Happy New Year!

Just want to wish everyone a Happy New year and that it will be healthy and a prosperous one!!

Mother nature or God's creation

This is what we woke up to this morning. So beautiful.

Toasting Glasses 2011

This is my most recent item that is in my Etsy store. I had fun making these. Hopefully we have a better 2011 than 2010. Cheers and wishing you a Happy New Year!

50th Birthday Party

My husband turned 50 a week ago and I surprised him with a party. I had an open house for family, friends and neighbors. Well he was surprised. It turned out well and we are so thankful for everyone who showed up! He likes ice cream cake and special thanks to DQ for making it.

Snowman Ornament

This is my newest item, it is a Snowman Ornament. Collect him or give as a gift for that special person who loves to collect snowmen. He can hang around until February. Click on the picture for more details.

Tip for finding spider webs

I found the best way to find spider webs in your house is to have the room with no lights on or even do it at night and then have a flashlight on and go around the room looking for spider webs. (Hopefully no one thinks someone is trying to rob you.) It is so easy to find and have your vacuum cleaner ready or if you use a feather duster and just clean them after finding them. I'm planning a party and just came up with the idea.

Story about Smoke Detector

This is funny. I had a couple of guys come over to install new carpet in our house. One of them told me that the neighbor across the street sounds like the smoke detector is going off. So I said I will go check and I went outside and sure enough I could hear the smoke detector as soon as I step outside. I decided to walk over across the street to her house but did see a light on and thought that someone was home so maybe it wasn't hers. I could not hear exactly where the sound was coming from because I'm deaf in one ear. So you lose your location of where the sound can come from. I decided to walk down the street on the west side and could still hear it. Turned around to walk to the east side and could hear it. Not sure which neighbors house it was coming from because no one was home since it is a week day every one is at work. I walked to my backyard and could tell it was not coming from behind my house. I went inside and called my neighbor across the street where the light was on and asked if they were okay. She said yes and I explained that a smoke detector was going off and I could not locate where the noise was and if they could go outside to find out. They meet me outside and said they could hear it. Then all of a sudden I just remembered that my husband took out our old smoke detector to put up a newer one. It was trash day today. I walked over and opened up the trash and sure enough it was coming from our trash bin. ( I was so embarrassed, let the neighbor know it was in our bin.) I took out the detector and took out the battery. My husband forgot to take the battery out. So it was pressing on something to set it off. I called him and told him. What a laugh. Now if you update your smoke detector make sure you take the battery out before throwing it away.

Fruit Pizza

My family really likes this and I do too. We had a Boy Scout meeting tonight and I brought that with other desserts that were there. Guess what? It was gone and so I didn't have left overs to bring home.

The Snowman

I was notified that my snowman I made is a new treasury today. I just listed him a few minutes before he was picked! Thank you to riskybeads the curator of this wonderful treasury!

The Snowman treasury

New in stores of Etsy and Artfire

This is my newest! Bronze Cocoa Necklace

New items in my Etsy store

Flower in the Mist Necklace




Heart and Pearl Earrings





Hot Chili Pepper Necklace

Boy Scout Popcorn

My son is selling popcorn for Boy Scouts this year. If you are interested just click on the pictures below to take you there. Quite a variety to choose from. It is good to from my experience.

The winner is...................

Congratulations NGS!! I want to thank all who particapated!! Just to let you know my 13th year old did the drawing. Look below at the picture for the earrings. If you want to see closer click on picture. If you picked number 2 that is the earrings I made for all the bridesmaids. Congrats. I had quite a few who picked that.

IT's that time again another.........

Giveaway!!
Yes, it has been awhile since I did a giveaway. Here are the details.
First applies to United States and Canada only. The drawing will be on held Sunday Sept. 26th, 2010 at night and I will notify the winner. Last time to enter will be 6:00 pm CST. Next look at the picture with the earrings and select the number you think the bride choose for her bridesmaids to wear. You can only choose one number. To help you decide below that is the pictures of the bracelet and necklace I made.
Next in the comments put the number you think the bride choose for earrings for her bridesmaids and also will need your contact information if you win. If you pick the correct earrings your name will be entered twice in the drawing and only once if you didn't pick the correct earrings. Good luck! The last picture is the giveaway(necklace) that you could possibly win.



Below is the necklace to win! Click on the picture for more detail

New listing -Light Sapphire Earrings

Here is my newest listing"Light Sapphire earrings" I hand forged them from a square wire and formed this shape. You can click on picture for more info. All made out of sterling silver wire and earwire.

Ames flooding

We had our worst flooding in history this past Wednesday. Since 2:30 pm on that day we could not use our water in the whole city because it was contaminated. We had to boil water before we could drink it. Many of the restaurants had to be closed. We had to conserve water for several days so no laundry to do or no dishwasher to use. Our city has done a great job and yesterday we finally received the okay to drink water from tap again. Yeah! Thank you to all whole has helped Ames get back on their feet. We are still in the process of cleaning up the areas that were mostly flooded. That will take sometime. Thank you for everyone and the states who are helping out!

Here is a video of the flood:

I finished a special order for a bride

I finished a bridal request order. Here is the necklace. I posted earlier the bracelet. Next time I will post earrings that match the order and I probably will have you guess which earrings she choose. So stay tuned because there might be a special giveaway on it. Here is the necklace she requested for her bridesmaids to wear. If you like this and want to request for your special wedding let me know.

Storm-83 hours without electricity

Last Sunday at 3:00 in the morning we had a storm blow through. I thought nothing of it. Hard rain hit the windows. I thought it was like any other storm. I just wanted to sleep. Then I knew the power went out so I got up to called the power outage. Decided to go back to bed. Went to bed and woke up around 7:00 am and thought wow the electricity is still out. I went to my back window and this is what the back yard look like. No wonder no electricity. I found out a few hours later on the radio in the car that we had 70 miles per hour wind. 2,000 people were without electricity. I thought we would get the power back on that day. No we ended up being the 200 people left to have power off. 83 hours without power. We did have the neighbors give us a genator temporarily for our freezer and frig. Thanks to great neighbors. Then they ended up getting their power on and we had to wait another day. Thanks again to the backyard neighbors they hooked us up to their house for juice to our frig and freezer again. Without that we would have lost everything in our freezer. We did lose some things in the fridge. Here is what happened. The neighbors tree branch blew off and knocked down the powerlines in which knocked down the pole and broke it in half. So this was going to take them sometime to get our electricity on. Infact it took the guys 7 hours to get this all back together. They ended up digging in our yard to put a pole in. I was hoping they would find oil, but wishful thinking. I really appreciate electricity now. I forgot what it was like without air conditioner, no TV or no radio. The good thing is I didn't have to clean house or cook! (the pictures are from my son cell phone)

Easy Lemon Poppy-seed Bread or Muffins

My son requested to have me make lemon poppy seed muffins. So I checked into my recipe book and found a great and easy one to make.

1 pkg lemon cake mix
1pkg lemon pudding (instant) use dry
1/4 c. poppy seeds
1/2 c. oil
4 eggs
1c. water

Mix all ingredients until smooth. Pour into loaf pan and bake at 350 degrees for 40 minutes, or pour into muffin tin and bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes

Hope you had a Happy 4th of July

Hope you enjoyed your 4th of July!! We decided to have a quite one this year. So it was nice not to go anywhere. Stayed home and watch movies. Did you see any specatular fireworks?

Wisconsin Vacation

Came back from vacation for Wisconsin Dells and the Door county area. So here are some pictures of the vacation. I'm waiting to get a video from our cousins about our zip line at the Dells. Then I will post a picture of that or the you tube. Our first picture is a storm coming up at Door County. We are at Door County in Peninsula State Park.


This is a gorgeous art gallery we stopped by. My husband just wanted to buy the whole thing. I was surprised! Just need more money.


Can you guess the stadium? We took a tour of the Green Bay Packers Stadium.


We are entering the ferry to take us to Washington Island.


This is a view in the evening at the resort we stayed at.

Etsy anniversary Sale

I'm going to celebrate my Etsy anniversary sale. So starting now until July 1st I will have 30% OFF. You read that correctly 30% OFF. Read about it in the announcement section. Catch the link and start saving: Cthingsetsy.com

Etsy Buy Handmade cthings

What do you think this is?

Well I really got myself into something that surprised me! See if you can guess what it is. I'm sure the clues will help out. Don't forget you can click on the picture to see a closeup view. I was walking along a creek that my dad owns and I fell into a weed. As I got up I started to have severe stinging and then I started welting up. The stinging lasted for the rest of the day. If I only knew what it was I was by a creek and could of use that to soothe my stinging by washing with the water. Do you know what this is? It is called stinging nettles. I have never heard of it until I fell into it. Here is a picture of it on my arm. This is the 4th day of it. It only stung that day but the redness and swelling was for a week.

What I'm working on

Here is what I'm working on now. I have a bridal order and I'm done with the bracelets as you can see here is one of them. I also will be receiving more pearls soon to work on the necklaces. I have some of the earrings done to. I will post more on the necklaces when I finish a few. I love doing custom orders! So fun to see how the customer reacts when you are finished with it. Thanks to Emily!

Wings on Things-treasury

I really like the new Etsy Treasury. You can make one anytime you want. I really didn't like fighting for one. Thanks Etsy for the feature! Here is my newest one: Wings on Things:

Citizen's Academy-Jail

You guessed it we got to see the jail on this class. First the jail supervisor talked to us for awhile before we had the tour. I found this part very interesting but makes since. Story County has 104 bed unit but they necessarily don't use it all because inmates need to be put together in a category or you could have a lawsuit on your hands. They can't take a murder and put them in with a drunk driver because they might not get along in the cell and then you might have a lawsuit. He told us you have to be able to balance the inmates so there are no problems. He told us some statistics about our veisha celebration. Since FRI, SAT and SUN are the major partying he told us that out of those three days this year they put 107 people in jail. Since January 1st 2010 they have processed 7000 people at this jail. I thought that was high since we are not a big city. We do hold federal people in this jail too. Then he told us some stories of two men that was his worst problems that he ever came across. We can ask him questions, then go on the tour. When we toured got to see the laundry area and they showed us that they wear orange clogs instead of tennis shoes. I thought that was funny. Another interesting part on the tour was this area that holds all the cameras of the whole facility. There is someone watching all doorways and inmates and taking phone calls. This person lets people through doors. The big screen had about 40 different cameras going at once. It was alot to watch. No sunlight in this room either. In fact the whole facility doesn't have sunlight. When we toured the inmates they have 3 sections. The women are divided out from the men. Then the men there were two holding areas. One was called a hub where you see on TV they are all together sitting around tables. That looked like 50 people in this area. The next section is secured off because it more for the dangerous inmates. These are sex offenders, murders, suicidal or have health issues.Definitely more security there. Actually the whole jail is really nice. It only is 9 years old and looked like new. They do have the working inmates cook, clean floors and other jobs. There are TVs in the rooms and if bad behavior happens then the tv is off. IF they have good behavior they can read a book at the library. So that is the last class I will have. Tonight I go to my graduation ceremony. Wish me luck!

Citizen's Academy-Emergeny Vehicle Operations,Crash/Collision Analysis

We started this class by learning about our obstacle courses we were going to drive. We had 3 course to drive between cones that were set up and if you ran over a cone that was a persons life. We did get to drive the sheriff's car. My first course I drove was to pull out and weave through two cones and then parallel park. After parking to come out and weave around 2 more sets of cones and then go into this box of cones and do a full circle come out of that and then weave back and then back into a box of cones. From there to pull out of that and make a sharp turn and pull into a diagonal set of cones. Back out of that and go back to start. I did this twice. Was not good at the parallel parking, but I did not knock any cones over. The next course to me was the most fun. We started off weaving between cones drive straight forward and stop in a box of cones. Then back up doing a sharp right into a set of cones and coming out of that weaving back to start. You can go as fast as you want. I also did this twice and much braver the 2nd time I took out a cone and was flying as they tell me. The 3rd course was to back up straight about 100 feet and stay between the cones. You can go as fast as you want. The first time was to look over your shoulder and back up. The 2nd time was to only use your mirrors to back up. The 3rd time was to open the car door slightly and look out the door but keep your head down and back up. That was fun. It was because if someone was shooting at you this would be safe way to get out of a situation. I did not knock any cones over this course either. I will write about visiting the jail on Thursday.

Citizen's Academy-Firearms-Hostage Negotation

This past week was exciting for me. First we had our meeting on Thurs last week and then we went to the range to shoot a 9 mm Smith and Wesson. I will talk about the meeting first. When they call in the ERT stands for Emergency Response Team that is new term instead of Swat. These are the items the ERT takes with them but are already geared up in their armor. Radios, Kevlor, gas mask, gas (of various kinds), breaching tools, M-4, SIG 229, MP5, autolog shotgun, gps, and distraction devices. This is what our team caries it will vary in different areas. They passed around the M-4 and the MP5 guns. Then we had a lesson on how to hold our guns in class. No ammunition was used during this time. We had to practice stance, how to hold the gun and where to look through when aiming. How to put the safety off and on. Then Saturday we went to the range and put on our belts and holsters. Then we practice some more on drawing, firing and how to load a new magazine. This was my first time doing any of this. I was having a hard time drawing. My gun would not come out of the holster. I was not quick draw McGraw. Infact I was the last person to be able to get my gun out. We had to have safety glasses on and earplugs. Then we went over to the range to shoot. The first half of the class shot then the 2nd half. I was in the second half. First we had to load 2 magazines. Then shot 10 rounds we were at the 15 yard range. Then we moved back to 20 yards range. Shot 10 more. Then loaded another magazine and shot 10 more at the 25 yard range. Well for my first time out of 30 rounds 4 of them were not even on my target paper. Braised one along the shoulder and one in the gonads. (Look out for that guys!) The rest were in the body cavity and head because we were to practice shooting there. It sure was fun and here is a picture of me shooting. They guy behind me was a deputy to help assist and watch. We all had one. My husband actually had the Head Sheriff watch him. First pic of me then of my husband.

Citizen's Academy-Support Services

This past week we talk about support services. What happens in this area of the office is serving papers. The sheriff's office goes out to serve papers such as warrants, eviction notices and also garnish wages. I found this very interesting on how they come across different places of how people live. She said she carries a bag with different items in it to help her. One is treats for dogs. You'll never guess the one thing they bring is flea tick collars. They put them on themselves because if they have to go to a place they have come across getting fleas on themselves. They did show some slides of what they come across in the apartments. Some people never let there dogs out and what a mess that was. Imagine being the landlord to have that cleaned up. When notices are being served to leave the house or apartments they have a window amount of time to get out of the place and if they are not out when the officer comes back then everything is moved out onto the curbs because it was court ordered.
The other topics they talked about was reserve officers. These are all volunteers and go through training and then help out when called by the sheriff's office. They may help out with football events or directing traffic. There is also a dive team that volunteers. Right now they have 10 volunteers. Just recently were pulled to go to Lake Laverne to search for the person that was missing on campus. They showed how they go about searching at night and what gear they wear. It was all very interesting.
This week's food menu was, roast beef casserole, buns, vegetables, apples/oranges, cookies and a banana cream pie dessert.
Next week I will be having my shooting lesson, so stay tuned!

Citizen's Academy-Field Services

This past week we had field services talk to us about traffic stops. Sgt. Dodds and two of his men were the presenters. They told us what they look for before they stop people because you need a good reason. Then they went through some scenarios of how to stop people. When they have a felony the deputies stop the car differently then a regular traffic stop. I found that to be interesting so the deputies don't put their life at risk. After they talk to us we then went outside and perform some of the scenarios. My husband volunteered for one and he did get to talk on the sheriff's PA for this scenario. Then we could sign up to ride with the officers. So I picked this last Saturday when Ames had VEISHA. I thought it was going to be wild but it turned out not to be. We rode around campus and saw quite a few college kids drinking. Since this is the biggest weekend for the celebrations. Then we went out of town and picked up someone for speeding. I got to watch the officer in action. I even saw the incident on camera. Wow I was in the Sheriffs car by myself. That felt cool. We rode around some more and then he went to his favorite spot to find speeders but only stop a person with a headlight out. So not to much action when I rode. I did tell him I would like to ride with him if it was a high speed chase, but he said they don't let citizen's do this because it is dangerous. Darn! That was the action I wanted. One thing I did notice is while he is driving he can call in a plate to see if the person has any violations and then pull them over. I do have respect for what these officers go through. I did get to ask quite a bit of questions and he told me stories of things he had done. Tonight is my class again so next week I'll report as to what went on.

Diaper Cake

I'm going to share about a diaper cake I made for my niece's shower. I will write on Thursday about my Citizen's academy. I decided to research on the internet on how to make the diaper cakes and there are plenty of ways to make them. All the decorations I used was on my niece's shower list. Even the brand of diapers she wanted. So no guessing games for me. Below are my stages of making the cake.


1ST Layer


2ND Layer

3RD layerPutting on the ribbon
Final stage decorations-then I used shrink wrap to cover this and used one of her blankets as a presentation for the wrap

Citizen's Academy-Media and County Attorney

This week the first subject was Media. The sheriff's office appoints one person to handle the media because when the officers go out to the accident scene they need to do their job. The media is their asking questions and if they can get close to the scene as possible the media will do that. So the department has one person who handles all the media response. He tries to answer questions the media asks but can't always say everything in detail because the story is still be investigated and unfolding. When the accident tends to be serious and involves quite a bit of the community that is when they release a press conference so everyone can be informed.

Our second speaker was the county attorney. He did a few scenarios just by adding different facts into them. Suppose you were walking down the street and you see someone grab someone's purse would you run after them as a citizen to catch them? Do you have rights to do that? If so how would you stop them? Suppose the scenario is now you just hear about the incident and didn't see the person snatching the purse and this person yells "Stop him he just took my purse". Would you still have rights as a citizen to stop the person who is running and try to arrest them? How would you do this? Suppose now that the same thing happens you hear about the purse being snatch, but this time you know the person has a gun, what would you do? The last scenario is you know the person has a gun and you see a cop ahead what would you do then? Your rights as a citizen is the 4th amendment and if it's violated then you can take that person to court. In the first scenario if you saw the person who snatch the purse and tried to stop them in some way in which you injured the person who was running. Then the victim can press charges on you for injuring them. That's when the lawsuit becomes civil and the county attorney steps in. I found this all interesting because if just one fact changes the whole scene of the crime changes. Makes you think what rights as a citizen you do have.
This weeks food menu was our Chicken and rice casserole, mixed canned fruit, lettuce salad, buns and cookie.

Citizen's Academy-DRE/Traffic Safety

This past week has been very interesting as well as exciting on the academy. On Thursday the topic was traffic safety and talking with a DRE. Do you know the top 3 traffic fatalities? The number one death is no seat belt. The second one is speed and the third is OWI'S. I would of never guess that. Then we had Sgt. Belz talk to us about his job as a DRE. Do you know what that stands for?
Drug Recognition Expert. He is like an investigator. He gathers all information when someone is picked up for OWI and then he is the one to question them to see if they are on other drugs besides alcohol. It was very informative. I had to do one of the Field Sobriety Tests in front of the class. Oh, boy! I ended up doing the Walk and Turn test for when someone is stopped for alcohol. I have never been picked up for drinking so I had to walk the 9 steps with one foot touching the other foot on a straight line and count my steps out loud and turn around and go back again counting out loud. Do you think I passed this test? I didn't and I never had a drink. Before I did this I explained to him my situation of my health and they do take that into consideration. So if you have a handicap of some kind then the DRE can figure that into the situation and that is why the breathe test is given to see if alcohol is present. This DRE has been doing his job for quite sometime He has done 140 drug evaluations and out of that he is 95% accurate. That means he knows what drugs a person could be on before the urine sample. The urine sample is the last step in doing a drug evaluation.The DRE told us he has a story for every question someone would ask. Man, was I surprised at the stories he had.
This week's food was, pasta casserole, green beans, bun, banana, oranges or apples to pick from and cupcakes.

Citizen's Academy Communications

This was very interesting this week. We talk about Communications in which includes dispatching. I was really impressed of all the calls and how they have to dispatch. We were given a test and on the test was three columns one labeled Numbers, another Color and the 3rd was the alphabet. What we had to do is listen to the dispatch and write down everything that was being said in the correct column. This was not easy because sometimes the dispatch had 3 things said at once and it came very fast. In a split second and try to write down the info too. I know I didn't pass this test. I now admire those dispatchers!!
Later today my husband and I are going to sit for 4 hours and watch them at work and be able to ask questions. I found it interesting that they are now looking to update the program that can use texting or pictures to send to the dispatchers that might help them out. I also found it interesting that people use the computer to call in 911.
The jail food menu was Hamburger casserole, lettuce salad, hot apples, bun and cookies.

Citizen's Academy

You are probably asking what is this? Our county has offered what is called "Citizen's Academy" in which the Sheriff's Office offers for 10 weeks free a training about the office. Our county hires quite a few citizen's to help run the Sheriff's Office. I thought this sounded exciting so I asked my husband to see if he wanted to go and he did. We also get free food from the jail if we want to. The topics they will be talking about are
1.Administration
2.Communications(dispatching)
3. Support Services
4 DRE/Traffic Safety
5.Field Services
6. Media Relations/Internal Affairs /County Attorney
7. Firearms Special Unit (we get to shoot guns)
8. Investigations Drug Task Force
9. Jail
10 We Graduate

One of these classes we get to ride with the Sheriff car. I can't wait for that. Another class we get to drive the car. So stay tuned every week I will put something new up at what we learned in class.
This week we talked about Administration and how the Sheriff's office runs, what includes the budget, the history of the office, how many employees. Our Office has 82 employess and they hire 18 citizen's to help keep the budget down.
The menu for food was Chicken and rice casserole, bananas, orange slices, assorted cooked vegetables, cookies and brownies. We did eat there and I must say it was good.

Ring and a pendant

I took another jewelry class and made a pendant and ring. I was going to plan on selling the pendant but I liked it so much that I'm keeping it. The ring I planned on keeping already because I wanted to make one and it is my first. I'm pleased with it, but I did need quite a bit of help from my wonderful instructor. She is so patient in class and knows so much. I'm really thankful that she is around here. You will need to start looking in my store soon for some metalsmithing jewelry.

Mustache Birthday Cake

Oh, yes you read that title correct a mustache birthday cake. My son turned 13 this past Saturday and he wanted a mustache birthday cake. Is this funny or what. We have a friend who has been making his cakes since he was two, bless her. She does such a wonderful job. Just ask what he wants and she delivers. The cakes always look great and are so moist and yummy! All chocolate inside this one. I wish I could say I did this but I can't even come close!

The Teacher by Leslie Pinckney Hill

We have been cleaning out my mother-in-laws places and we found this book of poems. I felt I wanted to share this one since she was a teacher.

THE TEACHER

Lord, who am I to teach the way,
To little children day by day,
So prone myself to go astray?

I teach them KNOWLEDGE, but I know
How faint they flicker and how low,
The candles of my knowledge glow.

I teach them POWER to will and do,
But only now to learn anew
My own great weakness through and through.

I teach them LOVE for all mankind
And all God's creatures, but I find
My love comes lagging far behind.

Lord, if their guide I still must be,
Oh, let the little children see
The teacher learning hard on thee.