2/28/2015

The owl will soon take flight!


I have been busy the last month on finishing the two bags for a custom order. I wrote about the Mermaid Bag last week and showed you some pictures. Today I plan on finishing the second bag, a treasure bag. I am so happy to finally finish these two. It was an enjoyable work. It has been a long time since I embroidered and it was good to do it again. I plan on doing a lot more now!

2/26/2015

Oops, pardon, my face is slipping!



Welcome everyone to my new blog! This poor old blog was so neglected I decided to give it a nice makeover to more reflect where I am right now in life. I am still working on my art, stitching and dyeing and bending wire but I am also involved in so much more!
Here is a little list to give you an idea:

 1.Greening my house- I have been working towards slowly removing as many chemicals from my house as possible. I am teaching myself how to make more enviromentally safe home products to help towards that goal. Many of them are hit and miss but I will be more than happy to share with you the ones that work.

Nourishing my skin: I have also been teaching myself how to make homemade products for skin and body care. Toothpaste, deodorant and body butters are all made and used regularly now. I have many many more things I want to try. Some things dont work so well but I am researching and learning and again, will be happy to share with you what works. I am taking a wonderful course over at Vintage Remedies about essential oils. Now I already have a lot of self taught knowledge about essential oils but who wouldn't want to know the facts? These people are serious about doing it right. All their teaching is based on clinical studies so I know I will walk away with a stonger foundation in the facts.

Eating whole foods: I live in Alsace in France. I am surrounded by fresh made cheeses, home grown organic vegetables and free range chickens, pigs, sheep and ducks. I am surrounded by a bounty of wonderful, fresh whole foods. I am working hard to unlearn my american eating habits and eat whole! I am also basing my diet on low carbs to help reduce my cholesterol. It is fun to combine the french cooking with my low carb tricks, if I whip up anything extraordinary I will pass it on to you.

Gardening and preserving my own foods: This one is hard. I have never gardened. I grew a few plants on my balcony in Mulhouse and those went well but that was not a garden. This last summer I tried here and failed miserably. I am not familiar with this climate. I am also just not used to the constant vigilance that a garden requires. I am determined to figure this out and when I do I want to share my successes with you. I also want to benefit from any success by dehydrating and fermenting my foods. I might even try my hand at canning.

Lastly I have tons of little things I want to do around the house and share with you. Right now I just finished repainting my kitchen, it has a serious storage problem and I will be working toward figuring out ANY way I can to get more storage in there. This is going to take some major brainstorming!

SO this is my goal and I hope you enjoy the new format. I know it will fit much better with what's going on in my life right now and so you will see me posting more often!

2/24/2015

Where did the time go?

Wow I can't believe I haven't written in my blog in three months! How did that happen? I thought I made posts...did the internet eat them?

I think maybe I am unconsciously avoiding this blog. It needs a complete overhaul and I really need to do that soon.

Anyway. I have been busy. I spent the Christmas season cross stitching away. I made several things:

A few Christmas ornaments,