WHIMSICAL CHARACTERS

Before I started doing primarily dog items, I used to sell whimsical characters at shows and on ebay for many years. In fact, it was those whimsical characters that led to me being asked by well known craft book publisher, Design Originals, to create a how-to book on creating clay Christmas ornaments, and to publishing numerous how-to projects in other collaborative books, and magazines.

I always enjoyed creating charming seasonal characters, especially snowmen. So I recently taped a video of myself creating an adorable little snowman. I was all set to edit it with Windows Movie Maker, and found out to my dismay, that the format my camera saves video files in is not supported by WMM! So now I'm in the process of upgrading my QuickTime software to QuickTime Pro, and hope I will be able to post this cute little video on YouTube and here, sometime in the next couple of days.

These little characters are currently listed on ebay, along with a few others. You can access my ebay seller page by clicking on the ebay widget on the right side of the page.

It was always so funny to me to be creating snowmen in Vegas when it was 70+ degrees outside! Last winter, our last in Vegas, we actually experienced a record snowfall on Dec. 17th. It was the first time the school district closed school because of snow in 30 years!! I'm so glad we were there for that, after living in Vegas for 17 1/2 years. It was such a fun day! It put everybody in such a festive mood, just before Christmas. :o)

Soon enough I won't be lacking for real life inspiration when the first snowfall hits my new MO hometown. So I'm enjoying creating these little snow guys and some seasonal dog items this week.

I hope to be able to share my little snowman video by Tues. or Wed. of this week.

MOTIVATIONAL MONDAY

Today's Quote:

"All of us can take steps - no matter how small and insignificant at the start -
in the direction we want to go."
~ Marsha Sinetar

Still taking steps myself - to finish the Yorkie tutorial, which is almost done, and to work on the website. I also have some jewelry ideas I'm anxious to get to, once I get a couple more orders finished. There's never a drought of ideas and projects keeping me busy!

One thing that may slow me down a bit on the things I want to do is that it looks like I will be moving in 2-3 months. I am very ready to leave Las Vegas. Seventeen and a half years here is more than enough! I've had lots of fun living here, and gotten to meet some wonderful people. Sooner or later everybody seems to end up coming here to visit, so that's given me an opportunity to meet people in person that I never would have met otherwise. But I am very ready for a change. What I'm not so ready to do is pack! Fortunately, we left a lot of things in boxes in the garage when we moved in. So it definitely won't be as daunting as the last move was, after being in our house for 16 years!

About a year and a half ago, we sold our home. We were lucky to have quite a bit of equity in it, so we walked away with a very nice chunk of money. We fared much better than a lot of people have in Vegas' awful housing market. We chose to rent this house rather than purchase another one. We knew we didn't want to stay here much longer, and also knew we did not want to be buying another house here as bad as the housing market currently is. So we moved into this house brand new. We're the only ones who have ever lived in it, and it's a really lovely house. Unfortunately, the owner has been badly affected by the downturn in the housing market and the house looks like it's probably going to be foreclosed on. It's a case of a young man trying to expand his investments to fast too soon, and buying a house in the wrong city. For a long time, the market was hot here. Not anymore. Everywhere we look there are brand new homes sitting empty. The only good thing is that after our initial lease, we chose to rent month to month. So we can give 30 days notice and leave when we like.

So things will be a bit up in the air for me again for a while. I'm ready for the change though! :o)