Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone! This holiday season just flew by too quickly for me, with blankets that I've been embroidering for my gifts to people and for other people's gifts, I've been a bit too busy to post. Thankfully the season is over and I can get back to doing other things.

Some of the things I've been making lately are earrings. I just love making jewelry, and it's been fun making earrings. I love long dangly earrings, so of course those are what I've been making.

I've bought a lot of fun low priced earrings that I know I can add beads to. Like the above pair of earrings I found at Target for $5.99. I added some glass beads I found at the flea market. The above is the before and after.

These two earrings (the other halves aren't in the photo) I got at Old Navy for $2.99 for both pair on sale. I really like the jewelry that Old Navy has been carrying lately.

But I thought I'd add a few more beads to the earrings to make them a bit longer. And I like the look.

These are a pair that I gave to one of my co-workers. I just love them and will definitely have to make a pair for myself.

I'll post a bit more as I make more. Sorry to have been away for so long!

Trip to Reno

We spent this weekend up in Reno. The Big Reno Show was this weekend, so we wanted to go check it out with a few other outdoors stores. Phil's daughter Ashley and her boyfriend Alex met us up in Reno, and we had a great time all together.

While driving up, we saw a ton of snow. Luckily it wasn't snowing during the drive, but it was really pretty to see the snow on the mountains.

We stopped for breakfast at Jax at the Tracks. We saw them on Diners Drive-ins and Drives awhile ago, and went to visit them for the first time on our last trip to Tahoe. Their breakfasts are amazing! I had the Corned Beef Hash, which was the most delicious ever! And they also serve it with toast and homemade strawberry jam. Oh yum!! I am not a fan of most strawberry jams cause they just taste like feet. LOL But this one was the yummiest ever. I think they need to bottle it and sell it!

Phil had Eggs Benedict. I'm not into the eggs, but it looked really yummy!

If you have a chance, Jax is a MUST stop!

Raining Hope & Kanzashi flowers.

My sister has a charity called Raining Hope that helps out families in need in Uganda. They had a charity event at Macy's last weekend, and I made some of the Kanzashi flowers for them to use as gifts to those who donated.
I was able to make some into hair pins and to pins. They came out pretty cool.

They're also having an Avon event through the internet at Tina Shadowen's Avon site. If that link doesn't work, you can also get to the event through Tina's Avon site link to the right.

Kanzashi Flowers

I've seen the templates for the Kanzashi Flowers on different sewing websites, so when I saw them in Beverly's when we were in Modesto, I knew I needed to have them. They said they were easy to use, and they weren't kidding.
You pretty much place a piece of material on the template, then close it. Cut around the template, then with a needle and thread, you follow the numbers. Easy peasy. Once you get to the last spot, you'll undo the template, and pull on the thread. This gathers the material into a petal.
Mine are all the smaller templates. I should have bought them all, but I thought that of course I'd not use them. Boy, was I wrong. I can see using these with some machine embroidery to make different gifts.

We'll see what types of things we can create from these!!

Heart chain necklace

My sister-in-law wanted me to update this heart chain that she found at the bead store. She loves the chain but thought it looked a little too plain. So she purchased some crystals and asked to see what I could do with it. And this is what I came up with.
Since the beads she purchased were the same size, I thought I'd add the larger pink glass beads to it because the crystal beads looked a bit too small.
And she had some beads left over, so of course we needed to make her matching earrings.

I hope she likes it.

Giants and A's Earrings

A few years ago I made some Giants earrings for my cousin using Giants earrings she had from her store. They were just the Giants logo with the earring wires. They were pretty popular, so I decided I wanted to make another set. But I couldn't find the earrings I quite wanted to use.

So, while at the flea market this month, I found these:
I thought to myself, man, those just aren't cute, and what is up with the big gold bars and the hoops? But then I had a lightbulb moment. I didn't care what parts they were on, I just wanted the Giants/A's logo. So I bought them. And turned them into these:


Much better! I love the crystal beads way better than the gold bar and hoop. Now I have a couple of pair of great big hoops that I'll figure out how to incorporate into another project. These are gonna make great Christmas gifts! ;)

Oakland A's

Now that Baseball season is over, I'm finally getting around to posting my A's pics. LOL We actually went to a game a couple of weeks ago, and Phil went with us! He hasn't been to a game in years, so it was great that Ashley took him for his birthday. (although we didn't get around to going till now).

Here's Phil with his dapper hat. ;)

This photo I took right when the player (who I can't remember who it was) hit the first home run of the game! It was really exciting. There were 4 home runs that night by the A's, and they actually won against the Tigers.

Yes, I'm both an A's and Giants fan. :) I loved the movie Moneyball. It was great seeing what happens behind the scenes.

Another couple of pair...

And here are a couple of other pair I worked on. Guess I was in a green mood today. :) I had the Asian coin beads for awhile, and thought this would be a good use for them.

I just love these large green crystal beads. You can't see the sparkle from the photo, but they're really sparkly!

New Pliers and earrings

One of my favorite places to find tools is at the Gun show. Yes, the gun show. There are dealers who sell different pliers, dental tools, drills, etc that I love to look through to find something that I can use for some of the various crafts that I make.

One of the best finds ever were these pair of pliers:

They are part round nosed and part curvy. I haven't seen these before and thought they would work well for wire wrapping jewelry.

And they are fast becoming my favorite pair of pliers. They make wire wrapping beads so fast and easy! Why didn't I think to invent these!! Now my loops are coming out evenly.

So I made some earrings, the above pair are purple and clear. It's hard to tell from the photograph.
I love these Celtic heart ones. I have to find more of the Celtic heart beads so that I can make these for other people.

I will have to post more of the ones I've made so you can see.

More Jewelry

I made the green pair of earrings just because. They're a bit more sparkly in person. I just love the color, it's more of a teal than a green.

The necklace above was made for my sister-in-law. She had these beads that she purchased that she really liked, so I just put them together with some chain and made her a long necklace.

This one was made for my sister. She loved the teardrop shaped beads because they are the theme of her non-profit organization, Raining Hope. So I made her a necklace like one that I saw that I really liked. It's the first time I've worked with Brioche beads, and they were really fun to work with.

Kara's Cupcakes

So we went to another food truck event last Monday in San Mateo, just to see who would be out there because we just need to know these things. We're getting really into the gourmet food trucks.

Anyway, we found Kara's Cupcakes. We thought we'd try them, eventhough we just love our normal Cupcake truck. They had some flavors that were the same, and some that were totally new, so we thought we'd try a few of theirs.

We had the s'mores just cause you just have to try marshmallow on a cupcake! We bought the meyer lemon one for my mom, Phil had the blackberry creme, and I had the chocolate velvet.

The Blackberry creme was good, the frosting tasted like blackberry, and it was on a chocolate cupcake. I LOVED the Chocolate velvet. I'm not usually into the frosting, but their frosting was to die for. And the chocolate sprinkles on the top were awesome!

Here's a close up of the s'mores cupcake. I just love that it had a graham cracker crust on the bottom.

This is what it looked like cut open. It was really very good. I'm not normally too into the marshmallow either, but loved this!

And I was even more excited to learn that they have stores in the south bay and in SF.

If you're in the area, or see their truck, you should definitely try them out!

It's beading time.

So now I'm in jewelry mode. Unfortunately, I can't find my collection of beads. When we moved I had to store them in the basement for awhile. And I can't seem to remember where I stored them. So I've been slowly gathering supplies to start making jewelry again.

I've started with this piece. My sister-in-law bought this necklace for $2, and wanted it jazzed up a bit. She didn't like the seed beads between the larger beads. The photo below shows the necklace in its before stage, I forgot to take a photo of it before I started to take it apart.


We decided to put chain between the larger beaded sections. Since they used fishing line to string the necklace, I wire wrapped the beaded sections so that the chain had something to connect to.


Below is the finished necklace. I really liked how it turned out.

Since I started beading, I decided to make another bracelet. I found the pearls on sale at Michael's. But I thought I should wear it first to see how the pearls would wear, because they are glass pearl beads. And good thing, the paint started wearing off on the pearls, so I need to string those with non-glass/metal beads. They will wear a ton better I think.

But the pearls sure do look pretty on the bracelet. LOL

That's Sweet Desserts

So, every Thursday in Union City, they have the Union City Street Eats where a bunch of gourmet food trucks get together to sell their wares. It's a great idea, you get to try the food from all these gourmet trucks that get together every week.

Our favorite is That's Sweet! Desserts. OMG, they have the best cupcakes that I've ever had. TONS better than Sprinkles. The cupcakes are so moist, with great flavor combinations.




These two are the Salted Caramel and the Maple Bacon. I tried the Salted Caramel last week and just LOVED it. And we just had to try out the Maple bacon just because.



Phil also needed to have the Red Velvet Whoopie Pie. We tried to get these last week, but they had sold out. It's a Red Velvet cake with a cream cheese filling. He said it was super rich, but it was super yummy!

This is a close up of the Salted Caramel Cupcake.


After cutting it open, I found that they kind of cut a hole in the center and pour caramel in it, then cover it up in the most delicious caramel frosting with a drizzle of caramel sauce on top. I love this one because despite all the caramel, the salt cuts the sweetness.

Guess where we'll be next week?? LOL

Go Flyers!

Our 16U Flyers team made it to second place this weekend at the tournament in Davis, CA. We missed the games on Saturday because Phil had to work. It was great that we didn't lose the first game and have to go all that way for one game. LOL

The tournament organizer announced during the medal ceremony that our organization, the Fremont Flyers, had a team in each division in the finals. This is the first time that he's seen that in a tournament. And he runs a lot of tournaments.

I think that is pretty awesome, because when we started with the Flyers, we weren't the best team in the league. But as we've progressed and matured, the girls have become a much better team. Very proud of you girls!

Happy August

It seems like I've been blogging once a month these days. I think I have to change that. Life is a bit busy because that thing called work has been getting in the way. LOL But if it wasn't for work I wouldn't be able to do the fun things in life like...

Going to see American Idols live! Now after going to the Glee show, and receiving extra special treatment, I thought that nothing could beat that show. Well, the Idols show came close. I really REALLY enjoyed the show this year.
It keeps getting better and better. They were amazing! Loved James and Haley. Lauren is super cute. And just love Scotty. LOL Paul was one of my favorites too. And Thia was way better live than on the show. And of course it was great seeing Pia. she was my favorite on the show. And I really enjoyed watching her on tour. She gave me goosebumps, and the last person to do that was Celine Dion. :)

We went to Tahoe a couple of weekends ago and saw friends that we haven't seen in quite some time. It was so great to catch up with them. I really miss them a lot! Wish we lived closer to them.

And last weekend our niece Sadie Brown sang with the Cheeseballs in Newark's Music in the Grove. I haven't seen them play in a couple of years, and they're still as awesome as ever! :)

I haven't been very creative lately, but I've been trying to get inspired to do some things. I'll post them as soon as I can figure that out.

It's July!

OMG, it's already July, can it really be 1.5 months since I've posted last?? Yep, pretty much. Life's been a bit busy at home & at work. Not much time to play lately.

Went to Counter burgers with my friend Kristen a couple of weeks ago and had these yummy slider burgers. They made tiny burgers and put them on Hawaiian rolls. They were so good. When I told Phil about them he had to make Teriyaki sliders with pineapple on them. Those were even better!!

Here's a picture of Velcro Hogging the remotes. Just because I can. LOL She's becoming a lot more chatty lately. She's finally coming out of her shell. She's been so quiet since we moved, and she's getting back to her normal self, which is good. Only took a year and a half.

And this is my favorite photo of the week:
My niece Alex acting all ninja at Bass Pro Shops. She's a character, let me tell you! LOL

This week I'll be going to the American Idols concert, so I'll have a new update for you then. Sorry for the long time between posts. Will have to get better at that!