Etsy 100 GIVEAWAY!! :)

Hello out there friends and fans!  I'm hijacking the blog for business-related items for the next week or so in order to celebrate getting up to 100 items on my Etsy page!  It took a whole lot more time and effort than I expected, but now I'm enjoying being in the triple digits!  To celebrate this achievement, I'm hosting my first giveaway.  :-D

There will be two items that you can try to win, and I'm going to let an awesome website called Rafflecopter do all the work for me!  There are a few ways to get "points", and each point will gain you added advantage in the winners pot.  At the end of the giveaway, Rafflecopter will choose two entries at random.  And the best part?  I'll even ship you the item for FREE! :)  A gen-u-ine  giveaway!  Can you tell I'm excited?

So, here are your options.  Do note that some of the options for getting points you can do multiple days in a row.  Might want to keep that in mind if you really want to win! :)   (Reversible bow ties are a $12 value and the Satin Flowers with Ostrich feathers are a $15 value.)

Good Luck! :)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Didn't know I had an Etsy page?  Go check it out!! :)  Crafts By Libby

Out on a Limb (Or stem, as it were)

In recent weeks our family acquired two baby monarch butterfly eggs.  At this moment, they are both in chrysalis form--it's been an exciting process to watch!!  One particular part of the process keeps hanging on my mind, as it seems it could be a metaphor for so many of life's adventures.

I suppose it wasn't a part of the process, exactly.  It was more a simple moment in the process.  Every couple of days I had to change the milkweed leaves out so that the caterpillars had enough food for their exponential growth.  On this day, one of the caterpillars had eaten itself onto just the stem of the leaf.  For a solid three inches of stem, it had consumed all of the leaf substance previously surrounding that area.  All that remained was stem and caterpillar.

I keep thinking about life on a limb....  pondering how my life might be compared to this caterpillars... bent on nothing but consumption?  Risking injury to get what I want?  Pushing until there's nothing left?  Needing new direction?  Thinking about the present, without too much thought to the future?  Focusing on one area without seeing the big picture?

I'm not sure that all of these would apply to me.  I am sure that one could probably derive many more "wonderings" about life based on this simple picture.  It's just such an interesting image....plentiful milkweed, and there hangs the caterpillar, alone, on the end of the stem....

Just pondering.  Guess it's been one of those weeks, just to wonder about life and what we're all really doing.  (And what are we supposed to be doing....?)

A Fun Project

My four year old begs almost daily to do a new craft--a new craft that's "different" and more "exciting" than we've ever done before.  This is not only a difficult request, but truthfully becoming an increasingly annoying one.  While my head is swimming with all the things I have to get done, the pressure from a four year old to come up with an amazingly creative craft, is simply irksome.  As much as I try to dissuade him from crafting, he will not have it.

Thankfully, we recently read this book: http://www.amazon.com/Welcome-Home-Mouse-Elisa-Kleven/dp/1582462771/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1344993482&sr=1-2&keywords=a+home+for+mouse

It's an adorable book--both in content and artistry.  My children had me read it again and again until finally it was due back to the library.  In the book, the clumsy elephant creates a beautiful replacement home (since he accidentally ruins the first) for his new friend mouse.  The house in the story was what we might think of as a diorama, made with a box and other small random objects.  Thankfully, this book gave me an easy idea for craft time....

I was so appreciative of the hour or more I got to spend doing the dishes in quiet...while my son tirelessly worked on making this house a home.  We had even made popsicle stick people the day before (another days craft that I had to come up with...), so the house even had inhabitants upon its completion.

So, there it is, a nice new house....  would you want to live there?