We're buying a house!

In less than a week, we close on our new home, and I'm very excited. It's a quaint little cap cod with an old carriage house and shed on 1.22 acres in the middle of Hershey. It was gutted and renovated 5 years ago so everything is new (except the woodwork with still has that 1930s charm). The loan was approved, the cash funds are working out, everything is inspected and fixed (except the radon, we'll take care of that before the year is out), and we are set to close before the new year. Woohoo!!!!!!!!!!!!

December Projects

It's Christmas, and I've been busy (just like you!). This month I made quite a few things:

-I painted a pilsner for my brother-in-law (Secret Santa)
-I painted some rose glasses(a friend wanted them to give away but asked really last minute, so they'll end up on etsy soon.)
-I made a silver spoon butterfly for my grandma
-I made a bunch of wire-wrapped rings, 3 for my nieces
-I made a cute beaded tiara and bracelet for my nieces birthday



Tiny rings for tiny fingers.




Extra large roses



This picture is actually one I made a long time ago, but the one I painted looks exactly like this.



Grandma's Silver Spoon Butterfly. That high-shine polish took effort!




Tiara and stretchy bracelet for Lily's birthday




Wire wrapped rings for adults. I'm not sure if I prefer the wrap all around or the anchor points. For the little girl ones I like them wrapped the whole way around, but there's something so steampunk about the visible loops on the exposed ones.



And, you know, it's xmas so I decorated the tree and made cookies. Our family cookie is a raw cookie flavored with liquor. Traditionally it's made with rum and walnuts. This year I made a traditional batch, a coconut/malibu batch, an almond/amaretto batch, and a hazelnut/buttershots batch. All told I made 6 batches. Bob pretty much ate them all...

Hoods, spoons, and fun!!!

I sold 3 things last month, 2 pens and a wine glass. I got my new business cards, and I've also been working on some projects:


I'm trying to get make some hooded scarves based off of my poncho. This was my first try, and while fun, the fabrics i chose are way too heavy to give to anyone so I'll need to try again. I'm thinking about a fleece one with some decorative stitching?

Very Assassin's Creed isn't it?

 My Grandma saw some butterflies made out of silver spoons on silverspoongallery, and brought me a bag of antique spoons. I'm kind of tackling it one step at a time. I cut it out a couple of weeks ago, and I put it together today.It's still in the pickle pot getting the rest of oxidation off, and then i need to clean up the body and polish everything, and add a pin backing to it, but here's some eye candy:



It IS pretty cute...

I've just about got my pen technique down, I'm getting pretty awesome at it if I do say so myself. I never thought they'd be so popular.

Also newsworthy, we've had our xmas presents bought and wrapped for almost a month now:



The presents to the left are for other people. The patterned baskets are full of play-food for my nieces. I'm using one of those boxes to gift one of my beer glasses. I'm going to have to keep an eye out on sales on these boxes after xmas.





Mine are on the left and Bob's are on the right. You can tell because my wrapping paper seletion is perfect. lol. I stacked them all first so I could make sure to wrap them in alternating paper. I also made that cute little box on the top of his presents out of wrapping paper.



Halloween!

Halloween is my favorite time of the year, and I tend to have fun with the costumes. We get to dress up at my job every weekend of October, and I wore 10 costumes this year! Some of them I made (like Little Red Riding Hood and the Devil horns) but most we pulled from my closet. I'm of the opinion that celebrating in true style means getting a little creative and since this blog is ALL about getting creative, I thought you might enjoy a peek at my Halloween fun!

Day 1: Pumpkin

Day 2: Elf
See the pointy ears?



Day 3: Little Red Riding Hood



Day 4: Angel by day, Devil by night



Day 5: Flower Child



Day 6: Witch



Day 7: Lovely Lady Bug



Day 8: Cowgirl
*We got ~6-10 inches of snow this day!



Halloween: Fairy

Coming Soon!

http://armedandinspired.etsy.com/ is up and running, but I haven't changed my business cards, etc yet. http://xarata.etsy.com/ is still open at the moment and I DID sell one of my copper quill pens for someone's copper anniversary. I made theirs with a copper tubing sheath which means the pen cartridge can be replaced! ::Genius:: Lots of favorites on my geekery (xbox controllers, zombie glasses, etc) and that's exciting.

So what else is new? I quit my second job (I finished out my notice a week ago) after 3 months with Francesca's Collections. Working 9 shifts a week was sucking the fun out of life, usurping my free time, and leaving me plum tuckered out! I also really wasn't making any money- I made $300/month working 2-3 days per week there. I spent ~$60-$80/month on gas, ~$60/month on Starbucks when I took my breaks, and ~$100/month on merchandise from the store netting me ~$60/month, with a 25minute commute each way and no days off each week- quitting really was the smart thing to do. I enjoyed parts of it, but I don't know that it was my calling :) This past week was my first regular 40 hour week since May, and I went hiking, played video games, and went house hunting.

House hunting?!?!? Remember I wanted a house? My goal was originally October and that really didn't happen. We had agreed to wait til Spring and then our realtor pointed out a house right up our alley. We haven't fully committed yet, but it's a very cute house with a very big yard in the area we already live in(near work) and we got approved for the loan, qualified for a first time homebuyer's grant, and got the seller to agree to pay the closing costs. This could be it ;)

I have free time again, AND almost all of my xmas shopping is done, so there are some very specific projects on the near horizon and I'm going to fill you in:

• A Purple Plaid Jacket that matches my Purple Plaid Poncho. I have 5 yards of that purple plaid suiting to play with. I love it!
• A series of hooded scarves based off of my purple plaid poncho, because I love hooded scarves ;p
• Some antique sterling silver spoon butterflies for my grandma
• Some simple silver rings for my neices for xmas
• A beer glass for my brother-in-law (my secret santa)
• Anything that strikes my fancy after that!



my best pen yet!

I also made confetti eggs at the end of October. We threw them at a friend for his going away party and they were tons of fun!



I took this picture after I cut the tops off, washed and dyed them orange, but before i filled them with confetti and mod-podge them shut with black tissue paper