Our First Winter Storm

This post may be late, but I wanted to share the craziness and beauty of the first storm of the year. On Jan 16th, we had our first snowfall, and school was delayed 2 hours. That was the only time school was in for the week. The rest of the week was canceled because of the crazy amount of snow and then ice we had.  It was beautiful, the girls loved to play in the snow, and we all just stayed home and didn't go anywhere as the roads were pretty dangerous.

After the ice storm, power was out for almost 200,000 homes in the area. We are lucky that we live on the same power grid as the fire station, so we lost power several times, but never more than 10 hours. A lot of my friends weren't so lucky and were without power for 5 days. The beauty of the frozen trees came at a hefty price, so many trees snapped in half under the weight of all the ice. Thankfully we didn't lose any trees, just lots of big branches.

During all of this, I also packed in the dark to got to my sister's home in Texas. Some wonderful friends agreed to take me to the airport on Thursday morning because neither of our cars would have made it, and sadly once we were 10 minutes away from the airport, my flight was canceled. By Sat morning, most of the snow and ice was gone, and I was happily boarding my flight to Texas.

Bead Soup is in the mail!

I am happy to say that my bead soup is in the mail and on its way to Jennifer. I had fun picking out beads in the dark before I left on my trip to come to Texas. Once here, I was happy with the beads I picked and was able to come up with what I hope will be a fun soup for her. Here is a sneak peak at her soup!

I get to play in the 5th Bead Soup Blog Party!

I am so excited, I am on of the lucky 200 people who was picked to participate in this party! Lori Anderson  of Pretty Things puts this together and does such a great job that she had over 350 people wanting to participate this time. So we all signed up knowing that there was a chance we wouldn't get to participate this time, well, at least not send out soup, but I know I would still be blog hopping to see all the fun even if I wasn't picked!

My partner this time is Jennifer Justman of Souls Fire Designs.  Turns out Jennifer lives in the PNW as well. She is in Oregon, so she was also hit by the crazy weather we have had. We have a lot in common from our love of designing jewelry, of course, to favorite colors (blue) and a love of reading. I can't wait to put together a fun soup for her. :)

I think this is my favorite piece she has in her etsy shop right now, I can't wait to see what she will do with the soup I send her. :)

Ceramic Gemstone Dark Brass and Silk Bracelet: Flower in Winter