Bello Modo!

Hi everyone! Still I have no internet at home or phone but hope is alive! Tomorrow is supposedly the day we go "live" again after a month with no service.

Anyway, for any of you oh so lucky souls who will be attending Bead & Button in person in Milwaukee next week, stop on by Bello Modo's booth 957 and check out my etched pendants. My work will be represented by Pamela Maxfield at Bello Modo at the show. I will have copper, nickel and brass etched pendants as well as some sweet as pie little charms.

Next week, if the universe allows, I will be back online with pictures and real blogs instead of piecemeal-patch 'em together sentences here and there once a week.

Until then, have a great weekend. TGIF (almost!).

Stringing!

I am pleased to announce that my work will be featured in Stringing magazine, fall 2009 issue. This is my first time in this publication. Tonight-- celebration dinner!

I Heart Whole Foods

Still no internet at home, or phone, and barely television. Through some weird and cruel mis-alignment of the stars, planets and sun, we fell in amongst the .1 percent of people dissatisfied with Fios and utilized the 30 day money back guarantee to can the entire service. Apparently even though our building is wired to the hilt, we managed to find the one apartment where the internet, instead of being "blazing fast" as advertised by Verizon, was instead the Slowskies at work. The connection constantly dropped down to almost nothing or entirely nothing and really only would work at a minimal speed if we sat in the closet it was installed. So the whole thing with getting bounced around to 25 different Verizon "assistants" on the phone, from Richmond to Bangladesh, all unable or unwilling to help us, made me so angry that not only did I cancel the internet, but the television and telephone as well. So now we are going back to good ole reliable Cavalier service, with DSL and three channels on the television, at least until we can figure out what other service to get. I figure by the time we are ready to move out of this nutty place, we may actually have it relatively livable and wired for technology.

So no pictures of my pretty little green hutch. No photos of jewelry I've completed and sold recently, new etchings, or cute poses by Mango or Lucy. Hopefully next week our DSL modem will arrive and then the next day our phone service is supposed to kick in. It's always something, folks!!!

After a week at work I would prefer not to recall, where my most pressing need after every shift was a nap, an ice cold diet coke and a shoulder to cry on, we are now relaxing in the lovely air conditioned bliss of Whole Foods in Richmond. In front of me-- the biggest, flakiest chocolate croissant I've seen since Europe. In front of Michael? The heaviest pumpkin cream cheese muffin this side of the Mississippi. Heaven.

We watched the show on Farrah Fawcett last night. Man. What a gem she is and God bless her. How disturbing that anyone should have to go through such an ordeal. Watching it, I cried and cried, especially when she interacted with her elderly daddy. *sigh* So hard to watch. Then we took a walk and went to bed, where I fell into a deep, dream filled night of weirdness and bad dreams. Too much stress this past week I guess. But after watching that show, and thinking of all the people in the world going through so much more than my little Fios drama and so on, today and most days I know I have not a thing in the world to be upset about. Nothing nothing nothing.

I need a maid

I have my jewelry bench put together and all my paraphernalia in that department in place. Otherwise I would be embarrassed to have anyone come in here, it's such an incredibly huge mess. We have no time to unpack, everything is in total disarray and I am so tired at work it's all I can do to make it through a day. *sigh*

This weekend, my days off, I am working two ten hour days at the Intergalactic Bead show in Richmond, a rather foolish decision I now see, after our moving ordeal, from which not I nor my husband or parents are sufficiently recovered, physically or mentally.

And I'm working on jewelry orders with boxes piled to the ceiling, my fat kitty Mango leaping from stack to stack (fat boys are light on their feet, you know...), my dog Lucy wanting attention and and and... oh well. no use complaining. better off just jumping back in and getting busy. My husband just told me that Buckingham Palace has 775 rooms. We have 6 rooms. Why is this so hard??

Our kitchen is one of those things that makes no sense. Sometimes in an apartment or house, you just scratch your head and go, huh? 'cuz it makes no sense at all, the arrangement of it, the layout. Because by some sleep deprived state of dementia, when we looked at the apartment 5 weeks ago, I (and my husband) neglected to notice that this kitchen has one tiny countertop, next to the sink, and it has NO DRAWERS AT ALL! Seriously! No drawers. In the entire kitchen. None. I mean, WTF? Who thought of that? Crazy! And how did I miss it? I told you this was an old building but really, no drawers? So, I decided to do something original, stop whining, and get a hutch of some sort and put it in the kitchen. There's room for one. We went to Target and found a nice kitchen cupboard, waist high, with a nice countertop and three drawers. Not in stock. Went to two more Targets. Not in stock, only the floor model, which we didn't want.

After all those stops, time was up and it was back to the work week. Then, this past Saturday, we moaned and groaned, set the alarm for 6 and headed out with bed-head, no showers and rumpled clothes (oh yes we are living the good life these days...) for a huge yard sale on the southside of Richmond. We got there, found almost no one set up, browsed a bit, and left. Oh, I did find two little woven kitchen rugs, which after washing, Mango immediately appropriated them for his new bed on the sofa. They're still there for him. Our pets are our kids, after all, and we deny them very little.

So we figured it was a wash and headed for the James River farmer's market, a stupendously wonderful organic market off of Forest Hill Avenue (for you locals who haven't been there, get on over there, it's fabulous) that also houses local artist's wares. Turning back the road to the market, we spied a woman pulling stuff out of an old house and setting up a yard sale. There, gleaming on the side of the road, was my cupboard-- a vintage white enamel top cupboard with black enamel trim and lovely mint green crackle paint. It has two large drawers on the left side, one deep bread drawer on the top right that has intact the original punched tin sliding top, and a large double sided storage area underneath with chrome handles. Michael hit the brakes and swung into the drive. The lady was ready to make deals, and by 8:30 a.m. we were putting Lucy in the front seat, folding back seats down and loading up the lovely little gem, my new kitchen cupboard. A good scrubbing with Dow bathroom cleaner removed some of the paint and all of the grime, and it's now resting prettily in its new home- our little dumb drawer-less kitchen, full of bamboo utensil trays, vintage aprons and dish towels.

A little something to be happy about, just what I needed. =)

moved in

Well, we are finally all moved in, except for two accent ceiling lights that Michael has to dismantle tomorrow, then we turn in our old keys and start living here at the new apartment. It has been an experience, dear friends, that I care not to repeat for a while!

It is almost ten thirty at night and I just pulled the fridge out and hand cleaned the floor. Super yuck, people. Maybe I am a rare bird to care that all these nooks and crannies get a good cleaning but I can hardly bear to go to work this week knowing dirt is lurking and I have not had the time to take care of it all before moving in, so we are having to move things around and then blast through this phase of it. Still to come tonight is a good swiffer scrub of the kitchen tile before I go nuts looking at all the refuse from almost a week's worth of four people, two dogs and one fat kitty walking back and forth over it. I'm not sure how long this old apartment has been standing empty but it is taking some work to bring it back to life. And I cannot get used to the super high ceilings in here. It is so weird compared to our old morgue apartment where one's head practically scraped the ceiling standing up.

And I was wrong about another thing here. Mango, my big fat orange Manx kitty, who was so frightened when we first got him that he hid under our bed for at least a month, absolutely LOVES it here. He is into everything, exploring all the cupboards and closets, sleeping in the bathroom linen closet and stretching full out on the bed to catch the sun's rays in the afternoon.

And Lucy is enjoying looking out the back bedroom window while laying on the bed, watching the afternoon convergence of several dog friends play under a huge old oak tree.

So it is going ok after alot of nerve bundle explosions and fits and starts of things not working and then being corrected by maintenance staff. I think I swore more in the past week than in the last year combined.

Our new art studio awaits unpacking. What with return to work, there has been no time to catch up on orders. I come home from work with the best intentions of setting up shop in earnest but fatigue is still my enemy and I end up propped up in bed, diet coke in hand, surfing etsy shops with droopy eyelids.

My jewelry bench is lined up on the correct wall but is surrounded on all sides by boxes, bags and even Mango's poop box, which has yet to find a permanent out of the way location. What can I say, it's a major move. Things will get put away when time permits. I would just like to wave a wand and have it all together in place looking clean and perfect right now. Patience is not my strong suite.

Two more days until the weekend. *sigh*

I had stars in my eyes of driving to the Beadfest show in Malvern but rest may be a better idea. The following weekend I'm working for a vendor Sat/Sun at the Richmond stop of the Intergalactic Bead show. Two hundred bucks cash or two forty for merchandise for the two day gig. I chose the cash. We need it. Moving costs the earth these days.

moving week & a quick trip to the bead store!

It's moving week!

That said, I hope to get back on track with jewelry, blogging, writing letters, filling orders, and all that jazz after next week (plus back to regular work).

A real live true dedicated art room. i can't wait. =) happy.

We picked up our keys today and celebrated at Starbucks after. Then we drove home and collapsed into a heap of humans and furballs on the bed for an early evening snooze, still exhausted after a nine hour drive to Pennsylvania.

Saturday afternoon found us creeping along in DC traffic for four hours straight, foot by foot in agony (and a bit of road rage), unsure I would make it before 5 p.m. closing time at Accents Beads in Rockville, Maryland, where they have some of the loveliest strands of beads around and the amethyst beads I was out of. Happily we made it with 1/2 hour to look and purchase.
The photo above is my makeshift pic of beads purchased at Accents Beads. From top to bottom, drilled Robels wood, faceted amethyst, white hemimorphile, large round amethyst (awesome deep purple!), cube flourite, faceted tourmilated quartz, loose stick pearls.

Above, a better photo of the fabulous AA grade amethyst.

Sunday- a family reunion, running all over visiting other friends in the area, bed at 3 a.m. Up at 7 to take my sister in law's dog to the vet. Another visit to a friend, then the drive home in pouring rain and thunderstorms last night. Not real pretty in the Laurel Highlands of PA yet. Still looks like the dead of winter except for very few daffodils here and there. Michael took this photo of a lovely clear stream & first daffodils of the season near Rector, Pa.

Calling all day today to switch out cable, internet, phone, business phone, electric, and so on. Hey, we'll have Fios after we move. I guess I am not living enough in the modern world that I never heard of such a thing. Fiber optics...hmmm. ok. all I care about is we'll get HBO and the History channel again, plus unlimited long distance calling.

The tired old stance still holds-- I must can this and get back to packing. Maybe along with May flowers I'll also have neat jewelry to show for once on here.

Buy this pendant!

Come on, now, people! What isn't cute about this owl pendant? Why hasn't it sold? I painstakingly drew it with a tiny brush onto the copper, etched it, and it is so cute! Based on an Aegean owl drawing from a ka-jillion years ago, it's a fabulous focal piece! Help me out and buy it now, a one of a kind, never to be made again owl etching from my etsy shop before I lose track of it in the rubble? Good deal. Now that you are on the way to my shop http://jenniferstumpf.etsy.com, you can snap up some other lovelies and add them to your collection and I can go to bed and sleep soundly for a change.

Good night and sleep tight! Friday is right around the long bend of the corner.