I love long weekends

Long weekends are so sweet.  I've had time to work on the major amount of orders in my jewelry shop, I've been able to read a lot of Nicholas Sparks' new book (it's a really poorly written one...like the worst of all of his books...but it's a quick read and I love when a book makes me feel like a fast reader, which I am definitely not).  The girls have been (**knock on wood**) super good and we took them to the Garden of the Gods yesterday...oh my god, I've never seen a more beautiful park.  I couldn't even describe it with words.  And so perfect for our kids...flat trails throughout with short detours into the most peaceful and beautiful little clusters of trees and logs.

I might take the dog there for a short walk/run today...it's only about 25 minutes away from our house.

I'm really excited about my jewelry shop right now.  I wanted my 33rd year to be filled with writing and trying to get my book published but my motivations are kind of shifting toward getting the jewelry shop to be successful enough to justify only doing that.  Father's Day has been as big as my Christmases usually are, which is so inspiring.  I'm going to add these bangles today and tomorrow:

I've made a half dozen more charms to swap out of the stainless steel bangle and there will be the option to add charms.  I really love working on new ideas like this.  I'm hoping my non-holiday months can become more successful with these types of anytime options, that might make doing only this a little more realistic.

I'm going to get back to reading and editing some images so I can turn them into stamps for the metal clay (footprints, kids' drawings, handwriting...one for the husband who wants me to make a keychain for his friend who just made Master Sergeant in the Air Force)...Busy, busy, busy...but a really good kind of busy.