Weekend Bliss

We are enjoying our weekend starting out with everyone being clean. I have such a wonderful husband to start his Saturday out by washing both of the dogs. They needed it!

Gunther hasn't had a both in over a month from being sick. He still is sick but well enough that he has gained a little weight back so shivering wont be so bad. Here he is under his "grandma blanket" that Colin's Grandma quilted for him a few years ago. I never quite knew what to use it for since it is so small and sweet. After baths is perfect!

Maximus has been playing in the flower beds and keeps coming in the house with mud all over his snout and paws. He definitely needed a bath as well.We plan on relaxing and trying to do nothing the rest of the weekend. Hope you enjoy yours!

Limbo.....and the prize is Spring!

I have been putting off having another jewelry show due to not knowing when we are moving. I would hate to plan one and find out I need to be putting things away instead of getting them out. That is where this dilemma starts. I need to clear some old stock out and I need to bring some more money in (I have no weddings this month). On top of trying to save as much as we can our dog keeps getting sick and yesterday my husband got a ticket. What a great way for this month to go. I can't wait until March gets here, its a good thing February is a really short month.

March sounds wonderful! I am dreaming of spring type weather especially since I have a few bulbs appearing in the flower beds. I really hope we are still here to see them bloom. Spokane as a city has more flowers in the spring than I have seen anywhere else we have lived. It makes me think of Holland and tulips honestly.

Hope your week is going better than mine! Enjoy the few new pieces on Handmade Obsessions.

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Great Friends

Well I started this out empty by hitting an unknown button and leaving you with a blank post.

I have been away and not had much of anything useful to share as of late. I spent all weekend cleaning my work area and making a few new items. Laid out in several trays are items that need to go online. So far I put two of over 20 up. Not good, when that is how you make ends meet.

Here is my sad reason why. Gunther is getting sick again and I have been dealing with that. I have a feeling I don't look so hot as I haven't slept much again. Our friend that I puppysit for graciously just asked if I would like him to borrow our puppy to get some energy out. What a great friend! And on top of that Colin brought me a frozen pizza and some beautiful flowers when he came home.

I am not going to be so sad today and I am going to get some work related items accomplished. My one accomplishment yesterday consisted of making oatmeal craisen cookies, and that doesn't count except maybe to Colin. I have lots to do so I better get going. I do want to say thank you to everyone that has asked about Gunther and made us feel loved. We appreciate you!

New Buttons and......not much else going on.

This house has been slightly boring the last week if you don't include the stolen truck behind our neighbors house last night. Two not so bright teenagers stole a really old dodge dakota and parked in the alley, when asked what they were doing they took off. Ok, not so exciting but we did have to call the police to come pick the thing up.

Other than that I received tons of new buttons from a friend moving from Fairbanks, AK back to Washington state. Some of the oldest and most detailed buttons that I have to use are from his travels and I am SO excited to make some new pieces with these. For this trip he focused on finding me black buttons since I was running really low. I will share some new photos once I get them all separated.

I have been trying to fatten Gunther back up since he lost so much weight but that is hard when you are feeding him non-fat yogurt and small amounts of dog food. I may just have to buy yogurt every week since he seems to like it so much. Our weather has been great the last few days so the two dogs want to spend most of their time in the yard. That is a huge signal Gunther is getting back to his old self, though a less bossy version.

This weekend since Colin will be home I am going to try and spend the days in my "bead studio" and get some work done. Watching my dog non stop to make sure he is not getting sick has not left much time for concentrating on jewelry. My goal is to work all day both days and post new items online at night. Wish me luck!

Hope you have a great weekend!

Quilting Fulfilled

I am not a quilter at all but decided to give it a try. I love the look of quilts and most of all the combos of fabrics. I always have a hard time picking one fabric because I love at least 5 choices and can't seem to pick just one. Of course I had this problem trying to pick a new fabric for my ironing board. So I made a quilted cover using LOTS of different fabrics.

Here is the nasty old cover stained with starch, glue from interfacing, and who knows what else. I had been planning on recovering this for at least a year but couldn't settle on a fabric, then I found this tutorial from Moda Bake Shop. I figured out what fabrics I wanted and found them $10 cheaper on Ebay including shipping. This consumed a huge chunk of my day but now I have a beautiful ironing board cover and it kept my brain busy.

Hope you are enjoying your week!

Distraught over A Furball

I have been wanting to post to get things off my mind but have been rather busy. The last week or so one of our dogs has been restless and sick. As in sick I mean more so than his usual ailments as he is allergic to wheat and is very high strung. After several symptoms that are worse than normal we called the vet Saturday. She came by in less than 2 hours and determined that he most likely has canine pancreatitis. His blood tests will come back tomorrow to confirm this. After speaking with her and reading everything I can find I do not feel confident about any solution to help him. This leaves me feeling awful inside as I love Gunther yet know he doesn't deserve to suffer like this. He is already on a very low fat diet due to his wheat allergy and doesn't have any of the likely causes. Looking back on his life and the last month I know that this event is not a one time occurrence it is just the worst so far, which means he has been suffering for a long time. Right now he has lost over 1 lb which is a lot for a 12 lb dog. All the recommendations both online and from our vet are things we have already been doing. If this is what he has we will determine a plan to try and prevent another breakdown. I hope we are able to do this and prevent him from suffering. If not I will not make my dog suffer and that kills me. I feel silly praying for my dog when others are suffering many times over but he is a member of our family and we love him.

Both dogs are sleeping so I hopefully can get some work done to sell some jewelry as I know we will have more vet bills shortly. I would appreciate any prayers.

Thank you.

Kerrie and Colin

If you are curious of what symptoms Gunther had/has and what we are doing to combat this disease please leave a comment or e-mail me at kerrie@handmadeobsessions.com

Tomorrow is the day

Tomorrow there should be a few new items on Handmade Obsessions. We are having an easy day as I had poor little Maximus neutered this morning. Very little other than that is happening at our house.

Hope you are having a wonderful Wednesday!

Tuesday is not Trash Day

We live on a corner where quite a few kids walk to and from school each day and lately have had a group of teenagers hanging out on the corner late at night. That seems to equate to trash being left on the side of our yard. In the last 5 days I have collected a large flashlight, several taco bell cups, bud light can, misc. small wrappers and today a large ceramic flower pot full of rocks which I had to collect from all over the yard.#@$#^^&%^*^ We live in a nice clean neighborhood. I hate when my dogs bark at people through the fence but two of our neighbors think its good that they bark at strangers. I am about to be that crazy old lady sitting on my porch with a broom chasing people away. Please note Colin did this to some 10-12ish boys that snuck in our garage while we were doing yard work in June. He is not cool with people touching his tools.! It's too bad our dogs don't look big and scary.
Thinking happy thoughts I did make a few toys for the dogs yesterday. Hopefully they hold up ok. I made our puppy friend Jack a set as well so we will see. Here is Maximus hiding under the coffee table trying to sleep since he isn't allowed to leave the family room without us.

I feel like I should go check with some of the neighbors about whose flower pot this is as it definitely was stolen from someone. Where do you even start with something like that?

Scatterbrained...the perfect word

Personally I feel my title fits me perfectly yet everyone always thinks I am organized. I am only organized because I have to be to function, I learned that about myself a long time ago thank god.

We all have things we are supposed to be doing and those things we want to do. Both of those lists are pretty large today. My ever so nice husband spent a good chunk of Saturday cleaning out my car. I am supposed to be scrubbing mud out of the floor mats in the basement today. I really need to be working on getting more jewelry online as well. But I feel like sewing and think I may run and buy some squeakers to make these.

They were made by thelab on Etsy. They are made out of a duck cloth or canvas so I am hoping they will stand up to some tugging between my furry rascals. I an only hope I can make them half as nice as these. If not I may order some since they are so cute.

I also am working on getting a beautiful bag like this custom made. The designer is making mine slightly larger so I can use it for traveling and it will fit my giant laptop. My husband had given me a gift certificate to get any leather item I wanted up to $200 for our anniversary. He knew I wanted a bag/purse but added I could get a bag, leather pants, boots, etc. It was quite amusing but an awesome thought on his part. I have had a really hard time picking anything but decided upon this since it is fun and will work exactly for what I wanted, plus she is making an adjustable strap so it can turn into a messenger bag.

Like normal I had nothing of substance to write but I since these are my thoughts this blog might as well correspond with how my brain functions. All over the place! Hope you are having a great Monday

Thanks for the Support

I just wanted to say thanks for all the sales this week! I have been a busy bee but didn't post anything new as housework was calling my name.

Frustration seems to be the word that fits today. Everything just seems difficult and worrisome. Maybe it's me or maybe that is just how things have been this week. I am trying not to stress but that is not a skill of mine.

I did have one great occurrence, for about 2 months we thought we had lost the remote to our shock collar for the dogs. I rarely use the shock because Gunther knows the beep and listens immediately when we use it. It is great when we go out in the country so they don't run off after a rabbit (actually the reason I bought it). Anyways I would like Max to know the meaning of the beep as well but haven't been able to find that darn remote, a new one costs $80-$120. I am so relieved that I finally found it.

Part of that stress I cant let go of is that there is still no word on the whole moving issue. I know everyone is getting nervous since we don't know anything. This next Friday could be the answer for various reasons, lets hope it doesn't mean the unemployed answer.

Yummy!

So I think I found an idea to make for Valentine's Day. Don't these look delicious? They are red wine truffles, but I think I will attempt to make Bailey's truffles as that is all I have in my liquor cabinet at the moment. Check the recipe out here on Sprinkle Bakes blog. They look fairly easy and don't require that many ingredients. Bonus is I have never made anything like this before.

I loaned out my heart shaped cake pan and sprinkles to Colin's work wife (they share an office) since his girlfriend is flying in from Denver and decided to spend up to $5 on each other. He decided to make a cake but has nothing to make or cook it in. I think that is so sweet especially since the poor guy has never made a cake. I on the other hand have only come up with these tasty chocolates, which I am pretty sure might be for me as Colin isn't a sweet fan. Since I still don't have any new ideas I think I am leaning towards the pilsners and different bottles of beer as a gift. Not exciting but he loved it a few years ago and my brain is still stumped. I hate that I have Zero creative juices regarding this, maybe I will go to Sears and get something small and tie a red ribbon around it.

Now that I have postponed what I am supposed to be doing, I will head back to work :) making a few new pieces of jewelry.

Filling a hole

I shipped out orders this morning and I planned on getting a ton of new items posted today but I keep having hurdles to jump. I am thinking nothing will be getting online unless it happens this evening. I had to call an owner of a missing dog that was trying to dig its way into our yard to play with Max. At least it had a tag on it....now I need to fill the hole from the outside.

Monday I discovered Max gets super car sick, just great for a dog that will be moving constantly. Motion sickness medicine for dogs isn't cheap! I really know how to pick puppies I tell you, now we have one allergic to wheat and one that cant be in the car. I may have just beat my sister out for issues with our dogs, wait one of her dog's broke all his teeth trying to get out of a wire kennel. She definitely has me beat. Sigh, the things we do for our silly pets.

Turquoise shall be the stone of the day, if I ever make it down to my work room. The thought of creating instead of cleaning sounds divine.

I need a new Boss

The problem with me is I get sidetracked by pretty things.....yesterday I needed to spend the entire day uploading new pieces of jewelry but instead I made a clutch and played with the dogs.

I need to have a talk with my boss and get myself working. :) Especially since while I was messing around yesterday a lot of things got sold out. Yeah! That is always a good feeling but now I really need to work hard today. It's a good thing I LOVE my job. I have to thank anyone that orders my jewelry and my husband for putting up with me.
This morning consisted of shipping out orders and this afternoon I will be taking photos like a fool so I can still spend the evening with my hubby while accomplishing something. I have a few tweaks that need done on the clutch but I kind of dig it. This one is for a friend and we picked out one of my great vintage buttons to finish it off.

This is our buddy Jack who I puppysit during the day, last week he only took up half of Max's tiny bed now he barely fits. We have had our fair share of slobbery love and fur these last few weeks.