on my Etsy store to see what color I was needing to make more of. I had one or two pages of most colors and something like 4 or 5 pages of blue. Guess it is just the color I gravitate towards. Hope that others like it as much as I do. :)

So why have I been missing so long?

Has it really been since October 18th that I last posted? I wish I could say I had been busy throwing pots in those few days but that is not the case. I finally got motivated to start working on jewelry again at night.

I am now back to working 5-6 hours a day on business along with schooling the kids. This means I am staying up very late and getting up early in order to try to break even with my projects and time. It isn't working. I am now at least a week behind on laundry.

I have come to the conclusion that there just are not enough hours in the day. Or... I have turned into a wimp since I need more than 6 hours of sleep at night!

So do you want to see what I have been making?

I thought you would never ask! LOL


I am absolutely loving these colors. They are not my colors at all but these colors just seem so warm and inviting to me and I LOVE these large beads. They are just beautiful! I just sold both of these items but hope to make another one tonight. (If these kids would get to bed!) In the meantime there are other items to see.


Here is what inspired the combination of champagne beads and the topaz colored beads. I started with this necklace and didn't want to stop using these colors.


Then I had to go back to ocean colors. I just love the aqua and blues. Can't seem to get enough of them. Good thing other people like them or I would really be stuck with a lot of inventory. :)




Then I decided to repeat a design I liked in the champagne beads but this time in purples. Just too much fun!


Well, now you know why I have not been around much lately. Oh and I even took time to pull weeds, trim some trees, and clean house. Just in case I start to get bored I have lots more weeds to pull (and we won't talk about the laundry issue).

This was an AWESOME day!

I cannot get the smile off my face!


I am so happy right now. I am wondering why I didn't just make it happen sooner. I spent a few hours yesterday getting rid of some things and "finding" my potters wheel. It has been tucked away in the garage and unused for TOO LONG!

So today, I grabbed a bag of clay, dragged the wheel outside, climbed up into the storage in the garage to find my old stool and found my tools. I found out that I can still throw. YES!


It is like riding a bike!

The only problem I ran into today...pictures will tell you better than words. :)



See the smile on her face too? Yep! She loves it! You can't tell by the picture but she has clay in her hair and on her face. She even rubbed it all up her arms and called it princess gloves. ;)


After a little help in centering she was off and running. Now I will be fighting with them for time on MY wheel. Isn't that great!! ;)

And The Winners Are!!

Drum roll please....

$25 Liesl

$10 Littlewomenmom

And we have a bonus winner because my 6 year old wanted to draw out a name too. So a $5 gift certificate goes to Hebron.

Congratulations everyone and thank you all so much for visiting my shop, giving me some wonderful ideas and helping me to get motivated again. I hope you will think of me when you are Christmas shopping!

Gift Certificates are good for anything currently listed in my shop.

Winners can contact me at oceanbreezeblog@yahoo.com or through Etsy to claim your gift certificate.

Retreat

Just got home from a retreat. Do you want to hear my new favorite song?

Giveaway just got better!

Just wanted to pop in and let you all know that I am reading your comments and writing them all down. You guys are great for taking the time to do this. I am hoping that a lot more will comment before October 16th. In fact I have decided to give away a second gift certificate for $10.

So be sure to comment and now you have a second chance to win. I will be putting all the names in the hat on October 16th at 9:00 am (PST) and will post the winners soon after.

Keep the ideas coming!

Time for Another Giveaway

I am in a creative slump and decided it is time to get out of it. I really need to get making jewelry again and I can't seem to find a starting point (or maybe it is energy I am lacking).


I enjoyed the earring giveaway I did last March and have decided to have some more fun. Instead of giving away a bracelet or necklace I have decided to give away a gift certificate to my Etsy shop.

A $25 gift certificate is my gift to someone on October 16.

The perfect way to start your Christmas shopping!

To enter you must go to my Etsy shop and spend a little time looking around, then come back here and tell me what is missing, a color combination you like, the styles you like or things you would like for Christmas gifts etc.

For example....

I love the ___ necklace but would love to see it in ___ colors instead. Or, I really like the ___bead in the ___ bracelet but I don't like the ___ that you put with it. You get the idea.

Be sure that I can find you again if you don't have a blog or you are not on a forum I visit then you might want to email me instead. Or if you prefer to not post here you may email me at Oceanbreezeblog@yahoo.com, write "blog giveaway", in the subject line.

I will post the winner here on October 16th.

Hue test

If you are on the Sonlight forums you may have already seen this but I wanted to post it here. This is a fun test. I thought after all my years of working in a frame shop/gallery I would do better. I scored a 12 (and I took it three times). I know I could have done better a few years ago. After all I could tell you if the white board you were looking at was a yellow white, gray white, blue white, etc.

Anyway...fun test. Go see how you do and let me know. :)

Music

I think I can actually feel my heart speeding up when I hear this song. It just moves me. I feel like running, dancing... I can't even explain in words...

More Vacation Pictures

Just have to post some more pictures from our trip. It was great for my city kids to get to experience harvest. I spent many summers driving truck for harvest and love that they got to see a little bit about that.

They were very happy when the field was harvested so they could go play. Didn't notice until later that we picked the one weed patch in the whole field to take our picture in. Opps!


Here is the view from the top looking off toward the west. If you look the other way you see all trees. A house sitting right about here would be fine with me. :)

My friend wanted a picture of all of us. Here I am hiding behind my two year old. LOL

Wordless Wednesday

Back in California!

What a trip!


We had so much fun visiting friends and family over the past three weeks. Time went much to quickly for us and too slow for my lonely husband. There were lots of fun things we got to do and see while on the trip.

Our first two days were spent in the car as we drove from S. California to the Seattle area to spend time with some wonderful friends. We enjoyed our time but it was much too short. We then spent another 6 hours driving to Idaho to be with family. Lots of fun for two weeks there before hopping back in the car for two days to drive back to California.



I took over 100 pictures and it was really hard to just show a few. Of course after I took out all the ones that included friends I was able to narrow it down a little. Here are just a few from the first two or three days. We had fun fishing with Grandpa. The two older ones even got a lesson in how to clean a fish. They loved fishing but had no desire to eat good Idaho Rainbow Trout. I wasn't too interested either when Grandma had already fixed steak. ;)


Holding your breath while cleaning fish doesn't really help much. :)

More tomorrow when I have time....

Travel Plans

I have not posted for a few days. We are packing for a trip to Idaho. The kids and I are very excited but a little sad to be leaving dad at home. I will probably not have access to a computer so I will be MIA until around September 15th. I'm sure I will have lots to show from our trip when I do get home.

Please pray for safe travels.

Wordless Wednesday

A different type of back to school sale

BACK TO SCHOOL SALE



Everything in my shop this next week will be shipped for free AND I will take off $1 per item.

This means if you order two pair of earrings at $6 each (already a great deal!) and a $14 bracelet instead of costing $28 with shipping it would be $23 total. What a deal!!

Just pay for the items as usual. If you use Pay Pal I will refund the difference to you. If you plan to pay by check or money order I will send you a revised amount.


This sale is only for U.S. or Canada shipping addresses.

Sale price is for items already listed. However, I will extend free shipping to custom orders that are placed before August 17th.



Sale ends August 17th

Happy Shopping!

Go to the Schooling at Home Etsian's blog to see even more sales.

It has been almost a week.

It has been almost a week since the "Big Clean" in the girls room. I thought I would share how it is going. They are still throwing clothes on the floor when they change. They are still leaving shoes all over. I do have to say that the shoe situation has improved a little, could be because I got rid of a few. They have been fairly good about putting toys away (should be easy with only a handful out). The top picture is a felt shirt that has been sitting in the same place on the floor since about Tuesday. You would think with such a clean open carpet that they would notice this poor lonely shirt and put it away. NOPE!

Here is an updated picture taken a couple minutes ago. Not sure if they are ready to have more things back yet or not. I know that most of you would say, what is wrong with that? Well, I guess my thinking is, if you only have one box of toys out and you can't keep it put away what will you do with three or four (or more)? This is training time people! Work with me! Encourage me to stick with it and not give in .


I still have not had time to go through the toys in the garage. I refuse to take a picture of that. I am sure that most people can relate that have more than one child but I am just not ready to show the world my mess if you know what I mean. Maybe if I get it all cleaned and organized this week. Of course that would mean staying home more than a couple hours in the day.

Before and After

I thought about just posting the pictures because I know that every mom would get it. In fact most kids would "get it" too. You have to understand that the before picture is actually on a good day. It is often worse than this.


I gave my girls a choice last week. Clean up your room before Saturday or mom will clean it for you. This room is shared by three so I give them a lot of grace. I don't expect perfection by any means. However, I would like to be able to walk into the room without stepping on things at least once this summer! So now everything except one container of toys (feeling generous) and one favorite stuffed animal to sleep with, are relegated to the garage until further notice. I want you to notice that there is not even a dust bunny under the bed!!


They will slowly earn back things. Only as long as they put things away as they go. Can you say intensive training time??

Now I get to spend another day of my time organizing and cleaning everything that was put in the garage. I hope to do it without little helpers in order to get rid of a few extras.


I recommend this to anyone feeling out of control with toys and "stuff". My girls actually sighed in relief when I moved everything out. They are in their room right now playing with the felt set (one of two things they got to keep), should be interesting to see how the week goes. I think the 6 yr old is going to get bored and frustrated. I predict that my 8 yr old will enjoy the week. I know that I am going to be happy with the lack of toys! :)

I will let you know how it goes!

I might even repaint their room while it is so empty.

Water Water Everywhere!

We had just come in from the kids playing in the sprinkler (Obviously didn't get enough water at the beach the day before!) and I thought the girls were in their room getting changed. I hear some giggles coming from the bathroom and went to investigate.


So we go back to the beach yesterday with a friend (for another 5 hours) just to give them a little more water time. ;) Of course we all went but for some reason these were the only pictures I got around to taking.

Cool Video

A friend just sent this to me and I had to share it. I love this song and the way this choir did it with the black light and white gloves. So turn on your sound, sit back and enjoy.

Two Years Old

Celebrated another birthday today.

Yep! My little one is two and she set out to prove it today!!



After having gone through three other two year olds in our family, we were convinced that two wasn't so bad. Three was the challenge year.

Then along comes Elianna!! She is setting out to prove that she is her own little person and she refuses to conform to the rest of the family! She is breaking all the molds.

She keeps us on our toes. It takes a lot to keep her from running into the street, playing in the toilet, eating trash out of the garbage can, pulling all the books off the shelf, scribbling on the wall (add floor to the list), and screaming and yelling in the library. I think that almost covers this afternoon. May have missed something. ;)

But isn't she just the cutest?

My common statement with her is, "It's a good thing she is so cute!"



Could be an interesting year!