Bee's Buzzings

Mmmm . . . Mmmittens :)

Sweet little pocket mirrors - just wanted to share some more designs :)  In my Etsy shop - these would make great teacher's gifts, too! 

Oh Christmas Tree, a Hand Crafted Art Pendant :)

I love this one SO much!!  Available in my BeeDazzles Pendant shop, in limited numbers :)

Blog readers can save 25% - today only - on this or any other pendant at BeeDazzlesPendants, or on note cards, pocket mirrors or mini notes/gift tags at BeeDazzlesGifts  - just type "Bee's Buzzings" at Etsy checkout and I'll send you a revised PayPal invoice.

Limit one discounted pendant per person (and $10 maximum at BeeDazzlesGifts).

It's a great time to start Holiday Shopping!

And one more new Holiday / Christmas design!!

Whew, finished another one.  Later I'll be transferring these images over to Pocket Mirrors, Art Pendants, Mini Notes and Gift Tags.  For now I have some urgent matters . . .  er . . .  housework to attend to :)  The crumbs on the kitchen floor are forming an army and threatening to attack as I type this.

Thanks for all your wonderful comments!  Keep your eyes open for that one BIG giveway I keep hinting at  . . . sometime this weekend or early next week.

Sweet Little Christmas Birdies :)

My sleep schedule has been off lately, which means I'm having a lot of quiet time in the mornings.  Have been putting that to good use by getting some more Holiday Artwork finished.  Yayy!! 

The only issue so far?  I'm having a hard time choosing which one I like best!

This year most cards are being offered with a choice of phrases on the front, at no additional charge.  Any that say "Happy Holidays", "Merry Christmas" or "Season's Greetings" can be switched to one of the other phrases for free.  And personalization is available on ALL cards, for a small added fee.  See shop listings in Holiday Items section of my Etsy shop for details.

Which one is your favorite??

 

Sweet Little Christmas Trees . . . all covered in Mittens

I'm really loving this new design . . . finally got the listing into the shop after a very exciting day of lunching and craft show shopping with my good friend, Marguerite.

Also, here's another fun giveaway on this sleepy Friday evening.  Just go through the listings in my shop (click) and find the listing with this Bee showing as the last photo.  Be the first to find it, place your order through Etsy (mark 'other during checkout'), and then come back here and leave a comment saying you found it.  Voila!  The item will be marked PAID and will be shipped to you, as a thanks for reading this blog.  UPDATE:  FOUND!

And don't despair if someone beat you to the prize.  I'll be tallying comments once again for a separate giveaway very soon - the more comments you leave (on this or any other blog post), the more entries you have to win :)

Have a great weekend, I'll be working on more new art and will be checking back in again soon!

Bee

p.s. another great week with my Fitness Goals . . . am amazed at how everything just fell into place this time.  I'm eating and exercising well, and the scale is supplying awesome results :)

New Holiday Designs . . . and a quick contest :)

Just a sneak peek of some new Christmas Tree Holiday Cards, in my Etsy Shop.  Working on more fun holiday artwork which will be posted soon. 

Also a quick contest.  First one to find this sweet little snowman pocket mirror (in my shop), wins it for free.  Just be the first one to order it, and mark "other" for a payment type when checking out and I'll mark it paid and pop it in the mail to you!  UPDATE:  FOUND!!  :)

These make great little stocking stuffers or teacher gifts.  Please leave a comment here if you were the winner, and for those of you who didn't win - your comment will count in yet another contest, to be held soon :)

and even more progress :)

Shop progress - am getting to the holiday artwork this week - yayyy!  Have also added more mini note combinations to my Etsy shop (and more to come soon!) but SO love these little mini bird notes - aren't they too cute??

House progress - we've been busy moving items back into the house - had to get everything out of the storage unit we rented while our house was on the market.  Will be listing some things on Craig's List, and have even more items heading to Goodwill.  The great news is that with all the re-arranging we'd done for prepping the house for showings, it looks fresher and even more inviting than before.  Life is good and I am now very excited about decorating for the holidays.

Personal progress - have been getting on the treadmill and continuing to eat well and lose more weight.  Am up to 2 miles jogging and have achieved a 6 pound loss after three weeks.  This is pretty eventful for me as I usually lose momentum after the first week or two  :)

Family progress - both Krist and Danielle have new 'driver' updates.  Kristi passed her driving test yesterday and was happily tooling around the neighborhood solo (we're taking it slow!) And Danielle, who passed her permit test recently, had her first opportunity to drive after Kristi and I got home.  It was a nice bonding moment for the girls - and probably a day neither is likely to forget.  They both did great, but my stomach was still in knots. 

You'd think after going through this with the first two, I'd just take it in stride . .  . but oh well, that's just not happening LOL :)

CONTEST progress - and lastly, here is the first of 3 opportunities to win a FREE BeeDazzles item:

The first person to comment (below) can go select ANY art pendant for FREE.  Just click here to view my Pendant Shop, and then transact the pendant of your choice and I will mark it PAID and ship it to you (you'll need to have an Etsy account to do this).  And if you're not first - well, just be on the lookout in the next few days - there will be two more winners!

Thanks again for stopping by, and hope you have a great day!

Bee

Making progress

Aren't these little guys just SO cute??  A glass mirror on one side, and sweet Holiday motifs on the other!  They make great stocking stuffers or hostess gifts. Or keep a supply on hand for those unexpected gift-swapping situations :)

In addition to finally getting some holiday images set up for pocket mirrors, I'm also thrilled to say that I'm making progress in another area of my life as well - and am down another 1.5 pounds this week (for a total of 4.5 so far).  One thing is certain - it's a LOT easier to jog with 4.5 fewer pounds!  Which gives me additional motivation to keep going. 

Will let you know how it continues, but I do know the timing is finally right for me to focus on this now.

In addition to the extra fitness and studio time, we've also been busy with the girls' fall sporting events, yard chores and Vikings football. I love autumn and all the activities we're involved with this time of year!

Hope you have a great night!

Bee

I love new beginnings!

Although it feels more like Winter here with the recent snow, I know it's really still Fall.  And boy-oh-boy do I love Fall!  For me, it's always been the time of year for new beginnings.  Guess I'm still hard-wired to the academic calendar year.  You know - the new shoes, clothes, folders and a fresh set of pencils.  Anything was possible!

I've heard many people agree with me about this.  I mean, seriously, if you're going to start something new, trying to get momentum going in the dead of winter when there are barely 6 hours of daylight (here in Minnesota at least) seems like a recipe for disaster!

And also like many other people, I dislike limbo.  Two things that kept me unsettled for the past 5 or so months were 1) getting the house ready and having it on the market and 2) knowing I still had to get all my bookkeeping done for our extended tax deadline.  And the more stressed I was, the harder it was to eat right.  So now that both those issues are resolved, and *voila* it's the right time of year . . . I'm finally getting back on track to getting this extra weight off and am also back to jogging again.

Will share a bit more later about my preparation and follow through - but for now am just very pleased to say that I lost 3 pounds last week!  woo hoo!

In addition to my own little self-congrats, I'd also like to congratulate Janae and Dianne for being the first two to visit here and comment.  Despite my very bad blogging habits they continue to check in - and I appreciate that!  They're the winners of the first two $15 merchandise awards - some of the spontaneous give aways I mentioned previously.  

My thanks to all of you who have stopped by recently - hope you have a great weekend.  I'll catch up with you soon about the weight loss progress - and with another winner or two :)

Lots of updates . . . and the start of an early winter

I'm always amazed at how quickly time goes by.  It seems every time I turn around another 3 weeks has passed since my last blog post!!  Will try and do better about keeping up. I mean, it's certainly not for a lack of things to share. Since the last post we've had two more birthdays (Katie's 20th and Kristi's 16th) and we also made a big decision about our house.   

Jim and I were both pretty excited about the idea of downsizing and fast-forwarding our plans for an eventual lake place.  So we priced our home somewhat realistically to start (about 10% off 2007 values) . . . or so we thought.  Well, the price brought in a handful of showings - so it must have been 'fair' at the very least.  But things weren't moving as quickly as we'd have liked so we did the updates mentioned earlier (hardwood and appliances), and as further incentive we dropped the price $30,000 in hopes of enticing a quick sale . . . and were unpleasantly surprised to have the showings drop off along with our price.

So after a few weeks of practically no showings we finally decided to drop the price another $23,000 - which put us within about $10,000 of our bottom that we were willing to take.  Of course this would bring some buyers in, right?  Wrong. Nada.  Seriously not one phone call.  So rather than continue to kick ourselves, we finally looked deeper into the market and realized that the statistics spoke for themselves.  Of the 22 homes in our school district in a $200,000 range around our home's value that had come off the market in the previous month, only 2 had sold.  Two additional homes were 'pending' and the other 18 had expired or canceled the listings.  And of those sold and/or pending, I'm willing to bet most if not all were bank owned, and selling at a 30% discount.  Bottom line, having the house on the market proved to be an exercise in futility.

The good news?  There's really nothing about this house I don't like - it's just a little too big for our lives at this point.  But it's now also clean, repair-free, updated and de-cluttered.  Which makes it much easier to keep clean.  So, there IS a silver lining in every cloud!  And now that everything here is in order, I can once again turn my attention back to my studio and some new art - after all the holidays are approaching quickly, too!

Quite frankly, if the recent weather here is an indicator of what this winter is going to be like, I'm feeling VERY thankful we're not moving . . . check out this porch scene out from a week or so ago . . . brrrrrrrrr!

So be on the look out for new art, and (finally!) some contest winners in the weeks ahead.  Maybe even some spontaneous winners . . . peek back often and you may be one of them :)