the maple festival!

on saturday morning, chris and i got up early and got ready so we could head out on our field trip to the maple festival. it was a sunny day (a little windy though, especially when you're small like me and have a hard time walking through it!) which i think attracted about three times more people than the last time we went - a cold, rainy morning. i really love the mountains, and if you're familiar with the virginia landscape, monerey, va is just a few miles east of the west virginia border, so you know just how mountainous it is! so, here we go...

in addition to some junk food (that we ate already), the only things i brought back are this amazing vintage bag (remember a few wish lists ago i had several of these bags? well, i found this baby for $2 and the proceeds from everything in that shop went to the spca! double win!) and two beautiful stones. one stone is bismuth, which i learned about shortly before the festival, and the other is dolomite which i've been wanting for quite some time!

our first order of business was breakfast. because of the rain the last time we went, i think there were maybe only three people in front of us in line for pancakes. on saturday, we had over an hour wait to even get up there and place our pancake order! madness! so, being the health-conscious adults we are, we had funnel cake and fried oreos for breakfast! the oreos were so good because they got all hot and melted and gooey! at about 2:00 or a little later, we finally got in to eat pancakes and met a nice older couple who live about 1.5 hours from us (and i think they were the highlight of lunch). also, just look at my hair to get an idea of how bad the wind was! AAAAHHHHHHH!

so how was your weekend? did you anything exciting?

flower preservation

As I'm sitting down eating my delicious plate of macaroni and cheese and taking a break from my normal Saturday cleaning, I thought I would share with you what I've been working on lately. I'm absolutely, positively obsessed with flowers, even if they are flowering weeds growing at the edge of my yard. With the oncoming winter and the thought of no flowers, only brown, dormant plants, I decided I wanted to preserve a little bit of life from the botanical world! I bought some vintage brass hearts with an indentation in the center and knew that they would be just perfect for my project! I picked some Queen Anne's Lace that grows wild around my mailbox and the edge of my road and set it in the hearts, then covered with resin. Now I can have, and share with others, a little memory of summer in the form of a bracelet or necklace!

I have a craft festival coming up next Saturday, my first ever, and I thought that I needed something a little more simple since rhinestones and multichain jewelry isn't for everyone, so I hope the customers like these!