Etsy Metal Blog Carnival: What in the World are you Doing?

The topic for this month's Etsy Metal Blog Carnival is to talk about your current "goings on." I hope to get back to some posts about jewelry soon, but in the meantime, here's a little bit of my personal life.

First, our daughter graduated from pre-K at the end of May and will be headed to kindergarten this fall. I am so proud of her! Below is a picture of Kate, me, and my mom at her graduation.

Then we took a trip to St. Louis to visit family. We saw the Chinese Lantern Festival at the Missouri Botanical Garden (always a great source of inspiration for me). Chinese artisans came from China and lived in tents at the garden for several months while they constructed these beautiful structures of steel and silk. They are lit at night, but we were there during the day. There were also two incredible, huge dragons made of blue and white plates, cups, and saucers (bottom of the four pictures below). While in St. Louis we visited the Magic House (children's museum) and ate plenty of Ted Drewe's frozen custard (my fave: raspberry with chocolate chips). Yum.

A couple of weeks later we flew to Pennsylvania to visit my husband's parents. We took Kate to Sesame Place (Sesame Street amusement park), and Tim met his childhood hero, Super Grover. Kate's favorite part was getting her face painted. We also visited the lovely Tyler Aboretum. And when it's hot out, what's better than a Slip 'n Slide?

This past weekend I celebrated my birthday on a 106 degree day with friends, sangria, homemade vanilla ice cream, and peach pie. I love summer food! On the jewelry side of things, I'm working on ideas for some new pieces, hopefully coming soon!

See what other Etsy Metal members have to say on this topic:

Silent Goddess: http://silentgoddess.blogspot.com/

Evelyn Markasky - http://markasky.blogspot.com/
Victoria Takahashi - http://vtakahashi.blogspot.com/
Gracebourne - http://gracebourne.blogspot.ca/
Beth Cyr - http://bcyrjewelry.blogspot.com/
Rebecca Bogan - http://adobesol.wordpress.com/
Erin Austin - http://metalmusing.blogspot.com/
Danielle Miller - http://daniellemillerjewelry.blogspot.com/
Nodeform - http://nodeform.blogspot.com/