Sophia's ornament wreath

Jane's daughter, Sophia, made a beautiful ornament wreath last night. Sophia has extensive glue gun training and a fearless spirit — plus she worked in the finial ornaments, a challenge I hope to master someday.

Thanks, Sophia, for sharing your awesome work with us. Your grandma will love it!

Jane will be beading this weekend, but I don't have any crafty plans yet. Making an ornament tree is on my "someday" list... I was searching for cone-shaped trees but found this Christmas tree screen and now have a new ornament obsession. Onward with the glue gun.

Happy a creative Thanksgiving, everybody!

Another ornament wreath

Taking a break from outlet shopping and pie eating and tree decorating, my sister and I made this ornament wreath.

There were lots of gold ornaments left over from my Bead Style video, so we merged them with some of last year's leftovers and went for a more subdued palette.

Yukie had a great idea: Vary the size of the ornaments around the inner and outer edges of the wreath base, instead of just alternating two sizes. Then you'll have more flexibility in what to attach to the rest of the base.

Unfortunately she had this idea after we were done, and my wreath is a bit too tall to fit into a storage box. Oops. (At least this can be a 2014 problem to solve.)

If you want to make your own wreath, you can find basic instructions and extra tips in the Bead Room. Happy gluing!

Sluggo's, still

Yesterday I had my birthday gathering at Sluggo's. Friends, drinks, and a doughnut pan from Kelsey? It was a wonderful outing.

We chatted about the movies Pat and Sandy saw, what Rob's reading, Jim staying calm during singles, Wendy's thoughts on digital publishing, and my struggle to become the 39th contact in Bill's phone. Good bar talk.

And Dave brought chocolate chip cookies, freshly baked. They were terrific with pizza and Jack and Cokes!

Thank you to all my dear friends for sharing my birthday with me. I wish only that I'd ordered the macho nachos. So at some point, let's do another coupon-worthy Sluggo's outing, before next year. Cheers!