muchas gracias!

...to Bonnie of Going Home to Roost for featuring my Quiet Bird print! Click here to read the feature on shopping locally in my hometown, Greenville, SC.

Thanks for the love!

I'll be making lovely things all weekend for a jewelry party next week and for a local boutique (Talloni of Greenville, if you're wondering) where I've started consigning my jewelry (yay!). I will have a short break from creating because I'll be spending my Saturday afternoon at Chuck E. Cheese's for our 5-year-old niece's birthday party, then going to my mom's in NC for a quick visit before coming home to chain myself to my desk in the craft room.

I hope everyone has an AMAZING weekend!

I rocked it

I'm not trying to brag, but I had a job interview today and I'm pretty sure I did AWESOME!! It's for a teaching position in Spartanburg County (about 45 minutes away). I LOVE the school's philosophy, vision, and overall essence, but I don't love the drive. On one hand, it'll be very quiet at 6:30 in the morning, when I'm driving there, but on the other, I'LL BE DRIVING THERE AT 6:30 IN THE MORNING! I know lots of people commute for their jobs, so if I get it I'll just suck it up and deal. Plus, my friend Jessica said that her mom liked teaching so far from home because it gave her time to decompress on the way home.

Honestly, if they had offered me the job today I would have taken it! There are no school jobs in Greenville County (unless you're a high school coach), so I'm just excited that I had an interview! Plus, I didn't even apply for the job--they found my application on the state website and contacted me for the interview.

I've been uber-busy making wedding jewelry for some of my friends, plus I've got a jewelry party next Wednesday and I'm now selling in a local boutique, so I've got a lot on my plate! My Etsy shops are on the back burner for right now, but I will update them after next week is over and I can breathe easy again!

I'll have pics of the bridesmaids'/bridal jewelry next week. I hope everyone is having a great Thursday afternoon!

I'm off to the craft room!

The new Lonny is here!!!

I know, I almost crapped my pants, too. What are you still doing here? GO READ LONNY, NOW.

OMG

I am so talented!! I made an animated button for my blog!!!!SRLSYOMGWTF!!!!

That's how excited I am. Seeing as it's 1:00 am and I've been working on this since, oh, 11:00 pm, I'm happy that it's finally done!! It's too late to figure out how to do the whole "grab this button" thing, but I will figure that out tomorrow and then PRESTO you can have a sweet hawleywood animated gif!!!!!!!

I realize that I title probably 95% of my posts with some form of "OMG," but that's because I know of no other phrase that fully captures my EXCITEDNESS AND DISBELIEF when something awesome happens/I do something cool.

YOU ARE JEALOUS OF MY ANIMATED GIF DESIGNING SKILLS. ADMIT IT.

On a Granny note, she is doing fine. Her pills make her woozy, but she still feels well enough to read her "important literature," aka, the National Enquirer. She goes this Tuesday for her first IV treatment, so please keep her and the rest of my family in your thoughts and prayers.

And have a fabulous week!

Ugh

I am hesitant to post about this, because I am usually very tight-lipped about personal things that are actually important and/or meaningful, but I think Shan has the right idea.

Yesterday, I found out for sure that my grandmother's breast cancer has come back. Even though she had a double radical mastectomy over 10 years ago. It's come back in her bone marrow. Luckily, the doctor says it's easily treatable with pills and intravenous treatments (not chemo, but I don't know exactly what it is). So that's good news.

In case any of you are readers of my old Myspace blog (if you're not, don't worry, you didn't miss anything), this is Crazy Granny of "greasy twigs" fame, not Grandmommie who lives in the Retirement Castle. No, my Granny is not really crazy, just...ummmm...eccentric? She researches aliens and government conspiracies and totally, 100% believes almost everything she reads on the interwebs. She has a laptop and a printer, and goes to town printing articles on how the Hopi Indians reverse-engineered alien technology to build spaceships and other things like that.

My Granny is hilarious, and lives with my mom, whom Granny calls bossy at least five times a day. I have some awesome Granny stories, too many to put here, but I need to write them down somewhere before I forget. Here's just a few reasons why my Granny is so awesome:

Granny was a teacher for a million years, and taught elementary and junior high in BFE Georgia. She was married to my Grandaddy, who was the high school guidance counselor and a WWII veteran. Every summer, my parents would ship my sister and me off to their house in the mountains of North Georgia for a three-week vacation. Usually, our first cousins were there, too, and we would spend the whole time playing outside, running through the cornfields, stepping in cow pies (that's cow shit, in case you didn't know), and fighting with each other constantly. Granny usually had to paddle at least one of us every single day with her ping-pong paddle of butt destruction. Not pretty, but we were brats and totally deserved it.

Granny is the best cook ever. Don't even try to tell me anything different because I will call you a liar. She uses "seasoned oil" in everything. "Seasoned oil" is also known as "starter grease" to some, or drippings to others. You know that stuff you drain out of your meat after you cook it and throw away or pour down the drain? Yeah, that stuff. But ONLY fried chicken and bacon grease. None of that hamburger grease--it will not do. And I don't want to hear any of this crap about "clogging my arteries" or "Type 2 Diabetes." I will eat Granny's cooking as long as she is able to cook it, and that's all there is to it.

Granny taught my sister and me (and my cousins I suppose) to read when we were 3 or 4.

Granny used to play her guitar or the piano and teach us folk songs from when she was young. My favorite was The Happy Wanderer.

Granny and Grandaddy had two huge gardens, cows, crabapple trees, and a lot of pasture land where we would roam and play act to our little heart's desires. It was like a wonderland to us.

As my mama and my Granny would say, she is the salt of the earth. I love my Granny SO MUCH.

That is all.

Just a taste

Gorgeous flowers in the lobby (from Dahlia)

I took some photographs for the fabulous women at Mia Alexander Salon for their website, and I wanted to share a few of my favorites:

Kelley's feathers in the aesthetics room--facials, skin care, makeup artistry, and more!


Kelly V.'s hand-mixed massage oils. Yum!


Chandy


Bling


Potions


Love


Blue


Magic wand


Tool shed

So I guess that was technically more than just a taste, but it's fine.

Thanks to Kelley, Kelly, Kari, Morgan, Robin, and Lisa for letting me photograph your beautiful salon!

Giveaway from Children Inspire Design!

Okay, I know I haven't posted in a month of Sundays. I am lame. BUT I'm posting to give you a chance to win a beautimous piece of original art from Children Inspire Design! How nice am I? Really, I'm sort of selfish because I get another chance to win by blogging about it, BUT you also get a chance to win so go leave a comment!!

Exciting things are happening around these parts! I was interviewed by our local paper today about Etsy and the crafting movement in general. I'm not as famous or cool as Shan, but I'm excited nonetheless!!  Also, my jewelry is going to be sold at a local boutique here in Greenville, so I'm super-duper excited about that!

Yay!

The Greenville News people are coming to take pics of my craft room next week (EEEEEEKKKKKK), so I need to kick it into high gear and get it cleaned up ASAP!!!

Enough screeching...I hope everyone in Blogland is doing wonderfully! Nick and I are enjoying a "snow day" here at home, which is awesome. (FYI, in South Carolina, one inch of snow = snow day. Yessssss!)

That's all I have for now...still haven't heard from the school district about the job--I submitted my resume for a 4K job and haven't had a call back. Yikes! I know I'm only one of probably 8 million people that applied for it (seeing as it's the ONLY early childhood job open right now), but still, a call or email or anything would be nice! Send me a carrier pigeon, even!

Anyway, love and other indoor sports,
Jess