My honey surprised me a couple of weeks ago with these:

Beautiful, luscious peachy-orange roses.

Now, I have to tell you: my honey is awesome, but he rarely gives me flowers.
It was a special occasion.

More on that soon. Actually, tomorrow I am expecting the final approval to share my news! Stay with me! I truly am sorry for dragging this all out for so long. I hope you're not gonna be like >yawn< when I finally spill it!

Some of the stems had fresh new baby leaves:

Here, you can see it better in this one:

I've read that you can  grow a new rose bush from stems from a store-bought bouquet. It's just propagating from a stem cutting! You have to use a cutting that is at least as thick around as a pencil. I think you cut it into 2-3 inch lengths, wet and dip in rooting hormone, then put in a growing medium. These are by no  means comprehensive instructions, just wanted to let you know since I always think of it when I am lucky enough to be given roses! I usually do cut some and throw them in some water, just in case they'll root the lazy way. They haven't yet, but that didn't stop me from trying again this time! Maybe someday I will do it the proper way.

And since Thor cannot resist...

I love this one:

This is what they look like now:

So, a little bit more on 2007.

I was down down down late last winter after all those rejections I told you about. I have a history of depression, so getting the blues is scary to me because I know where it can lead. Especially compounded by the cold and dark of winter!
I was feeling pretty beaten down. I had to stop reading my favorite blogs because I just felt too jealous and defeated when I would see the success that they had. ( I still struggle with this!)

Some of the things I was being rejected for  weren't even the things I necessarily really wanted to be doing! After a bunch of design rejections, I  approached a regional publication about doing some illustration. We had some good back and forth emails and submissions, but when it came down to it...they ended up choosing clipart instead of my work! Well, that was demoralizing, to say the least.

After much sulking, I finally rallied a bit and thought I would just do some handmade stuff for a while instead of focusing on illustration and design licensing. I have always painted and made jewelry. Really, since middle school. Every now and then I would get the bug to try and sell my work, but I never really followed it up.  It has always been something I do for the pure pleasure of it, the expression and release I get (from painting) and the love of giving friends my handmade jewelry. Oh yeah, and wearing it myself!

I started this blog and soon after signed up to sell  on etsy.  I made some jewelry and did some paintings, but pretty quickly I realized  it just wasn't the time for me to be trying to sell that stuff. I like to do those things for fun.  Trying to sell them and learn etsy and navigate the blues was, frankly,  just more than I really felt up for. It took the fun out of it.

I started to ask myself What do I really want to do? Enough of this messing around... just go for the thing you really want...Quit wasting your energy on all of these little back-up plans and just go for it!

So I did. 

And after months and months of fretting, waiting, working, revising...I am almost done!