Goats Milk Soap

By tomorrow I should be listing a new goats milk soap on sophiasgrandma.etsy.com and on jessesgrandma.artfire.com. The new scent is Tango Mango, a very tropical scent which consists of Coconut, Vanilla and Mango. Soap is ready to be cut and photographed, if I can make the time tonight.

ShopHandmade.com

A link to an item on my ShopHandmade shop. http://www.ShopHandmade.com/Item/H697C47
I don't know if it will work, some do and some don't. Anyway, this is a link for a cute owl ring. I had a similar ring listed in my etsy shop and it sold pretty quick. Check it out.

New Project

Started working on a new line of creams for my bath and body line (Sophia's Grandma). Not sure how long before I decide to market them. I intend to experiment a little first. I also intend to revamp my labels like so many others are choosing to do. I need a fresh new look.

Shop Handmade - Yellow Rose Ring

Shop Handmade - Yellow Rose Ring

Last night I worked on several jewelry projects and listed them between my etsy shop and my Artfire shop. I even added one piece to my ShopHandmade shop. Here is the link to that item , (the first link that has finally worked since I signed up with them...maybe they finally have it worked out.) http://www.ShopHandmade.com/Item/H542BXA. Hopefully I will be able to get other items to work also.

Some of my bath and beauty products

Spotlight Retro Red

Pop-Ups

Pop up are annoying, that's why I have a pop-up blocker on my computer to prevent them. I was thinking, wouldn't it be nice if we could have a pop-up blocker for our daily lives. I had this whole week planned out, but thanks to life's 'pop-ups' I didn't accomplish anything that I intended to. I am learning to just 'go with the flow', though it can be a little hard to do at times, like yesterday when both the toilets in my house overflowed. All day yesterday and also today we have a heavy duty fan blowing on the carpet in our bedroom which the water saturated. The smell isn't very nice in there right now. But due to our sinkhole problem, we have grouting scheduled in a couple of weeks which has to be done from inside the home. All the flooring has to be ripped out anyway and replaced so I guess if I was going to have a flood, this was the best time for it to happen. I don't know if I should try and plan out my schedule for next week or not, I might just be better off if I just took it day by day. This week I had intended on making 2 or 3 batches of lip balm, at least one batch of soap, a few pillows and about 7 or 8 jewelry pieces. The only thing I was able to accomplish was the jewelry. In anticipation of completing these tasks I had ordered more supplies which should be here in a day or two.

This sinkhole thing is driving me crazy. First they tell me the grouting is going to start the beginning of April. Yesterday they tell me it's not going to start until May 4th. Today they called me and told me the grouting is going to start on April 28th. This is kind of frustrating. I need to know exactly when cause I need to put all my furniture in storage and rip up all our floors before they can start.

Septic Problems

Hubby leaves for work and I am still dreaming, enjoying my slumber for usually another hour or two, but not this morning. About 35 minutes after he left, I woke to the sound of water running coming from the master bathroom. A few days ago he had replaced the handle on the toilet and it seems that the chain on the 'flapper' had become dislodged and the toilet kept filling with water and overflowing into the bathroom, seeping out onto the carpet in our bedroom and, in the other direction, out into our garage. I desperately tried to turn the little knob behind the toilet that shuts the water off but I couldn't get it to budge. I picked up the phone to call my husband and the phone was dead. Water was everywhere. I grabbed my cell phone and called him. Luckily, he was only 5 minutes away so he rushed home. In the meantime, I decided to use the other bathroom and when I flushed that toilet it began to overflow, but I was able to shut off the water supply in that bathroom. When hubby got home I was standing in an inch or so of water in our bathroom with the toilet tank off, holding up the arm to keep the water from running. Immediately he took over, and was able to turn that stupid little knob behind the toilet that wouldn't budge for me. He reconnected the 'flapper thing' and I grabbed some towels to start sopping up the water. Once he finished in the master bathroom he checked out the guest bathroom. The problem there was quite different. He thinks it is a warning sign that our septic tank needs to be pumped out or everything will backup and overflow everywhere. It is now an hour and a half later and he is finally returning to work. In two hours I have several women meeting at my home for a Bible study, so this should be interesting. We called a company (from our cell phones) to pump out the septic and they should be here in about an hour. I disconnected the phone wire in our bedroom from the jack in the wall because the wire had gotten wet and that seemed to fix the telephone problem. All the other house phones are now working. I had intended to have a leisurely morning, but things don't always work out the way I plan.

Packing

Spent most of the day packing up my collectibles and other stuff because I was told that the grouting would be started the beginning of April and I need to get everything packed and moved into storage before then. After I finished packing about 10 boxes I got a phone call telling me that they won't be starting the grouting process until May 4th. It gives me 4 more weeks to pack but now I have 10 boxes sitting in the middle of my living room. Oh well, I guess it could be worse. At least I didn't pack up any of my crafts supplies yet. I am debating on which craft supplies I will take with me to the motel that we will have to be living in for about a month while the house is getting worked on. I will have to be doing crafts or I will go totally stir crazy in such confined quarters. I will probably be spending a lot of time on the computer too, blogging, twittering, and hopefully listing new stuff on Artfire and Etsy.

New Earrings

I have listed a few new pairs of earrings between etsy and Artfire. I never know what to call each pair of earrings so I decided that I am going to give them female names. I started with Ariel and will go through the alphabet. So far I have Barbara, Chloe, and Deidra.
Tonight, while I was putting together two more pairs of earrings, the power went out. It was out for about a hour and a half, which was very frustrating. I forget how dependant we are on electricity. No lights, no computer, no phone (unless you have the corded variety, thank goodness for cell phones), no television or radio, can't read by candlelight (I don't know how they did it years ago!), can't cook (we have an electric stove), no air conditioning. At least it was nightime and it was cooling down outside, so hubby and I went outside to cool off (all the candles were generating too much heat to an already warm house). I felt so helpless, I can't stand being idle so I started to put together file boxes that I recently bought to pack up our stuff for the 'sinkhole fix' move. Anyway the lights are back on and I finished the earrings. The black pair is Chloe and the copper earrings are Deidra.

Sinkhole Nightmare!

We are gearing up for the second fix on the sinkhole that is under our house. Now the insurance company wants to do a chemical grouting process. The bad thing about this is they have to drill through the floors in our home to inject this grout so my house has to be emptied of its contents, including us. We will have to put our belongings and furniture in storage and live in a motel while this is going on. Once the grouting is finished then the insurance company has to redo all our floors before we move back in, so we could be displaced for up to a month. Last year we had 412 yards of grout pumped underneath our house to fix the problem...but that didn't fix it. I don't forsee being able to do a lot of crafting while living in the small quarters of a motel suite so I probably won't be adding much to my sites when this thing gets into full swing...which should be in about 3 weeks. I am going to try and get as much crafting as I can get in for the next 3 weeks, that is, in between packing up all my 'stuff'.

I have several new projects jumbled around in my head. I need to put them down on paper so I don't forget them and then one at a time, start creating them. Unfortunately, there are other things that I do have to do on a daily basis that take up a lot of my time. There always seems to be an errand that I need to run...but I am determined to get at least one project started tomorrow, even if I have to do it in between errands.

New Stuff

I have been working on some new jewelry pieces that I finally finished tonight. One choker necklace and two other necklaces and one ring. I still have several other pieces in the works, but I am too tired to finish them tonight. Here are pictures of two of my new pieces. They are both listed on my etsy site. Jessesgrandma.etsy.com

SNOW

We are in Alabama, arrived Friday afternoon, just in time to pick up Jesse from school. Jesse loves making soaps with me because I let him make his own (pick the colors, scents and molds). He really likes to create things...any things, he draws his own comic books all the time. Sophia is grandpa's little girl, she follows him around like a puppy. Yesterday it snowed, the first time we saw snow in quite a few years, living in Florida. It didn't last though, but it snowed enough to watch my grandson and his dad have a snowball fight. We are having a great time.