October 10th 2015   Livermore, CA  11-5

Gem Hunter Designs will once again be at the Livermore ArtWalk! I love living and designing jewelry in Livermore. This is a sample of my ammo jewelry. The collection is called "Concealed Carry" Collection. The brass bracelet features .45 caliber shells and the silver ones are .40 caliber.

Kitchen and Great room Renovation time!

Some of you have seen and/or heard we are renovating our kitchen.  It's a whole DIY thing that has slowly morphed into YDI, (You Do It).  Here is what the kitchen, dinning and family rooms looked like when we toured the house to purchase, 3 years ago.  The social space of the home is all one great room which has 8 foot walls here and there, dividing up zones.  

The picture below is from the same angle..just about.

 I'm a bit closer in this one.  3 walls have been taken down, leaving the ENTIRE space an official great-room!  Yeah!  Now I can see windows and what my three kids are doing.  I'll post details of each phase or project soon.

Don't forget the Crickets!

 Yesterday was one of my taxi driver days.  No, I didn't shoot anyone, we were just driving all over the place.  I had many different errands to run; from going to the club, to the pet store, to the bank and to someones house.  After making breakfast and getting all three kids dressed or swim suited, we all loaded up into the car and headed to the swim club.

Once we found a parking spot that was less than a quarter mile away, I loaded up my purse, gym bag, jewelry design tote, swim related bag and a diaper bag.  Pack mule mommy!  Once at the facility, I walked my oldest to her swim team practice, one into the KidFit program and checked the youngest one into the nursery.  I sat down.

I was at an outside table overlooking the pools and could feel the breeze.  It was nice, not too breezy that it would blow away my design sketches.  I have a couple boxes of agate stones that needed homes designed.  So after sketching necklace and pendant designs for 30 minutes I packed everything up and went to pick up my 5 year old son.  He has swim lessons today.  After those were over we got the toddler and drove to the bank then back home.

My daughter has Jazz dance, (at the club we were just at), today so we had approximately 2.5 hours to eat lunch and make sure the toddler got his nap.  Toddler woke up just before we had to leave, so I fed him lunch in the car on the way back to the club.  One of the many reasons my car is a pig sty.  I dropped both boys off at the nursery and brought my daughter to the Jazz class.  I had around 35-45 minutes to work out!  After that we all got loaded up again and headed straight to a friends house to drop something off then back home again.  We had to be back at the club for swimming, dinner and root-beer floats FOR THE THIRD TIME.  So, I had to make dinner for 5, pack it in portable containers and make sure we got BACK there on time because I was helping to run the root-beer float station.

After all was done and done, us 5 packed up and went home.  When I finally laid down to sleep, I realized I forgot to go by the pet store and buy a box of crickets for the gecko my daughter, (me and husband), is babysitting for the summer.  I did, however, manage to sneak an extra float for myself.  I deserved that at least!






 

I did what on my birthday?

I finally made a decision, probably not the final decision.  Anyone who knows me knows I always leave room for improvement, aka: I can always change my mind!  I've been toying with the idea of a blog for a while now and have decided I'll do it!

On my birthday, very, very late into the night, (I was subsequently tired the next morning), I thought about what part of my life my friends and/or readers would want to read about.  People often ask me about what we're doing with our house, how's the jewelry design business going, (what Art Fair will you be at next?), and they ask about my kiddos.  Writing is not my talent, however I enjoy telling people stories, especially funny ones.  As I make blog entries, I'll be taking this opportunity to sharpen my writing skills.
First blog entry accomplished!