My mom, the artist

I'm still reeling from last night's Kenny Loggins performance. It was a-freakin-mazing. And he fell in love with my cousin, so that was just the cherry on top. The cherry on top of that cherry was hanging out with Kenny's guitarist, Gene, and drummer, Chris, who also drums for Pat freakin Benetar and perhaps, just maybe, he'll get to putting us on the list when she comes to town in July. Love is a gol'darn battlefield!

(Oh, and we taught Gene and Chris two Texisms: "muggin' down" and "tumped over." Don't know what those mean? Move to Texas and you'll soon find out.)

Despite all of the crazy goodness last night, this morning I'm draggin' like a catfish at the bottom of Lake Lavon. So imagine my delight when I got this in my inbox this morning:

That is not a photograph. It's a drawing my mom did recently of her cat, Katy. Isn't it wonderful? My mom's been taking a drawing class at Richland (ain't retirement great?) and this is her latest triumph. Here's another particular favorite of mine that she did in pastels:

Who new all of us kin were so darn artistically inclined?

And did I mention Kenny Loggins *hearts* my cousin?

OCA Studio Tour Nerves

Surprisingly, my nerves have been rather calm this week considering the fact that I will soon have complete strangers tromping up my driveway, onto my deck, and into my sunroom to (let's hope) purchase tons and tons of Tefi jewelry.

Being the anal shebang! that I am, I created a calendar of "To Do" items for this week, and so far I am on track. Tonite I will finish passing out invites and brochures to my neighbors, and I will get all of my jewelry out on the tables and lookin' purty. I took some pics just for you.

This is where I will hang the majority of my lesser-priced Pottery Shard pieces, as well as display some CLEARANCE items in an attempt to reduce my bulging inventory (tilt head to side):

Here's one of the three main display tables plus the old sewing table I found at a thrift store. I bought and stained the wooden top myself and have yet to screw it on so it just sliiiiides around. Another unfinished project is that red and blue carry-tote-thingy on the sewing table. It displays my Escapulario collection - some pieces are hanging from the handle and some are lying in a bed of uncooked rice. Rice makes an excellent display element! (I will have a tutorial blog entry once I get around to decoupaging and sealing the tote.)

This here is a little table that normally houses my indoor plants in the sunroom. Right now it's exploding with trendy chandelier earrings!

This is the center table - yes that's my dining room table, and yes I carried it all by myselfs into the sunroom. Kung Fu has made me one strong mutha! We will leave the sofa in the room for the time being and have the telly tuned to some background muzak.

Okay, do the head tilty thing one last time to see the pretty-in-pink table that will house Tefi's signature Juicy Fruit pieces. Just to the right of this table is the large step leading into the kitchen and the rest of the house. The Hukills let me borrow a four-panel screen that will go up right there to keep the lookey-loos from roaming around the pad.

Now why aren't the hyper links working? you may ask. Good question. I'm about to take my site off line to keep customers from double-buying pieces that I will have for sale at my studio this weekend. Want to buy a Tefi piece now because you can't come to the Studio Tour? No problem. Just email me. God, I love you.

Price Calculator - so cool!

I have found one of the coolest resources out there. It makes my compulsive, crazy organization-oriented brain jump for joy. I had a little trouble with it at first, but once I figured out what the deal-io was, it has been a major help for me in pricing my pieces.

One major thing I learned was that I was pricing most things way too low, and some things way too high. Whoops. Now, instead of using the basic pricing formula I was using before, I am using this to reprice all of my pieces.

My plans are to keep web prices around wholesale levels, and show prices around retail levels. This will help me compensate for all of the time, energy, and work it takes for me to travel to show locations, set up my displays, and sell for hours at a time. Web sales, of course, have very little overhead, and shipping costs cover most of the work and supplies it takes to mail out my goods. So, I'll keep the web prices low in the interest of sticking to Tefi's mission:

The mission of Tefi Designs is to create original handmade jewelry that is beautiful, unique, and above all - affordable.

Here's a snapshot of what the calculator (designed by Eni Oken) looks like:


And here's the link: http://www.enioken.com/jewelry/pricecalc.html

Enjoy!

tragedy

This is from a bulletin I posted this afternoon on Myspace.

I'm keeping track of the breaking news on CNN.com regarding the massacre at Virginia Tech this morning. So far, 32 (unconfirmed) people are dead, including the gunman, person unknown.

There are reports of students jumping out of classroom windows in a panic to get away from the gunfire. Some students were killed as they sat in classrooms, and some were killed in several buildings, including a large dorm.

So far, this is the worst school shooting. Before that, the record went to Columbine in 1999 and UT Austin (my alma mater) in 1966.

I'm hardly capable of understanding what happened, and it's hard for me to type this. I hope what I reported is accurate.

I'm an atheist and would never proselytize, but I do ask that you keep the students, faculty, and their families in your thoughts, etc.

Read about it here: http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/16/vtech.shooting/index.html

The Way the Cookie Crumbles

I've decided that if the world ended today and I could only have two thing to eat for the rest of my life, it would be coffee with half-n-half and an endless bowl of guacamole. That led me to think of my guacamole recipe (see archives) and take note of my rumbling stomach. She's been talking on overtime ever since I finished off a large guacamole salad with 3 flour tortillas last night for dinner. My stomach bitched so much it kept Oliver on guard til after midnight. Perhaps I should rethink my apocalyptic fare after all.

So this morning as I'm shushing my tummy, I get on the elevator and right next to me is the star of the following blog post. I nearly wet my pants. But he didn't seem to remember me, or at least had the wherewithall to act like a grown-up. We exchanged pleasantries, remarked on the remodelling of the lobby, and bid each other fare thee well when I came to stop. What a day this promises to be.

POSTED: April 2, 2007 (on my old Myspace blog)

I had one of those Huh? moments today.

Walking through the lobby after lunch up to my office, I was in a daydream. I think I was humming to myself and wondering why I ate that whole Chipotle veggie fajita bowl and is it possible to eat too much guacamole? I was sort of pissy, as I usually am at the end of my lunch hour, when a man in the lobby looked at me. Whatevs, I kept my head up and kept toward the elevator. Then he turned away and then turned back around and looked right at me again. But like for several seconds, so it was creepy. There was no one else in the lobby! So without thinking, I frowned, looked right at him, and snapped, "What?!"

He sort of started and looked surprised. He turned and walked away, through the first set of elevators and onto the other side of the lobby, out of sight. I sort of laughed to myself as I thought, "What, am I eight years old?"

I must have been in a state. Sometimes I just say things without wondering first, "Hmm, is this socially acceptable?" And most times I just don't give a damn. People shouldn't stare; it's rude. So yeah, you wanna look at me you looky-loo? Then I'm gonna ask you what's up. Then I'm going to laugh to myself all the way up to my office and then I'm going to sit myself down at my desk and work some more on these damn HUD applications, then I'm going to open my Secret Stash and eat two Cadbury creme eggs and then I'm going to blog about the whole damn thing and laugh all over again.

Then I'll eat one more Cadbury creme egg and slip into another daydream of Chipotle and mounds and mounds of fresh, green guacamole.

DIY Health Care

When I'm in my "lady way" and I've got the cramps like nobody's business, I find the only remedy is coffee, chocolate, getting ticked off at random things, and kung fu.

So far, I've had 3 cups of coffee, I'm sucking on a Daim chocolate, I am mad at my stapler, and I have kung fu training tonite. I'm on the road to recovery.

Other rememdies: heating pad, Midol, venting, my boyfriend calling me for no reason, and making jewelry. Right now I am inspired to create a piece called Boomshine, in homage to my new favorite techno pasttime. I'll post a pic soon as I make it!

Nappyheaded

In the wake of this Rutgers/Imus hullaballoo, I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. For those of you who haven't crawled out from under your rock lately (sometimes it's just better to stay buried!), I'm talking about shock jock Don "not funny anymore" Imus' comment about the Rutgers women's basketball team being a bunch of "nappyheaded hoes." I mean, to me the most offensive part is that it's simply not funny. If you're going to insult a group of people, at least be funny about it. So I did a Google images search to see what these nappyheads looked like. First off, let me say that I think the term "nappyhead" should be positive. There have been many mornings when I wake up and think, yeah, I really dig my nap. If I were a black woman, I'd have a big ol' fro, Foxy Brown style. The bigger, the better. But Imus meant it in a mean, schoolyard bully way, and that's just not cool. When I typed in "Rutgers basketball" into the images search, I found this:

How cool is that? Here's what the web site says about the women in this photo:

"Women's basketball became a popular sport for high school girls in the early twentieth century. These Ridgewood High School girls are dressed in the middie blouses, knee-length bloomers, and dark stockings that were considered appropriate athletic attire. Holding the basketball is Elizabeth Brackett, team captain, who became a doctor with a practice in Nutley."

We learn something new every day. Oh, and Imus should be fired.

Polka Dots: Techno DIY

This morning in my inbox Daily Candy left me nice little surprise. It's a Flash game called Boomshine and it's super simple. Here, I'll let the creator explain it to ya: "Boomshine is an addictive Flash casual game. Click the screen to start a chain reaction and try to explode as many dots as needed to pass a level. The game contains 12 levels ranging from the easy to the hard (only 3.97% of games pass level 12). Over 3 million games have been played by over 100,000 different players." Apparently, the Georgia Tech student and his girlfriend created this game in one night. Pretty cool, considering I don't even know why I've wasted 15 minutes trying to pass level 12. I got as close as 54 out of 55 stinkin' dots. Aesthetically I love the game because it reminds me of all those groovy 60s polka dot prints - dresses, mini-skirts, sofas, lava lamps. Give it try. I think you'll find it as fun as I do: http://www.k2xl.com/games/boomshine/