Update on life in general

I also posted this on myspace too cause I miss my Myspace peoples!

I am going today to finally get dreads! I found a local lady who works at a ritzy salon who is gonna do em for 80 bucks can you believe it?! I was thinking 200?? so I am happy I am getting it done for 80!
Anyone in Louisville who is looking for dreads email me, and I can give you her number.She has been doing it for 20 years and her own dreads are to die for!

Maylee got sick last week and then Tyler got sick this past week and Maylee has had what Tyler had too so this poor kid cant win, she is getting so skinny. But she will pull thru OK once all this sickness is over I will get her fattened back up in no time. We never get sick so its weird for 2 weeks straight someone in this house has had either this weird flu with the high fever that wont break or this crazy pukey poopin virus thing.

I been making lots of soap and not sewing too much lately. Maylee wont let me sit anywhere without crawling all over me and with my fibro being so bad right now I cant take the pain of my legs being touched at all much less having a baby digging heels and elbows into them. So I dont sew...and she has got to where she tries to stick her hand under the needle and she is just getting too dangerous for me to even try to sew...I hope its a short phase that passes but something tells me I am in for a couple years of being restricted in everything I like to do..thank goodness I can still spin yarn and crochet as long as I stand up to do it (sigh) I feel bad complaining...took me so long to have her ya know...

So I feel my business will be changing a lot. I will probably be offering handspun wool yarn soon, and some crocheted items. I am debating buying some hand cards so I can make some batts for other people to spin up. I would love to make batts! So if you see Auroras Garden changing please dont worry. My first love is sewing and i will come back to it when Maylee is bigger. For now I have a couple of customs I may never get done, and when they are finished I dont plan on taking any more. Its not fair to the customer to have to wait a month or more for an item I could have sewed in one day before Maylee came. I dont like to run business like that so I hate to but I am closed to customs for an indefinite period of time. As I can get people to help me with Maylee and I can get time to sew I will be posting clothing in my shop as I get it made, but all I will be selling is premade stuff. This is a sad day and I would rather rip my own heart out than have to announce I am closed to customs....but I have to.

On the other hand, if anyone wants a custom Soap I can do that! I take requests for special scents you may want. I can find just about anything. Designer fragrances, bath and bodyworks stuff, Victorias Secret stuff...anything you see in a store I can find it and make you a BETTER product than what is offered in a commercial store. All the soaps are vegan and now they are also nut free. Anyone with nut allergies can use my soap with no worries. I can also make a laundry soap that cleans amazingly out of any soap I have in stock

So thats whats up with me lately. Lots of changes due to family and medical issues, but I still keep on keepin on! I love to create beautiful things for you all and I will continue to do it just maybe not in the way your used to seeing. My creative energies are being directed in other places till my baby can grow and learn that I really do need time to work, and its nice to sit down every now and then. My standing all day is why my pain level is thru the roof I know. By bedtime I can hardly walk...this is every day, and its wearing me down seriously. I need a vacation!

My snow day

Here is an amazing picture of the snow. I stepped farther out on the front porch to take more pictures this time. I got some good ones. This stuff sure is pretty but it sure has caused a lot of trouble here. See the ice all over the power line...yeah thats bad.












So after freezing my butt off taking pictures I decided to finish up lunch. I started some Chicken for the savages made with Simmons Creek Chicken rub. MMmmmm It sure smelled awesome! You can see it here its the greasy stuff toward the bottom of the plate, and the red stuff is my much sought after taters made with that good Simmons creek Pork rub. I gave the recipe for these taters in a previous post

I will let you in on how I made the chicken which was met with rave reviews by the way. I put some vegetable oil in a pan (obviously) and I added some dried onion...about a teaspoon then I added in some of the chicken rub, 2 teaspoons full, when the oil was hot. I fried the spices JUST a little bit then I turned down the heat and added the cut up chicken breast. Keep in mind you dont want to fry spices more than a couple of seconds they DO burn, ask me how I know this...This is a method you use when making curry, and I wanted to make a bit of a curry but not full blown curry if that makes sense...it dont but anyhoo.. Fry the chicken in this spice and grease mixture till its done, then serve as you wish, with grease or without. Hubs prefers to practically drink the grease so I let him have it LOL. I plan on doing something different with the spices next time I get my hands on chicken. For now I have a squash for me and Maylee to eat tomorrow and I am gonna use some more of these spices on that. Maylee LOVES this stuff! Those taters are one thing I could get down her while she was sick last week. not too many but enough to keep her going. I was thankful to have something on hand she would eat.

So after we ate taters and greasy chicken and some mac and cheese, I started back to work on my pants here. They are FINALLY finished. I worked ALL day on these Maylee just wont let me get too much done at once, bless her heart.

These are corduroy, even the plaid fabric os corduroy, but the orb in the picture is NOT corduroy. he is a friendly fellow that likes to hang around. Interesting how I been getting so many orbs lately. Almost every time I take pictures around here I get at least one orb now.



Here you can see up close the pockets, and the embroidery. yeah I broke out the embroidery machine last night. It wont sew for shit but it still embroiders great! I picked a paisley to put on these pants. I went thru thousands of designs before I picked this one. i felt like it suited the project. Of course I did it in red to go with the red and purple theme we got going here. I love these colors so much. They are so bright and happy!
I sewed a purple and a red button on the pockets. I like to make the pockets fancy, so I did these with buttons rather than lace and stuff...lace just isnt the thing for this project. Maybe the next one! LOL

So in between being able to work on my pants, I spun some yarn. Maylee lets me spin yarn just fine so we did a lot of that today. I am working on this white wool right now. I have mixed in some pink with it too. its gonna be real interesting to see how it comes out in a project. I would spin one long piece of white, then attach a long piece of pink and alternate like that. This should be interesting!









Here is my ball of bamboo and wool all plyed and ready to crochet into something cool. I wish I had more! This little ball wont do much but it will make a nice trim for something I hope.

I am gonna try to spin up some more bamboo soon. Its a challenge, and it goes a lot slower than wool cause you really cant draft it, you have to kinda draft as you go, but its fun!






yes thats Tyler with an icicle in his mouth like a piece of straw LOL He is so cute.

So that was my snow day today. I hope you enjoyed it! Bye from Kentucky for now

Snowy ice or icy snow in Kentucky

This is the tree in front of my house...its AWFUL! Its pretty, yeah but its so bad here. The snow is actually deeper now since I took this picture about an hour ago.

We had ice and rain all evening yesterday and ALL night long till about 8 Am this morning then it turned to big fat snow, then it really started piling up. So we have on the ground a nice layer of snow-ice-snow. Makes for fun driving and a fun trip out to get in your car too!




This is the view from across the neighbors yard. I was NOT stepping outside to take pictures I just snapped a few from the doorway. I dont need a broke hip today. Its bad enough I am out of soy milk.

Today I plan on praying to the power line gods to keep my electric on, and if something does happen I have a gas stove so it will run no matter what. We will have heat, and I got plenty of soy wax to make candles with!



If you or a loved one is in this mess, i feel for ya. Its bad. Its REAL bad. I am hoping with the temp getting up to 33 tomorrow it will all melt off and we can get back to normal. I hope.

So today I am planning on spinning more yarn and finishing up the purple corduroy pants I started last night, and I am also making some more of these awesome taters for the fam and i have some real chicken so I am gonna try out the chicken seasoning on chicken this time. Isnt it awful how everytime I blog I have to talk about the Simmons Creek seasonings...yeah I am obsessed. I think everybody should try this stuff for real! Ok I am off to put some more weight on YEAH! Love being snowed in so i have a good excuse to eat (sarcasm)

Bag Crocheted from recycled grocery bags tutorial

I was picked to be the provider of stuff for February's Contest on behalf of my Street Team. So I put together this super cool bag of soapy goodness.

the bag is one I made from plastic grocery bags. I crocheted them all with a big fat "Q" hook. The bottom of the basket is tighter. I spun those plastic strips and then crocheted it. I wish I had got a picture of it, darn!








I have filled the basket with all kinds of wonderful things. 6 oz of laundry soap, and 4 bars of soap. 3 soaps are designer scents, and one Rose scent. Rose is a good one lots of people like it so I figured it would be a good pick.


You can still get in on this months contest featuring a gorgeous pair of earrings made by Kim Ries of Creative Eye Studios
Check her out! her work is incredible! The contest ends on January 31 so you better get your butt over there and enter to win now!


I wanted to tell you guys how I made this bag in hopes that you too can keep some of these things from getting on the sides of the street and stuff...they are everywhere like a plague! They can be so useful its really a shame to see them hit the trash. So now your gonna learn how to make them into reusable bags that will last ages to carry groceries in or just to put anything in!

First get you about 25 or 30 plastic grocery bags...lay them flat, this is the hard part. you have to fold in that side crease so that the bottom part lays flat, the handle part dont really matter its the body we are after, so get it as flat as you can.

You can pile 3 or 4 bags on top of each other just to cut your time down.

Cut the very bottoms off the bags, try real hard to not cut too high into the bag cause this is the part we want to preserve.

Once you get the ends cut off then you can cut your strips. Cut them 2 or 3 inches wide, try to stay the same width but its not necessary. you get a more interesting finished product if its not perfect.

Once you have processed all your bags like this you can start putting them together like in this tutorial here I am giving basically the same directions as in this tutorial just with no pictures cause I was too lazy to take any LOL She shows how to loop the pieces together better than I can ddescribe it.

Once you get a long striong of looped pieces you can get out your spindle and spin it to make a chunky yarn you can use with an "N" hook or you can leave it as is in the rough and get out your "Q" hook and go to town!

I made this bag by crocheting a circle using single crochets as big as I wanted the bottom and then I started making big triple crochets...I would chain 3 then count over 2 stitches and make a triple crochet..that gives this bag that netted look.

For making the handle I just did a chain as long as I wanted the handle to be and put in a row of single crochets in each chain space. you may have a different way you want to do the handle and thats great!

You can use this yarn to make more than bags too. i am thinking a whole line of "trash couture" fashion here. Skirts, headbands, hats, baby booties. All you would have to do is cut your yarn strips thinner to make a thinner plarn and you could even do a baby weight plarn!

So get out the crochet hook and make you some plarn! Have fun!