Getting ready for the holiday season

Making and selling handcrafted items makes for a strange summer. I have just completed the prototype for a Christmas ornament kit. It's almost 100 degrees outside and I'm in shorts, so gathering up the red and green beads is pretty weird. With this done though, the kits will be printed and packaged and ready to go by September.
It is an odd, but neccessary thing to get the Christmas season underway in the dog days of summer. Right now, my bead tray is full of warm fall colours. I'm working on pieces for fall and Christmas shows.
Hopefully, this will mean that I am prepared for the upcoming holiday season. I've got some shows that I am really looking forward to and some ideas for earrings that I can't wait to try out. Better get back to work!

Never enough time...

I know that I am not the only person who has this problem, but everyday I seem to come up against it. Kids, Hubby, house work, friends, family, beading, actually attempting to sell my work, and since it is summer, gardening and canning. There are too many things that I love to do and need to do. This weekend was all about spending time as a family- we picked blackberries, made jelly and jam, went out for breakfast, bought shoes, played Wii. It was GREAT! My new order of silver wire went untouched all weekend. Ah, well, that is fine though, wire will always be there, but there are precious few years that my daughter will willingly go and pick blackberries with me.
Today is back to work as usual. I am trying to get the house in order so naptime will involve me and a half finished woven cuff bracelet. So, I am done with my break and back to work I go!

Greetings!

Well, I have never blogged before. This will be interesting and fun.
Now, for introductions. My name is Allison. I am a 31 year old work at home mom of 2 children- a 2 year old and a 4 month old. The "work" part of my work at home is beadweaving and jewelry making. I have been playing with beads compulsively for about 15 years now...WOW, that is nearly half my life...I love to create with these tiny pieces of glass, stones, metals- doesn't really matter, if it is tiny and can be strung, I will at least give it a look. I am passing my addiction onto my 2 year old daughter as well. We call her our little raccoon, because of her love of all things shiny .
Anyway, I am sort of schizophrenic when it comes to jewelry making. I love to use tiny glass seed beads and weave thousands of them into large statement pieces of jewelry and then I also love to use precious gemstones and sterling silver wire. Occasionally, I even combine the two. Oh, I forgot to mention, I also have a serious addiction to melting glass- in the torch and the kiln. I don't have my studio set up right now- we moved in December and I gave birth to my son in January, so that is sort of on the backburner for the moment.
My kids keep me pretty busy these days, but just about every day I manage to get a little time to bead. Speaking of babies, my tiny one is calling...