Book Tag

So no shortage of books in my house, but when this popped up on Twisted's blog I chuckled. My books fall into two catagories. Well three, but I don't count my kids books as mine.

A. Books I read like crazy. Stephen King, semi fantasy or sci fi and horror.

B. Books I've picked up at antique stores or estate sales to lay around the house to make it feel more like home.

So when the tag said to pick up the next nearest book I knew it would be of the second category as theres one on the table at my back.

Here's the tag.


1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five other people.


And here is the excerpt from A Short History of England by Edward P. Cheyney. Copyright 1904

"On the same occasion he did homage to the king. That is to say, he knelt before the king and took an oath to be faithful to him. This was followed by the consecration , a religious service in which the new bishop or abbot was inducted by the archbishop or some other bishops into the religious functions of his position. "

I enjoyed the book when I picked it up, its worn in some spots, the pages are long ago yellowed and it is written quite nicely. While I wouldn't call myself a history buff or lover, I do from time to time enjoy picking up books on other places. Especially when they were written before my time.


It was sold for $1.40 at a drug store at some point in the past, it's got a little stamp in the corner. Theres also an address and a few lines written in pencil. There are lines underlined and small notes in the margin throughout the book which make me smile when I come across them.


Alright.....5 other people.

Hmm...tell you what I always feel so pressed by these things to choose just the right people. And I know there are so many tags floating out there that it seems they never end. So I tell you what. If you feel like sharing a book, do so then post a comment here letting me know you have. I've always got an eye out for something new and love to see others views on books. So share, ^-^

Robot Plush

And I do mean plush. ^-^ He's quite snuggly.


Blue Fleece, red fleece and black fleece all snugly stitched together into one robot with a heart.

I was making him for my little brother for his birthday Sat......but I think I'll be making him something else. ^-~

Just had to share...

I really love a good fresh fruit smoothie and every so often I get the urge to make one. Now I make one every couple of days for the kiddos, it includes carrots and fruits and what ever good stuff I can include for them. Gotta get the good stuff in where I can. ^-~

Today I wanted to make one that I would enjoy as well (I'm not a fan of carrots in mine, they make it too gritty for me. 0-o) so I started grabbing the fruit bags from the freezer. Well its nearly stock up time again so I used what I could get ahold of and just hoped it would be yummy. It was!


So heres my new smoothie recipe.

3 spoon fulls of honey.
2 shakes of cinnamon. (My shakes are fairly good shakes, and my containers got good sized holes. So I suppose it'd be about 1tsp but you don't have to use that much)

One large chunk of frozen berry mix. (this one has ras, blue, and black berries in it)

1 Philly Swirl blueberry flavored. I(t comes in a pack of 6 or so different flavor mixes, they are in the ice cream section but are a non dairy shaved ice sort of thing. I was just using it for the ice and the blueberry flavor. I don't like to add a bunch of ice chunks as it makes it harder to blend and my lil guy is afraid of the blender.)

1 Frusion Strawberry Banana yougurt smoothie. It's cheap, its a filler and it tastes good.

Blend until smooth as you like.


Now most of the things I use I keep around, but you may not have the specific brands, any yogurt or yogurt smoothie will do, I like the smoothies better because they are liquid and i don't have to add extra juice. But I've used all kinds in these. The shaved ice thingy, really any sort of ice and flavor mix works, even if its adding blueberries and ice cubes.

Just play with it. ^-^ I like this mix the best out of all I've made lately because the hint of cinnamon kept popping up and making it interesting. Not to sweet and not to tangy, it was a hit with both the kids and myself.

*^-~ And it means I got my fruits in for the day. he he.


0-0......I grabbed my camera to shoot a few shots of the yummy stuff before it was all gone and got spooked when I went to edit the photos! Apparently something else likes my drink.

Weird.....

On a lighter note

I just had to laugh. I hadn't gripped much this morning with my right hand, so when I set about making lunch for my kiddos I noticed my hand hurt.

I looked down and I have a large bruise where I was holding my round nose pliers handle. ^-~ Guess I did a bit too much spiral making last night. he he.

Just a note.

I don't normally cross post my blogs or even tell people about the others, I like my other lives secret. ^-~, but today I'm frustrated. So I'm sharing a bit of a rant on one of my other blogs. It's been made for just that, ranting. Not a sole actually reads it (or at least that I know of no ones ever commented and I'm rarely over there) so feel free to ignore it as well.

It's about the scare we had about two weeks ago and whats happened since. But again it's a rant, with words I can't say outloud anymore (I have little ears in the house ^_^) so not really anyone friendly.

Check it here if you want to. I wouldn't mind another thought on the subject, but do understand, it's a rant blog. It's not got many posts and its rarely a. updated b. read.

And its another side of me that not everyone cares for so fair warning.

I've been tagged! Twice ^-^

Never really been good at these tagging things, so here goes.

I've been tagged by both Cyndi *see here*
as well as Vicki of Parrotise Beads

Heres the tag, which by the way is an award ^-^ Which makes it a cool tag.

This was started by Erin of Idyll Hands

-Post the award on your own blog. (Post who gave it to you)
-Indicate its original link and link to that site.
-Give the award to 5 other blogs that you enjoy, find creative and inspire you.

So heres my 5

1. Posie Gets Cozy, She makes some really cute stuff and writes a blog thats a great read anyday.

2. BitterSweet, A blog I check on a daily basis. She has a wonderful writing style and a delicious blog in general. Plus shes a young author of a cookbook!

3.Etsians Say The Darnest Things, Because when ever I need a good laugh, I check this blog. It's based off the forums and the folks who say funny things in it. I've found some great shops through this blog.

4.Some Girls Wander, is a neat blog about some of the fun fashions popping up on Etsy.

5. The Twisted Pearl, A fellow ArEtsy gal who does some very pretty spinning and dying of yarn. I love her stuff and if I can't get ahold of some fiber of my own, I know I can get a fiber fix there!

Hope you all enjoy the blogs, if you've seen them before or not, and I hope you bloggers enjoy your award! ^-^ I know I've enjoyed sharing some of my favs.

Elysium the faun poppet

She's been floating around in my head for a good bit so I thought I'd let her out. ^-^



Today I took her outside and got some shots while it was nice and sunny. Though she said it was too cold and quickly wanted to go back in. *chuckles*




For now she's back to hanging out with Calypso. Which I'm not sure is a great idea....they might be scheming. ^-~

A joyful blurb on my sick day ^-^

Our house for the past few days has been nothing but coughs and couch lazy time. I've done some spinning but other than that it's been mostly sit and be covered by kids.

Which is why I was nearly skipping from my front door to the table when my ArEtsy Valentines Swap package got here today. ^-^ Nothing makes a sick lady feel better than jewelry. Ok, maybe not all ladies, but absolutely this one!

Heres the goodies I received today from my fabulous swap partner Vicki of Parrotise Beads.

A lovely pair of earrings *In just my colors! I can't wait to get to wear them.* And a very cute, very fun cell phone charm that has a story of its own.
You can check her out at http://www.parrotisebeads.com

Now on to the yarn ^-^ I started a single the other day and it finally finished drying out this morning. So I snapped a few shots of the small but pretty skien.



The second one is still hanging out on the spindle as I want to ply it but haven't figured out a. exactly how and b. with what yet. So here's a preview.

It's the same roving, so not much difference, except I made this yarn a good bit thicker than the other and want to ply it with something tiny.


What I am finding is that apparently I'm in a bit of a blue green kick these days and I think it may have started with this photo I took in game recently.

I've been struck by this outfit and I can't quite get peacock feathers out of my head. *chuckles as she realizes she recently added a peacock feather to her banner......*

What a Day!

Ohmygoodness long day. Went out shopping yesterday afternoon for mom a new dress, found nothing for myself to wear. So out I went this morning to find something. I started feeling dizzy as I was walking around looking at things. Not long afterwards Hubb called. Apparently we had a gas leak!

So he grabbed the boys from their room and called the fire department. Then he ran around opening windows.
They said that the rooms upstairs were fairly dangerous and that it's good our boys didn't actually go to sleep when we put them down for a nap. Then the gas co guy came and tried to go into the attic *which is upstairs in back of our rooms* and got light headed just inside the door. 0-0.......So yeah. The vent on the roof had gotten clogged in the last storm and had Hubb not forgotten to turn off the stove, we'd not have found that out this weekend. I'm notorious for forgetting the stove until I go back into the kitchen after we eat, so it would have been me and the boys. *Whew!*

Mom's wedding was quick, painless and very pretty for the informal wedding it was. Lucky for all of us the Arkansas weather didn't change its mind last min. ^-~
(Image copyright Brandy Davis, do not steal, reproduce, or use without consent. Thank you)


(Image copyright Brandy Davis, do not steal, reproduce, or use without consent. Thank you)

The second great fun of the afternoon was playing outside with the boys since it was so nice out. I still had my camera with me, so I snapped some shots.

Got one that I'm going to send to Sony and thank them for the camera. I mean really. I'm in love with this shot.

(Image copyright Brandy Davis, do not steal, reproduce, or use without consent. Thank you)


Little Man is harder to catch, he's just not much of a camera ham since he's always on the move, but I managed to snap a couple of him as well.
(Image copyright Brandy Davis, do not steal, reproduce, or use without consent. Thank you)



Hope you all have had a good weekend. I'm hoping tomorrow is less stressful. ^-^

With Love from ArEtsy

I got a treasury!

So check it out, i'll be swapping out goodies from all the aretsy shops as the time passes. ^-^




Ooh! I got featured in a treasury!


Such pretty copper things.

Resizing your photographs for etsy- a small tutorial

There was a question posed in the forums today about how to get the right size photo to upload for etsy. Basically from a larger image.

So I thought I'd share my reply since I know that when I got my new camera I encountered this problem. (That thing takes some HUGE pictures) It's made editing a bit faster since I don't even have to go through the process of cropping anymore.

______________________________________________________________
What I've done is to take and make a 1000x1000 pixel document in photoshop. Then when I take photos of items I just add a layer on top of that square and size it down.

Um, let me try to explain that better.

1000x1000 pxl document in photoshop, just a blank canvas.
*open picture to adjust*
Ctrl-A- to select the whole picture I'm trying to adjust to size.
Ctrl-C- to copy the image
*back to the blank canvas*
Ctrl-V- to paste the image to the blank canvas. (will create a new layer on its own unless your starting from the background or base layer. I tend to make a new layer when I first open the blank canvas square)
Move tool- to slide the picture around a little bit
Click twice while moving or go to an edged to scale down and it will change the tool to free transform

Then just scale to the right size for the square. Sometimes I crop the image by not using all of the picture and just scaling it to where I want, and sometimes I have to make the picture smaller than the square to do a rectangle. But overall it just scales your image. That way if you have one that can't be cropped because the item is all the way out to the sides, you don't have to.

Plus it means that all my thumbnails are square. (unless its one of the rectangle smaller ones of course, but even then you still see the whole picture in the square thumbnail alotment)


Hope that made sense. It's worked out easy for me. Of course I'm also using a camera that takes extra large photos, so it may depend on your actual picture size.

Best thing I can say is just to play with it!

Ah Spring

I've been feeling a bit more like I want to get out and plant some things, but I know it will have to wait a while. The weather here is a mess. ^-^ Today it was in the 70's but by the end of the week it promises to be chilly again. Who knows.

In the spirit of spring I felt like making a new banner for my shop. Its the same as the one above us here, and its a bit on the different side. But it's fresh and I like that.


Plus I've been going the spring route with the new jewelry pieces I've been making.

Heres a sampling. ^-~


This last piece I've been trying to figure out how to finish off. It's made to be worn with a ribbon or something but I just haven't found the right set up for it yet. Same theme though.




And as for the rest of my crafting....I've got a poppet in the works (the dolls) but I just haven't had the time to clean out my machine before I can start. Felting wise I've kind of hit a stand still. Partially because I've been so wrapped up in the moving out of my husband. (Not a bad thing 0-0, he's just working for a bit in the area were going to be moving to soon. Getting things set up as it were.)

Oh and I've been itching to pick up spinning. So with the profits of the last few sales, I'm buying a small drop spindle to try it out. I've got a stash of roving so I can start with that. It just looks like too much fun!

Anywho, off to bed now, sleepy sleepy and all that.