Aprill 2011, my husband and I drove to Cannon Beach, OR from Puyallup, WA. We took Sonny, our Westie dog, along. He was pretty much sleep in the back seat during the trip. We stopped a couple times to stretch our legs. This is our first time visit to Cannon Beach (and even Oregon state for me). We stayed in a vacation rental home, with a view to the beach and haystack rocks. We (including Sonny) also walked a lot in the beach, morning and afternoon. The haystack rocks are re

I recently posted a blog regarding pliers to open and/or jump rings. Even I often use pliers (especially flat nose pliers to open and close jump rings), sometimes I got my hands so tired to hold the pliers. I have carpal tunnel symptoms as well as arthritis. So it's hard for me to hold something in my hand for long. Lucky I found another tool, The Bead Smith Tools: jump ring opener. Slip the tool onto you finger, then use the other hand with plier to place the jump ring into

I moved from Indonesia to US in year 2006. My first 'vacation' here in US is the trip to Ocean Shores. Not far, just about 2 1/2 hours drive from where we lived. Went there with my husband. It's very different from tropical beach. It's windy, it's cold, and not safe to play in the water. I wore jacket/coat :-) Anyway, it was sunny and beautiful. We stayed at a timeshare condo. We walked along the beach during the day, saw a lot of driftwood/logs laying on the beach. In the

I decided to create a new thread of blog called: Travel Inspired Painting. I love traveling, I love taking pictures of the travel, and I love making painting based on travel pictures :-). Not necessary to copy exactly from the picture. But it represents what I like from that place. So here I am creating a new blog thread talking about 'travel inspired paintings'. Most of them are beautiful landscape/scenery of places that I visited. I don't do the painting immediately afte

In the beginning, I only have a very few pliers. When I need to open and/or close jump rings, I used chain nose pliers as that's the only option that I have. Sometimes I found it's a bit difficult to hold the jump rings with this pliers, especially for bigger size of jump rings. Eventually, I bought more and more pliers in different types and sizes. I found out that using flat nose pliers is much easier to open and close big jump rings, while chain nose pliers are great when