Last Bead Along Projects

Well the bead along is officially finished! Here are some pictures of the last projects I received. If you haven't finished the project yet be sure to send me a picture when your finished so I can get it posted. A big THANK YOU to all who participated. I know a lot of you who attempted the projects learned some new techniques and are getting better at reading patterns. Since Grayson is due in August it may be awhile before we start another bead along but rest assured that I will be looking for a great book in the near future.

Jan Crosthwaite - Wallasey U.K.

I used 8/0 silver lined gold seed beads for the peyote band and 11/0 silver lined crystal seed beeds for the netting.

Jen Amaral

The colors I used for this project are black and raspberry seedbeeds.

Pat Jones - Huntsville AL

Here are my earrings, size 11 and 15 white seed beads with crystal volcano foil back chatons. You can't see it on the back...but I also used a light purple seed bead with the white so I could keep track of the increases. For me, this one was a definite challenge!

Kelly Dale - Forest City NC

I used 11/0 Duracoat Galvanized Egg Plant. Instead of using a different color seed bead I added a 3mm Swarovski Crystal. 

Cake turned out great!

So I got up this morning and made the icing for the cake. It's more like a sugar drizzle. It smelled so good but cutting and eating a cake at 7:00 am didn't seem like a feasible thing to do.

Sammy and I went and picked up his grill and when I came home I could no longer resist. I cut the cake and had a slice and it was wonderful! It was super moist and the strawberries tasted so good. If you get a chance I would highly recommend trying this recipe!

Staycation

A lot has been happening in my world over the last week or so. I was so excited because Friday I went to the Orthodontist and ended up getting my permanent retainers put in. I'm on the books to have my braces taken off July 22nd! I'm so excited and can hardly wait. Since I've gotten pregnant I've been hoping that I would get the braces off before I had Grayson and it's happening! Going to have to wear a retainer at night for the rest of my life but it's totally OK because it's pink and my new straight smile will be worth all the money.

I also had to go have my eyes checked last week. As always my eyes had gotten a little worse so I had to purchase new glasses. They ended up having to order my glasses but I'm looking forward to having new frames.

I had an Anesthesiologist appointment this morning. I had to go and talk to him about my pain options during birth. I really don't want to have to use him but it's better to be safe then sorry. After the appointment we were supposed to leave for the Beach. Sammy's whole family is there this week. After much thought though we decided to have a staycation instead. There is so much still to be done before Grayson gets here in August. Did we want to spend over 1000.00 on 3 days vacation or did we want to invest that money into the house? In the end the house won so we have been busy working from home today. Our first big project this week is the front walkway so we'll see how that turns out.

Tomorrow we have to go and pick up Sammy's new grill. We go to a church called NewSpring on Sunday nights about 40 minutes from our house. For fathers day they were giving away a 500.00 prize to one lucky dad. Well Sammy ended up winning! We were so shocked because there were about 600 dads at Sunday nights service! We go pick up his new mac daddy 5 burner grill tomorrow and then they will be delivering steaks to our house later this week. Sammy's first official Fathers Day was pretty awesome!

I went to the Grocery store today to pick up ingredients for a new recipe that I found on pinterest. It is for a Fresh Strawberry Yogurt Cake. It's pretty simple to make. The prep time is about 20 minutes but then it has to cook for 1 hour. I made the mistake of deciding to start making this cake at 9:00pm so by the time I got it out of the oven a few minutes ago I was ready to go to bed. I'm going to let it cool tonight and then add the lemon glaze tomorrow. I'll let you know how it turns out. You can find the recipe here: http://www.aspicyperspective.com/2010/05/farmstand-fresh.html  Here is what the cake looked like when I took it out of the oven a few minutes ago. It's all I can do not to dive right into it right now! I'll finish it tomorrow, post pictures, and let you know how it tastes. I love pinterest but sometimes things are not always what they seem. Some recipes look so easy or look like they will taste so great and when i make them they don't seem that easy or seem to taste that great. Anybody else have that problem?

Sorry for the delay!

Sorry for the delay in getting the recent pictures put up. I purchased a new lap top with Windows 8 on it last week and I'm still trying to learn the operating system and how to do all the things I need to do. The pictures I have received are awesome and I'm so proud of all of you who have challenged yourself and learned new techniques!

Jan Crosthwaite - Wallasey U.K.

I modified the pattern slightly adding 11/0 seed beads to the outer edge of the 14mm rivoli.

I used purple lined purple 11/0 & 15/0 seed beads, 14 & 16mm swarovski crystal clear rivolis and 6lb crystal fireline.

Jen Amaral

This project has been my favorite so far, the earrings are very elegant and 2 people have already asked me to make them a pair. They make an easy and fun gift.  I used emerald Swarovski rivolis, and black seed beads.

Cheryl I, Lake wallenpaupack,Pa

I made the bracelet on page 41 instead of the oval link bracelet.

I used: 6mm gold dyed fresh water drop pearls, toho 11/0  gold, toho 11/0 rose gold, 6/0 bronze