A New Laptop!

One more thing that hopefully will help me stay on top of things this year... or at least a little more on top than last year.... hubby got me a new laptop!

Well, it's not brand new, but it's new to me! I found a great deal ($300 delivered!) on a refurbished Dell that was "off lease" at Tiger Direct. I LOVE it!

Hubby has had a laptop for a number of years. I didn't think I wanted one of my own because his just did not feel right to me. I preferred our main computer in my office.

But I realized how much better I might be able to keep on top of things if I was able to be online in the evenings... and so I started looking.

I like mine much better than hubby's! His screen is a 15+" screen, and mine is just 14". With my smaller hands, my unit is much more comfortable for me to type on! Of course it is also nice to be able to set up my own home page and have only my favorites in the toolbar above ;) Naturally I have photos of teddy bears and chihuahuas on my home page ;)

Well, we'll see how I do. It IS only January so far.... ;)

6 Random Things about Me

I was tagged yesterday by Ginger Brame of The Piece Parade. Ginger is a lovely person and fabulous bear artist. I was so pleased a couple of years ago to have a seat next to her at a bear show banquet!

I am supposed to tell you 6 random things about myself.

1) I used to be a pet photographer


2) After that, I was a car show portrait photographer


3) I enjoy drag racing our Trans Am at the drag strip


4) I've been on safari on the Amazon River in Brazil - twice, and want to go back..


5) I am a direct descendant of John Alden from the Mayflower

6) I dislike cooking

If you are on the list below, you've been tagged to post about 6 random things about you!

Apple Dumpling Diaries
Beckoning Bears
Waggle Bears
Dog Patch Critters
Dolls n Dreams
K Pawz Creations
THE RULES (for this game of tag):
1. LINK TO THE PERSON WHO TAGGED YOU
2. POST THE RULES ON YOUR BLOG
3. WRITE SIX RANDOM THINGS ABOUT YOURSELF
4. TAG SIX PEOPLE AT THE END OF YOUR POST AND LINK TO THEM
5. LET EACH PERSON KNOW THEY ARE TAGGED AND LEAVE A COMMENT ON THEIR BLOG
6.LET THE TAGGER KNOW WHEN YOUR ENTRY IS UP
7. DON’T BREAK THE CHAIN (not actually a rule)

My Project Last Weekend - a Website for my Father in Law's Bird Carvings

This weekend I finally finished a project that I have been working on since before Halloween - a website for my Father in Law www.FeatherWoodCarvings.com

His work is spectacular! He is a wood carver who started out carving water fowl, but over the past 30 years has expanded into birds of prey, songbirds, fish and even relief carvings and whimsical cottonwood bark carvings.

He had been doing shows for a long time, but needed to cut down on the number of shows he did. It was just getting harder and harder for him to do them - he turned 70 last year ;)

I had been after him for a while to get a website set up. A few years ago I told him that although I am NOT a website designer, I could set him up a very simple site if he wanted me to. Last fall he finally decided to take me up on my offer. Last weekend I finally finished LOL!

We have some more photos to upload, but there are quite a few on there now. I'd also like to sneak over there when he is not home to take some "portraits" of his work with my digital studio set up!

I hope you enjoy looking at the photos of some of his work!

Mohair 4 Sale

Yes, I actually have some mohair for sale!

I hope you all had a wonderful start to 2009.

While cleaning up my studio for the New Year, I realized I have a little too much mohair in my stash. I know... hard to believe LOL!

Now that Paypal has implemented "inventory control" with their "add to cart" buttons, I have the mohair listed for sale directly from my site with FREE US SHIPPING!!

I'm so glad for this new feature from Paypal. That means I can't sell the same piece of mohair twice if I only have once piece!

You can find the mohair for sale right here:
http://teddiesbylauralynn.com/mohair/index.html

Happy Bearmaking!
Laura Lynn
www.TeddiesbyLauraLynn.com

Sending Hugs....

The Hug ...
Originally uploaded by l'enfer

I've heard hard and sad news from several dear friends at the beginning of this new year :( I just wanted to send hugs out to you all....

Still working....

Oh my gosh, we're almost half way thru January already!! It feels like I have gotten nothing done... but I must realize that I have. Jen (my daughter) went back to school yesterday. Her visit was wonderful ;)

To start the year out, I got myself a new organizer to help try to keep me on track. It's a pretty pink one! So far so good, but it's not even 2 weeks into the new year ;)

I've got 3 bear orders that should be done this week - and I must send my yearly state sales taxes in by tomorrow at the latest! (which means going thru paperwork... my LEAST favorite chore!) Then I do need to get my yearly books in order. We like to go to our CPA as soon as we get all of our W2's and 1099's. No... I did not keep up on them like I planned to do last January. This year is a new chance to achieve that goal ;-P

My studio was in desperate need of cleaning after the holidays. I think most of the artists I know were in the same boat LOL! After the cleaning, however, I realized I had not been happy with the way the furniture was arranged. Sometimes I have to live with something a while to figure out how to make it better.

Thankfully Jen was home on break from school! I can no longer move heavy items because of my back. Jen was more than happy to help! We started at noon. I really should have taken a picture when I was in the middle of moving things around -- you would have really laughed HARD! But everything got into place when it was time for me to make dinner. If you saw the "in progress" photo that I never took, you would not have believed that I finished in a mere 5 hours! I do have some "after" photos though! As I was going thru my old studio photos, I realize that I never took a photo of my new re-organized supply closet! I'll have to do that later or I'll never finish this post ;)

Ready to Get Back to Bears!

Note to Self: When hubby takes a vacation from work, realize that it means you too LOL!!!

Hubby took a week off of work, and I always end up out of my routine when that happens - and then worried cause I'm not working when I feel I should be. I must remember to "take a vacation" too when he does so I don't feel guilty ;)

We slept in every morning, it was glorious! Well, I got up at 7 to take care of the Girls so there weren't any accidents - and so Isis could stay on her medication schedule, but then we all went back to bed!

We got LOTS done in the week between Christmas and New Year's. The trip down and back to my Mom's in Kentucky, then the garage door opener broke and needed fixing. Then my car needed a new battery and had to go to the dealer because it's a Mercedes. Then we realized the small oil leak in the Mercedes was not so small anymore and needed fixing (also a dealer must do, our mechanic friend was unable to do it) and they found 2 other leaks also....

So.... then we decided to look at cars, just in case... that all took 2 days. Turns out the repair bill was not as much as we feared it could be so we kept my car (hurray, I love my car!)

Hubby's and my tradition for New Year's Eve is to go out to dinner around 3pm and then head home for the night, ready to spend the evening watching DVD's. When we get hungry, we had frozen snacks to heat up, yummy! Yes, we did make it till Midnight... barely ;)

New Year's Day is when we traditionally take down all the Christmas decorations... an all day event. The rest of the weekend was getting the house and myself back to "normal".

Technically today I should have started "back to work", but as my daughter was still home from college, I wanted to take her out to lunch before she went back. And who can just go to lunch and not shop?

Tomorrow it's finally back to bears!!! I've missed them so much! Hopefully tonight I'll get caught up on returning the emails I'm behind on due to the unexpected vacation :)

*edited to add: nothing done tonight! Ended up trying to fix a computer problem... STILL not fixed but I'm done trying! It's only the sound... so no biggie...but spent a lot of time trouble shooting.

If your email is one of them I apologize!!!