Is Valentine’s Day creeping up on you? There is still time to order a special handmade gift from Class and Sassy charms on Etsy. You can find the shop here: http://www.etsy.com/shop/classyandsassycharms. She has beautiful cross stitch as well as unique handmade charms.
Wouldn’t this look great in your house for Valentine’s day!
These babies are so cute. 
Valentine’s Day leaves you a little blue. Then this one is perfect for you or your Valentine!
Talk to you later,
Karen
Sew Ecological is a wonderful shop full of ecologically conscious knitwear. You can choose from an assortment of up-cycled scarves and mittens. 
Rose also has beautiful hand knit wool items as well. Here are a two of my favorite cowls.
Stop by Rose’s shop at Etsy and take a look at her full line of ecologically friendly accessories. You can find her shop on Etsy here: http://www.etsy.com/shop/SewEcological
Talk to you later,
Karen
This is the Etsy shop Wild Applause. You can find them here http://www.wildapplause.etsy.com. This is a great Etsy shop run by two sisters. Their items are beautiful and as individual as they are. They have been open since Sept. of 2011. They have fingerless gloves and bracelets in a wide variety of colors to suit any taste.
Talk to you later!
Karen
The tools of the trade in these pictures remind me of my Grandparents and the tools that they used everyday. Well, maybe not everyday. Grandma certainly used an egg beater like this one. I am sure that they had lanterns like this. I remember my Dad having a drill like the one pictured. I tried using it once. He also had an oilcan. It is amazing what a few years can do to give everyday tools nostalgia.
Just a few tools of the trade. These items are from the Etsy shop PhotosPast. This is just a drop in the bucket of the wonderful vintage finds available at PhotosPast. You may see the rest of them here: http://www.photospast.etsy.com.
Talk to you later,
Karen
What do all these great jewelry pieces have in common?
They are all created by Renee at Wake Up The Angel, an Etsy shop. She has 25 years of experience hand making each creation. She has a great eye for design and color. There is something for every taste. Her jewelry creations are reasonably priced and with 139 items to pick from, you are sure to find something that you can’t live without. See for yourself at http://www.WakeUpTheAngel.etsy.com.
Talk to you later,
Karen
We are zooming back in time to the point when shower gels started to come on the market. In fact they were so new that manufacturers were sending samples out to the shower gel poor. I received one of these wondrous samples. I had just had child number two and income was at an all time low. Free was wonderful and any showering I did was super quick and any new soap invention that added pampering to my day was magnificent. I felt re-created, a new being, a Mom able to leap tall buildings in a single bound…..or at least able to fix lunch for the three of us still at home. Flash forward to about seven years ago when I was given a wonderful shower gel set by a well known soap shop. It was a relaxing scented set and I loved it, I loved the lather, the scent, the whole shower experience. I stepped out of the shower relaxed and ready to get four children into the van with everything they needed and off to school. I would teach art to classrooms of children and get up the next day and do it again. THEN I was introduced to handmade soaps….and…it revolutionized the whole shower thing all over again. It totally changed the whole shower thing all over again. I am seeing why bathrooms have easily become the largest room in the whole house, with such lovely bath products; HOW can you not spend hours in there every day. This past Christmas I treated two of the men in my house to these wonderful hand made soaps and I think that I have created a monster. :0)
This is their favorite. It is called Zinger and is scented with citrus, fresh peppermint, eucalyptus and jasmine petals.
It is a pleasant scented soap that my teenage boy and 20 something son loved.
This one would be the one I buy next for them. It is scented with the cinnamon, clove, vanilla musk and mulberry and hints of cassia root, eucalyptus, amber, fir balsam, pine and cedar. These wonderful handmade soaps are from Delicate by Nature at Etsy. They create bath and body products that are dye free and made without artificial fragrances. The shop is run by two sisters and each product is made and tested by their friends and family. Check out their shop on Etsy at http://www.delicatebynature.etsy.com.
Talk to you later,
Karen
It is no secret that I love fabric. I come from a long line of fabric lovers. My Mom knows where fabric stores are in towns she hasn’t lived in for 20+ years. She might not know her way around the town, but she knows where the fabric stores are. It is all in your priorities. My Aunts are the same; very creative people with fabric and needles. Our girls had no chance of not loving fabric. since both of their Grandma’s love to sew. They have given the girls countless bits of fabric, taught them to sew and spent time investing in their sewing future.
Ok, now that you know that we are staunch fabric a holics. The one path that I haven’t really travelled is that of quilting. I would love to quilt, in fact I am cutting one out right now. I have been cutting it out for a couple of months……The problem is that I want to quilt like this:
http://www.etsy.com/listing/35924904/quilt-pineapple-blocks-and-appliqued
Reality always hits me when I look at Nancy’s quilts at NHQuiltarts. She has been sewing quilts and teaching quilting for 27 years. She also creates the most beautiful wall hangings. I love this pink hydrangea.
As you browse through Nancy’s etsy shop you will be stunned at the variety of styles, colors and items. There is a wide variety and truly something for everyone. She uses quality fabrics and creates a one of a kind use-able artwork that will last several lifetimes. Stop by her etsy shop http://www.nhquiltarts.etsy.com and let her know that I sent you by. I am going to keep plugging along and finish my quilt but I will never compete with Nancy. What I sew will simply be for family!
Talk to you later,
Karen
I have always wanted to be one of the those people that journals. I get started but then I get to feeling that my life is too normal and why would I want to journal about dinner choices, laundry and life at my house! So I guess I blog instead. IF I DID journal these are the books that I would want to journal in.
This one
or this one! I just love this green.
When I was a teen The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady was quite popular. She had written and water colored in her book. She covered the changes in the seasons of her gardens and surrounding countryside.
It built up my desire to journal but I don’t have to journal I could just write. My daughter journals and writes books. She would love to have one of these journals as her own. She has filled several blank books with writing. She would love this one in its blue leather cover.
Shhhh…don’t tell…maybe for her birthday!
Talk to you later,
Karen
BTW all of these journals are available for purchase at http://www.theorangewindmill.etsy.com
I guess I should have been on here much earlier than Jan. 18! Life has been very busy and my blog has fallen by the wayside. We had family in after Christmas and the busyness of Pre-Christmas sales kept me hopping before Christmas! I almost reached some goals I had set last year at this time and when I look back at the year I can see God’s hand in all of it. I am not going to bore you with all the details. I feel very blessed and definitely well cared for.
My newest venture is to sell books on Amazon.com. It is incredibly easy and we are pulling books from our shelves that we haven’t touched in years or everyone has read. Then we are also getting rid of books that we used in college. It is good to get rid of things and see the pile of books getting smaller every week. The kids wanted to list some wii games that they have outgrown or played through so those were listed in an adventurous moment. I think they are already planning what to do with any money that they get from the games.
My other new venture is my second Etsy shop called….The Paper Train. You can find it at http://www.thepapertrain.etsy.com. What does it sell? Well, all the paper items that I have had too much of in my other shop. They are both streamlined now and seem less cluttered. I wish I had created the second shop earlier.
I am creating some new items for ChocolateDogStudio and can’t wait to post them in the shop but it will be Feb. before they are ready.
I keep looking back on the year and seeing the frustrations and then the blessings. We still have a house for sale and it has not had many lookers but the housing market is down and there are many people in the same boat. We have had a child announce an engagement so we will get to celebrate a wedding within 18 months! I was sure that time would never fly this fast and it seems to have picked up speed once he graduated from high school.
What is going on in your future?
Thanks for listening to me ramble,
Karen
After getting together with my photographer over the Thanksgiving Weekend I have new listings in the Http://www.chocolatedogstudio.etsy.com shop. Woohoo, I am excited and made up a bunch of new ones that I think appeal more to the guys in your life. So here they are!
Which one do you like best?
Talk to you later,
Karen