Sneaky Peek

I promised awhile back to do a little sneaky peek from the store. I made these in December for a work related party for BF. Earrings with a matching bracelet. Thoughts?

The earrings are a combo of white river shell with hematite and copper on sterling silver hooks. The bracelet is a hematite/copper deal with a magnet clasp (not pictured).

Cleaning My Act Up

 Today was the day I conquered the craft cupboard. It was becoming a dumping ground for all things crafty and possibly a few other miscellaneous items. It's been bothering me for a while so I decided to grit my teeth and get in there.

There are still a few things to sort through. I'd like to divide up my beads from my tools and wires. Things like that. There is also a little wicker basket and that grey bag that need sorting. I might leave the grey bag as a catch all for mystery items though. Everyone needs a little messy spot.

So this weekend it looks like I'll need to head over to Canadian Tire to buy another 10 set of those awesome see through bins you see in the "after" picture. I think I paid $10 for the set. BF will love an excuse to hit up his favorite store of all time. These bins are perfect as I can easily find what I'm looking for without having to open them all up and peek inside.

I put all my paper, shipping and general office type supplies up top. I also kept a binder to keep all my supplier and customer orders organized. There's also a little spot for supply receipts.

The second shelf holds all my rice writing supplies and my beading things. I'll be happier with this shelf once I get those beads all sorted out. That way I'll be able to track what I have better. Clutter and excess is not good for my creative mind.

The third shelf houses my sewing supplies (fabrics, pins, patterns, etc), wool, and the bottom bin in the middle is a few random craft ideas that may come into play later on. Oh, I also have a bin there with my bottle cap magnet supplies. The sketchy grey bag and curious wicker basket are tucked along side.

The last shelf is for all my display pieces and my sewing machine. The towel wrapped piece is a thick hard sheet of metal  I used to work with on hammering my sterling wire. Haven't done that in ages.

So there you have it. I have a few orders coming in the next few weeks of things I bought from suppliers to get me on my merry way to creating stock for my shop opening late April. I feel ready to get to work now. One more step in the direction of having my own little business set up. It will be a dream come true.

School Start Date Is FINALLY Official

Earlier this week I called the school to find out where I was on the waiting list. I was happy to find out that 4 spots had opened up and I was 4th on the list. The woman in charge of the French division said she would hassle the women in charge of setting up paperwork and contacting people to hurry up and call me.

Well today she called and talked to BF. I start January 21st. It seems so soon! I've been waiting since August and now it's finally happening. I'm a little peeved they didn't give more notice as I have to pay fees and do a lot of paperwork before next Friday. My MIL leaves today for vacation so I don't have anyone to help me get to different appointments so it's super inconvenient. If they had called even a few days earlier it would have been fine. It seems the administration at this school are a little unorganized.

I guess I'll be shopping for school supplies and maybe even a back pack this weekend. So strange to be going back to school after all these years. I finished my Pharmacy diploma Jan 2004. High School in 2000. It will definitely be a little weird at first.

I need to fix my sleep schedule. Since I have no responsibilities lately I stay up super late and sleep in every day. I'll have to try and slowly adjust this over the next week so I'm not sleepy all day. 8 hours of French every week day.... hmm. Yeah, better get that sleep, lol.

So I guess I'm going back to school. Finally I'll be able to communicate with people here. *sigh*

Savings Update

It's been awhile since I've posted anything about my savings goals. Welp I'm pretty excited today because my overall savings accounts have just hit the $4000 mark in total. This is a huge leap from where I was just a few months back.

One very exciting part of this is that exactly half of this is in my account earmarked for purchasing our first home. Depending on what type of property we are going to buy we will need to either save $10,000 each or $20,000. So I suppose I should set my goal right in the middle at $15,000. Very exciting!

Ice Fishing

Every year BF's siblings get together and give a a group gift to his parents. Something fun. This year they decided on ice fishing for the whole family. It worked out well because about a week go BF's father mentioned he would like to do that some time. He had no idea we already had it all planned because all the card mentioned was a "surprise" coming their way on a particular day. 

It was my first time ice fishing and I actually quite enjoyed myself. I would go again but without kids. It seemed the fishing was a lot better when there wasn't 4 pairs of little boots stomping around, lol. Speaking of boots. I bought my first pair since I was a child two months back to prepare for winter. Finding shoes in general is hard for me because my feet are oddly shaped. These guys were comfy so I bought them up at a great price. My toes were FREEZING part way through the day and never seemed to warm up. At one point I took them off and toasted my little piggies by the wood stove. Is that normal?

We started the morning off with breakfast at a restaurant the whole family seemed to be excited about and seemed to be familiar with. BF's Mom was super thrilled. Then we made our way to the river for ice fishing. BF made some excuse about having to use the toilet so we pulled off the road and down onto the river. Boom, we were there. 

Sorry for the lack of photos. I didn't take very many and most had people in them. I am only posting the one of my nephews waiting for fish because their faces are mostly covered. 

 Under the bridge in the Ice Shanty Town. I think BF said there's at least 100 where we were.

 Waiting for the fish to bite! We actually did pretty good. They are a quite small fish though.

 Hooks waiting to be baited. They were all the way along one wall.

 Our little shanty. I believe it was $25 per person which is a good price I think for a group activity.

The only thing that annoyed me was twice during our time there people selling things came into our shanty and started to bug us. I really felt it was annoying and it put a damper on what was happening inside. At one point there was also some weird looking guys going around outside checking out other peoples fish and carrying bags with them. I saw them take a bunch of fish from one cabin. Then they headed to ours. I saw them peeking in the window and I gave them the stink eye, lol. Finally they went away.

Besides the few weirdos and freezing toes I was quite happy with the overall experience. BF's parents and family seemed to enjoy it. We had two injuries though where people slipped on the ice and bumped their heads. Ouch :(

I would go back next year with BF and maybe do a couples weekend or something. I think it would be fun to try again.

Have you ever been ice fishing before?

Down With The Sickness

I am so sick AGAIN!!! In my family if you are sick you stay away from family events. This seems to not be the case for BF's family. I haven't been this sick in many moons. My throat is absolutely horrifically painful. I missed New Years but BF was sweet and arrived home just before the stroke of midnight. I've been pegged inside but am feeling too gross to do anything except read and watch movies. Last night was cheap night at the movies so BF talked me into going to see The Hobbit because he knows how badly I was to see it. More on that later. For now I'm going to lay back down and sleep my way to health.

Homemade Christmas Gifts

I promised a to show you all the rice key chains I made for our nephews as well as the wine charms I made for my mother in law. I think both went over quite well. I kept the key chains super simple in comparison to the one I did for my Secret Santa 2 weeks ago.

So first the key chains. I took the longer chain off and didn't add any extra detail charms to it. Kept them all the same color so they would be "equal". They thought they were pretty cool. It was a fun project for me and it helps me start to build a gallery of photos for my little online shop I hope to open in April. These are just one of the things I will be selling.

Here are the wine charms. In the picture I see that on my laptop 3 of the colors look the same. There is actually a clear, silver and light green that look similar in the photo but not in real life. I will definitely be adding some new colors to my seed bead collection in the future. I just used what I had on hand. The hematite dangling bead are ones that I picked out a few weeks ago with my MIL. They didn't work out for another project I was working on but worked well for this. I was fortunate to have everything I needed to make these in my stock pile. I needed to make 8 as that is how many adults we have in the family on this side.

 For my first time making them I thought they turned out pretty good. She liked them and needed a set for sure. At every family gathering we are forever asking "who's glass is this?". Everyone at the party seemed to think they were pretty cute. I can't wait to see them at the next family dinner.

They were pretty easy to make. I see myself making a lot more in the future. I have a lot of ideas in my head and beads that I need to use up. I will just be making them in sets of 4 or 6 though.

So what do you guys think? Honest opinions please. I'll be making some more over the next few weeks that I will be sure to share with you guys.

24 hours to go...

We are celebrating Christmas with BF's family tomorrow evening. We have list of things to finish off tonight and tomorrow. We have everything we need to get it done. It's just a case of needing motivation now. We are amazing at procrastination. Here's what's left to do:

• Make Rice Krispies squares for the kids tomorrow
• Prepare potato salad for tomorrows meal (special request)
• Chop up all the fruit for our fruit plate for the midnight meal 
• Pump out 4 rice key chains for our nephews
• Finish the coupon booklets for our nephews
• Create 8 wine charms for my MIL
• Tidy up and pray I find our camera battery charger
• Snuggle up together with our two furbabies and watch a movie :)

Wish me luck. I excel in high pressure situations.

Anything left on your list of things to do?

*update* We finished everything except the coupon books which BF decided he didn't want to do. He ended up just giving cash to his Godnephew and we gave them all the rice charms. We also didn't get to snuggle up with a movie but we have plenty of time for that now that BF is on vacation ;)

Excitement

Today is the last day of work for BF before his Christmas holidays start. I am so excited to have him home during the day with me and our two furbabies!! I just love spending time with him. I can't wait until he gets home tonight :)

What's Cooking Wednesday - Parmesan Baked Potato

Last night I gave a new recipe a try. I spotted it on Pinterest and thought it looked quick, easy and yummy which are 3 things I always look for in a recipe!

Here is a link to the original recipe. In the comments section other reviews added a variety of spices. I always like to try the recipe as the poster has written first and then tweak it later if I think it's a keeper. All I changed this time was I added a little salt and pepper. I also read you can use this technique with sweet potatoes and brown sugar. Since I personally don't like sweet potatoes I won't be trying it that way :)

Ingredients

Potatoes scrubbed and cut in half
Butter
Parmesan Cheese
Salt
Pepper
Garlic Powder

Coat the bottom of your glass baking dish with melted butter.
Sprinkle parmesan cheese generously over butter.
Add garlic powder, salt and pepper to taste.
Place cut potatoes cut side down onto pan.
Bake in oven preheated to 400 for 45 minutes or until potatoes are done.
Let cool for 5 minutes (helps set the mixture to the potato)
Serve!

How is easy is that? I didn't include any measurements because you can really do however many potatoes you like as long as they fit in the pan you are using. Play around with different spices too. Mine turned out great. BF really liked them and had seconds. I thought they were pretty good. I might try some other spices next time. This recipe is a keeper for me because of how simple it is.

Here are some photos I took while I was preparing the meal:

Yum! Oh, and yes it was an easy clean up as well.