How We Became a Tribe of 3 Part One

Since it seems I have gained a few new readers in the past few weeks I thought I would round out the year on this blog by posting a short history of who we are and how we have come to be living and traveling in the Airstream. I will break this into three posts or so... I am going to greatly abbreviate the story, it's too much to try to post it all at once. Plus my brains would melt out of my head if I tried to.

I grew up in the Midwest in northern Illinois just shy of the Wisconsin state border... or "The Cheddar Curtain" as they like to call it. I don't have any siblings. There's not much you need to know about that portion of my life other than that I was a tom boy when I was little and then I transitioned into a punk rock girl and still later in to a more hippy dippy type of kid and I spent a lot of time reading books, hanging out at the park and smoking pot like it was my job. I actually worked 82.9 million different ridiculous jobs from the time I was in high school until the time I ran away from home at the age of 27. I worked as a waitress. I worked at a junk yard. I even worked as a mortgage loan officer at a bank (that was the silliest job I ever had) and finally at a Japanese Garden before moving away. Why did I run away? Because I got married. I will keep this short... but I married a guy when I was 27 and it was the biggest and best mistake of my life. It freaked me out badly enough that I just had to change everything and get away from all that I was familiar with in order to get my head straight. So after 8 months of miserable marriage to a drunk moron I left my "husband" and made the radical choice to move to Nantucket Island off the coast of Massachusetts. I had found an inn keeping job there and decided to go for it. Nobody had seen this coming and everyone thought I had cracked. Friends and family did not want me to go... but I did. I cleared things up, packed my things into my car and took off for Nantucket within two weeks of finding the job. I had no idea where I was going... I had picked this place literally at random. I made my ferry reservation to get my car out to the island and I took off.




I arrived on Nantucket in April of 2000. It blew me away. It was SO different than any place I had ever been. It had breath taking beauty, incredible history, it was quaint to the point of being surreal and it was distant. The rest of the world sort of falls away when you are out there. The little island is 30 miles out to sea for those of you unfamiliar. I HATED my job at the inn. The woman who owned it was a serious bitch/lunatic. And I was made to live in a tiny, moldy cellar room in the basement. So that job only lasted for a few months until I was able to secure work elsewhere. I got a job at a health food store right smack dab in the center of downtown and made great friends with the owner, Bernadette. She became such a great source of energy and comfort for me. I met all the island characters while working in her shop. Everyone came there for lunch or for vitamins or whatever. I made a few lasting friends (that's you David) and thus began my foundation on the island. I really felt instantly at home there thanks to these generous people. Everything was not coming up roses though... I still felt alone in the sense that I had lost myself somehow along the way in my twenties. I found a place to contemplate who I was and heal my lost soul by the side of the Atlantic Ocean.




Bernadette eventually had to close up shop due to big box competition moving on island and I found work at a little gourmet shop one street over. The people who owned this shop (Patty and Jon) became family to me. Their daughter had just left for college a few days before I went in looking for a job.... her name is Bethany and she has long strawberry blond hair. Patty nearly shoved me down to the ground (ala Elaine on Seinfeld) when I told her my name. I could not have found a more perfect place to weather the winter on Nantucket. Because it does get pretty much like that movie 'The Shining' out there come February. Everyone gets a little sketchy.

While working at Nantucket Gourmet I met Billy. The sandwich shop pretty much fed the whole of downtown come mid winter. He would drop in to grab lunch a few times a week and eventually asked me to come to an art opening at the Artist's Association Gallery where he worked. Little did he know this was the beginning of the end for him.

That's it for today.... I will keep you hanging there for a few days! And oh yeah... Happy New Year! I almost forgot!

Macro-licious Friday Fishes

Well... These are not the most exciting pics ever, but I have been a wee bit under the weather for the past two days and I was just not feelin' it to get out there and really take my time to get inspired. Mostly I crept around the edges of the pond frightening the minnows and the small children who are here on Christmas vacation. Minnows and small children both scare very easily.

We had to move to a new site here in this park today so we no longer have a river front site. Now we have a highway front site. It never ceases to amaze me the way people construct RV sites like 4 inches off loud, busy highways. Because yeah... we invested tens of thousands of dollars in this set up so we could be SLEEPING ON THE EDGE OF THE HIGHWAY. It really is perplexing. And it is amazing the number of people who seem to be perfectly OK with this situation. They even seem to like it on some weird level. Maybe they like to watch traffic? Maybe the sound of a car with a loose muffler choking by at 2 a.m. is comforting to them? Anyway, the actual site we are on is not bad at all. It has live oak trees and plenty of space... it's just the noise from the road that sucks. Maybe I will learn to love it like how you can learn to love brussel sprouts.




Can I just mention again the reason for these photos? The Friday set of macro shots... Because I love the macro setting on my Nikon that's why. I love it. I love coming back from shooting pics and loading them on my laptop and seeing what I got. Because you can never really tell while you are still outside with the camera if you actually got what you were going for or not. It's like a surprise show once you load them and start looking through. Like this little dude below... with his ultra fat little shadow and his nubby little fish eyes.




And now... just to make sure you are paying attention...



We are starting a fund to get Rudy braces. What kind of parents would we be to let him go through the rest of his life with those crooked teeth? He needs serious ortho work.

Bumblebee Bats, Bicycles and Dead Cell Phones

I neglected to mention yesterday that another gift we received was a bicycle purchased through World Bicycle Relief for an AIDS care worker in Africa. My parents purchased it in my late Grandfather's name. He was always heavily involved in charity work during the holidays. Here is some info I lifted from the website to explain more about the organization...

"Currently, World Bicycle Relief has partnered with a coalition of relief organizations to address the HIV/AIDS crisis in Zambia. We will provide 23,000 bicycles to community home-based care volunteers, disease prevention educators and vulnerable households. We are also training and equipping more than 400 bicycle mechanics in the field. The program will reach more than 500,000 adults, orphans and vulnerable children."

I can't think of a more worthy place to send funding through to! Thanks to my Mom and Dad for supporting WBR and thanks to my Grandpa Biehl for instilling a healthy vein of charitable empathy in our family.

On that note I also want to talk about something we purchased for my Mom. She drives a lot with her work and her vehicle is an Escalade. It's not exactly fuel efficient. She has driven this type of vehicle for years because it comfortably seats her clients and coworkers on their numerous outings and she finds piece of mind in it's safety on the road and she of course enjoys the luxury aspect of it as well. Anyway... through TerraPass, a company which invests our monies to reduce our individual carbon footprints we purchased a carbon offset for my Mom's vehicle and the amount of emissions she produces in a year driving it. You can calculate your emissions on their website. So buying a pass for a vehicle eases the footprint you leave over the course of a year. You can also buy passes for your home or for someone who does a lot of airline travel. Why buy a TerraPass? Because as I read one reviewer write... "you can't exactly mail a personal check to a wind farm in an effort to support clean energy." They also have a program to recycle old cell phones which I am about to participate in. I can mail my old cell (aka my piece of junk Razor) in to them postage paid and they issue me a TerraPass. Here is some info lifted from the TerraPass website in regard to cell phones...

People buy and toss out cell phones at an astonishing rate. RIPMobile estimates that there are 850 million unused cell phones in the U.S. Since cell phones contain lead, cadmium, mercury, beryllium and arsenic, they become toxic waste when they end up in a landfill.

By recycling your phone you help to protect local water and food supplies from toxins, while making industry less dependent on destructive new mining for metals. You are also getting functional phones into the hands of people in the developing world who need them.

Reselling a used cell phone is far more energy efficient than manufacturing a new one. And when you purchase a TerraPass with the proceeds you are fighting climate change to boot!

So... my phone is worth $24 in this exchange. A $24 TerraPass that is. You can look up what your old phone is worth by clicking through to the site HERE. I am going to use this amount to begin to pay for a pass for our F250. Of course driving a much more fuel efficient vehicle would be a better answer... but until they build a hybrid that can tow 10,000 pounds we are stuck with the big old truck.

Why should we care about any of this? Because of Bumblebee Bats, that's why. Bumblebee Bats are the world's smallest bat species. They live in Thailand and they weigh about the same as a dime and can rest comfortably on your thumb (although they would probably prefer to rest else wear.) They are endangered. What do they have to do with cell phones, bicycles and carbon emissions? Well, I don't know enough to be able to construct an intelligent answer to that question but I can say that I am sure there is a viable connection in there somewhere. If it were not for our crazy consumption and current indifference to the planet's and our own wellness I am sure the dear little Bumblebee Bat would have nothing to worry about. So do your part for the world's smallest mammal and recycle your old cell phone the next time you need a new one!

Spoiled Rotten

Don't worry... Billy is not threatening us on Christmas morning, he got new knives in his stocking.

We spent the morning on speaker phone with my parents opening our gifts. As usual we got spoiled rotten. Billy and I each got an Amazon Kindle! If you don't know what a Kindle is click through on that link and read about it. It's a really cool thing. In short it's a wireless, paperless device that holds up to 200 books, downloads blogs, periodicals like The New York Times and is also capable of pulling up web pages. We have each already bought a book and subscribed to magazines via the whispernet system on Amazon. When you buy a book it loads in like ten seconds. It's nuts. I can actually pull up my blog (or any blog or site that I know the address for) and view it on the screen as well. The screen is not in color, I guess that technology does not exist yet... but it is waaaay cool. Anywhere that you get cell signal you can get online and download and read web pages etc.

I also got a Jeanine Payer necklace that I have been coveting for a long time. She is one of my favorite jewelry artists. Billy bought me a ring designed by her years ago for my birthday. This necklace reads... "The journey is the reward."





My Mom also shopped on Etsy and got me some beautiful handmade things which I had been admiring for some time. Including this neck scarf handmade in Italy...




I hope everyone is having a great day with family and friends wherever you are in this world... I am off to cook our dinner and put away our treasures.

I will leave you with a shot of Rudy exhausted after opening presents this morning...

SUN Day

I have spent most of this day so far laying out back in a lawn chair with sunlight on me like a warm, heavy blanket. After the horrible weather yesterday I can barely believe how beautiful it is today. There's not a cloud in the sky and the wind is gentle and quiet. Yesterday it was blowing at 40 mph and was just awful. So... just in case we head back in that direction I am taking full advantage of this perfect December day.

The photo above is a shot of the sunlight reflecting off the river. If you click through to the larger image it almost looks like you are viewing something under a microscope. Very pretty and abstract.

Billy completed a painting yesterday that is one of my favorites he has done in a while. It is of coastal Maine... near Prout's Neck. This is where Winslow Homer lived and painted and when you go there you can see the atmosphere and elements that inspired him. Here's Billy's painting...




I just love it. The softness of the sky and the drama of the water crashing on the rocks... it really captures the feel of the place I think. This one will be hard to let go of. I hope it finds a good home.

I think I just heard my lawn chair calling me... time to get back outside and soak up some more sunshine while I still can!

Macro-liscious Friday

Since it was a beautiful day here I decided to get out with my Nikon and see what I could find to shoot. I LOVE shooting in macro and I think I produced some pretty neat photos today. Maybe I will make this a weekly endeavor. I kind of like the sound and feel of Macro-liscious Friday. How about you? Make sure you click through to see the larger version of the images!






















Lots of duck feathers... I know, but they were so pretty in the camera I could not resist! Have a groovin' Friday night and I hope none of you are still out Christmas shopping!

Surprise! It's a Dog Parade!

So... what has my life come to when the most exciting thing that happened to me (us) today was participating in the RV park's Christmas dog parade? Let me start off by saying that we had no idea this was even happening until I went out to throw some stuff away in the trash bin across the way and a woman said to me "Hey you are on the parade route!" And I was all... "Parade route? Here? What parade?" And then I had images of Shriners on tricycles and clowns and county fair beauty queens waving from the back of a convertible. All passing by right outside my front door...and I thought, "Ok! This is going to be an interesting cap to the day!" But as it turned out our parade was a dog parade. A small gathering of people and their pets who walked without much purpose or zest through the park accompanied by Santa Claus in a golf cart powered sleigh.

I stooped so low as to tie a green Christmas bow on to Rudy's back. You can imagine his surprise upon arriving at the dog parade. He was not the only one with Christmas decor tied to his body.


So... we walked around. And it looked something like this...



Are you laughing yet? Here's more...



I am sure the people who organized the whole thing had a much more grandiose view of what the actual event would play out to be... I know I had a more exciting visual cooked up in my mind. We needed like 50 more dogs and we needed spectators who could not get enough of us and our Christmas bedazzled dogs cheering us on wildly from the sidelines. I think I counted two people who set foot outside to look at us as we straggled by. We were led by a woman riding a three wheeled motorcycle and Santa brought up the rear in his wagon. When we got to the end of the route they handed out fancy treat bags to all of the dogs which was cute (again...this was a planned out thing with a much larger vision of dog action than what we ended up with.) There were two little girls (about 3 and 6 years old) who had walked with us and they were crying at the end because nobody had thrown candy at them during the parade. No one had any candy. One little girl asked her Mom if the treats were only for dogs. At this point I ran home and got some candy canes to bring back for them. I had to do something. They were gonna end up sneaking and eating dog cookies if I did not.

Sigh. The best outcome of the parade was that Rudy was exhausted afterwards. He has been quiet and/or sleeping all night. I would be in a dog parade every day if it would continue to produce these results at night.

Another amazing fact is that the local paper had sent someone out to document the event. So we might end up with our photo in the local paper. I am keeping my fingers and my toes crossed on that one. I will be sure to post the big news asap if we hit the Kerrville headlines this week.

I Am Obsessed!

I tried to post this game right here on this page but I can't get the widget sized right... so you will have to click through to it. I made it to level 8 so far... see how far you can get!

KNOW YOUR WORLD!

Aggressive Scooter Operators

Some days just whiz past so quickly that it makes my head spin. Today we spent the morning getting a lot of boxes ready to ship. I sent my families Christmas stuff off, we sent a few things to Billy's family as well and Billy also shipped out three paintings he recently sold. Shipping stuff takes time. Before we knew it we looked at the clock to see that it was 2 pm. And we had not even had breakfast yet!? After leaping in to the fray at both the post office and a Fed Ex store (there went another hour!) we sped off to the grocery store. Man... did we ever need to go to the grocery! Dinner last night was a 12 on a scale of one to ten measuring out "creepy as Hell" dinners. Yuck.

So we went to the local H.E.B. and fought the insane crowds there. People... what HAPPENS this time of the year? The grocery store was a SCENE. The parking lot was full (remember this is like 2:45 on a Monday afternoon) and when we got inside it was every man for himself. Or I should say it was every senior citizen on a grocery store provided mobile scooter thing against me. It was like the whole retired, elderly world decided to grocery shop right that minute fueled by confusion and aggression while powering around in an awkwardly large scooter. There was a low level of something akin to road rage vibing out throughout the entire store. It was intense and weird. I was glad when we were able to check out and run away with our bags-o-stuff.

We raced home and I whipped up some homemade potato leek soup. Ahhhhhhh. That's better. Then we took Rudy for a (much needed) spin out back. I recently pulled out my Nikon to shoot pics with instead of the Canon for awhile and today I decided to shoot in black and white.



That pic shows you how low the river is... the birds can walk around without even getting their bums wet.

It was still cold today and we have stayed snuggled up while inside to keep the chill off. The cold turns Rudy in to a giant bed bug.



And being cooped up inside turns me into a snarling lunatic...



Thankfully the rest of the week is supposed to be in the 70's here. I expect a full recovery of my wits after a good dose of sunshine and short sleeves has been administered.

Free Rice!

Not for you.... If you want free rice you will have to go looking for it elsewhere. But if you would like to build up a nice pile of rice to give to someone who really needs it (for free) here is your chance and it's fun. My friend Gordon turned me on to this site this morning via email.

It's a vocabulary quiz/game that donates 20 grains of rice for every word you get correct. It's an intuitive program and with the first few words it assesses your knowledge level and asks your next few words accordingly. So as tempting as it is to look words up in a different window on google for the right answer... that will only get you harder words the next time. But... truth be told, this is just what I did. Heck! I learned new words and I accumulated a larger amount of rice for donation. The rice is donated to people with extreme need through the United Nations World Food Program. Have fun!

Quiet Sunday

Last night we had a low of 26 here in Texas. It was our coldest night yet in the Airstream. We kept the heat on (the actual furnace instead of our usual ceramic heat cube) set at around 62 and piled on the blankets. Per advice on the Airstream chat forum we opened up all the cabinets to allow warm air to circulate down in around our water tanks and keep stuff from freezing up. Everything worked out fine and we woke in the morning to sunshine and blue skies. It is supposed to be below freezing again tonight but now that we have weathered one night with no problems I am no longer worried.

I finished up wrapping and packing my boxes to send home for Christmas yesterday and now today I am just sort of hanging around feeling kind of ambiguously stunned. What does an ambiguously stunned person look like?



And no amount of coffee seems to help. It's just the aftermath of wrapping and packing I guess. It leaves me feeling a bit deflated. I need a new project.

So today has been a quiet day. This morning I made corn spoon bread for breakfast with blueberries and honey. We ate a whole 8 x 8 square pan full of it. And if we had had another we would have eaten it too. What is it about a Sunday morning that makes you feel entitled to a massive and indulgent breakfast? Is that just me or does it happen to you too?



Rudy suffers the most on a day like today. All he wants is to get outside and rip loose like a cracked up rabid wolverine. And we keep him inside laying about with our boring old asses. He alternates between doing this....



And doing this...



The first shot is the longing, trembling stare out the window watching those dreadful squirrels and other (lucky) dogs pass by and the second is standing at my feet starring at me for long, long periods of time trying to accomplish some sort of a Vulcan mind meld with me convincing me to take him outside. We DO take him out...obviously, but only for like ten minute walks down the river bank every few hours. He would stay out there ALL DAY sniffing and chasing and being whipped into a frenzy by the flora and fauna of the place. He's a dog. I am an ambiguously stunned girl. Herein lies the problem. We may never actually find a happy medium but we try.

Correction! It's a Vibraphone...

OK... so after my last post I decided it may be worth while to actually post something to help explain my proclamation of love for the xylophone. In searching for a clip I have realized that the instrument I am grooving on is actually a vibraphone.

So now.... for those of you who know me, try to put me in the place of the big mug seen here playing "the vibe."



I hope this helps explain my situation. I really feel it's too late for me to tackle this particular instrument at this point in my life... I will just have to appreciate from my seat here on the sidelines. Unless one of you knows of a vibraphone boot camp I could attend? If there is one... sign me up.

Two Unrelated But Important Things

1. If I could do it all over again, go back in time or be reborn to another life.... I would most certainly be a xylophone player in a jazz band. This is a thing that I feel quite sure would come as a complete surprise to most if not all of you.

2. This is the best thing I have seen today....

Dreary Day

We woke up this morning to the coldest day we have had yet here in Texas. It's in the upper 30's and really foggy and rainy. I know this is nothing to complain about considering what most of the rest of you are dealing with right now for weather.

We had planned to drive to Lost Maples State Park today but decided (obviously) to wait until a nicer day to go. Instead I bundled up and set out with the camera to see if I could find a few bright spots in an otherwise dreary day.

I did find some lovely bright orange feet...




My own yellow rubber clad feet...




And of course Christmas adds a nice splash of color to the scene.



Who knew Texas was so wet? We have pretty much stayed inside reading and chatting on the phone with friends and family for the better part of the day. I may have to take a drive up the street to get a chai tea in a few minutes. It's a perfect day for one.

Wow. Cowboy Christmas.

So. There's somethin' you don't see every day right? This uber Christmas-y/Western-y scene is in the town of Bandera, TX. We drove down there today to check it out and to see if it lived up to it's self proclaimed title of "Cowboy Capital of the World." Well. I don't know if the folks in the picture above qualify as real cowboys or not, but they are trying harder to live outside the norm than most people I have seen around. I don't think that real cowboys use orange safety cones to guide them in the parking of their horses... but maybe after a few beers, who knows?

The drive down to Bandera was a real treat. We pulled off to the side to shoot pics enough times that what was supposed to be a 45 minute drive ended up taking 2 hours. Here are a few of my faves from today...

Ernestino's Warning!

OK.... Obviously I had to borrow this pic from google images. I needed an image to accompany my story. As soon as I can grab my own shot of a giant anaconda to post here I will take this one down and replace it with mine. So, yesterday I bought a vintage Kodak Instamatic camera at a thrift store for fifty cents. I bought it because it had a roll of film still in it with 19 (out of 24) exposures taken. It was too much for me to resist. I need to see what is on a camera from 1973 in the middle of nowhere Texas. Today I set out to get the film developed. As it turns out I will have to mail my film off to Oregon for processing because there are only like two places in the whole country who even CAN develop this film (because it is so old) but that is not the real meat of my story here. I stopped in to Walgreens on my quest to get the film processed. On my way into the store I had to walk past the Salvation Army Christmas bell ringin' guy. You know the guy. Here is what happened next...

Bell Guy: "Excuse me ma'am?" (you have to do the bell guy with your best heavy Mexican accent)
me: "Yeah?"
BG: "Is that your truck with the boat on top?"
me: "Yeah."
BG: "What kind of boat is theese? Do you go in it here?"
me: "Well, we had hoped and planned to use it here but the Guadalupe (river) is too low right now."
BG: "Ohhhhh.... NO ma'am! NO! The Guadalupe! NOOO!"
me: ????????????
BG: "Ma'am... (now he points to his stick on name badge, which reads "Ernestino") Do you see theese? Do you see where I am from?"
me: "Ernestino? Umm, no where are you from?"
BG: "Meh-hee-co! I am from Meh-hee-co! Ma'am! The river...is SNAKES!"
me: (laughing) "What?! Snakes?"
BG: "Rattlesnakes? NO! Moccasins? No! We don't worry about theese! Tall grasses ma'am, bushes and weeds! Is the ANACONDA!!! SIXTY FIVE FEET LONG!!!!"
me: (still laughing) "No!? They are not!"
BG: "In Meh-hee-co ONE HUNDRED FEET! They ATTACK the VILLAGES! (wild eyes) You see theese car? THEESE IS HOW BIG IS THE HEAD!!!!"
So at this point I realize Ernestino is not out to pull a funny on me. Ernestino really believes that The Guadalupe River in Kerrville, TX is inhabited by a sixty five foot long man eating anaconda. He goes on to tell me that he and his uncle were once attacked while trying to cross a slippery bridge in his uncle's car. He demonstrated with one huge black mitten clad hand how the snake had slowly risen up out of the river and bashed into the side of the car actually breaking the window! He then told me that when this happened he laughed. (????) He also told me that his Mother taught him never to drink the rattlesnake water even though to some people it may taste sweet! (again...?????) Let me also mention that he continued to ring the Salvation Army bell through all of this. It made it really hard to follow what he was saying. He talked a lot about how the snake likes it near the dam and in the tall grasses and weeds. And he said with the utmost sincerity that he did not want to see me get hurt. Clearly, I am just asking for it.

I finally was able to pull myself away from Ernestino to get inside Walgreens where once again (I had already tried at Walmart and CVS) the film counter person looked at my roll of film like it was a prehistoric cat turd. I exited the automatic doors at a near run in order to escape further doomsaying from Ernestino but managed to toss him a wave and yell "Thanks!" To which he replied "Be safe! Be SAFE!!" While waving me off with his giant mittened hand.

December in Texas

We are settling in pretty well in our new digs here in Kerrville. This is where we will be for Christmas and New Years. The weather has been pretty darned reasonable so far. Today and the next few days are kickin' around in the low 70's... nothin' wrong with that. It makes for good times sitting around outside with a book in the afternoon sun.



I have been trying to grab a nice shot of the deer which hang around out back on the river banks but I have not been too happy with anything I have taken so far. They are pretty skittish and I just don't have a good enough zoom on my camera to get anything better than this...



Yesterday while I was shopping in Fredericksburg I found a cute little foil Christmas tree at a shop called Red. They have great vintage/modern stuff in there... it's a dangerous place to hang around in for too long. Anyway, I brought my little tree home and stuck it out on top of our patio table. It looks pretty cute.



If Billy would let me I would cover the entire trailer in Christmas lights. And the inside of the trailer too. And Billy... he would look good covered in lights.

ETSY HANDMADE!

On my last post I stuck in a link to ETSY for Christmas gift inspiration and shopping. For anyone unfamiliar with the site it can perhaps feel a little daunting to navigate and find what you are looking for. Especially if you have absolutely no idea what you are looking for... then it's pretty hard to find it. So I have put together a postie here of some neato shtuff I have found while poking around on there. It truly is a fantastic go to place for an unusual, special gift.



People.... I think this is cool. If you send this guy your plain assed leather shoes he will custom paint them in one of 36 different designs. Granted... this design entitled "Amoeba" may not be for everyone... but I am here to tell you, it works for me. Think of the things you could do while wearing your Amoeba shoes! You would be unstoppable.



This is a print from a shop called The Black Apple. I think her work would be really great for a child's room. She has pages of prints to look through at a great price... they would be so fun to frame and hang!



Don't even go HERE if you are currently hungry or if your sweet tooth rules the day. This chick will blow your cookie lovin' brains out all over the walls. So beware. I would like to request samples of each and every thing she has there. She is kickin' some cookie ass.



Again... avert your gaze if you are a sugar whore like me. This is the evil lair of The Fat Daddy Bake Shop!!! They make a positively sick amount of delicious sounding cupcakes that come to you in an individual little mason jar! How cute is that? Look through the list of flavors and I dare you to not drool on your keyboard.



Enough with the sweets... I love these silk screened/decoupaged votive holders at Mary Ink! Look here's more...




Super cute! And again a great gift for someone who loves candles and has eclectic, fun taste.



Everything in Larime Loom's shop pretty much kicks the teeth right out of my head (but in a GOOD way.) Italian handwoven scarfs, bags and shawls in gorgeous fibers. Gooood stuff. This scarflette pictured above is my favorite.



Because WHO can resist a chick with a huge goiter? Not me. I'll follow her home every time. Seriously though... if this does not prove my point about Etsy... you can find ANYTHING on there people, and it is all handmade. Oh... and if you fl you must purchase the goiter lady pendant? It can be had HERE at Sushipot Shop. I actually love her shop... she has truly bizarre, cool stuff.