Craft, crafty, crating

I haven't been blogging with much, uh, frequency but I haven't stopped doing blog worthy crafty things. Here are some pictures of things I have made/done.

My fairly successful attempt at ring making. I should probably buy myself some jewelry making pliers because using my old rusty needle nose pliers resulted in my scraping off the black on the wire and revealing the copper color, which doesn't look awful but isn't what I was going for. I also need a ring thing.....you know the cone thing that you can wrap the wire around to get the right size, because I used chapstick tubes for this and the sizing is pretty awful. 

Simple chain earrings. Wore these all day when my mom got married but they are slightly heavy, after this day I took off 2 of the chains (went from 5 strands to 3) and they look just as good and pull less on my ears.  

I love Halloween time and the fabrics that show up. Bought myself this lovely black and silver spider print and made myself a new small purse. Lined it with a lovely purple and gold print and put a decorative skull button on the front. All it took for this bag was 2 fat quarters and it was rather simple to sew together. 

Bag pattern/instructions here. 

 Another simple funky looking necklace. I added a few more safety pins to the lowest chain (had to buy more). Saw this over at Trinkets in Bloom, she has some great things on her blog.

Don't think I posted this already but I may have. This was a lunch bag I made for my mom for her birthday I think. She had asked me to make her one. 

With the extra material I made a headband. 

Skirts! Making skirts is fun and pretty easy!  

I wore the red one to my moms wedding and the day walking around Balboa Park.

This one is sheer and I used an old tshirt of my husbands as a lining. 

(Me and my mom!)

Snake skin print is channeling my inner 80's personality!

From skirt making I moved onto dress making. This one took a few days and I love the way it turned out. These are some pretty crappy pictures of it, the flow and pattern are much nicer in person. 

 A few bracelets I made. 

 I took an old pair of heels that had stretched  a bit and I couldn't really wear anymore, painted the heels silver and added sliver laces too. 

Look at what I finally did, chalkboard paint and storage jars! My cabinet is still full of re-purposed jars but now they have chalkboard paint labels! Woohoo! It only took me years to accomplish this!

That's pretty much how I have been occupying my time this year. I am currently working on ideas for Halloween or Christmas cards, thinking I might skip Halloween cards this year but not sure. I enjoy Halloween much more than Christmas but I think people want/expect Christmas cards from me more than Halloween. Don't have any great ideas for either at this point. Need some inspiration. 

Anyone have any cool/fun things they have done or are planning on doing?

Butterflies

I took some pictures of butterflies at work today.

 Gulf Fritillary resting on a Passion Flower Vine 

 Caterpillar life stage of the Gulf Fritillary

Passion Flower Vine is the exclusive food plant for the caterpillars

 Chrysalis life stage of the Gulf Fritillary

Passion flower

Passion flower (we have 2 different varieties of the vine)

Some species of Underwing moth was a close as I could get to identifying this moth I happened to see flying around at the same time, not sure why since it is a nocturnal species.

Also saw what I believe is a female Marine Blue flying around.

Driving to the sun and trapped bird

Saturday I was driving home a bit before sunset and on a street heading west apparently. I felt like I was driving and about to arrive at the sun, it hurt, it really hurt. When I got home I felt like my face was sunburned and I was seeing spots for a bit too. I was only driving on this road for 5 minutes at the longest I'd guess. The pictures don't really show how bright the sun was in my eyes but they sure did turn out rather pretty I think. (please ignore my dirty/pitted windshield)

Sunday I came across a bird that had trapped itself in a friends bird feeder.
I guess it had gone into the hole used to pour the seed into.

Luckily I was able to unscrew the top easily and lift the top parts off to let the bird fly off all happy to be free.....eventually. I think it had been there for a bit, it was huffing and puffing a lot.
Bird feeder put back together all free of trapped bird. Looks much better this way, don't you think?

Why no pictures....

Well it's been a while since I blogged and even longer since I posted what I wanted to be a weekly photo post. Not much has been going on that was photo worthy. I've been mostly dealing with trying to be healthier and all that good stuff.

Mostly I have been really trying to get some good sleep, it was hard to come by for a few weeks, I was pretty miserable from total lack of sleep for almost a whole week at one point. It's partially because I just couldn't sleep and also because my husbands snoring was getting really bad. He added a pillow and that seems to be helping. I stopped drinking caffeine and it was a lot simpler than I thought it was going to be, I usually start my morning with a delicious mug of hot coffee. I downloaded a water sounds for sleep album and listen to that every night and I have been trying to keep the bedroom cooler, which isn't hard since it's on the corner and it is still getting cold at night. I checked out 5 books on sleep from the library, they haven't really helped but I haven't just sat down and read them yet, I've just been browsing them, not very smart on my part. I have been sleeping better but still need to work on it, mostly need to force myself to bed earlier than 1 am and make myself get out of bed before 10 am. I think I might be use to getting my best sleep in the morning basically making the rest of my day hard because I can't get feeling good and functional until 2 pm which is just way too late.

I have also been eating healthier, which hasn't been difficult at all, I've just had to put my foot down and say no to going out to eat. Getting the husband to go along with that has been more difficult but we don't eat the same things anyways. I went vegetarian in November and vegan in January and Rich didn't so he has been cooking for himself and me for myself. Recently I have just had to make the time to actually cook for myself every night and force myself to eat leftovers, don't know why but I have never been a left over eater.

One thing that has happened since this change in diet is my skin, my skin is the skin I have always wanted and dreamed of and knew I should have. Not just my face, but that's the most obvious, I've always had small breakouts around my chin and I haven't had one real pimple/zit/nastiness on my face since January. Even the rest of my skin is less dry and itchy and smoother, softer, and it's just lovely. I'm pretty sure this is due to giving up dairy, I also have not been bloated since giving up dairy. I am pretty sure I have a lactose sensitivity. My brother and my mothers side of the family are lactose intolerant probably mostly due to the fact that we/they are Japanese and Asians have a very high occurrence of lactose intolerance. Not being bloated is a GREAT feeling, a really great feeling. I can always fit into any of my pants at any time no matter what, do you know how awesome that is.

So that's what I have been up to for the past three weeks and beyond. Not a lot of fun but a lot of good. Fun is in my future though, next week I am going to Indian Wells for the BNP Paribas Open. WOOHOO!!! I am so excited. Look back a year in my blog and you will understand why I am so excited, teehee.

There are a few pictures of my cat's from the past three weeks. First Harley Quinn is not a fan of beer. I got a package delivered one day and every time Otsego heard the UPS truck in the afternoon she went to the door and waited for him to come up the stairs and leave a box on the patio. Most notably Otsego and Harley Quinn have been sleeping on the same piece of cat furniture, taking turns with the spots, that is notable because they don't particularly like each other. They tolerate each other but don't like being close and this is pretty close for them. (FYI if you click on the picture it should get bigger, I've been struggling with pictures and formatting and all that crap. Another reason I haven't been blogging as much, pictures and me just aren't getting along right now.)

Tomato or cactus fruit?

These pictures are from November, I never got around to doing anything with them. The cactus growing to the right of the garage door at work seemed to be fruiting (is that even a term). When I first saw it though I thought someone had shoved a tomato on the cactus.

That isn't as bizarre as it may seem. We have 2 tortoises that roam the front and back yards at work and we just lay out greens and other things for them to eat. The dogs LOVE to eat the greens. I've never met dogs that love greens, fruit, and vegetables as much as them, and all three of them eat the stuff.

What I thought happened was the tortoises ignored the tomato and to keep the dogs from eating the tomato and to be able give the tomato back to the tortoise at a later point it was placed on the cactus. As the day went a long I decided to take a closer look and get a picture of the tomato on a cactus and when I got closer I realized that it was actually a cactus fruit.

But still looking at it as close as I could get with out getting poked I was not convinced it was actually a part of the cactus and not something stuck on it. This cactus has been here for years and I've never seen anything like this on it. It's just so interesting to me.