My very good friend Simon returned from his trip to Peru with a big bag of Peruvian ceramic hand painted beads for me this week. You have officially climbed to the top of the totem pole : )

The last week was quite busy and yet I have no idea what I actually did. I suppose the easiest way to figure it out is to look back over some of the photos I took. Of course I’m pretty sure that there was a lot more that I did besides what is shown below including shopping for a dress for my cousin’s wedding, watching Project Runway in the middle of the night (while feeding L) and losing my wallet sometime between yesterday and today!

Firstly we had a fair bit of ‘playing with the new (birthday) toys’ time:

I did a custom order:

Lots of L cuddling and playing:

A massive pile of washing:

We had some friends over:

K did some painting:

and I created some tea light candle holders:

and finally, some mucking around:

I do wonder what this week will show when I look at my photos. I have a busy week including going out to tea, having friends over for lunch, enjoying the company of another Etsy seller and going to the Royal show!! Sounds very busy.

As promised here is the post about the party. The whole thing went so well and I think the kids had fun. A big thank you to my Mum and Dad who helped us the day and night before and during the party and also to my hubby’s parents who looked after L at the party. Thank you also to Erin F who helped out in all sorts of ways (food, activity etc…).

Rather than write too much, enjoy these photos from the day:

I can’t believe it. My little baby girl is now three! Happy birthday K!

We had the best birthday party today, it was so pink, girly and fun. Everything went smoothly and even the weather was perfect in the two hours I needed it to be. It actually rained in the afternoon but was sunny all morning. Our next door neighbours lent us a bouncy castle which was a big hit and the kids made little crowns and dancing ribbons. The cake came out pretty nice too, as did the other things I’d planned like the stripey jelly and mini cupcakes. It was all so much fun and I don’t even feel that tired. I’ll post photos from the party in the next post or this one will be too photo heavy.

I couldn’t resist a small timeline of the last three years to show you the progress. Also, take a look at the baby pic of K at the top of the row and compare her to L – they are so alike!

This is Keziah on her second birthday

You can see my birth announcement if you go to this post on my old blogger blog.

The other night I sat and made up 14 pairs of earrings, 7 button cards (as in buttons sewn to card to sell, not a greeting card) and one phone charm in one sitting. It sounds as if I really threw them together doesn’t it? I did in a way but mainly because I had made the beads with intention instead of experimentally like usual. Lately I’ve been considering my craft a lot more as I do it and while allowing myself to ‘play’ I’m still creating with the deliberate-ness that it takes to make a sellable item.

At the moment I am preparing for the next two markets I’m doing so I’ve been stocking up and stocking up, so far I think I have around 50 pairs of earrings made up that are not listed in my stores as well as many many necklaces, bookmarks, bracelets, beads and other items. At some point in the next week I think I’d better take an inventory so I know where I’m up to!

So, here’s some of the results of the other night’s creativity (you can see the rest over on my flickr page if you want to). As you can see these are from the same ‘canes’ or blocks of clay so have a similarity about them.

I have also been trying to play around with new cane designs and master the skill of caning. Here’s some of those results:

Buttons

Telephones

Cars

Sheep

And finally, a little experiment in the mokume gane technique:

Lately I’ve been thinking a fair bit about what it REALLY means to be called a Christian. This word seems to have so many contexts these days as well as quite a few generalisations attached to it. I am very aware that the way a person reacts when I say I’m a Christian will depend greatly on their personal experience with other Christians. In many ways its unfair to be associated with generalisations and stereotypes but there’s nothing I can do about it.

I suppose all I can say is what it means for me to be a Christian. Firstly, it has nothing to do with church and nothing to do with being good, perfect or judgemental. If I’m honest, those characteristics were three that I did try to emulate back in my school days and as a result I was pretty self-righteous and judgemental of those around me.

People in general (myself included) prefer others to be genuine, confident in the way they choose to live (in other words, not wishy washy) and non judgemental. I must admit, us Christians can look very arrogant and pushy at times and these are two characteristics I do not agree with.

The arrogance seems to stem from our view that we believe to have the truth and the only truth. We believe that everyone should follow Jesus and those who don’t are separated from God. That’s a pretty strong viewpoint to hold and yes, it seems arrogant…….or does it? Perhaps its more of a confident view than an arrogant one. While I’m being so honest I have to say that I do hold these views.

Another thing I want to make clear is my stance on Bible bashing. I don’t believe in it at all. I believe that you cannot force another person to share your point of view and that each person’s beliefs are personal and a place they have come to on their own. The thing that I wish people would do is take a serious look at Jesus for themselves. Not the Christmas Jesus and not the painted Jesus but the actual Jesus of the Bible. The Bible is a historical record and should not be thrown out lightly. Look at Jesus for yourself.

This finally brings me to the though of the word ‘testimony’ or ‘witness’ and what it means. I used to think that if you allowed others to see your mistakes, negative emotions or slip ups you would ruin your testimony. A testimony is simply showing other people the way that Jesus has made a difference in your life. As I’ve grown older I’ve come to see that if you guard the real you from other people then you are not allowing anyone to really know you and they cannot see how much Jesus has affected you. I have also come to understand that as a Christian I should be allowing Jesus’ teachings to penetrate my inner being. His words (and I believe Jesus is God) should so affect a person that it changes the way you do everything. This does NOT mean that a Christian is perfect, nor does it mean that everything I do will reflect Jesus (because I’m human!).

My conclusion is this. I am a Christ-follower. I believe in Jesus (Christ) and that he is God and that he died to save me. I believe that I must follow his words (as found in the Bible) and be completely confident and genuine about this. I believe that other people should see Jesus when they look at me (as in see his characteristics). I believe that it’s wrong to shove Jesus at people and its also wrong to befriend people with the sole purpose of doing this. I believe in respecting other people, regardless of whether I disagree with their choices or thinking.

That’s my conclusion and I’m completely confident in it. Serious post over.

Today I had a great time, I had the opportunity to teach a group of teenagers how to be creative with polymer clay at a birthday party. I’ve taught kids a lot in the past (Girl’s Brigade, Sahel Academy in Niger, private art classes) but it’s been a while and I’d forgotten the thrill of watching them as they discover what they’ve been able to do. It was so rewarding to see the looks on their faces as they cut the canes they’d made to find a flower pattern inside and it ALMOST makes me want to extend my degree to education like I have in the past (I have a BA Arts majoring in painting but never quite got to the Diploma of Education). We’ll see, it will be a few years before I can consider doing that.

Anyway, happy birthday Erin, I hope you had a good day. Enjoy your actual birthday on Monday!

Here’s some of the girls as they’re creating their canes

and the end result of some of their work

Good on you girls, you did such a great job, I hope you had fun because I did!

It appears that the last time I did a Photo Friday Entry was last November! About time I did one again. Here’s my entry with this week’s theme of ‘relationship’. I think this is a great pic of a brand new relationship that’s forming and not to mention a bond:

Before I show you what I’ve been doing in between general every day life and bouts of sickness I want to mention again the SIM project for these two months. Perhaps you’ve noticed a bit of Christmassy stuff in our stores already, well its never too early to start gift buying!

A reminder that the money from my sales for September and October go to the work of Deborah House Shelter for Street Girls (92704) in Addis Abbaba in Ethiopia. I’ve already had three sales but the more I can sent to help these girls the better so feel frr to browse my shops here;

Polyclarific on Etsy
Polyclarific on Made It
Polyclarific on Wahmania

Now to some of the newest items, I had fun making the polymer clay beads over the last year, its great to see them finally made into jewellery;

Necklace

Bracelet

Necklace

There’s a lot more but this is a picture heavy post already!

After nearly a year of not sewing a thing on my machine I am finally back into it again. I found some really sweet fabric the other week and a pattern that I thought would be easy enough and had a go on Saturday with the guidance of Mum. I decided I wanted to make K one of the tiered skirts that are in the shops at the moment, I figured they couldn’t be too difficult. Hmmmm, well the first one was quite stressful, I’ve never done gathering before but the second one I whipped up in about 2 hours (with interruptions) this afternoon. Here are the results of the skirts: