Planning a vacation

My husband and I haven't been on a vacation with just the two of us in almost three years. We both realized this the other day and deemed it extremely unacceptable. We've been doing a lot of thinking and I think we have come up with a plan. PACIFIC COASTAL HIGHWAY!

That's right! We are going to fly to San Francisco, renting a car, and will drive down to LA. I'm still researching stops to make along the way, but the great Redwood forest is definitely a must see and I really want to visit Santa Cruz and Santa Barbara. We won't know how much time we want to spend at each place, so it's going to be difficult to book rooms at hotels/B&Bs in advance. However, I did find one B&B in San Francisco that we MUST stay at. It looks awesome. It's a hippy joint in Haight Ashbury and all of its rooms are named "rainbow" or "sunshine" and there are no televisions anywhere....PERFECT! It's called the Red Victorian Bed and Breakfast. Check it out:

Doesn't that place look like the most amazing B&B you've ever seen? I make a point of it to be drug-free, but looking at pictures of this place makes me want to sit in a room with a large group of people and "free my mind" whilst cuddling. We'll see what happens...

Still researching ideas for Santa Cruz and Santa Barbara - no clue where we will stay there. Most likely the good ol' Hampton Inn. If we stay at quaint and quirky Inns throughout our entire trip, we might have to hitch hike home.

What I think I'm most excited about is just taking our time driving along this beautiful highway and enjoying the scenery. From my research I've found that parts of the PCH (Pacific Coastal Hwy) have seals just chillin' along the banks and beaches. I could probably spend a good two hours pulled over at a scenic view staring at these guys!

I think Ian and I are just going to pack light, rent the cheapest car available, stay at some cheap places and just spend all of our vaca money on adventures and FOOD. Sounds like a good plan to me. Can't wait to get booked!

Who believes in Valentine's Day?

Valentine's Day is right around the corner. What do you have planned? Can you expect to give or receive flowers? Do you make dinner reservations or cook a romantic meal and stay in? Do you ignore the holiday all together? I've always been indifferent when it comes to Valentine's day - for example: this year I booked my monthly massage on Valentine's day at 5:30pm because it's the only day and time that my massage therapist had available! I will not be bringing her flowers or chocolates, but I might add a couple bucks to her tip just to be nice.

Ian's outlook is pretty simple: "Since I got you two bouquets of flowers recently when you were sick, we can count one of them towards your Valentine's day flowers." Works for me and I like you're style! There are those out there who really love this romantic holiday and make big plans and buy big teddy bears and excessively large boxes of chocolate. Good for them....go nuts!

And for the extra romantic out there, I have a couple of wine glass sets just for you. Check out my latest set which is extra mushy:

How darling and romantic, huh? This set is titled "Love Bugs". How fitting. I painted "Valentine's Day 2012" at the base of each glass (as you can see above). You have no idea how close I was to painting 2011. I'm obviously not mentally adjusted to the new year as of yet.

Next blog - vacation ideas! I'm ready to go somewhere special!

Love is in the air

Or at least I'm trying to shove it down people's throats in regards to painted glassware! Sorry - that sounded a bit negative and violent. I think Valentine's Day is quite special...it would be even better if I could get some sales from it too! I'm a little late to the game, but I'm scrambling to get some lovey dovey items listed on my shop in time for the big day. Right now, I only have two listings and I'd like to get more available to my customers.

My goal is to create designs that can be used for Valentine gifts, but aren't pigeon-holed for that specific holiday. For example, here is a recent set I just listed:

They are my notorious mum flowers, but I used shades of pink and white for the fillers. It's an explosive flower and I hope someone buys them soon! There's nothing more depressing than getting excited over a new design and then have no one pay attention to it.

Kinda looks like a wound up rope....fantastic. Oh well, I love em!

My next idea is going to be titled "love bugs". I don't want to spoil the surprise, but it will be adorable. Stay tuned.

New Design Time!

I whipped up new design this week and even though my camera is performing better, these pictures still don't do the glasses justice. I think I'm going to go bold this year and flood my shop with COLOR! More ideas came to me while I was trying to fall asleep last night and I'm excited to get started on next. Here's a listing I just posted. Bright yellow and green leaves are sure to make anyone's drinking experience more pleasurable.

New Year - New Furniture

Just wanted to create a quick post in honor of our new World Market furniture. This isn't supposed to be a cheap plug for that store, but good heavens....I just love that place! Our living room before wasn't exactly the ideal place to have guests....it was a place to watch television. One large couch facing a large TV and a fight over who gets the seat with the ottoman. Sexy....

But now....we have CHAIRS! If people come over to visit, we don't have to sit at the dining room table, we can all sit in the living room and they can sit on our new CHAIRS! I acknowledge that it's a bit weird to get this excited over furniture. However, I like to think that I'm getting excited over a new 2012 lifestyle. Hoorah!

Penny really likes it too. Well....I may have put her on the chair specifically for a picture, but she still looks darling!

2012 - The year for new designs!

It's official - 2012 is here and I'm ready to face it head on! I've kicked off the new year with a couple of new wine glass designs and I'd like to keep the momentum going and crank out more and more. A good family friend has a gift shop in West Virginia where I have a couple of sets of wine glasses sitting on her shelves. Next time I go up, I'm going to bring a whole slew of my glassware up there to try and sell. I'll switch over those listings from "ready to ship" to "made to order" and it will clear out some space in my studio for some new designs!

Now, my mum design is not exactly new, but I wanted to try it with just black and white. Here are a couple of photos:

Not sure if you can tell -  but some of the flowers are painted in - black outline with white filler and vise versa. Unfortunately, to my chagrin, the photos don't do them justice. The design really pops and hopefully this set will get more appreciation at the gift shop where people can look at them in person!

Next are my dogwood blossom glasses. I've done these before, but not for a while. Check em out:

With the white background in my lightbox, it's hard to get a good feel of the flowers. They have beautiful petals with a light pink shimmer over top of the white paint. So lovely!

My goal this week - create two more listings.......and do a bit of yoga....and get some more sleep. I'm tellin' ya - I'm gonna shake it up in 2012. It's time to get my grown up pants on!

New wine glass design...if only it came with a new camera!

I marched my rear end down to the basement yesterday and finished an order that I got on Christmas day (merry xmas to ME!) and I also whipped up a new design that was Valentine's Day inspired...but not too obvious. I took some pictures and created a new Etsy listing for it, but the photos just don't do it justice! To be honest...it's not my camera's fault...it's the photo editor! It was free for a reason. Lately I can't seem to get my pictures to come out sharp and with a bright white background. It's driving me NUTS! Here's one angle:

Ok, now I'm mad. This picture looks better here in my blog than it does on my Etsy page. It might be a conspiracy! Ian notices it too. He says that if a picture looks clear on your computer, but crappy on a website, then it's the website's photo filter that is the problem. Great. Fan-damn-tastic. Here's another byt with a black background so you can see the white leaves:

I live in a townhouse. With that comes very few windows, therefore, very little natural light. Especially in the winter. I tried to capture a shred of sunlight this morning to see if I could take more pictures of this stemware in natural light. I haven't decided whether to post them or not because the background remains pretty dark. Take a look:

Thoughts?

I don't have any blog followers yet, so I guess this question was directed at me. Sigh...