Self-Examination Time!

I just found this great article that has caused me to look at how I might look to other people.  Not physically!  I mean my behaviors!  I think I need to take a good look at how I react to things, and do my best to NOT mimic the behaviors mentioned in this article.  I think it might be hard to do!  The article is called: 

6 Toxic Behaviors That Push People Away: How To Recognize Them In Yourself and Change Them

 I know!  Scary, huh? You can click on the title to read the article.  Try not to take it personally!

Treading Lightly Through the Friend Zone

I’m a jeweler.  I have friends that like my jewelry. Every once in a while, I’ll have one who wants me to create something special for them. I love that my friends like my jewelry and want me to make something special for them!  I don’t, however, like to use their stones to create that special item. This is why…

When you create jewelry using stones, you always take a risk that the stone will get cracked, scratched or otherwise ruined.  Setting a stone takes pressure with metal tools.  Metal tools can damage a stone in a split second.  One slip and you’ve just scratched it.  One push just a little too hard on the bezel has just cracked the stone.  If it’s my stone, it’s my loss.  I won’t say it’s no big deal, because it usually is.  Chances are the setting was made specifically for that stone and another stone just won’t fit in it.  So now I have to find another stone and remake the setting.   But if it’s someone else’s stone, I’ve just destroyed something that a friend was attached to enough to want me to create something special with it.  Now I have to find another, and it needs to be a perfect match.  Maybe you’re not even 100% sure of what kind of stone it was, or what replacing it will cost.  What a headache!

Second, there’s pricing the item. I think that most people think that if they go to a friend to do something for them, you’re going to give them the “friend” price.  So you’re expected to cut them a deal on something that you’re already agonizing over.  Great!  Plus, they supplied the stone, so that should knock quite a bit off the price, right?  Wrong!!!  Those of us who create with our hands sometimes do a little fudging.  Sometimes we used the perceived value of our materials to recoup some of the losses we’ve made time-wise.  Most people think we can just wave our magic wand (torch) over the metal to create a beautiful piece.  In reality, we may have had problem after problem crop up, making the piece take twice as long as it should’ve.  We need to make that money up somewhere.  That’s where we hope the beautiful stone looks worth that price, or the amount of metal in a piece makes that piece worth every cent.

Finally, there’s the fact that we really do want our friend to like the piece we’ve just created for them.  What if they don’t like it?  Do they admit they don’t like it?  Or do they just suck it up and pay for it, only to stick it in a drawer, never to be seen again?  If they don’t like it and tell you they don’t like it, will that damage your friendship?  Do they want their stone pulled back out, damaging the setting and destroying the whole piece?  Do you have to buy their stone from them?  But maybe they do like what you’ve done with it.  Great!  That’s excellent news!  But they don’t like the price. Great… now what?  Cut them that deal and get mad at them and yourself for letting them talk you down?  Hold firm to your price and run the risk of them getting mad at you? 

It’s all so hard!  I love when friends see one of my pieces and just have to have it.  The price is right there, the design is already done, and they can take it or leave it.  It’s up to them, and I love it that way!  Please, buy from me, but please don’t ask me to do something with one of your stones.  It’s too much pressure!  I want everyone to be happy with my jewelry, and I certainly don’t want to lose a friend over it!  Sadly, I think maybe it's already happened.

O, Christmas Tree!

A few weeks ago, my boss decided to have a contest and asked all of us to write, in fifty words or less, what Christmas meant to us. Well, I went over, of course, because I can't abbreviate ANYTHING. But it did get me thinking. What DID Christmas mean to me?

She asked this a day or two before we bought our Christmas tree. I love a live tree, so that's what we get every year. It's messy, it drops needles, as well as ornaments, as it slowly wilts. But there's nothing like the smell of it, or each tree's uniqueness.

As I started decorating I think about our life. Our Christmas tree tells the story of our lives. Decorating the tree reminds me of EVERYTHING we've gone through. There are the ornaments on the tree that I made for my parents in preschool. There are ornaments that my kids made for me and my husband in preschool. There are the ornaments that my husband and I bought our first year of marriage at the dollar store, when we were terribly poor. There's the ornament that my grandmother made for our family when I was little and it makes me miss her. There are the photo ornaments of my children as babies with their toothless grins, and I have to smile.

Now, when we go on vacation, one of the souvenirs that I try to always bring back with us is a Christmas ornament. That helps us keep the memories of that trip alive. We have countless ornaments from Disney World. There's a crawdad with a crown and mardi gras beads from New Orleans as a reminder of the one and only trip my husband and I took by ourselves after we had kids. This year we took a cruise to Mexico, and I didn't find any ornaments while on the trip, but while I was Christmas shopping I did buy us a burro pinata ornament to remind us of the trip.

There are also the ornaments that just remind us of everyday life. The black lab ornament for Molly, the chocolate lab ornament for Hershey, the cat for both cats. We have a Santa constuction company ornament with Santa in a hard hat on a steel beam for the house we built in the Outer Banks. The fish ornament my best friend in the Outer Banks gave me. Almost all of our ornaments mean something to us.

I really don't understand how people can just decorate their tree to look pretty. Our Christmas tree is our time to reflect. It reminds us of where we've been. I'm hoping to pass down the tradition to my boys. I've already started to separate some ornaments out for them to use on their own trees, though we have a few years before they'll have their own trees. But my wish for them is that at least once a year, they remember their lives when they were children, and how much we love them. And that they pass it on to their children.

Now it's time to take the Christmas tree down. That will stir up all those wonderful memories again. I guess that makes it twice a year that it stirs up memories! That's what Christmas is all about. Happy remembering!