Silver Cascade Earrings class

I'm thrilled to announce my latest class, Silver Cascade Earrings. This is one of my favorite designs EVER, because they're so lightweight and pretty.

These flirty mixed media earrings feature freshwater pearls, Swarovski bicones, lampwork beads and sterling silver - all of which add up to lightweight and comfortable earrings. The bright colors and flexible movement make them fun to wear as well!

This class is suitable for beginners and beyond. The class will be held August 8, 2009, from 12:00 noon to 4:30 p.m. at Shipwreck Beads in Lacey, WA. Class fee is $25. Register by 12:00 noon August 7, 2009 at Shipwreck Beads online or by phone - (360) 754-2323 or (800) 950-4232.

Roof Job, post 2

Here's the progress so far. Jerry found a couple of spots of water damage under the old roof, so I suppose it's a good thing we're doing this project now and not trying to make it through another rainy season. (eeek!) He just informed me that I'll need to go back out later and take more pics, because it'll look different. You GO guy!

In this picture, Jerry's priming the end sheets that go on the rafters. He's replacing all of them on the whole house.


This shot shows the tricked out utility line connection Jerry finished last night.


Looking good so far!


This picture shows one of the new shingles (and Jerry's left toe). It's CertainTeed's premium 50-year architectural shingle in Heather. We think it'll look great, especially after we paint the house a light mossy green.


Jerry shows off his complex cut - our house doesn't have a regular A-frame roof - it's got hips and angles and eaves...all the little things that make doing your own roof that much more challenging...and special!

DIY roof

The big project this year is replacing the roof on our house. We had 5 (or was it 6?) roofing companies out to bid the job, and the lowest bid was about $6K...way too rich for our blood so Jerry, consumate DIY guy that he is, decided to do it himself. (He says he wants the "I did my own roof" badge, LOL.)

I've been providing administrative backup for him - among other things, I arranged for the permit, found 50-year shingles at a steep discount, AND thoroughly researched our limited old-roof-disposal-options. (After numerous phone calls and web searching, I found that in Thurston County, the only option is to haul those old shingles to the landfill. Argh!)

Jerry's got a to-do list a mile long for this project, and truly, the project started a long time ago. The first thing on the list was to replace the rotted wood posts on the front of the house - they were "floating" on top of the concrete base. As a result, that corner of the roof sank a bit and needed to be jacked back up to where it should be. Here's a before shot showing the wood posts, sagging corner, and on the left side just behind the house, you can see the top of the doomed cedar tree as well.

Jerry took a welding class at South Puget Sound Community College and made some heavy duty steel posts; he and our neighbor David installed the posts with fresh concrete and now the corner no longer sags.

New sturdy posts - as you can see - they are not going anywhere!

The next thing Jerry did was remove the cedar tree in our backyard. We both hated to see it go, but it was about 10 feet from the house and in the Northwest, when trees are that close to houses, it invites moss to grow on one's roof. Moss degrades the roof, and in a rainy climate such as ours, a degraded roof is not good.

The last big thing to tackle before the actual roof replacement was to fix the eave on the garage side of the house - a previous tenant had sheared off the eave, possibly to park a motor home.

Before pic of the "eave" and tree, and after pic of eave and no tree.

Stay tuned for more exciting updates on this project!