Awww sweet!!!

The cutest thing happened to day when I was putting the rubbish out. It has been raining and when I was standing by the rubbish bin outside I must have brushed against a bush which then deposited a little green gift on my shoe, which stuck fast with the rain drops. It was with great amusement when I returned inside, that I discovered the bush had given me a leafy love heart. Soppy I know, but I'm having an operation on my knee tomorrow at 7.30am (I've affectionately namde it my hop-eration) and I'm looking for good things wherever I can find them, to take my mind of IT! Actually I don't think it will be too bad as I am having a general anesthetic but the hop-eration will only take about half an hour and my surgeon assures me that I'll be back on the bike in a week. So watch this space.

I love Wednesdays!

Who would have thought Wednesday nights would make me so happy. I am finally doing something I've dreamed about for years and it's like salve for the soul. I am doing jewellery making nightclasses with a retired jeweller and I love it. These are photos of my latest creation. A silver and copper brooch (and I even made the brooch pin from scratch!) Not only am I making jewellery but I get to hang out with one of my dearest friends who is also doing it with me. It's official...Wednesday nights are my favourite time of the week! If you want to visit me to see what other crafty things I've been up to (felting is my other crafty love) call by http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5544405

Sunny Sunflower

Wow, look at this cool sunflower I made with felting. Not my original idea as I used the great new book I just bought off Amazon called Creative Felting by Lizzie Houghton. It's a beautiful book especially for a felting junkie like me! I think I might be an Amazon junkie now too. So many lovely books and this one got to me in little old New Zealand really quickly. Highly recommended, Creative Felting and Amazon.

Flower Power

With spring being here (it seems like I've been waiting a long time!) the winds have really picked up. Wind is Blenheim's best kept secret. We might get in the top three for sunshine hours every year but noone ever talks about the wind. The wind is so rough and strong it makes me cranky! It slams doors, makes my hair blow in my eyes but worst of all it smashes my lovley flowers. And I love flowers. I love them for their awesome beauty, their beautiful colours and those that smell good too, delicious!!! When you stop and really look at flowers, I mean really look closely at them, they are in fact pieces of incredible and structural wonder. With that in mind when we bought our new camera with its macro setting, I went straight to the park and spent hours just taking photos of flowers, nice and close. It was such fun. Here's some of my pics, enjoy!

Check this out!

Here's a link to a cool competition http://www.facebook.com/pages/La-tera/112456077705 and you can check out the wares at http://latera.etsy.com/ .

At the risk of repeating myself...

At the risk of repeating myself...I've just been to another funeral (that's four this year and I've had enough!)

Funerals are heart breaking for obvious reasons and that sense of loss can be over-whelming but I went to my friend's funeral yesterday and she died suddenly, much too young and very unexpectedly. So it got me thinking how profoundly sad it is to me, that when someone dies all of their family, friends and loved ones get together and publicly articulate how special the deceased person was to them.

So often people leave this mortail coil listening and believing the negative voices in their heads and thinking ill of themselves for one reason or another, never fully comprehending how their being has positively influenced the existence of others. I hope in my heart of hearts that they are "up there somewhere" watching over the spectacle that is their final farewell and that they hear the wonderful and loving things that are being said about them. It is my wish that they can store those sentiments and carry them close as they travel to the next place.

Why don't we say these things to our special people when we are all alive and well together? To honour Stephanie's passing I am going to endeavour to do just that. I am also going to try to worry less and appreciate more.

Oh joy. Spring is here!!!

I love spring it is such a wonderous time. It remindes me of fresh begins and hope of great things to come (see the koru blog). I'm busy planting seeds and seedlings. Well busy-ish, as we are still having the odd frost and my very wise husband has counselled me not to rush these things as he knows how heart broken I get when my plants die. Not to mention the fact that I am quite busy with my felting addiction, jewellery making and fitting in the odd bout of exercise in too. Oh and there is my teaching as well....where does the time go?

I just hope that my very smart (he's worked out how to get the lid off the compost bin so he can eat the scraps ) but also very naughty dog (see compost bin antics!) does not dig up my Christmas Lillies this year. I love smelly flowers (just one more great thing about spring) and having Christmas Lillies smelling the house out at Christmas just fills my little heart with Christmassy joy. So when the dog demolished them last year in his desire to escape by tunnelling under the fence I could have cried!

All of my fruit trees are bursting with buds and flowers and the peonies are well on their way too. Isn't it funny how gardening grows on you as you age. When I was young I hated being dirty and bugs freaked me out, so gardening was completely out of the question. Actually I still don't really like dirty hands and the soil plays havic with my skin so I wear gloves. As for the bugs, apart from cockroaches and wetas I'm really brave now!

I discovered gardening about 12 years ago when coming through a bout of depression. Someone suggested a garden. I lived in the city but turned the little balcony of my bedroom into a garden of sorts. What a wonderous idea! The tending of little seedlings eased me and gave me something tangible to look forward to. It really was just what the doctor ordered, and the Prozac of course. Now I don't need Prozac but I still need gardening.

I love New Zealand!!!

I was listening to the radio the other day and they were interviewing a musician and he was talking about the 1981 Springbok Tour and he said "from crisis comes growth". And it started me thinking, what a cool little country I come from and how proud I am to call my self a Kiwi. Isn't it amazing how much difference a small nation can make when it puts its mind to it. Just proves chaos theory really and the ripples don't always have a negative effect!

It is one of my lasting memories as a child, watching the footage on the tellie and thinking how could my mother and uncle be at the game at Eden Park and my Dad and his girlfriend be protesting outside the gates of that same game. But then that is an illustration of just how divided the country was over such an important issue. It seemed that fence sitting just wasn't an option.

As a nation we have repeatedly proven ourselves to be so resourceful and resilient and again and again we manage to make a stand when it really counts. For a young, small and (until quite recently historically speaking) conservative nation our track record is impressive. And we're nuclear free and have thus far avoided fighting in "the war against terror". Who wouldn't be proud to be from little old New Zealand? I sure am!!!

Mt Taranaki from a plane

Mt Taranaki 2
Originally uploaded by Jewels By Renee

Sometimes I have to fly to Auckland for school and on one of my trips I had my camera with me so thought I'd take some photos of the awesome landscape. I got this one of Mount Taranaki and some splendid shots of the Marlborough Sounds. When you get the chance to look at the landscape from up high it makes you realise just how awesome our world is and how really insignificant we all are in the larger scheme of things but that we each have such a profound effect on the environment in which we live at the same time.

Fall Buttons, necklace of autumn colours

Fall Buttons5
Originally uploaded by Jewels By Renee

This is so cute I might make another. What do you think?

This turned out much better than I expected! It's amazing what you can do with some old buttons. This is a gorgeous necklace made using crocheted embroidery thread and small green buttons with the odd orangey one thrown in for good measure. It reminds me of autumn and the leaves turning as they change color and eventually drop to the forest floor creating a lovely leafy carpet. You can also wear this necklace as a bracelet. So versatile!!!

If you like this little number than please feel free to visit me at http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=30783675 for this and many of my other creations.

A more positive blog next time....maybe?!

As a small-time crafter who sells items as a hobby and little bit of extra money aside from my real job of teaching I sometimes use the services of the New Zealand postal service. I am also known to send my family gifts and did just that at the end of August when I sent my Dad a ceramic wall hanging for his birthday. Sadly the gift was crushed on its way to him further down the South Island in Wanaka. I dutifully had my Dad send the item to them for their assessment but I found out yesterday that they're not compensating because they said it wasn't packed properly. Apparently it needs to be able to withstand 25kg on top of it. Not really happy because I asked about it at the Post Office and they thought it would be okay. I guess I will have to pay squillions of dollars with another courier company who will probably break it anyway, or worse misplace it for an unknown amount of time.

This is on top of the drama last year when I sent some of my jewels to Auckland from Blenheim (yes from one island to another!) for an exhibition. I sent it by courier in October, for an exhibition that started at the end of November. They delivered it to the gallery on Christmas Eve... the day the exhibition finished! They didn't compensate me then either because in their fine print they don't gaurantee that it'll get there on time and they had the cheek to tell me at the Auckland mail centre, October is during the Christmas rush! This is in spite of the fact that their marketing strategy emplores you to use their services because they are timely. I THINK NOT!!!

In both cases I got the sense that they didn't really care because there was the fine print and there was nothing I could do about it! BAH HUMBUG!!!

The true tragedy of funerals!

Funerals are heart breaking for obvious reasons and that sense of loss can be over-whelming but I went to my friend's funeral yesterday and she died suddenly, much too young and very unexpectedly. So it got me thinking how profoundly sad it is to me, that when someone dies all of their family, friends and loved ones get together and publicly articulate how special the deceased person was to them.

So often people leave this mortail coil listening and believing the negative voices in their heads and thinking ill of themselves for one reason or another, never fully comprehending how their being has positively influenced the existence of others. I hope in my heart of hearts that they are "up there somewhere" watching over the spectacle that is their final farewell and that they hear the wonderful and loving things that are being said about them. It is my wish that they can store those sentiments and carry them close as they travel to the next place.

Why don't we say these things to our special people when we are all alive and well together? To honour Stephanie's passing I am going to endeavour to do just that. I am also going to try to worry less and appreciate more.

Random Acts of Kindness Day

2 Hearts
Originally uploaded by Jewels By Renee

September 1st is Random Acts of Kindness day and whilst my students didn't think it was as cool as Talk like a Pirate day I tried to get them to think about their actions and the effect they have on others. I also explained that sometimes it is nice to do something kind to someone else, for the only reward being that you made someone else feel good. Hopefully they will remember this sometimes in their lives and will pay it forward and make the world a better place to be!!! This is an example of my heart work and if you want to see more visit me at http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5544405

Seed bead heart brooches with a silk backing. A lovely tribute to Random Acts of Kindness Day (September 1st).

Koru Shells

Shells
Originally uploaded by Jewels By Renee

Another picture to acknowledge the first day of spring here in sunny Blenheim.

Koru (in Maori means life, growth, movement). The koru shape is a scroll shape and is linked to the New Zealand fern plant. The shoot of the fern has a curled-over tip, which unfurls and becomes a fern leaf. The koru reaches towards the light, striving for perfection, encouraging new positive beginnings. The koru represents the unfolding of new life, that everything is reborn and continues. It represents renewal and hope for the future. Spiral, geometry of life, sacred creation.

I just love this shape because it is both aesthetically pleasing and for its cultural significance to the New Zealand Maori.

Koru and glass beads necklace examples

Koru and glass beads necklace examples
Originally uploaded by Jewels By Renee

Yesterday was the first day of Spring her in beautiful New Zealand (and other Southern Hemispere locations of course) although the buds and bulbs have been bursting through for a week or two now. Anyway it reminded me of the koru and its symbolic reference to new beginnings.