I hope you all enjoyed/are enjoying some sort of celebration with the ones you love. New Years Eve has always been pretty low key for me as I’m not a huge fan of paying overpriced covers at clubs or standing outside in the cold for hours on end for a countdown.  As long as I’m surrounded by people that mean a lot to me, I couldn’t ask for more!

To gear up for 2010, I’ve been working on a handful of new pieces. This is one of them: The Luxurious Rocker Earrings!

Luxurious Rocker Earrings

Over the next few weeks I will be sharing pieces that will slowly be added to my Etsy shop. You will definitely notice a sparkly trend as I am currently going through a rhinestone & miniature ring kick!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas!

Since settling back in Canada, I’ve been trying to catch up with family and friends. It’s been a week full of lunch, dinner, and dessert outings. Picking up with those who I care about after 4 months of being away has been extremely gratifying and makes me realize how lucky I am to be surrounded by such wonderful people in my life.

Cupcakes!

Speaking of reconnecting, I couldn’t help by reconnect with my shop. After more than a two week hiatus, I realized that I couldn’t take any longer of a break. I know I said I would reopen shop on January 3, 2010, but I couldn’t help myself. I started getting the crafting itch and knew it was time to start making more jewelry.

Right now, I’m in the process of making new pieces for the winter/spring collection. Please bear with me as the shop is  slowly restocked.

Fallen Leaves

I’m trying to soak up as much Californian sun as I can before I head back to the dull, snow-filled east coast of Canada. I can’t believe that in some areas all the trees still have leaves on them, whereas there are other cities with sidewalks covered in leaves.  Oh California, I feel like I’m going to miss you a lot more than I think I will.

For all of you who stop by my Etsy regularly, you will have noticed that as of midnight on Dec 16, the shop is now closed. Don’t fret… it’s not going to be permanently closed. I’m in the process of relocating (again… yes, this is the story of my life. haha) and hope to reopen the shop in early January 2010.

I just wanted to thank everyone for all of the support in 2009. I’ve met so many amazing people through Etsy and cannot thank you all enough.

I hope you all have a wonderful winter holiday! I will be spending mine packing and moving back to the east coast of Canada. Hopefully I can still fit my life into those two tiny suitcases I moved out to California with!

As a Canadian living in California, I was really excited to hear that there would be no snow over the winter. Despite having lived in Canada all my life, I can’t say that I am a huge fan of winter sports or snow in general. However, I’ve been feeling a little homesick as of late and got a bit jealous when I heard that there was snowfall in Toronto.

Over the weekend, I went on a mini roadtrip in search of snow. After about 4 hours of driving there were snow-covered mountains!!

Highway Sights

More Snow!

As if a small taste of snow was not enough to satisfy my inner-Canadian-snow-seeking needs, 7000ft up a mountain proved to be extremely fulfilling in terms of snow quantity. (This photo was taken at the start of a blizzard… imagine how much snow was left on those trees by the end of it!)

Snow at a 7000ft elevation

This past weekend was spent catching up on some much needed quality time outdoors. It was nice to put everything aside for 4 days to enjoy life away from my laptop.

Aimlessly walking around

The hills were much bigger than I expected them to be. Try running up 3 of them to take photos!

View from the hill

I can’t believe it’s the first of December and still perfect cardigan weather!

I realize that it’s only Wednesday and I’m a day early with my Thanksgiving wishes, but I am starting my long weekend a day early.

I just wanted to give you all a heads up that I will be out of town and will have very limited access to my email while away. All orders will be shipped on Tuesday, Dec 1 when I return.

Before I leave, I wanted to share some silly photos I took last week. I purchased a cute wristlet from madebyhank on Etsy, and Katie included this awesome dinosaur figurine along with my package. I couldn’t help but hold a little photoshoot with this guy. He looked incredible against with the lush colors of the wristlet.

Mr.Dinosaur Man inspecting the package

Dancing in the lush green field

Wait a second... that's not a field! They're ruffles on a wristlet!

I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend! Eat lots of turkey and stuffing for me.

The holiday mail rush always makes me paranoid for one reason: What happens if the package doesn’t make it under the tree in time?

To ensure that your package arrives before Dec 25, the following dates for purchases are being suggested as a guideline:

• For domestic orders (within the US):  Dec 13
• For Canadian destinations: Dec 10
• For all other international destinations: Dec 7

Since we’re on the topic of presents, I figured I would share this amazing Etsy find with you:

Present Dress by imyourpresent

I’ve been a huge fan of Kelly’s work since I first discovered her shop in 2006. She always manages to make the cutest holiday appropriate attire! This “Present Dress” is no exception– I am in looooove!!

Since 2005, I have been trying to DIY at least 25% of my Christmas gifts. Not only has this been a wallet friendly alternative to buying from the mall, but it also gives that extra touch of personalization to the gift.

SUPER-SIZED Love Letter Necklace

This year, I’m aiming to support handmade for 100% of my gifts. I’ve been flipping through Etsy listings and adding a handful of items to my Favorites which will be purchased in the near future for gifting. I will still make a couple of the gifts myself, but there are just some items that are too cute to pass up on (i.e: Amigurumi dolls) that I do not currently possess the skills to make myself.

Belle of the Ball Earrings

With that said, I’m slowly in the works of adding all the holiday jewelry to my Etsy.  You can expect to see lots of sparkly, girly, dainty pieces. Just the perfect amount of understated  luxury  for your holiday accessorizing!

This past weekend has been filled with a lot of catching up on sleep and baking! Since moving to California, I haven’t had a lot of time (or motivation) to bake. This is partially due to the fact that I have an ill equipped kitchen.

To put things into perspective, I don’t even have a measuring cups! Yes, the most essential instrument for recipe following is absent in my kitchen. Did I mention that I am also lacking a mixing bowl?

It was an adventure and a half for me to bake cookies this weekend. I ended up using the biggest pot in the kitchen as a substitute for a mixing bowl. Since I purchased pre-packaged cookie mix, lacking measuring cups wasn’t a big deal.

pigs & birds

The only reason I felt like baking was because of these cute cookie cutters that I bought from Daiso a couple weeks ago. If you are anything like me and feel the need to fill your kicthen cabinets with animal-themed mugs, plates and utensils, you can count on Daiso to carry it! I bought 2 sets of cookie cutters: one with a bird and bunny, and another with a pig, dog and squirrel. The dog and squirrel cookie cutters looked a bit too intricate for my explosive chocolate chip cookies, so I passed on those shapes.

bunnies & smiles

Can you blame me for wanting to use the cookie cutters? I felt like a 5 year old all over again! Towards the end of the batch of 3 dozen cookies, I got lazy and stopped using the cutters and just made regular-shaped cookies. After realizing how cute the iced animal cookies turned out, I had to think of something clever to ice the regular-shaped cookies with. A smiley face seemed easy enough!

cookie overload!

An hour and a half later, I had close to three dozen kid-friendly-looking cookies!

After being on a baking hiatus for over 2 months, it definitely felt good to break out the oven mitts and icing tubes again.