Charly is 4 today!

Charly turned four today. Here is my weak excuse for a birthday party:

Thanks to Mary's brownies from Highland Hollow, we were able to celebrate a little at the store. And... just in case you can't tell, this is Charly's excited face. Izak even tried to help spit on, I mean blow out the candles.

We knew we wouldn't have much time to do anything for her birthday today, so we gave her her gift last night. It was an easel with a chalk board on one side and a magnetic white board on the other. It came with magnetic letters and numbers. She was pretty thrilled.

We will take her bowling on Sunday. Aunt Jean and her family will be there, and hopefully, Nana and Papo.

Some of my work.

I've officially decided to turn off my website the day after Christmas. The only thing it is useful for is that I can accept credit cards at my store through the website. So, since I'm going to turn off my website, I'll post pics of some of my work here...

This is a picture of one of my designs. It is about 17" in length and finished with a silver plated lobster clasp. I also have similar necklaces in black and garnet red. At only $14.00, you can't go wrong! E-mail me at r.bechel@charmedgiftsllc.com if you are interested.

More pics coming soon. Or, if you can't wait, send me an e-mail with your custom request. I make beaded necklaces, earrings, bracelets, anklets, rosaries, ID badge holders, and so on.

You have to love your kids... that's the rule.

For special treat, I bought one of those holiday popcorn tins for a snack at the store. It was time for afternoon snack at the store and I decided to let the kids have fun and eat right out of the tin. I let them bring it into the playroom and watch a movie while snacking... now I know better.

Izak dumped the tin over, Charly proceeded to toss it in the air ('It was raining popcorn, mom.') and then stomp it into little tiny pieces. All while Desirea watched the movie, oblivious to what was going on around her.

These pictures are after about 20 minutes of picking up popcorn bits. To add to the drama, Izak happened to be wearing fleece pants. If you didn't know, crushed popcorn is a bit like tiny balls of styrofoam, clinging to everything. I got out the vaccuum, but everytime I got a small spot clean, Izak had to crawl through and leave a popcorn-bit trail. It was really a great time.

Even though we spent about 45 minutes cleaning the the playroom floor, I think we will be finding popcorn-bits for months to come.