asbestos fingers and charming insanity

so sometimes you find you are just too busy to be bloggin.

that's sorta true lately round here
to be bloggin i find i have to:

1. be in the mood
2. have something i wanna talk about
3. have some time to deal with the method of bloggin (for the most part blogger is most cooperative but every once in a while....)
4. and its nice if i have some kind of photo or something to add

so in keeping with the above list

1. i'm sorta in the mood
2. have nothing really to talk about but we know that never stopped me
3. i just sent my son on back down south (he's working this summer as well as taking some classes) as well as having baked and cooked this morning (more on that in a minute) so i have some lovely free time
4. and i actually have a photo of something i made semi-recently to share

first of all the temperatures are quite annoying here yesterday and today - we're heading in to the 80's again today. i am not a fan of warm weather - at all. I like spring time. i feel i got rooked this year. winter, a few teaser spring days, and some evil hot days already... and now we're pressing right on into summertime temps. yuk. but that is the way it is so....

I decided I'd do the real cooking for our dinner this morning in an effort to keep things a little cooler round here come dinner time. One would think with all the windows we have in this house and its fairly open floor plan the circulation would be good - just open the windows and things would be comfortable - but not so. (when the summer really gets rollin i have to have the AC on prior to noon to have any hope the house will be cool )I think the high ceilings are to blame but i digress.

I cooked up a whole batch of meatballs (we'll have salad, pasta and garlic bread added to that - but no sauce - trust me - its good) and baked some of my chocolate chip brownies (here's the recipe: take a batch of chocolate chip cookie dough made from the tollhouse recipe on the nestles chip bag - dump it in a 9x13 pan, bake for around 25 minutes at 350 and voila - yummy brownies.) i finished all that by 10:30 am. My son's ride showed up and i entertained her while he packed his things in the car and they were off. I finished cleaning up in the kitchen, threw on some more laundry (isn't there always some of that?) and here i am.

I was in a swap recently with some dear friends - a charm swap. I've done a goodly variety of swapping in my day but never a charm swap. Well i must say that there were some pretty gorgeous creations - all very talented women, my fellow swappers. Here's a picture of mine. Note the paper plate - a lovely way to display your fine art pieces.

I used a die (of a slide mount) to cut out some shrink plastic that i had already inked with blue. then i separated the pieces and stamped on them using a lovely floral background stamp from Stampinup and a face stamp by renaissance art stamps. Then i put the pieces in the oven to bake and shrink. Well whenever i get these bright ideas i never quite realize until i am in the midst of it how insane it will really get. One would think that the pieces would fit back together but people i am here to tell you that shrink plastic is an imperfect art. And you can fit a rectangle into a square if you work it right. and have asbestos fingers.

i added some sugar dust all around and a flower bead at the top (and my version of a jump ring out of wire - not shown in pic above - cos no jump ring known to man - or any store in the greater leesburg area- will fit thru that damn bead.... i am wire impaired - we'll just leave it at that).

so you can see why i haven't blogged in a bit - my burned fingers and relative insanity after finishing those charms.
off to change a load of laundry - see you sooner than later