I know you're dying to know....

Where I've been.

It has come to my attention that most of my blog posts in the last few months have consisted of an explanation of where I’ve been and what I’ve been doing-lots of excuses as to why I’m not blogging. Well, here's another round!

I swear, I do not understand how these ‘Mommy Bloggers” do it. Four kids-all toddlers, a perfect house, an online business or three and every day there’s a new post on their blogs. They run giveaways, make crafts, re-finish furniture, cook perfect looking meals...Do you people sleep?! Do you ever have a Fuckitall day? No cleaning, no crafting, just pure and unadulterated, slovenly laziness? A day where your kids don’t eat anything that’s good for them? Fruit snacks for breakfast and cold hotdogs for lunch? Cause I do. Two or three a month at a minimum.

In spite of the lazy, I’ve actually been keeping quite busy. To update everyone-all 3 or 4 of my readers-here’s what’s been going on:

My little nephew is now with his parents. The two of them have worked out a visitation schedule and he is more or less safe and sound. I’ve been keeping him on Sunday afternoons to give them a break and to visit with him and make sure he is doing well. I worry, but I know he’s ok and he is where he should be.

Not having a toddler wrapped around my ankle has freed up a ton of time for me. So I’ve been crafting like crazy. I’ve been making all kinds of things for the shop, doing some experimenting and making things for the house. I’ve decided that I really want to put some effort into my Etsy shop and doing side work on PCs for extra money. I am setting a goal of making $250 in extra income for the month of March. If that works out well, I’ll increase my goal after a month or two. I plan to use February to make a bunch of things and get my stock up.

Now, couple those goals with two huge projects at work. I’ve had to work from home quite a bit in the last couple of months. That’s new to me, but honestly-I’m loving these new projects so much that I don’t mind. After 6 years of doing the same thing I was in a bit of a rut and my performance was suffering. I’m excited to get to the office again and that is a very welcome feeling.

I joined Weight Watchers again! I’ve been counting points and trying to get used to their new system. Thanks to Christie and my sister, who are both following the plan-I think I can do it this time and actually stick with it. Since I joined I’ve dropped 6 lbs. Not bad, but I just got my second months card in the mail. I hadn’t realized it had already been a month since I joined. That lit a bit of a fire under my too-large ass.

Oh! And I’ve been on Mom Strike. I’m not like picketing or anything, though I may start after this weekend. What I am doing is not doing laundry; I’m not washing dishes or taking the trash out. I’m barely cooking. The house is a pig-sty. And it’s gonna stay that way until the hubs and my two nearly grown children decide to help out. It’s making me crazy. People that know me know that while I do have those aforementioned days of extreme lazy-I want my home to be spotless-magazine cover worthy-spotless, all the time. But…I digress. That bitch session story is another blog post in itself!

The upside of doing no household chores is, again, that I’ve had TONS of time to do crafty stuff! Here’s a taste of what I’ve been up too and of what will hopefully be appearing in my Etsy shop soon!

This will be a set of 5 for my kitchen.

These two trees are going over my mantel, beside the TV.

I love this necklace! I made it out of beads from broken old jewelery. I am going to keep this one, but make more for my shop.

Wine charms made from irregular glass beads and glass pearls from an old necklace. These will eventually be for sale.

I made this pendant out of 24 gage silver coated copper wire and some irregular glass beads. This is an experiment, so I'll keep it. I think I'm going to put it on a peice of ribbon.

This braclet and ring are made from the same kind of wire as the pendant. I found a couple of tutorials on wire jewelery making and then altered them to my liking. Eventually these will be for sale too.

Same with this ring. Found a cool tutorial and made my own alterations. I don't know if I'll sell this one, but I will have several similar ones for sale.

I love making these flowers! They are so easy and so pretty! I'll eventually have these for sale on their own, plus some on headbands, hair clips and necklaces.

I found this huge leaf this fall and kept it. I coated it in Mod Podge so it wouldn't fall apart then framed it to go with my livingroom which is done in trees, branchs, leaves and fall/earthy colors.

I love how this little tree turned out. Originally it was going to be a pendant, but I decided to frame it and include it in my livingroom.

I redid this dresser for my daughter's room. It was my grandmothers. I think she would be happy that it has new life.

This is the first one of these I made. I gave this one as a birthday gift.

Ok, so forgive the terrible picture. I made this ring out of wire and a big orange recycled glass bead.

I crocheted this necklace with beads and I just love it. I'll have to practice a ton more to include any of these in the shop, but for me-it's great!

I have plans involving old book pages, more beads, vintage jewelery, more 'embroidery', repurposing my daughter's old(er) dresser and a ton more things. Maybe I need to focus on making enough to hire a maid....

Trust me, I do realize that none of these pictures are Etsy worthy. My camera is taking an extended nap, so all these were taken with the hubs phone. One of the reasons I want to get this going is to be able to save up for the camera I really want!

Stop by my shop and check out what I've got up there. I'm not trying to plug myself here...ok, maybe a little bit....but really what I would love is for you to check out my items then come back here and give me your honest feed back.

At the end of these "Where have I been" blogs I always swear to post more so here ya go: I swear I'll post more soon!

P.S. Blogger...your formatting blows me. Srsly-can you not fix some of these bugs? Like a double space in Compose should equal a double space in Preview and/or Post. Just sayin'.