I know why it's so warm this winter

I figured out why it's so warm this winter.

It's Mom.

She hated the cold, so now she is making us all suffer.

At work, lately, they are dealing with maintenance issues.

Mostly because the previous pastor didn't.
Gas leaks, water leaks, termites.

I'm getting bit by mosquitoes so much, I have to spray myself with OFF every day when I arrive.
If the weather was cold, they would surely die off...

The new pastor is a little disgruntled at the maintenance he inherited.

We had to raise the price of weddings and things like that.

I'm a little worried that there might be other cut-backs, after the holidays.
We'll see.


After Mom passed away I received all of her jewelry.

There was a whole lot of beaded stuff I had made for her.

I spent a lot of time reminiscing. The older things I made, weren't so great.
Also her style was completely different from mine.

I have been spending some time dis-assembling and making things over.


Here are some things I made over recently.

The center part of these earrings looked like the Sun.
It didn't go with the dark purple beads.

What was I thinking?

I made it look a little more Southwestern with "coral" and "turquoise"

When I inherited Mom's things, I found a lot of stuff that I had made for myself, that she had rescued from the counter top or the laundry room and stored them away.

I also spent a whole day going through her box of missing-pair earrings, to find their pair in my own missing-pair box.


These earrings were a cheap pair of mine.

One time, I added the glass beads to make them more interesting.

Now I have better beads, so I replaced the glass beads with crystals.

You can't really tell from the picture, but they are more sparkly now.



These were some that I made for Mom that I hadn't seen in a long time.

These turned out nice, I wasn't going to re-do them.

I like black, and I thought I could re-create them more refined, so I did.

Here you can see the difference.

The new ones are not as clunky.