Going "Over the Bridge"

If you've been reading my blog for a while, you'll have seen the term "over the bridge". I'll write, "Today I went over the bridge to Barnes and Noble" or, "I went over the bridge with Zack to the aquarium."

We live on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, or as I am fond of saying, "you know, the stickie-outie part of Maryland".



The eastern shore is beautiful, but it's mostly rural, and therefore every so often I make a trip Over the Bridge. Today was one of those days, as Zack was off school for a teacher work day, and we'd planned an adventure day mixed with a few errands.

So, what does this bridge look like? Why, this!

Nearly five miles of terror. The Chesapeake Bay Bridge. Tall, imposing, three lanes going west, two lanes going east, with curves. And it's always, always got something under construction.

When rush hour gets hairy and people are heading to the shore, there's this nastiness where they take the three-lane bridge and make one lane head east and two lanes head west. I call it Very Bad Names and drive with even whiter knuckles than normal.

It took me a while, but after seven years of living on the eastern shore, I can now drive this bridge day or night without my spine crawling or my pulse speeding or needing a Xanax. Today, however, was different. Today, I dealt with 30mph winds and pouring rain.


Now ordinarily, when faced with 40° rain that the wind was driving sideways, I would have said, "Feh, let's watch Bridezilla's on TiVO" and called it a pajama day. But I'd made a promise to my son, and I keep my promises.

Did I mention that we had to go over a bridge?


There really is a point to this post. Even though it would have been fairly easy to bribe Zack into believing that a rainy day would be a perfect day to hang out and watch TV and play video games and basically stay indoors and be DRY, I made a promise. That bridge is hella scary, but I've driven it a million times -- in rain, snow, wind, darkness, and fog -- really, I had no excuse.

So I left it to Zack.

"Hey, Zack-man. It's icky out. You still want to go?"

"YEAH!"

"OK then. Get your coat."

Promises. Keep 'em.

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Designer Spotlight -- Lisa Liddy of Joolz by Lisa

Today I'd like to highlight a fellow jewelry designer, Lisa Liddy. I own some of Lisa's jewelry, and you'd be doing yourself a favor by visiting her site, www.joolzbylisa.com.

You're probably wondering why in the world I would promote someone else's jewelry, but it's like this -- I consider jewelry art. I own a lot of handmade art, from blown glass vases to paintings to collaged boxes to Other People's Jewelry. Jewelry is art (yes indeed it is!). When someone loves what they do, a piece of their heart goes into it, and to me, that's a huge part of the meaning of art.

Enter Lisa Liddy. Take a look at some of her work. I've been dying over this kyanite necklace with handmade glass accents:

She's also known for her fun, festive, over-the-top rings:


She also has a very clever earring creation called Changeables. You purchase one pair of hoops that come with a beaded drop. You can then purchase additional drops from her store (or email her for custom dangles) to have a fun, full jewelry box of earrings!

I hope you'll visit her store (she offers FREE SHIPPING right now!) and take a look at her blog, her work with the Melonhead Foundation, and of course, her jewelry! And wave and say hello and tell her Lori sent you!

Being an Entrepreneur -- The Working From Home Edition

If you've ever wondered what it's like being an entrepreneur, well, let me tell you. It's a lot more than shambling down the stairs in your pajamas with a cup of coffee and an endless day of joyful creating.

If only.

Yesterday my plan was to spend all day tackling my To-Do list, which consisted mainly of updating my web site in preparation for the holiday rush. I also wanted to make some jewelry for my last show of the season, the ALS Artisan Boutique in Annapolis, MD (November 22nd, please come!)

However, the day ran like this:

1) Oversleep. I have an excuse. I was up until 6am the night before working.

2) Due to oversleeping, missed my window of good light for photographing new jewelry.

3) Make coffee. Leave coffee on the counter when the dryer dings. Forget I made coffee.

4) Sit down at computer. Remember I have to stick postcard stamps on a 10" stack of cards.

5) Remember coffee. It's cold. Make it again.

6) Run upstairs to put on real clothes as Zack has been invited to go play kick ball. Watch and remember why I hated grade school gym

7) Where the hell is that danged coffee.

8) Sit down to computer. Have three orders waiting to be packed. Stop everything to pull orders, wrap, pack, print postage. Yell to whomever will listen to turn the television DOWN.

9) Say a Very Bad Word. It involves lack of coffee.

10) Open computer programs to work on web site. Notice that it is now 7:30pm.

11) Upload exactly two (2) pieces of jewelry before it's time to read to Zack.

12) Finally drink my coffee. It's 9pm.

13) Everyone goes to bed, and thanks to coffee, I am up until 4am making jewelry.


Woody Allen was right. "If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans."

When Lori isn't searching for a Venti Starbucks Mocha, she's (trying) to create jewelry in her Easton, MD studio. You can see her work at www.lorianderson.net.
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Attention All Beaders! ArtBeads.com Discount!

As a recent ArtBeads.com reviewer, I was recently given a gift to give to you --
a 10% off coupon code to use at www.artbeads.com!
Use code SCF10P-ARTBEADS-0424

So what will you buy? Their new Murano Chevron Beads?

Or Swarovski crystal? You can never have enough sparkle in your designs....

Another great things about ArtBeads.com is their shipping -- only $1 to Canada and FREE to the US.

So what are you waiting for? Happy designing!


Lori Anderson designs jewelry in her studio in Easton, MD. Her web site is www.lorianderson.net
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Watch Me Create -- Working With Dark Colors

I have a new blog article on Watch Me Create that you can read by clicking here. It's about how to create with dark borosilicate glass beads. Boro glass beads are some of my favorites, but they also can look one way on the computer screen and quite another when they end up out of the package and on my work bench. My article talks about how I work with such beads. In my house, no bead goes unloved!



The blue bracelet above sold out at a craft show within a week of my making it and never appeared on www.lorianderson.net, but you can now buy the "Pearl Garden Princess" bracelet below by clicking here. (If you get a blank page when you click, then someone beat you to it.)



I hope you enjoy my article at Watch Me Create, and be sure to visit all the other contributors' offerings there as well!


Lori Anderson designs and writes from her studio in Easton, MD.
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Eye Candy Jewelry Day

I've been working non-stop for my next show as well as for near-daily updates of www.lorianderson.net (and from now until Saturday, November 7th, there's FREE SHIPPING on all orders!), so I don't have much to write about. Unless you count my telling you about 24/7 excruciating headaches or the chaos of a normally neatly organized household. But that would be boring.

No, I'll leave you with Eye Candy Jewelry Day. As always, if you see something you want (none of these, as of this writing, have hit the web site yet), please email me to order! Click each photo for a larger view.

Enjoy!



"Pearl Princess" -- handmade lampwork glass and cultured pearls (chunky and substantial)


"Free-Spirited Gardener" -- polymer clay and Swarovski crystal



"Teal Treasure Hunt" -- Glass, golden pewter, and satin


"Larimar Onyx Flower" -- rare larimar and onyx

"Larimar Butterfly" -- rare larimar, purple mother-of-pearl, and large sterling silver butterfly (note the butterfly clasp!).

You can see more jewelry, including holiday jewelry, at www.lorianderson.net.
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A Precious Moment with NASCAR Announcers

I'm sitting here listening to my six-year old son and his friend have a play date.

They put together a race track and dragged out all of Zack's many NASCAR Hot Wheels cars.

I am now listening to them act as color announcers, using each car's sponsor as the cue for their announcement.

"Also, this is brought to you by, CHEEZIT! Get your OWN darn box."

"Yep! He's the last car up to the practice round. He's full of OLD SPICE."

"And he's back. CHEEZIT is back from his stomach ache. He's feeling a lot better now. He got his own box. But he ate it all."

I love kids.

500 Days of Summer

It started when I was young.

When I would get a bit down or depressed, I would make up music videos in my head. Early on, when I was an adolescent, the daydreams involved me singing something to adoring fans or dancing something flawlessly (also to adoring fans -- do you see a pattern here?).

Nowadays, I just direct cool visions of happiness to cheery music scores. So I was THRILLED to find this video via a blogger friend who graciously allowed me to pass it on to you. This clip, for the movie "500 Days of Summer", is exactly the sort of thing that goes on in my head when I'm blue and need to pull myself up by my own bootstraps.

Enjoy.

Our Ninth Wedding Anniversary -- Part Two

Welcome back! I hope you enjoyed Part One and are ready to enjoy the final part of our wedding story.

In Part One, I left you with my waking to a beautiful autumn day - the perfect day for marrying a man I met ten years previously, and then lost total contact with. What a long, emotional journey we'd both traveled to get to the point where we serendipitously reconnected ... and how strange that I'd met the man I was destined to marry so long ago, but never knew it at the time!

Our family and guests relaxed before the wedding at the country club, which helped calm the nerves and allowed everyone to catch up -- remember, pretty much everyone was coming in from out of town and some hadn't seen each other in years.

We broke with tradition when Rick and I decided to see each other for the first time before the ceremony. I think this was a grand idea because one or the other of us would likely have passed out in the church from giddiness or nervousness otherwise!

It was beautiful. Our photographer, Ken Graham, was amazing. He set up the entire thing, setting me up in the center of one of the rooms, and then went to find Rick. I have no idea where Ken was after that, because time stopped.

Time for the ceremony. My maid of honor, bridesmaid, and I were driven to the chapel in a vintage Rolls Royce Phantom. That was an event! The UVA football game had just let out, and it was, apparently, a spectacular win, because the crowds were hugely festive. As the car slowly drove down the streets of the University, I felt like we were in a parade. People were waving and yelling, "Congratulations!" and it was just so incredibly ... unreal and other-worldly and amazing.

I loved my flowers. I've always had a fondness for vintage things, so there were lots of hydrangeas, snow berries, and of course roses for a traditional touch. My something old was my grandmother's handkerchief wrapped around the stems of the bouquet.

Preparing for the wedding is where I got my first inkling that I might possibly be creative. I made the place cards, the favors, the menus, and the programs. In fact, I enjoyed the entire process so much that I seriously considered becoming a wedding planner.

The programs were covered in purple vellum, bound with satin ribbon tied in pearls. The opening page began, "Once upon a time, two people met. And they had no idea that one day they would fall in love with each other." It continued in story book fashion.

The music was traditional -- Handel's "Music for the Royal Fireworks" for the Seating of the Mothers, Pachelbel's "Canon in D" for the Prelude, and of course, Clarke's "Trumpet Voluntary" for the Processional. But we completely broke with tradition in the middle of the ceremony by having the University of Virginia's acapella group The Virginia Gentlemen sing. The VG's are the University's oldest acapella group, and their performances were some of the best memories I have of my grueling years of pre-med at UVA.


They sang the BoDeans song "Good Things". Now, I tried for hours to get the song to embed into this blog post, and failed miserably. So I'm hoping that this link will work, because listening to these college students make music solely from their voices is worth a listen.

Via Windows Media Player
(click the "VG", and email me if you can't get it to work)

Then came "with this ring"....


The recessional was Mouret's "Le Rondeau", and Rick and I were ecstatic.

Once again, our photographer had a great idea that broke from tradition, and had all of our guests gather on the steps of Thomas Jefferson's famous Rotunda for a photo. It was a lovely memory of the day, and we sent them out as presents to our guests that Christmas.

Now it was time for dinner and relaxation! Farmington Country Club has amazing food, and after drinks and hors d'oeuvres, everyone settled in for potato and leek soup with crispy bacon, baby green salad with raspberry vinaigrette, and either beef tenderloin and salmon, chicken and shrimp, or vegetarian lasagna.

We opted for no head table, but kept it intimate, with small round tables, and since a lot of people came from points here and there, each place card opened to tell a little about how Rick and I met each person -- a bit of an ice-breaker and conversation starter for the guests.


The cake! Or should I say, cakes! Everyone had their own -- coconut with chocolate and raspberries on the plate.

Everything about the day was perfect. Around 10pm, we left the country club for Prospect Hill Plantation for our honeymoon. We were elated, exhausted, and still giddy. We took time throughout the weekend to write down every single tiny detail we could remember about our wedding day so we'd never forget -- so many things happen and fly by and become a blur at weddings and we didn't want to lose a single moment.

I signed Rick's anniversary card this week with a passage from one of my favorite books. I paraphrased it, but I thought it was perfect, and said exactly what I felt but couldn't say better than the book's author:

"When the day shall come, that we do part, if my last words are not "I love you", you'll know it was because I did not have time".

Sometimes it's hard to put into words the love you feel for someone you've spent so much time with. But I think, perhaps, he knows.

(wedding photos by Ken Graham)

Our Ninth Wedding Anniversary -- Part One

Today begins the story of our wedding. I love writing about this each year, and have written about it here, here and here. So pour a cup or glass of your favorite drink and settle in for another edition of

First, how did we meet?

Rick and I met while serving in the US Air Force, but hadn't been friends during the three years I spent in Korea. Don't get me wrong, we didn't dislike each other; he was just quite a few stripes higher in rank than I was and more or less ran the show, and I had a completely different place in the flight. But ten years later, via an email list that a colleague started (we are forever in his debt), we got back in touch. After a year of emailing back and forth, the rest, as they say, is history.

By necessity, the wedding was going to be small -- about 50 people. All of our friends are scattered far and wide, in various states and countries, and only about four people actually lived in the town of the wedding. This was going to have to be a destination wedding.

Charlottesville, VA, is special to me because I attended the University of Virginia and bought my first house in this lovely town. This was also the place Rick and I saw each other for the first time after the year of emails.

(photo by Charles McDonald)

The wedding was going to take place at the UVA Chapel, which was an amazing feat of skill in and of itself. A lottery system is used to book the chapel for weddings, and you have to call the first working day of the month, one year before the wedding. Except for football season, which has its own set of rules, and our wedding fell during football season. (Is your head spinning yet?) Thankfully, in 2000 they moved the lottery to a phone lottery, and I was given a specific time to call, rather than the way brides-to-be USED to grab a slot -- sleep outside the door of the office the day the lottery opened to get a good spot in line the one day you could register.


There are always problems in planning weddings, though, aren't there? My particular problem was the day of my lottery, I had a presentation to give to a customer. My good friend Katie called in and pretended to be me, but when the time slot we wanted wasn't available, she was afraid to commit to another, so she faked a sneezing fit or something (I forget now) and raced in to interrupt my meeting to whisper in my ear for approval. That's a true friend.

Katie, as a member of Farmington Country Club, also sponsored me so we could have our reception there. It's a beautiful, beautiful place with wonderful food and amazing grounds, and since Rick and I opted to see each other before the wedding, it was a terrific place to have that happen. Also, since our wedding coincided with a home football game at UVA, there was zero parking on Grounds. We were providing transportation for our guests, having them all meet at the country club first so they could relax beforehand if they wanted. What a great change from the norm!


The dress. Ah, the dress. I flew to St. Paul, MN to see my maid of honor, Kristin, for help choosing a dress. That was a rather humbling experience. I've recently become an enormous fan of "Say Yes to the Dress" and if I had gone to Kleinfeld, I wouldn't have been sneered at for not being a size 2. The boutique we first went to was horribly rude, and I was in tears when I left. We ended up at, of all places, David's Bridal. I know that many people look at DB as the Walmart of bridal stores, but when Kristin and I walked in, the place was full of life and energy and laughter. I found a dress that I loved, in my size, so I could see it right then, not guessing at how it might look. I still wish I had known about Kleinfeld, though -- the trip to New York would have been worth it.

And speaking again of "Say Yes to the Dress" and Kleinfeld, I loved the episode where they talked about having larger sizes and helping women make the most of their figures, no matter what that figure may be.

(my dress, photo by Ken Graham)

Our rehearsal dinner was a relaxed, fun affair, held at a brick oven pizzeria that made creative, utterly delicious concoctions. I purposely wanted this dinner to be casual because the wedding dinner was going to be a sumptuous extravaganza. One of the good things about having a small wedding was that we could splurge on food, and the country club wouldn't know a rubber chicken if it flew in the window and bit the chef on the bottom.

The next day dawned utterly, completely perfect -- and I'm not just saying that. Being the end of October, we hit the peak of the leaves turning, but the day was balmy and clear and delightful.

When I woke and looked out the window, seeing the beauty of the sun on the leaves and the green of the grass, the softness of the air and just the sheer magic of the day -- yes, I thought. It's a wonderful day to get married.

Thus ends Part One. Part Two will begin tomorrow, and I hope you'll join me to read more!


When Lori isn't reminiscing, she's creating jewelry. You can see it at www.lorianderson.net.

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Clothes Shopping -- The New Frontier

I mentioned recently that I've dug into the deep recesses of my closet for the two or three pairs of "skinny" jeans that I'd doggedly held onto. Trouble is, that's ALL I have in the way of smaller clothes. Shirts are still the same size, for instance, and as a friend kindly put it, it looks like I'm wearing a box now. No wonder nobody can tell anything is changing under there.

So today, after a trip for a new migraine medicine (big sigh, and sad shaking of head. Ow. But slow shaking of head.) I then ran a few errands in Annapolis, which included a stop at Barnes and Noble. If there' s a B&N within 45 miles, I'm there. I just love, love, love my books.

On the way out of the store, I passed a clothing boutique that I've always longed to enter -- South Moon Under. I've only ever admired the window displays because I never felt I was "cool enough", or, well, let's face it -- thin enough -- to walk in. In a world where a Size 00 exits, shopping has drastically changed.

But what the heck, I thought. I owe it to myself to walk in. Yeah, I can do it. Sure, I'm not 20, but I'm not dead, and I make cool jewelry, so back off, man, if you roll their eyes at me! (This said STRICTLY in my head before I'd crossed the doorway. I'm way meeker than that in situations like this).

The girl was pleasant and told me about the sale on the jeans and I started looking around. And then I heard, "Is that Lori Anderson?"

Oh Happy Day! One of my favorite people, and a remarkable woman who is key to organizing one of the most successful art and craft shows in the Annapolis area, The ALS Artisan Boutique (a fundraiser for Lou Gehrigs Disease) happened to be working in the store that day.

All of a sudden I had the world's best personal shopper. I ended up walking out with some lovely things, including this very cool drapey jacket that is so comfortable....

(photo credit South Moon Under)

A departure from my normal Eddie Bauer t-shirt, eh?

Another thing I very unexpectedly fell in love with was a funky pair of shoes. Now if you read my post about Dustjacket Attic and my love for all things shoes before my feet were gnawed on by orthopedic surgeons, you'll not be surprised that these caught my eye from across the room...

(photo credit Victoria's Secret)

I got the black pair, which unfortunately didn't photograph as well to show you all the cute ruffles, so I had to show you the gray/taupe version. As much as I love all things historically romantic, it's not too surprising that I love these.

What IS surprising is that I can walk in the bad boys. These will have to be worn only for Looking Pretty and Making a Statement. Not for play dates or grocery shopping. Unless I commandeer one of those electric carts or something.

Now, had I known that they were available online in purple.....

(photo credit dsw.com)

Well. Let's just say if my feet were in 20-year old shape and I didn't have to wear Birkenstocks and Danskos as a rule, these would probably be hanging out in my closet, too.

So even though I normally wear these most of the time:

(photo credit ShoeBuy.com)

and these...(photo credit zappos.com)

and absolutely will be wearing them 99% of the time -- it's nice to be branching out. Just like I plan to branch out in my jewelry next year, it sometimes takes meeting that right person at the right time to nudge you in the proper direction.

So what will you be wearing this fall? Where should I be shopping online?
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Lori Anderson creates jewelry, which can be seen at www.lorianderson.net

A New Meaning to Ring Tone

1000 ring tones. 53 different ring tone alerts. All for your listening pleasure, thanks to Vodafone.

Enjoy.