Time Out Tuesday or stuff to check out while you eat your tuna on an everything bagel

I've been a bit AWOL from this blog lately what will all my decorating, caroling, shopping

(have got the shopping part down, just not the shopping "for other people" part)

wrapping, baking, visiting schools, nursing homes, hospitals- your basic do-gooder holiday schedule that I have every year

(well... I did sing Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer yesterday to an old lady at the grocery store until she tried to silence me with a can of Raid- not very eco-friendly these old ladies now a days)

so, now seems like a good time to take a time out and see what the wonderful web has offered up for us in the way of inspiration and maybe even some last minute gifts

(but don't count on it because this stuff is awesome and is probably sold out)


This hidden bookshelf allows your books to just kind of float on your wall- love it.


Rural Chinese farmers are growing Buddha pears - these are a little scary, but very cool.


Now, I trip over my own shoelaces (actually I have even tripped over other people's shoelaces) all the time, so this Shoelace Rug has a special place in my heart.


This camera can punch out a picture anytime, anywhere- yup, I said punch out a picture- me thinks me likes it!


A seesaw (that spelling looks wrong) for grown-ups recycled from bike parts- what more can I say about that.


Now when my hubby dances with our daughter he steps on her feet, so we would need these reversed for us.


I think I am obsessed with resting my books- but I love these, too.


Yup- that's 3604 coffee cups in 4 shades using various amounts of milk and coffee!


The most brilliant use of your extra cords- had me searching my entire house for extension cords- just brilliant!


French footlong marshmallows!


A new way to look at design that I just love.




The gorgeous furniture collages of Jennifer Mullin- I want to live in her rooms and yes, she has a locket!



How cute are these.

OK, back to work- just a few (couple) more days of chaos. I've been slowly adjusting to my return to real life like a diver coming up from the darkest depths of the ocean, although an ocean that has been littered with unwashed bowls of Lucky Charms, laundry, unopened mail and a very sad little Olive needing a walk and some brushin'.

Recycled Christmas Countdown ... more reasons to drink more wine

While you are getting merry this season with your favorite bottles of red and white -start saving your wine corks

(you may already have a nice little collection)

and turn them into amazingly awesome Christmas tree ornaments!

A little cork education:

Cork is the bark of the cork oak tree. Most cork is grown in managed forests, primarily in Portugal and Spain, where the cork is carefully harvested in a centuries-old tradition using hand tools and without pesticides or fertilizers ensuring the trees will remain undamaged.

To make these little beauties you will need:

Corks, Buttons, Glue, Pleather Cording, Eyehooks, Slip Rings and Some Cute Little Christmasy Things to Hang From Your Corks

1. Start with a button that is about the size of your cork or a bit larger and thread it with a strand of pleather from the bottom up
2. Stack on a few more buttons and tie it off. Give your pleather a few more inches for hanging and trim.
3. Using a pair of sharp little scissors dig a little hole in the top of your cork so your bottom button sits flat
4. Glue the button to the cork and let this set
5. Twist an eyehook into the bottom of your cork and add a slip ring
6. Now you are ready to add any cute little Christmasy things you can think of to dangle from your corks


OK, I have to admit this is a re-post from last Christmas.

I'm actually at the mall right now looking for a parking spot or maybe at our town's tree lighting ceremony- which is actually held right across the street from our house- yup, lucky us- but they give us jingle bells for our shoes and we really, really want those bells, so even though it is about minus 20 with the wind chill we will be there.

and this post is for your own good anyway, because wine is very good for you- at least red wine .... plus it is low calorie ... really

Note to my scale- please be kind today- I'm hoping for a .6 loss - that's all I need-and if it happens, we'll totally be BFF forever.

OK, off to get my jingle bells.

Smells Like Sweat or your holiday marathon needs a time out and a trip to the shower

An amazing perfume maker and blogger, Roxana of Illuminated Perfume, asked me to participate - along with a dozen or so other bloggers - in a holiday round robin
Advent-ure.

Every day a different blogger creates their own little post about scent and its relationship to the experience of the holiday season.

And since I am a bit of an expert on scent

(not to brag or anything but I have been known to tell my hubby to close the window because I 'smell screen')

I decided to accept her blogger challenge

(and because otherwise I would have had to arm wrestle her and I have heard these perfume makers are very, very strong)

So, anyhoo, when I think of scent and the holidays I think of 3 things - cinnamon sticks and also Yankee Candle Homecoming which has a very strong cinnamon scent, gingerbread cookies or sugar cookies baking in the oven

(someone else's oven, probably)

and sweat.

Yes, I'm sorry but the holidays have come to smell like sweat to me because I am always running here and there, doing this and that and make about a third of my annual income in about 5 weeks.

For a few years I had a cart in a local mall- I set up on Halloween (first holiday lost), I was burned out by Thanksgiving and getting ready for Black Friday (second holiday lost) and was half asleep on the couch on Christmas morning (third holiday lost) while the presents were being opened. The good news was that I didn't work much the rest of the year- the bad news was the holiday season was lost.

With the internet, things are different. The wholesalers order early and although they hope you can restock them up until the last minute, they understand when you can't. The retail sales slow down a couple weeks before Christmas compared to the mall with its endless holiday hours and last minute shoppers. There is time to

breathe.

We are all ao busy now anyway and add in all the holiday hoopla and it can be a recipe for exhaustion and burn out. Let's focus on those amazing holiday scents like cinnamon and cookie dough and yes, even sweat, which I kind of like actually and let's remember to

breathe.

(and check out the other bloggers scent-sational holiday posts - all amazingly inspiring)

Just Another Manic Monday

I am going to take a little break from weekly giveaways and give a few little things of my own away between now and Christmas

(more on that later)

for today, I have to take a little breath and remember that the holidays can be amazingly wonderful or incredibly stressful and the choice is always our own.

for today, I am going to hold on to the amazingly wonderful parts and hope you can, too

xo

Recycled Christmas Countdown or baby got book

This is part 5 of my weekly series on some recycled and repurposed Christmas gift ideas- things that are easy enough to make fairly quickly, but still look like you put the proper time and thought into them.

I love little knobs and hangers and hooks and doodads and pick them up at garage sales and Anthropologie's sales racks whenever I have the chance- not knowing what I am ever going to do with them.

They make great little hanging racks but attached to a piece of wood they are just so 'been there, done that'. Attached to a book they make an amazing, recycled little hanging rack!


1. Gather your supplies: books that you don't mind drilling holes in- I know this is going to hurt all you bibliophiles, but sometimes art hurts folks (the books should be the same thickness as the length of the screw attached to your drawer pull unless you have some heavy duty wire cutters like I do), your doodads and sawtooth hangers

2. Mark the spot(s) where you want your hooks.

3. Drill your holes - note- when I drilled the very thick Harry Potter book, I smelled smoke and thought I had started a fire, so maybe thinner books are best or that could be just a little of the Potter magic leaking out

4. Clean the drill area flush with a razor blade

5. Add your drawer pulls with washer and bolt on back

6. Add your sawtooth hanger with a hammer
Some simple wrap (Target giant lunch bag - just how big have our lunches gotten I'd like to know- run through an inkjet) completes the gift!

Thankful Thursday or I did not really cause Katrina... really

I am starting to like these thankful Thursdays now and feeling like a much better person

(glass half full, remember)

than the one who whined all the time.

And I have alot to be thankful for this week .

Gratitude 1: This amazing giveaway over on Lory's The Sunshine Studio blog where you can win your choice of one of my Polarity lockets

so hop over there and get yourself entered!

Gratitude 2: Polarity's soft launch on Uncommon Goods website

yup, THAT Uncommon Goods (and if you are asking what a soft launch is, I am not exactly sure, but it sounds..well... soft and kind of launchy)

I was totally going to do a big announcement for this in January - when I thought we would be making our debut, but somehow we are on their website now and I am a bit speechless...

well, not exactly (have been howling at the moon a bit over this actually)

I love Uncommon Goods and this is very exciting for me and 3 of the Polarity locket artists - Holly Ward Bimba (Gollybard), Jessica Doyle and Christy Zaragoza (Peppermint Daydreams) and I will chat more on this later when the Valentine's Day catalog comes out and yes, this is my first catalog, ever!

Gratitude 3: I am very thankful that I found my missing keys (that have been missing for almost a week)

at the bottom of my pocketbook

the pocketbook that I use everyday and had checked a few times - well, at least I thought I had checked it a few times, I mean who loses their keys and doesn't check their pocketbook, right?

Gratitude 4: I broke a major OCD habit today

well, maybe not so major because I have alot of them, but I had my little bag of peanut M&M's

(well ... actually a HUGE bag, why is everything else getting smaller while these damn bags of peanut M&Ms are getting super sized)

and instead of eating the colors in alphabetical- well, red first and then alphabetical order, I just ate them out of the bag, one by one, distractedly, without thinking about the color

I stared at the empty bag with shock and awe when I realized what I had done and then knocked on some wood that I hadn't just caused a major disaster somewhere in the world

(like Katrina- don't even ask me what I forgot to do that day)

Gratitude 5 - The security camera in our local video store is totally broken.

(now I had nothing to do with the actual breakage, but am happy that someone else out there had just had enough of this already, too)

I mean, have you ever seen yourself on a store security camera?

It is horrifying. You totally think you are having a good (looking) day and and then you see yourself on one of those, and you're like, "oh my God look at that sloth coming into the st-- wait, that's me."

then you feel like crap

or maybe that only happens to me.

Oh, and I am totally grateful that the customer who ordered the Mad Scientist cork necklace and discovered that I had reversed the last 2 letters of the word scientist, which kind of changes the meaning a bit if you see what I mean, was kind enough to tell me about it and not tell everyone else by putting it in my public feedback - of course I told her I would fix this problem immediately, but couldn't resist telling her that as far as the problem piece goes - I wantit back.