I got my snaps & snap setter in the mail yesterday (if any of you crafty types need snaps & such I highly recommend Snap Source, they have awesome colors & super fast shipping) and I’m really excited to get started on some cuffs. Its not going to happen until Sunday at the earliest, since its pay day today, which means shopping & such, then tonight we have a wedding rehearsal at 7 & are grilling with friends after that & tomorrow is taken up by a wedding most of the day. Hopefully I won’t be totally wiped out on Sunday. I also need to start crafting some thing for a Harry Potter swap I’m in, but I won’t be posting those items until after they’ve been sent & received, since my partner has this URL.

I’m really starting to get excited for this years Faire. I can’t wait to get into the booth & get set up, see our old friends & what they’re selling this year, and see what of ours sells well this time around. We have some new things this year, since we’re still really trying to figure out what our niche is, and its always exciting to see what people are interested in. Last year, I had no idea the bath salts would sell as well as they did and didn’t make early enough. This year, I’m ready! (watch, they won’t sell this time LOL)

Its a gorgeous day today! The storms have finally gone past us, the sky is clear & bright blue, the sun is shining & its WARM!! I have some chicken thawing to grill tonight, and I’m hoping we’ll even be able to eat outside today, too.

I am, however, very tired today. I woke up at 4:45 this morning & couldn’t get back to sleep until around 6, and of course, my alarm goes off at 6:20. I keep catching myself drifting off if I sit still too long. The funny thing is, Troy worked all night & came home jazzed up & not tired at all, so he’s still awake.

I got my snaps & snap setter ordered the other day, so I think at some point today, I’m going to go through my fabrics & pick some to make wrist cuffs out of & then decide which ones need designs stenciled on them, which need felt embellisments & which can stand on their own. Yay!

The other day, my daughter & I were coming home from the store & noticed that there were all kinds of police cars & EMS vehicles all over the road that we usually take to get home. We tried to turn off of it & go around the elementary school in our neighborhood, but halfway down it was blocked off due to construction, so I did a u-turn & went back with our original route.

The crazy thing was, as soon as we got closer I saw a couch in the middle of the road.. about 25 feet in front of a truck, who’s front end was smashed so far forward it was even with the cab. The bed of the truck had no ladder rack, (and no side rails either) so I’m assuming that it was hit so hard that upon impact, the couch it was carrying flew up & over the cab, landing in front of the truck. Or, the truck was hit so hard, the couch flew out of the back & the truck spun around into the other lane. Another really strange thing was that there didn’t seem to be any other vehicle around that was damaged at all, and it was shortly after the accident, because there were still truck pieces in the road & the police were still getting statements in the middle of the road.

Gods. I’m so tired of being cold, already. Can we please have some spring? We actually had snow Sunday night, and its been raining off & on ever since. A cold, drizzly rain. With a cold, nasty wind, too.

Today I plan to organize the craft room, since I’ve got everything (pretty much) moved in there, now it needs to be put into some type of order so I can find whatever I’m looking for at any given time. (inspired by the fact that I put my ruler in there & now I can’t find it)

I also need to finish the living room and take my daughter to the dentist. I’m thinking dinner is going to be kind of a pick-up type thing tonight. I’m almost wishing I had something to put in the oven to warm me up!!

I swear, we have so many occasions coming up this spring & summer that we need to come up with gifts for. We have 4 friends getting married this Saturday, but Troy & I are officiating at this one and that’s our gift to them. Ours friends’ little girl turns 2 tomorrow, our daughter’s boyfriend turns 17 on May 4, she turns 17 on May 7 (and we have another friend who’s birthday is the same day), Morgan’s baby shower is May 12, there’s another wedding on May 19. We have the usual run of summer birthdays and then Morgan & Roger get married on August 18.

I have a friend, Vicki, who’s getting ready to start nursing school, and I’m already thinking about what gift I’d like to get for her – I’ve picked out a really nice Littman stethoscope for her – but for the life of me, I can’t think of wedding gifts. What’s wrong with me? Am I only good with the unusual occasions & not the standard?

My daughter & I have spent the afternoon cleaning the kitchen, the dishes are done, the counters are scrubbed, the table is clear & clean & the floor is mopped. Everything smells sooooo good right now! This evening, I imagine we’ll work on the living room & getting it organized, clean & vacuumed. We’ve made a pact to help each other keep the house clean, so neither of us has to be embarrassed anymore.

Cetta, I’ll post a picture of one of the tooth fairy pillows just as soon as I get one done. I have one as an example to myself, but its covered in pet hair now *L*

I was thinking this morning on the differences in belief in this family. Troy is Catholic, he went to a Catholic seminary college with the intent of becoming a priest (this was way before we ever met), and is even an ordained Deacon. He has Godparents and a God-daughter and all of that stuff, too.

I was raised Baptist & converted to Paganism when I was 21, so I have no Godparents, and while I have godchildren, its so different in my belief structure that its almost not even the same thing, like we have no first communion, (and with that the need for first communion gifts is eliminated) and I’m not so much responsible for their spiritual growth as I am their health & welfare if something happens to their mom.

Our daughter is kind of a mixture of the two, believing in angels, demons, Satan, and possibly Heaven & Hell, but is also polytheistic. She has an unborn god-daughter, and I’m not sure what her role will be in her life yet. She had godparents at one time, but I’ve lost contact with her godfather & I wouldn’t trust her godmother to take care of a ham.

Erin, although he isn’t in the house anymore, is an agnostic. He believes there is probably a higher power, but hasn’t seen any real proof of it yet, and thinks what I believe is fairly silly.

Garrett, again, not in the house, teaches Sunday School at a Baptist church, but also claims to be Wiccan, so I think his beliefs are probably a lot like our daughter’s in that he believes in polytheism, along with aspects of Christianity.

I think all of this is really cool, because that was how we raised them, to think for themselves & embrace what they truly believe & not what someone else tells them they ought to, you know? I always resented having my parents religion shoved down my throat, and being told what I believed, and that was one thing I did make sure to do differently than them. At least they know that they are 100% responsible for their own spirituality, and can worship as they like

I guess its time for me to get my list of things to do before faire up, so I can see what I need to do & keep track of it all.

1. Finish Soap
2. Finish Lip Balm
3. Make Bath Salt
4. Make a pattern for purses, out of fabric.
5. Cut out purses.
6. Make purses.
7. Make pattern for wrist cuffs.
8. Make/find stencils for wrist cuffs.
9. Order snap setter & snaps for wrist cuffs.
10. Cut out & sew wrist cuffs.
11. Print signs.
12. Make new banner.
13. Get everything packaged.
14. Make tooth fairy pillows.
15. Buy jars for bath salts.
16. Figure out decorations for the small bath salt jars.
17. Print labels for jars.

I’ll add to this as I remember other things I want to work on.

The craft room is finished, everything that needed moving out is gone & new stuff (including my sewing table – Woot!) is moved in. We have a TV, DVD player & VCR set up in there, with a loveseat, so my daughter & her friends can hang out, use laptops or watch movies, or really, just have a nice place to hang out & relax.

I have a nice place to sew, assemble things and work on packaging and all of that. I plan to get a folding table to use in there for melting soap & such, too, that way I don’t have to take up space in the kitchen every time I want to make soap. I’m actually really hyped to get to using my nice new room.

I get crafting will give me somewhere to channel my anger when I think about Erin, now, since what I was doing was cleaning in there every time I’d get sad, because cleaning up what he left behind made me stop dwelling on it. The only problem I’m having now is that I apparently overdid it somehow, my lower back is killing me & it feels like I might snap in half if I bend too far.