A Bit About My Bears

I mentioned yesterday the boxes and packaging that I keep for posting my bears in when I sell any – what I didn’t say is that they very rarely seem to leave the promises!  To say I have an addiction is an understatement!!! 

I have absolutely loads of bears – more than a bear shop I should think.  I collect Artist bears (one-of-a-kind), limited edition bears like Isabelle, Kaycee, Deans etc. and in the loft I still have loads of Russ and TY type cheaper bears that I started out my bear collecting hobby with quite a few years ago now.  I bought quite a lot when I received a small inheritance a few years ago but now I need to sell some to buy others.  After my financial fling I have to do that with bears now as I can’t just fill the house any further with my collection that is taking up so much space already both in the house and on the credit card statement.  So I currently have 2 boxes in the “spare” room I was talking about yesterday waiting to be sold.  They are waiting until I have the time to list them but the jewellery listing has been more important recently.  

I am terrible about parting with any but still see others I want to buy so I have to try to be ruthless every now and then and choose a few to sell.  But I have found the only way to do it is to take the photos and then put them away in the box for a while so I get used to not seeing them and then list them when I have chance.  Then I have to be really brave to wrap them up if they sell because I have been known to be really upset when I wrap them to post.   Then I wish I had never sold them at all and pine for a few days.  Ideally it would be better to get them boxed ready to post so that I don’t see them at all but that never works as some people buy more than one bear which would mean opening the boxes to put them together in one bigger box to send.  Plus of course individually boxed bears take up a lot more space than all the bears in one big box until they sell. 

It also never works to box them ready because someone will ask me some obscure question about them like “how long are his arms” or something equally strange that I don’t know the answer to without getting the bear out of the box.  Why is it that anyone who ever asks a question never buys the bear even if the answer was an affirmative to their yes or no question?  Do some people have nothing better to do all day than to sit at their computer and go round the listings asking silly questions just to wind people up with no intention at all of buying?  It is obviously just a form of amusement to some people. 

At the moment I haven’t really had chance to list any bears to sell so I am having to be very good and not look at the bears for sale on ebay or on Bearpile so that I don’t see any that I will be tempted to buy either.  What I don’t see I wont miss but if I do see any I like then I know it is either buy now or never see them again if they are OOAK bears – so not looking at all is best.  I can’t add a photo of my bear shelves because I can’t get far enough away in the room to get a photo.

Of course if you aren’t a collector of anything and don’t really like bears you wont understand this at all and think I am totally madJ

Todays bit of trivia that you really need to know is (I don’t think this is definitely proven as the jury is still out on it):

Many years ago in Scotland, a new game was invented.

It was ruled “Gentlemen Only…Ladies Forbidden”

And thus, the word GOLF entered the English language.

 ♥♥♥ ~ ♥♥♥ ~ ♥♥♥ ~ ♥♥♥ ~ ♥♥♥

And the chuckle for today is:

Aging:
Eventually you will reach a point when you stop lying about your age and start bragging about it.

This is so true.

You will love to hear them say "you don't look that old."

I Need a Craft Room

I really would love (and really need) to turn a room upstairs into “my craft room” for my jewellery making and my computer, especially as I seem to spend so many hours in front of the computer these days and at the moment it is in the smallest room in the house (well, apart from the cloakroom and the utility room & maybe the bathroom to be completely accurate).  The trouble is I don’t think any of the rooms upstairs are as light as the dining room as it has 2 big windows.   

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The “bedroom” at the front of the house, which is south facing, may work but it is full at the moment with a row of glass cabinets housing my artist bears, a massage table with tarot decks stored underneath, a treadmill, and there is also a stack of packaging for my jewellery and for selling any bears stacked in front of that.  Along the other wall there is a wardrobe with clothes in that I know I will never fit in again as they are all my favourite items from the “smaller me” period but I do like them so I live in hope (hmm) that I may be able to wear them again.  Yes but thinking about that though, it is now some time since I have probably ever given up hope of being anywhere near that slimmer size again so probably time to de-clutter so I can re-house some things from my overflowing main wardrobe (ok, wardrobes with an s!). 

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Also the internet connection is in the office so I am not sure how it would work – a wifi I suppose or get the service provider to move it.  On the subject of an office, why do I call it an office? - is it because I have spent all my adult life working in offices?  Or is it because the house didn’t come with a “study” and an office seems to be upstairs whereas as study is downstairs – hmm I could do with your feedback on that please – what do you call yours? / or do you have a laptop that you use sitting anywhere in the house and where do you normally sit if you do?  - I would be really interested to know as I am curious about how others do that.  So please please please send me a comment to let me know.  Also if you do craft work do you have a specific room for that?  Answers on a postcard please (as they use to say) – no seriously I want to hear your comments please.

Todays little Trivia snippet:

If you yelled for 8 years, 7 months and 6 days you would have produced enough sound energy to heat one cup of coffee.

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And lastly todays chuckle:

A Minister decided that a visual demonstration would add emphasis to his Sunday sermon.
Four worms were placed into four separate jars.
The first worm was put into a container of alcohol.
The second worm was put into a container of cigarette smoke.
The third worm was put into a container of chocolate syrup.
The fourth worm was put into a container of good, clean soil.
At the conclusion of the sermon, the Minister reported the following results:
The first worm in alcohol was dead.
The second worm in cigarette smoke was dead.
The third worm in chocolate syrup was dead.
The fourth worm in good, clean soil was alive.
So the Minister asked the congregation, "What did you learn from this demonstration?"

Maxine was sitting in the back and quickly raised her hand and said,
"As long as you drink, smoke, and eat chocolate, you won't have worms!"
That pretty much ended the service !!

Where is Everything NOW?

Well I have completed the 2^nd marathon of listing 50 more pendants on ebay while it is free listing (link at the side of the blog if you are interested) which is why I am late with my blog again.  I can’t believe how long it takes and it is only because they have changed it now so that even though I just copy the main details of a previous listing, I have to individually click all the countries with their postage costs.  Now this doesn’t involve too much – only about 10 clicks per item on the postage part but as you can now use more letters in the heading I was adding Crystal Gemstone which I thought would about cover what people are looking for.  So all in all doing that on 50 items, as well as changing the name and size of the pendant I was listing this time the time, soon mounted up and hours went by before I finished.

It was lucky that I had cleared the dining room of all my jewellery making stuff before Rays daughter and grandson came round yesterday because the photos I have used for this blog shows what it looked like before.  The only trouble is that they had all accumulated there for a reason – ease of use!!!  Now I can’t find anything!  All my things are in different places and all my trays have been neatly put away but I knew where all my gemstones were in the tray layout on the table – now they are in the tray cabinet upstairs in the office and even though there are labels on the front, I can’t get used to which tray holds which gemstones.  I could lay my hands on them exactly when they were laid out on the dining table.  It might have been a mess but it was my know-where-everything-is mess.  I knew which tray held all the different gemstones and whereabouts in the tray different ones were.  Now I just can’t get used to it. 

The idea is that I just take out the gemstones I want to use and then make up the necklaces but I used to do it very randomly and intuitively as to which one I wanted to make up next.  All my beads were around me as well in open boxes so I could see which beads I wanted to use with each pendant but now they are in the office with me the light isn’t so good and I can’t see the colour matches so well which means I have to take them all down to the dining room to match up anyway so it is more hassle – but a tidier dining room.  Even the necklaces are hard to match with the gemstone in a not-so-good light as I do like to play around with all possibly suitable necklaces and beads before I make up a necklace using the gemstone I have selected for the pendant.  It is surprising how some necklaces or beads bring out different colours in the gemstones or just suit them better.  I like to think that a lot of my skill is not just in physically making the jewellery but my designer skills in picking out the right parts to go with the other parts of the necklace.  Occasionally I will find that it is hard to match a particular gemstone at all with the necklace choices I have (and I have absolutely loads of all colours and types) and have to go for the best necklace choice I can find, but most times there are quite a few good possible choices and it is finding a good match that makes the end product look good.

And for the 2^nd part of:

YOU KNOW YOU ARE LIVING IN 2011 when... 

6. You pull up in your own driveway and use your mobile phone to see if anyone is home to help you carry in the groceries...

7. Every commercial on television has a web site at the bottom of the screen

8. Leaving the house without your mobile phone, which you didn't even have the first 20 or 30 (or 60) years of your life, is now a cause for panic and you turn around to go and get it

10. You get up in the morning and go on line before getting your coffee

11. You start tilting your head sideways to smile. : )

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And todays chuckle:

An older gentleman was on the operating table awaiting surgery and he insisted that his son,a renowned surgeon, perform the operation.
As he was about to get the anaesthesia, he asked to speak to his son.
"Yes, Dad, what is it?"
"Don't be nervous, son; do your best, and just remember, if it doesn't go well, if something happens to me, your mother is going to come and live with you and your wife...." 

I'm all Clicked Out!

Do you know how long it takes to list 50 items on ebay – no I don’t either! but it was a VERY long time.  I have spent the whole afternoon doing it – I thought I had listed a lot more than 50 until I saw the count.  It seemed like 150 but I know they only allow 100 free listings.  By then I had just had enough and I have decided I will leave the next 50 free listings until tomorrow.  Now they have changed it all on there you have to individually click all the boxes for the countries you are willing to post to with the price.  I send a lot of my pendants internationally – they go all over the world and so I needed to click the boxes and check they were under the correct postage prices.  My wrist has gone stiff with all the clicking and I just could not believe the time when I saw I had listed 49 so I thought one more and that is it as I haven’t got anything else done today at all. 

Well I did manage to photograph a pendant on a very unusual necklace.  It is gold and bendy which means you can make it go into any shape so it was very hard to take the photos as there were loads of shapes I could make it into but I can only list 10 photos and had to have a couple of close-up photos of the crystal/gemstone so I could only shape it 8 ways for the photos.  Then there was the problem of how to get the whole necklace in the photo without the gemstone looking tiny (remembering that some of the long necklace would be round the neck.  Hmm - thinking about it now I should have just cut the top bit off the photos but never mind they will have to go on as they are now and maybe I will play around with cropping the photos later.  Pop over to my ArtFire shop later tonight or tomorrow if you want to see what I mean about this bendy necklace in the photos.  It is really unusual and I love its versatility – if you’ve got big boobs you can bend it over the top – LOL.  At its full length it is 34” but as you can shape it in all different ways you can make it into all sorts of lengths.  I had not seen one before but when I saw it at my suppliers I just had to get a couple to try.  The only trouble is they are not cheap to buy so it puts the price of the pendant up higher than normal but I guess you have to pay that for something that is unusual. 

My poor pussy cat seems absolutely fine now despite having a big hole in her neck which is still heavily stained with blood.  She is fine with the dogs as well and not guarding her sore bit really either.  We had thunder today and she always hides under the settee when there is a storm.

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I had a minor migraine this morning and was in bed trying to get rid of it when Rays daughter popped round with his 6 year old grandson!  You forget how LOUD kids are!!!  I know he is rather a noisy boy anyway but when it has been quiet all morning and even the cat miaowing is loud, it seemed sheer hell when he arrived and he got the dogs barking too.  I tried cotton wool in my ears, a pillow over my head – anything to shut the noise out.  Luckily Ray gave them some lunch after a while which meant they went into the dining room and the food kept him quiet for a bit.  Ray said afterwards (when I was moaning about their unthoughtfulness and their inability to keep the noise down) that I should have banged on the floor!  I am not sure if I could even do that with a migraine and I definitely don’t think they would have heard.  Never mind, as I said it was a mild one and luckily I have only had a couple of really bad ones, so I am almost fine now.

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Todays trivia snippet:

Banging your head against a wall uses 150 calories an hour.

(I definitely wont be trying that one today)

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And todays chuckle (part 1):

YOU KNOW YOU ARE LIVING IN 2011 when...
1. You accidentally enter your PIN on the microwave.
2. You haven't played solitaire with real cards in years.
3. You have a list of 15 phone numbers to reach your family of  three.
4. You e-mail the person who works at the desk next to you.
5. Your reason for not staying in touch with friends and family is that they don't have e-mail addresses.

What a Mess!

I was going to write another blog tutorial today or post a recipe but I honestly couldn’t be bothered as I am too tired and sleepy so didn’t want to get it wrong.  Here’s why…

Last night our poor tortoiseshell cat had an abscess which we just hadn’t seen, that obviously burst.  She has quite long hair and it was sort of under but at the side of her jaw.  Last night when we were about to go to bed we realised there was a load of bloody mess all around near her bed and all over the floor (isn’t that always the case that these things happen late at night when you are really tired and just want your bed!)   When we tried to look at her she ran into the kitchen and was dripping this foul smelling stuff everywhere – the mess on the floor looked horrific and she was just dripping spots all over the place.  At first we presumed it was her rear end due to the foul smell but then we realised it was coming from what we thought was her mouth which seemed even worse.  It was awful as you imagine the worst, but also can’t quite work out how an otherwise healthy cat seemed to be drooling in this exorcist-like fashion.   On closer inspection we found it was coming from her jaw and not her mouth (we did try her on a bit of her dry food later just to check it wasn’t a tooth abscess). 

Now that is no mean feat with this cat (in fact both of our cats) as they are really loving when they want to be but don’t you try to get near either of them to do anything they don’t want done.  They keep their claws – we don’t cut them, they have injections instead of pills for anything and they have the neck lotion that covers for most worms as well as fleas because there is absolutely no way on this earth will either of them let you get a pill down their throat.  A few vets have ventured to try it but scratches and bites later they have given up too.  They sound like ogres but they are really loving cats – as long as you play by their rules.  This cat is huge as well – she weighs over a stone. 

Anyway, to cut a long story short, half a kitchen roll, much patience on her and our behalf and almost 2 hours later she seemed to be over the worst of the seepage and so we all went to bed after 3 a.m.!  But of course, we had to put the alarm on to be up 1st thing so that we could take her to the vets.  The surgery was great and said to bring her straight down so we got in to see the vet very quickly.  The vet, knowing what she was like (must be on her notes in big bold CAPITAL letters, decided to not even take her out of the cat carrier until they got to the back room where I presume they must have some sort of cat straight-jacket type apparatus they put her in which locks their nasty claws out of the way.  I have visions of an armour-like metal cat shaped stand that they drop them into so that their legs are totally confined in the metal tubes and they can’t get anywhere near the vet.  I suppose she did run the risk of the cats teeth sinking in but I dare say the head is secured in some way as well.  We didn’t hear any screeching or squawking noises from the waiting room (from the cat or the vet) so I should image they have built a soundproof room in their new surgery for all the potentially loud treatments.  She had a student with her on work experience – I wonder if he will change direction in what he wants to do in life after seeing what she had to do with our cat.  The vet already had a cut or scratch under her chin when we arrived – yes I promise it was there before we went in (maybe I should have taken photographic evidence just to cover ourselves).  Well over £60 lighter we took our shaved, antiinflammatoried and anitbioticed cat home and just breathed a sigh of relief that she was going to be ok and she didn’t need a very pricey operation.

Todays little bit of trivia:    

The flea can jump 350 times its body length. It's like a human jumping the length of a football field.   

And to end on a joke:

2 kids in a hospital outside the operating room,

1^st kid asks “What are you in here for?”

2^nd kid says “I’m having my tonsils out.  I’m a little nervous”.

1^st kid says “You’ve got nothing to worry about.  I had that done when I was about 4.  They put you to sleep and then when you wake up they give you jelly and ice cream.  It’s a breeze”.

2^nd kid asks “What are you in here for?”

1^st kid says “Circumcision”.

“Whoa!” the 2^nd kid replies “Good luck with that buddy.  I had that done when I was born.  Couldn’t walk for a year”!

   

Blog Tutorial - How to change the colour of your links on Blogger

I have always had the red colour links on my blog because I just had no idea that they could be changed.  I tried getting the clickable links to be blue by putting them on Word and then copying them on to my blog, but as soon as I previewed them they were that red colour again.  Well I wanted to change something else on my blog and in the trial and error of doing that I spotted the way to change my link colour.

You may well already know how to do this but I guess there may be a lot of people like me who set things up initially when it was all gobbeldy gook anyway and just felt pleased they had accomplished the basics, but then had no idea how to change anything.  If you are anything like me then you daren’t go into anything that says Advanced as it may mess up all you have done so far.  So todays blog is to let others know how to do it in (I hope) an easy to understand way and to assure you that what you do will not mess up your blog at all and you can go back to change the colours back at any time.

So here are the very easy instructions (it is so easy to do when you know how. but finding out how to do it is the hard part, so here you are):

Click Design at the top right of your blog.

You will see a picture of your blog with Live on Blog written above it and an orange box with Customise written in it underneath.

Click Customise.  This brings up a new page with a dark part along the top and your blog underneath.  This is the dark box that you originally used when you set up your blog initially.

Click the Advanced tab at the bottom of the left hand row.  This brings up a new dark top part.

Click Links (3^rd one down in the 2^nd row) which will bring up new colour charts.

Now you are ready to change the colours.

Click whatever colours you want for the 3 parts:

The 1st colour is how the link itself as seen on the blog.

The  2nd colour is the one for when the link has already been visited by the person reading the blog (so they know which bits of your blog they have already been to).

The 3^rd colour is for when they are hovering over a link so it changes colour to let them know there is a link there that they can click into.

I set mine to blue, red and dark green but you can use whatever colours you like (I used blue for links because that is the colour people expect to see for a website link).

If you want a wider colour range than they have in the palette, just click the black box with the arrow beside it above each colour palette and a whole range of colours comes up that you can choose from.

Then just click View Blog (3^rd from top right) which opens the blog in a new window so you can see and try out the colours.

When you are happy with the result click Apply to Blog in the orange box at the top right corner of the original one you were working on.

Click Back to Blogger (in the top row) and you are done.

If you want to change the colours at any time just go back to Design and do it again. 

So all you need to remember is to click these:

Design, Customise, Advanced, Links

Making Bread

My husband Ray spent a lot of time yesterday with the next door neighbour locked away in the kitchen.  LOL - no not what you are thinking - he had an intensive bread making day with the man next door who had been on a bread making course.  Ray is not known for his cooking skills when it comes to meals and some of the few meals he has cooked have been rather disastrous but he does like to make jam from scratch, marmalade from a tin and boils up blackberry and apple (as he loves the idea of free food).  Oh he can cook the basics like an omelette – especially if we have found mushrooms growing while taking the dogs for a walk.  We had bought some bread mixes that he had fancied trying but they didn’t turn out too well unless you used them to build a new wall.  So when he got talking to the neighbour who gave us some scrummy aniseed and fig bread he had made on the course (I don’t think they can like aniseed) Ray jumped at the chance when he offered to give him some bread making instructions. 

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So yesterday Ray was back and forth every time the alarm went off to do each stage of the bread making process.  He came home with 6 white rolls, a white loaf and a date and aniseed soda loaf.  Even better, the neighbour had made a marmite and cheese loaf for me earlier as I had said that sounded great but Ray wont get near marmite.  So no watching the weight yesterday as just had to try a bit of everything.  The marmite and cheese one was a bit weird though as it was a bit like a roly poly inside a loaf – the marmite was in a sort of whirl inside the loaf as he had to roll it in and it sort of separated the loaf.  It was lovely but could so easily have just been a white loaf with marmite spread on top as it didn’t taste in the parts of the bread that it wasn’t touching, although there was a lovely intense cheese and marmite taste on the roly bits, if you see what I mean.   Maybe a cheese loaf would have been better and then just spread the marmite on afterwards.  LOL – that way Ray could eat it too without any fear of marmite on it or in it.  I am not sure if a day with our very very precise neighbour (opposite to Rays slapdash ways) has cured Rays desire to make bread or if he will be wanting ingredients to make some more.  Watch this space!

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Here’s a bit of trivia for you:

The human heart creates enough pressure when it pumps out to the body to squirt blood 30 feet.

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And lastly a little chuckle:

Jack, age 92, and Gill, age 89, are all excited about their decision to get married. They go for a stroll to discuss the wedding, and on the way they pass a chemist shop and Jack suggests they go in.
Jack addresses the man behind the counter: "Are you the owner?"
The pharmacist answers, "Yes."
Jack: "We're about to get married. Do you sell heart medication?"
Pharmacist: "Of course we do."
Jack: "How about medicine for circulation?"
Pharmacist: "All kinds"
Jack: "Medicine for rheumatism?"
Pharmacist: "Definitely."
Jack: "How about suppositories?"
Pharmacist: "You bet!"
Jack: "Medicine for memory problems, arthritis, and Alzheimer's?"
Pharmacist: "Yes, a large variety. The works.."
Jack: "What about vitamins, sleeping pills, antidotes for Parkinson's disease?"
Pharmacist: "Absolutely.."
Jack: "Everything for heartburn and indigestion?"
Pharmacist: "We sure do..."
Jack: "You sell wheelchairs and walkers and canes?"
Pharmacist: "All speeds and sizes."
Jack: "Adult incontinence pants?"
Pharmacist: "Sure."
Jack:

"Then we'd like to use this store for our wedding presents list..."