First sale!!

I made my first sale this past Saturday. I was mid-transition from one store to my new store and I thought I lost an item. Lo and bohold, it had been sold! Shrunken head creations is now closed and VouDou Regal, a name that better embodies the feeling of my creations, is now officially in business. The items from the ld store that have been added to the new will have fresh pictures, which means it'll take a bit to get it all moved. I fell like this first sale is a good omen. Thank you etayotateya for buying Le grand Fleur De Lis.

New jewelry for sale. Click here

I just made a bunch of new jewelry and put them up for sale on Etsy.com
Looksies...

My organic garden. This is whay I havent blogged in a while.

Wow its been a while since I've last blogged. I guess I've been so busy planning my organic veggie garden that I've forgotten to write.
That's right, organic vegetable garden. In the back yard where there were once huge fallen oak trees now lies a nice cleared area and a small pile of smoldering leaves and wood bits. There are still a few huge logs but they're out of the way and will eventually get chopped up for next winter's firewood and what wont chop will be burned outside. My BF and I cleared away all the brambles and blackberry thorns and I now have a nice clear space to plant a good sized veg garden.

Its been raining a lot lately so I took the opportunity to start my seeds inside in egg cartons. I filled them with potting soil, planted my seeds and covered the whole thing with plastic wrap and set on the window sill on the south side of the house to germinate. I have a few that have already started. I planted
Basil
broccoli
brussel sprouts
Buttercrunch lettuce
Beans, pinto
Beans, green
Beans, black
Beans, lima
Cabbage
Cantaloupe
Carrots
Chamomile
Chili peppers
Chives
Cilantro
Collards
Copenhagen cabbage
Eggplant
Garlic
Green bell pepper
green onion
green onion2
Jet star tomatoes
Lavender
Marigold
Mint
Okra
Peas
pickling cucumbers
Potatoes
Red onions
roma tomato
Rosemary
Round dutch cabbage
spinach
Sweet yellow peppers
watermelon
white daisies
yellow daisies
yellow squash
zucchini
and a green heirloom cotton that I am totally psyched about.

Once my plants get growing and make seeds I plan to do some seed saving. I'm curious to see what happens with the jet star tomato though, as it is a hybrid and its offspring wont turn out like the parent plant.

So, in my little back yard area I plan to do a "lasagna" or no-till type garden. This means that instead of tilling up the dirt, which is clay, I will lay down a thick layer of newspaper, then leave, then straw, then maybe some more leaves, lol, since I have plenty, and finally some top soil i bought for cheap mixed with what I've been composting for the past year. I only got the top soil for this season. The yard needs to be built up as it has a drainage problem and it needs better soil. the layers of the lasagna will decompose and help to improve the soil conditions. I've also been thinking about getting some wheat or barley to plant in the off season as a cover crop as it will help replenish the nutrients in the soil.

I'm getting some free landscaping timbers from a friend and for my plant supports, i.e. tomato's peas, etc. I am using cane poles since I have a plethora of cane growing in my front yard.

Aside from the garden I've been trying to get my alpaca fibers spun and out of the way because I am getting 3 Jacob's sheep fleece from my aunt who has a petting zoo. Its going to be a lot of work cleaning and carding all that fleece. I'm excited about it though. It will be a new experience and a chance to learn something. plus, I will have lots of wool to spin into lots of yarn to weave and crochet. I'm going to attempt to make a frame loom with some salvage lumber and supplies I already have. I haven't quite figured out the design though. I need to finish getting my garden ready before I can focus on the loom.

Oh, I also got a little dog. I'm not normally a little dog person, but this one was free and needed a good home. He's a Chinese crested hairless and his name is Brody. He's a sweet little dog and goofy as heck. I've had him for a week now. He follows me all over the yard and likes to eat the cold charcoal from around the fire. Weird dog.

Well, that's about all I've got. Until next time...

DLL HELL

OMG! I have been without a properly functioning computer for a week. I just reformatted my hard drive this morning and finally got my computer back to its normal working self.

A week ago my boyfriend was getting online to check his bank account and some strange windows started popping up. Pro Antispyware 2009 is the Devil! It started running all of these processes that made my computer run slow and freeze and it wouldn't let me get onto certain websites that had anything to do with anti-virus, anti-spyware. I found info on how to manually uninstall it, that didn't work. I went through my registry, my hard drive, deleted anything that had something to do with this thing and that still didn't work. I bought Defender pro 5 in 1 antivirus, that didn't work. After it scanned about 20% of my hard drive the whole computer froze. A friend burned a copy of malware bytes for me and I couldn't even get it to run. Ai Dios Mio! My last resort was to either get professional help (too expensive) or reformat the hard drive (free). I opted for the cheaper and am now enjoying the "out of box experience".

I think I lost a few pictures though. I put what I could onto photo bucket. Eventually my computer started to freeze every time I tried to upload my pictures so I could only upload so many. I threw whatever else I had important onto a 2g flash drive and called it a day.

The only thing that sucks about starting anew is all these programs that I never use that come pre-installed with your operating system. I don't like to pay for what I don't have to and Mcafee requires a monthly subscription That costs as much as my credit card bill. I never use the google tool bar or the google desk top, I'd just rather go to google.com

So, after a week of headache and probably a new grey hair or two. I have a fully functioning computer and no more stupid malware keeping me from my daily computing.

Fancy cake

I made my very first professional looking cake Sunday night. It came out really well. Its a red velvet round cake with cream cheese icing, pink roses and "Happy Birthday" in green.

I've been wanting to take cake decorating classes for years now but could never find the time because of my schedule. I've learned a lot of things from very helpful Youtube videos like embroidery and spinning yarn so I figured, Why not learn about cake decorating? I found tons of videos, most very informative, and followed those. I ran into one problem. I was using store bought "whipped" cream cheese icing which was a little too soft to do anything 3 dimensional. Even after I added about a cup of confectioners sugar my roses seemed to melt off the rose nail. I had to chill my icing in the fridge to make it more firm, and them when I made my rose I had to get it into the freezer as soon as I made it so it wouldn't fall off the nail. I must have made about 100 roses, but only ended up with about 10 on the cake. I worked out well though, just in the future I will have to make my own icing and not use that funky store bought stuff.

I'm bringing the cake to work tonight for Barb's birthday. I'm sure everyone will enjoy it, I'm just hoping that I get it there alright. I'm totally looking forward to making more cakes. I want to learn how to make gum paste flowers and work with fondant. Look out Sylvia Weinstock! LOL

Something new

OK. My boyfriend is from Mississippi. The country part. He really likes chicken livers, fried especially. I am not an organ meat eater, as far as i know (McDonald's?). They kind of gross me out though I really don't know why. Maybe it's because the organs aren't the "prime" part of the animal that most people eat.

I went grocery shopping today and picked some up. A pint of liver, is that what its called? So, there's a pint of bloody chicken livers in my fridge and I plan on surprising B.A. w/ some home-made fried chicken liver. I don't think he's had them since we went to Koz in June. Here's the clincher... I'm going to try them!! Who knows, I may like them. Besides, I'm also a really good cook and I have to make sure they taste good. No other way to do that than to taste them.

I hope they come out alright.

Life in general

I 25 soon to be 26 and I've been getting heartburn for the first time in my life. What is up with this? I had plain 'ol bacon and eggs for breakfast followed by heartburn an hour later.

The first time it happened I was at work, working the night shift, and decided that I would eat some garlic bagel crisps for a midnight snack. Oh my gosh! About an hour later I had heartburn that radiated from my ears to my elbows. I ate pepto tablets antacids and it still wouldn't go away completely. It finally went away when I got home that morning and ate some yogurt and drank a glass of milk. Apparently milk is the savior.

Is this old age setting in? I suppose now I really have to watch what I eat. I'm of Cajun and Italian decent. I love spicy foods, garlic and tomato sauces.

Oh what a year! I stop drinking alcohol because all it does is make me tired and now I have to give up my favorite pungent and acidic foods. I suppose I'll do anything just to avoid "the menacing burn".