RIP Donna Summer, you brightened my teen years and you will be missed.

with a Google checkout shop for Purple Ducky Designs.

I'd explored everything I could to find an alternative to Etsy to sell my creations thru, but the shops at Amazon and Yahoo! were too expensive for what I need. The final selling point for the Google checkout was they have a shop gadget that lets me add my creations to it and put on various websites. So on my Blogger blogs the gadget is in the side bar. I've set it up on my gallery under the shop button. For here I have it above next to my Zazzle shop gadget.

Right now I just have the earrings I have currently made. I will be adding my sun catchers as soon as I get pictures of them and then brooches and pendants as they are made and photographed. I will also be posting my mobiles once I get them made.

Yesterday I made tri-color quinoa cooked in turkey stock with dried wild mushrooms. After it was cooled I drizzled in some olive oil and a bit of sesame oil. I then added some sheep/goat milk feta and topped with fresh green onions. It was even better today for lunch.

The Palouse Women Artist's Alphabet project is out and about and in windows around town. Here is mine:



WAY cool location too:

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HAPPY DANCE!!!!!!

Had a very good weekend. Saturday we dropped some old blankets and stuff off at the Humane Society, several bags of books and video tapes at the Hope Center, picked up a splice piece to fix the water line on the ice maker in the fridge. So now we have ice, no lake on the kitchen floor and the cold water tap turned back on. Trying to do dishes by hand when all you have it hot water to the sink makes things very interesting (and very, very burny. Hot water is REALLY hot!).

Celebrated Beltane Saturday night. It was a very enjoyable rit and we had lots of fun. Saw the super moon, tried to get pics, did get some nice ones, but not quite what I wanted.

Sunday we decided to drive up to Spokane for the day. Had a lovely day, got a new dress at Target:




Managed to NOT spend too much money while up there. Picked a few things up and had dinner before driving home.

One of these will be hanging in the Beyond Retro at Mikey's Gyros starting May 21st and will hang for Art Walk.

I did the background in MyPaint, Hippie Dippy Hippie was drawn in GIMP and I merged the two in Inkscape. Once I printed them out I hand colored in the ground and flowers with colored markers and did the borders with the markers. Poster board and a foam core backing complete the pieces.

Definitely got the technique for rice noodles down:



Dinner last night was grill pork and rice noodles with pad thai paste. Made for a very yummy lunch today.

So been putter a bit. We went to Lewiston to shop, found a really cute dress at Ross and some cool sandals at Pay Less. Fixed the leak in the hose for the icemaker in the freezer. We'd been without cold water for a week and we had to move the deep freeze AND the fridge to get tot he back and those to figure out what the problem was. So we should have cold water now that we've repaired the hose.

Got my art for the Mikey's Retro show done (well, almost, still need to trim the edges of the mat to make them straight. I can't cut a straight line with an x-acto knife and a straight edge to save my life). So just need to get it to the person who is coordinating collecting all the art for the show.

So, just puttering along.

I have conquered glass noodles!



Finally ot the technique of soaking them in hot water long enough to be edible. I am a bit addicted to them. The other day I tossed a chunk o'beef on the grill and soaked some glass noodles (cellophane noodles or simply mung bean noodles) and then tossed those with some spinach, olive oil and a dash of sesame oil. Re-heated very nicely for lunch the next day.

Now that I have the method down (knock on wood) I will see about expanding my GF noodle repertoire for deliciousness noodles, esp noodles for pad thai which are still hit and miss when I try and cook them. Now I need to see what noodle recipes are on the intrwebz and see what I cn come up with to avoid falling into a cooking rut.

It is supposed to be nice. I am hoping to open up the house some more, if only during the day. Maybe even get the kitty window open so I don't have to keep letting them in and out.

Got some ideas for gardening. Saw a way cool idea on Facespace for using rain gutters for planters. I have extra gutters and the wire shelves I have on the outside of my porch aren't quite cutting it (can't get them level and my pots try and slide off). SO I will pull those and use the gutters instead for my salad greens and herbs. The gutters are bright white, may look at picking up some spray paint suitable for plastics and see about some cool colors (and since I want to spray paint the plastic buckets I use for container gardening, that would be perfect). GO for a very colorful garden in more ways then one!

Planning a dump run tomorrow. Tried last week, but when we got there discovered they only took cash or checks, neither of which we had (we are pretty sure we are over the 500 lb limit to dump for free). So we turned around and headed home. Pretty silly I think, who the heck carries cash or checks anymore since hardly anyone in this town takes checks anymore. Everyone uses plastic. Ah well, we'll get the one load out and add some more and may make a 2nd run.

Been looking at ways to sell my stuff online. As mentioned previously, Etsy is out since I refuse to have anything to do with Paypal. Looked into Google checkout and still haven't made up my mind on it, online reviews of it are pretty mixed leaning towards the negative. What I would like is Etsy without Paypal since something like it makes it easy to get seen. Looked at Amazon shops and Yahoo shops. Both too expensive to think about right now.

Working on trying to get a Kickstarter project going to expand my recycled computer jewelry and art. While I can do webdesign, I am pretty basic and I would like to get a professionally designed page to merge my Zazzle and Purple Ducky jewelry/art sites. So I am getting that proposal written up. Still need to do a short vid for it and then I will submit it and hope it is accepted and people would want to invest in me. I will post about it later.

So my poor Lumix DMC-FH20 has issues. The ring with the shutter fell off and fell apart. The sensor is seriously full of dust that shows up on my pictures. I've also gone as far as I can go with the quality of pictures. I still want a DSLR, got my eye on a Canon Rebel T1 at Costco that comes with two lenses, but it will be a while before I can even think to afford it.

So in the meantime hubby scored a deal:



Yes, it does look like my old camera, this is the DMC FH25, a newer model with improved everything and a couple more scene modes, such as pinhole:



I've been having fun with the pinhole mode, gives the effect of using a pinhole camera (which I liked making and playing with as a kid in science class).

The food mode is even better:



And it is 16.1 megapixels instead of the 14.1 megapixels of my old camera so I can print larger pictures with no loss of quality.

Can't wait until I get a nice day to go out and do more outside pics with it.

Speaking of pics, I have been getting lots of compliments on my photos showing at the Wellness Center, so I am happy

FINALLY hung my photos this morning at the Gritman Community Wellness Center. I have 9 up, 5 B&W and 4 color. Spent yesterday getting everything I needed to get ready done.

The hubby and I got there a bit early as I needed time to get my brain settled and figure out how I wanted to hang the photos. Then the previous artist came in to retrieve her pieces. My friend Deb was supposed to be there, but she couldn't make it so the hubby and I were on our own.

EEPPP!!!!!!!!!

So we had the wall and hangers:



The hubby whipped out a small measuring tape and we got the wires and hooks adjusted and I proceeded to hang the photos:





Took a bit of adjusting, but we got them and the placards up and almost on level:



Hanging photos is harder then it looks. But it is up and will be for the next 3 weeks.