Don't waste life.

“Don't waste life in doubts and fears; spend yourself on the work before you, well assured that the right performance of this hour's duties will be the best preparation for the hours and ages that will follow it.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Rainy day routine

Living on the westcoast in basically a rainforest makes for many a rainy day. I like the sound of rain on the roof, preferably at night, but the gray overcast during the day I could do without. It tends to depress me, and we get days and days of it here in a row.

I usually open the windows, letting in some fresh air and try and get some work done in the studio. If I can't get motivated at all I retreat to the couch, with a good book and the cat.

Favorite Tool - Canon MX700 printer

I use my printer a lot! I am often printing up images for my pierced pieces, tutorials, inspirational sayings to hang in the studio. I got the Canon MX700 about two years ago and I really do like it. It scans and faxes as well, so it's really the only machine I need office wise. It's pretty easy to use, and has wonderful image quality.

To Celebrate!

Kaye Husko won this give away!!!!

To Celebrate 103 watchers I am giving away a assortment of 6 penny charms in your suggested "style". I've got bead themed, horse themed, rodeo, sayings, funny, skulls, trees etc etc you'll get a copper ball chain to wear them on too.

Leave a comment hear with your favorite saying. I'll draw a name wednesday the 25th!

Plain will never be the same.

I love this poem. It's from a yogurt commercial!

From deeply depth in the sea of same,

Plain broke free from the same old same.

Plain will never be the same.

"With nothing to lose and the world to gain,

Plain arched its back and did proclaim.

Plain will never be the same.

103!!!

103 Followers!!

Stay tuned I'm going to have a give away to celebrate!

Let me introduce you

Let me introduce you to one of my best friends. Andrea Guarino Slemmons of Andrea Guarino Beads. I met Andrea many years ago, she's actually the instructor I took my first "real" beadmaking class with. I went to her home studio in Pt Townsend and took a two day semi private lesson with her. WELL, I was hooked! Hooked on beadmaking, hooked on Pt Townsend and definitely intrigued by this amazing sharing person. We didn't become close friends till years later.

I've had the joy of being close friends for years now. We've traveled to Germany, Turkey, Texas and many places in between. She's a joy to travel with, I often help her out in classes by being her teaching assistant. She's a wonderful instructor, sharing all she knows and very caring and attentive.

I'm lucky to call her my friend. She listens when I whine and moan about living so far away from everyone, when I can't get motivated to make anything, when I don't want to go for a run today and many other general gripes. Always being supportive, always being a friend.

I thought you all might enjoy a little introduction to such a wonderful person!

10 K week two

Today was day one of week two, interval three of my 10K program..............and I'm still walking! About two hours after my run this morning I wondered how my day would progress. I was stiff! But I kept going about my day and now I feel back to normal. I'm up to 4K in run/walk intervals now. Aside from the large dog that scared the bejezzus out of me it was a great run this morning!

10 K week one

Today marked day two of week one of my 10K in 10 weeks program. I have to admit whilst jogging UP a hill this morning I thought "WHAT the HELL was I thinking!?" But after finishing this mornings interval training session I felt uplifted. I'm doing a program that works you up over 10 weeks to running 10K. When I got home I logged the rest of the training intervals into my runkeeper program and when I read the last one I thought "how cool would it be if I could do this?". Anyone who knows me knows I do not choose to run. I've never chose to run. If our horses get loose, I head for the front gate and close it, then persue the loose critters. I'm NOT going to chase them about willy nilly, sheesh, running makes you sweat ya know?

But mid winter I decided I needed to do something to get active, I'm not a gym kinda gal so I tried walking. Which lead to running (a bit). Then I saw this program and so far I like it, running in the morning gets me moving and seems to keep my energy up throughout the day. I like that I can just put shoes on and do something, I'm really going to try and stick with it while at Bead and Button. I'll have to use a treadmill there, it'll be interesting to see if I can master the treadmill and stick to the program while away from home.

Who knows maybe this will be me soon!

Favorite Tools -Laptop

Some how in my favorite tools blog posts I've managed to miss the one tool I spend a exceptional amount of time using, my laptop.

I have a MacBook, and I love it! I used to have a Toshiba somethingorother that crashed on a regular basis and got viruses so often I stopped counting. I futzed around on it for a very long time, cursing daily and wasting a lot of time waiting for it to decide to work.

Finally I decided enough was enough and it was time to get a new laptop. But what? Well a good friend and Mac loved talked me into getting a Mac. Boy, if I only knew what I'd been missing I'd have done it ages ago!

There was a bit of a learning curve involved but once I got it all sorted out I am amazed at how user friendly a Mac is. Coming with lots of softwear and tutorials to go with them it really has made my computer time less painful and more productive.

I've had my MacBook for about two years now and aside from dropping it, it's had no problems. The dropping issue was fixed amazingly fast, 24 hours and I had my laptop returned and backed up!

So shortly after the MacBook came the Iphone, and now I'm happily a Mac owner!

What sparks the feeling of failure?

Today I ran into an old friend I'd lost touch with. Someone I always enjoyed spending time with. Funny, caring, helpful, a devoted husband, and wonderful friend. He mentioned he was ill (again) and it hit me like a bus. I immediately felt like I'd failed at being a friend. I'd fell out of touch, not bothered to put myself out there, stayed home when I should have visited and just in general felt a huge empty heart.

I know in my head that these feelings aren't valid, that I am a decent caring person and life just gets in the way sometimes. But I can't help but feel like I often don't put myself out there enough. I tend stick to working in the studio, doing barn chores, errands and the like but often not reaching out to connect with friends. Locally for sure, it seems I often see my US friends more than my Canadian ones.

It's interesting what can spark feelings of failure and how it can affect our thoughts. Has anything sparked a feeling of failure with you?