My first real sale!

I was invited to show my bears at a Christmas Boutique at my local quilt/bead shop. I was so excited to be invited so I got to work and had 8 bears ready for the Boutique which ran Friday, Saturday and Sunday after Thanksgiving. Along with me and my bears, there were 11 others who had beautiful quilts, wearable art, and a variety of hand-crafted jewelry. Everyone had a great Friday, but Saturday and Sunday were slower. Since this was my first "show," I'd prepared myself not to expect too much. This was the first time anything other than quilts and jewelry was shown and many people didn't even look at the bears.

Nevertheless, Friday was a great day for me. I sold 5 bears. Lei Lei was adopted first. The lady loved that he had an attitude about him. She even came back to the show on Sunday to talk with me about him. The second lady adopted FOUR of my bears. I was overwhelmed! Allyn said I should just say I sold 5 bears because that sounds better than saying I only had two customers. But, hey, I was thrilled that someone would want four at the same time. So I'm a happy camper.



Gabriella

Aloysius

Alexandra

William

New Website

I'm so happy! I have a brand new website as of a couple of weeks ago. I can't take credit for its creation, however. I worked with Nancy at www.timberlineweb.com. Nancy is also a well know bear artist from Canada and you can visit her site at http://www.kranbearys.com/. She was very patient with me and so helpful in getting things set up.

Please visit http://wagglebears.com/ and let me know what you think.

It's been a while

Happy late Thanksgiving wishes to all. I haven't been around for a while but I've still been busy. To briefly catch up...

Ashley and I went to Chicago in late August for Joseph's graduation from UChicago. We were there for five days and had a wonderful time seeing Joseph and meeting his friends. The weather was miserably heavy and humid while we were there and especially inside the Roosevelt Chapel on the UC campus during graduation.

Joseph's been looking for a job since and is having a difficult time finding one. He loves Chicago and wants to stay there.

Joseph did run the Chicago Marathon on October 7th, and made it to Mile 19 before they were forced to stop. I'm sure you read some of the stories about the lack of water and the high temperatures. He and his friends were very disappointed that they couldn't finish since by Mile 19 there were sure they could.

This summer we took on some remodeling around the house and we're still trying to finish everything. We removed a wall between our two small bedrooms upstairs in order to give Ashley a little more room. Of course, she made sure all of her work was done first and anything she doesn't want cluttering up her room goes right next door to my sewing room, which I can barely walk through.

We removed a wall between the office and family room downstairs, put in some new recessed ceiling lighting throughout including the kitchen and changed out two windows. We've painted and then we stopped. We want to make some more changes but have had trouble getting our contractor to get back to us so we are dealing with kind of a mess downstairs. It will come together eventually.

Ashley flew to Chicago again to spend Thanksgiving with Joseph and his roommate, Becky. They had a holiday together and Becky prepared a full Thanksgiving dinner and in addition to Ashley, they also invited another couple in their building. It snowed lightly while she was there and she loved it.

Now it's back to work for everyone and she's not too happy about that. She's teaching middle school nearby.