A Relaxing Weekend

I absolutely LOVE Thanksgiving weekend! It's replaced Crissmiss as my fave holiday. We've relaxed, slept late, and I have to say, neither of us has over-indulged too badly, food-wise. The weather was cold and clear all week. I've done a lot of crafts and Brian and I have had a lot of laughs, although he took the bag of pretzel sticks away from me after my 100th attempt at pretzel-fangs, which I'm sorry, is always a crowd pleaser. But then he made me laugh so hard yesterday that I sprayed crystal lite and pretzel chunks out of my nose and all over my clothes. Causing him to choke on his beer.

Because many of our neighbors either took down trees or had them fall in the storms, we discovered that we almost have a killer view of Mt. Rainier from our deck. If we could just locate these 2 offending, scraggly fir trees and cut them down, it would be an unobstructed view and raise our property value by a staggering sum. I'm kind of hoping Ma Nature takes care of these 2 trees in the next storm, although I certainly don't want the trees to damage anyone's home.

We watched a lot of football on Thursday and we ate around 5:00. Here's a picture of our table. The blue bottle is Bridgeview Winery Blue Moon Chardonnay. I do not like wine, or beer for that matter, and I only bought the wine for the bottle. I'm nuts about cobalt and crescent moons. Brian had the Chardonnay with dinner and I stuck to Martinelli's non-alcoholic sparkling apple-cranberry cider. The white paper is the menu I create each year on the computer, to make it look like a restaurant. I forgot to add "cranberry sauce". We make our Thanksgiving as easy as possible. We get a turkey breast and cook that. But everything else is out of the box: Stove-Top stuffing, Potato Buds mashed potatoes (tastes just like the real thing and no pesky pealing!), Ocean Spray jellied cranberry sauce, Heinz Homestyle turkey gravy from the jar, frozen corn and green bean casserole (takes 10 minutes to make). This being our 19th Thanksgiving together, we have it down to a science in that we are seated and eating by 5:10, and by 6:00 p.m., the kitchen is completely cleaned up and all dishes washed (we don't even have a dishwasher! Oh wait, yes we do, her name is JoJo).
This stained glass piece throws some pretty reflections on the wall this time of year. I made this piece from a craft kit, which is why the diamonds don't exactly line up.

Ooooooo, purty!

Of course Sagan and Pepper were given a small taste of all the fixin's we made and they dived in appreciatively. They are such good dogs. Sagan was clearly being driven mad by all of the smells but he did his best to stay out of the way, and there was absolutely no table or counter surfing or begging when Brian and I were eating.

Yesterday, I fixed them half sandwiches of turkey & stuffing. Nothing too big of course and we limited the rest of the treats yesterday. Sagan dutifully ate his sandwich in his bowl, but Beanie grabbed hers and took it downstairs, with me running after her yelling, "NOOOOOOOOOO! NOT ON THE CARPET!" Oops......too late.

"I has turkey sammich!" nom nom nom nom

nom nom nom nom

I spent yesterday making vast quantities of beaded jewelry. Here's my craft table in full jewelry-making mode.
I apologize for the crappy ass pics again....the sun was washing out the jewelry, and today being cloudy, I tried to shoot the stuff under my Ott Light, but you just can't see how pretty and sparkly they are. I'm hoping that you will be able to click each picture to see the details.

The charm is the Chinese symbol for the Year of the Dragon.

The large beads are so incredibly pretty and eye catching and it's a shame you can't really see them in this picture. They are sort of a peachy/pale green.

Here is a collaborative effort. I bought some marbles off eBay a year or so ago, and I sent a bunch of them to Michelle for her collection, and I also enclosed some that I wanted her to wrap with wire. She is really, really good at wire wrapping, so she did a bunch and then mailed them back to me so that I could make necklaces.

These are pink Swarovsky crystal "pearls", with a natural stone pendant that I bought in Tacoma. I'm not 100% sure what the crystally stone is, although to me it almost looks like lepidolite.

I got the dichroic pendant in Portland and then created necklace with pink & topaz Swarovski crystal. This one is especially sparkly.

I found the millefiori pendant on sale at the Crystal Pineapple Gift Shop on Cape Cod a few years ago and just now got around to stringing it with blue Japanese delica seed beads and Swarovski crystal.

These are some fun millefiori-like beads that I got at Shipwreck Beads last month. I had enough to make 2 necklaces, a bracelet and pair of earrings.

I wish you could see the detail of the beads on the necklace. They are 3 different shapes and are multi-coloured in blues and purples.

Another marble collaborative with Michelle.

Julie gave me a puka shell necklace but it was a little too tight around my neck. So I restrung it, with clear Swarovsky crystals interspaced after every 12 puka shells. I also added a magnetic clasp. I thought it was a fancy twist on a great 70's retro fashion statement!