Our "kids": beaded pet pins by The Lone Beader!

I have been following The Lone Beader (Diana L. Grygo) for a Long time.... and I have Badly wanted to own (and be able to wear) at least one piece of her work!
The Lone Beader's art is really incredible- her pet pins are truly miniature and wearable works of art:  fun, and sweet, and both incredibly clever and perfectly designed, and her beaded paintings are truly magnificent. Perhaps the most amazing thing is that she's "self-taught"- and I don't say that lightly, as I am a watercolor illustrator by profession, and I truly know what it takes to reach that level of skill, not to mention creativity.
My mother sent me a Hanukkah gift check this past December, and I quickly decided- backed by my hubby- that before it wound up going to pay for bills or some such necessity, I should "play it forward", as it were, and finally commission The Lone Beader to do pins of our "kids": Bear the kissy-needy pit bull, Lady-the-Almost-Lab, and the two Psycho Kitties, Caramel and Butterscotch! Back In The Day I had a contemporary art gallery in Germany and NYC, and I represented 26 artists. My original concept when I opened the gallery was to buy a piece from each artist to enable them to make a living at their art and not have to wait tables, and to build a collection at the same time. And I did it- until I literally ran out of money and lost my shirt in the gallery business thanks to a robbery that essentially finished me off. I had to reinvent myself professionally... which I did: as a FEMA Disaster Response Specialist. After I met my husband during the 9/11 Disaster Response Operation in NYC, I went to WV to be with him when he was deployed to West Virginia following the floods of 2002, and became not only his wife, but his partner in the restoration and owning of of the Elkhorn Inn & Theatre: www.elklhorninnwv.com!  And in the process of reinvention and working to make a living all these years, I'd forgotten how much fun it is to be able to commission an artist whose work you love, and let them do what they do best! I sent The Lone Beader photos of our four critters, and she started with Bear. It was So much fun to watch her work through the photos she sent us! And here they are, both completed, and as "Works-In-Progress",  from her sketches to the final pin/necklaces! We were going to frame them, on velvet in a shadow box, but I'm in the process of making myself a necklace on a silver wire with spacer beads, so I can wear them all at once!

The Lone Beader's pins: Caramel, Lady, Butterscotch, & Bear!

The Lone Beader's pins/necklaces, & the lovely boxes they came in!

PLEASE check out her etsy shop and get yourself a pin!:
http://www.etsy.com/shop/thelonebeader

Collie

Tuxedo Cat

Pug

Westie

Yorkie

Here are the photos of her work on our pets in progress:  

The Lone Beader's Sketch for Lady

Bear in progress!

Bear- as a work-in-progress! 

The Lone Beader's Sketch for Butterscotch
- aka "Li'l Psychopath"

Lady- as she started out!

Lady!

Lady and Bear!

All the critters!

Caramel!

Bear!

Oy! (But I can't complain- I'd be an idiot)...

With the good, comes the bad, right?
We've had a wonderful fall at the Inn. If I complained about Anything I'd be a criminally stupid idiot. Homer & Linda Hickam stopped by the Elkhorn Inn the night before the Coalwood October Sky Festival and Totally thrilled our guests (and us)! Homer signed books, posed for photos with our guests (and me!), and was, as we say in Yiddish, a Total Mensch! :-) He is really As Good As It Gets, and so is Linda, for it was she who informed us that some of Homer's books that we had in our Gift Shop were First Editions and REALLY special! :-) (Our only "Rocket Boys" Signed First Edition is on eBay right now... and there's a bid, so it will definitely sell to one Really Happy Person! Check it out! http://shop.ebay.com/290367934084 )
Our many wonderful Railfan guests have been enjoying the Inn, leaf-peeping, and all our wonderful Pocahontas trains, and the Inn's great, new ATCS Monitor and Scanner, shooting backup pix & videos off our balcony & patio... and we've had guests from as far away as Alaska & MN enjoying the Inn... (Our AK guest gifted us with a jar of her home-made "half-smoke" spicy salmon, which was like Manna from heaven for Dan & I!)
Our hand-crafted WV coal gifts, McDowell County jams & jellies, coal candy, and vintage American Quilts have been flying off the shelves for Hanukkah and Christmas gifts, proving that REALLY affordable- read: cheap!- gifts, that are unique, fun, "green", and actually made by Real People, right HERE, still have some allure! :-D
On the Sweepstakes Front, the Sweeps Queen of Landgraff, WV won a couple of Real Goodies, including eye glasses (she Badly needs) from http://www.EyeBuyDirect.com, a fairly fabulous pearl necklace, beauty products, and two hog hunting holidays (!) in Texas...
But our love-dog, our Tiger, still hasn't come home, and both Dan & I are broken-hearted and not sleeping- for the last month. We've almost lost hope of ever getting him back, but I just Can't lose total hope. Tiger was my love-dog, my puppy, my all-time-best cuddle-dog, my "Mr. Lickey", and my laughter... and I just Can't bear to lose hope that by some miracle he'll come home safe...
In the last week, Lady & Bear-Puppy literally chewed through windows- twice- & took off, scaring both Dan & I to pieces. Dan literally had to rebuild a 1922 window as a result... Since they Never pulled this kind of thing before, I assume it's been desperate attempts by Lady to find Tiger- her Puppy-Hubby- but they came home safe, thank G-d. Wet, shivering-cold, & exhausted- but safe... last night, when we had guests at the Inn. tey literally banged into the side door to let us know they were home! Lady, Bear, & Kitty are now all cuddled up together in their big box, and all is well, but we miss our Tiger SO bad...

Autumn (I mean winter...) is here...

I love fall, don't get me wrong. It's REALLY pretty here in the so. WV mountains when the leaves turn, and they turn late here and usually hang around for quite awhile- it's still pretty here come Halloween. As you can see from the photos, two weeks ago Dan & I had a magical day, ATVing and having a picnic up above Miracle Mountain, seeing the leaves start to turn in the glorious summery sunshine... But I personally hate Cold, and we had our first frost the other night... Having "Weatherbug" chirping madly on my computer to let me know what was in store, Dan & I managed to pull in 6 Tabasco pepper plants totally Covered in tiny peppers, all the herbs, and one window-box full of flowering geraniums at The Last Minute, before everything else got whacked by frost. I am SO bummed, as the marigolds & geraniums were totally covered in flowers, & the roses still had buds! And now everything we couldn't drag inside has frozen :-( So for me, winter is now here- 6 months of it! :-P We have a fire in the fireplace every night now, and the aromatic oak smells glorious & makes the Inn all "cozy", but I'm now wearing Layers, and will be doing so until April, and as an Official Summer Girl, this doesn't thrill me to the core of my being!
The Good News is that for the first time in 7 years, Dan & I went to Yom Kippur services- at the Bluefield, WV Synagogue- and it was wonderful! Dan finally got to hear Kol Nidre done Right! I was literally in tears throughout the service- the familiar prayers and music opened up a great well of loneliness in me, I guess... It's been WAY too long since I was in shul! I got my lulav & Israeli etrog on eBay, and so was able to do Sukkot right- and right here at the Elkhorn Inn! :-D I got a lovely porcelain Havdallah set from Israel (made in China- LOL) on eBay, too, complete with the braided candle, cup, spice box, and tray, and since I can get Manischevitz Kosher wine for Kiddush @the Kimball, WV Walmart(!), I basically have everything I need to do Shabbat the way it's supposed to be done- even up here in the rural mountains! :-D

We've had lots of happy railfan at the Inn this past month, with more again tonight enjoying the trains, our scanner & new ATCS Monitor, and ATVing couples and Foodie Guests arriving tomorrow for Chef Dans Prime Rib, and our hand-crafted WV coal statues are flying out of the gift shop... and so everything is really great & we have been truly blessed... but we've evidently lost our wonderful Tiger-dog, and this has broken both our hearts. Tiger & Lady managed to run off about a month ago, and tho' Lady returned 2 days later, Tiger didn't. Dan's driven all around the mountain, day after day, but no one's seen him. Tiger was my "baby"; we raised him from when he turned up as a pitiful, emaciated puppy, and losing him was like losing a piece of me. :-( We posted "reward" posters all over the place, and got calls from someone who claimed to have our Tiger and then hung up on me. Dan and a police officer ransomed & rescued him, (he was badly hurt), but it wasn't Tiger. And so we now have Bear, a darling, lovey-kissy pit puppy, and he's healing up nicely. He and Lady and Lucky Kitty all sleep together nestled in a box, and he's full of puppy-kisses... But we miss our Tiger SO bad, & I haven't slept right for a month. We still pray that by some miracle he'll come home safe, and also that someone is loving on him like we are loving on Bear...
To try to cheer myself up one night when I couldn't sleep, I visited http://www.dartagnan.com, http://www.VeryAsia.com, http://www.igourmet.com, and http://www.ebay.com and went Gourmet Food Shopping to give Chef Dan something to do & his Foodie Wife something glorious to eat! The fruits of my midnight shopping spree have started to arrive (bless you, FedEx & UPS! What Would we do in these rural mountains without you???): Wild Boar Tenderloin, Buffalo Fillet Mignon medallions, duck & boar bacon, and lamb sausages from d'artagnan, and Korean, Japanese, & Vietnamese foodstuffs from VeryAsia... The igourmet Italian truffle cheese I adore & a batch of condiments are due to arrive tomorrow, & the Sushi ginger, panko bread crumbs, and black & golden sesame seeds, next week. (I'm about to get us the little Japanese plums- umeboshi?- & hopefully some Vietnamese pho rice noddles- tonight on eBay...) I ordered a batch of used books off http://www.amazon.com/, including one of Mai Pham's excellent Vietnamese cookbooks, and so I'm in the process of gathering all the bits & pieces we need to make Korean and Vietnamese dishes & "real" sushi & maki rolls, so the next time Dan brings home sushi fish or scallops from ab fab Food City in Bluefield we can make the "real McCoy"! Up 'til now we've always eaten it as sashimi- simple & utterly sexy-wonderful- but I thought it'd be fun to try to actually make maki rolls and such, and to do it w/the "right" kind of rice, nori, and condiments. Chef Dan will be doing his herb-rubbed smoked lamb chop racks for the Inn's Gourmet Guests this Sunday, and is planning to smoke some of the wild boar tenderloin, too...

While hunting for wild boar recipes on-line, I wound up on http://www.epicurious.com, and saw one of those keyword Google ad links for a "free wild boar hunt", and I HAD to check that out! Dan's an experienced big game hunter, but I'm a newbie; I've been Dreaming about "really" going hunting with him since we did a little pheasant hunting on Jeju island in Korea on our Honeymoon last year... and so we've both registered to win a free wild boar hunt in Texas on http://www.huntinghoghunting.com! I figure our chances are pretty good, since how many epicurious.com visitors would actually want to hunt their own boar? LOL

BTW, the Sweeps & Contest Queen of Landgraff, WV recently won a couple of great things: a pair of (sorely-needed) eyeglasses from Eye Buy Direct http://www.eyebuydirect.com via the great Born2Impress Blog http://kidzborn2impress.blogspot.com/ I follow; she always has great info, showcases great products, and hosts some Very cool contests! I haven't had a Real pair of glasses since I got contacts at the age of 16 (34 years ago! AAAUGH!), and so this is Truly a great win! Eye Buy Direct has some Very cute glasses, including ones with rhinestones which are Just My Thing! LOL You can even download a photo of yourself & virtually "try on" all their glasses, so you can see how they'll actually look! Without that option I'd be REALLY afraid to order glasses on-line, but I easily uploaded a face photo of myself, and tried on a mess of glasses, finding that the ones with the rhinestones I so admired will actually look good on me! :-D (And now I have to go get a prescription!)

I also won a fairly fabulous and elegant $75 freshwater pearl sterling silver necklace from http://www.MyJewelryBox.com via Steal The Style http://stealthestyle.com/, another great website and Blog I follow (and I follow them on Twitter, too @StealTheStyle). Remember my rule of thumb: only enter for things you REALLY want to win! :-)

I Didn't win the "Huge Lips Skinny Hips" contest from Purple Lab NYC http://www.purplelabnyc.com on Brickfish (http://www.brickfish.com/), and got Seriously bummed (LOL), but then I got back in the fashionista saddle and entered 4 more Brickfish contests, so yes, you can go on http://www.brickfish.com/ RIGHT NOW and vote for me (elisse) and help "Boomer Babe" win a Macy's shopping spree in NYC! (Even my 87 year-old mother is voting for me every day!) I am Determined to somehow win a makeover in NYC, so I can get back up there to see my eye doc (Dr. Farkas, who's been (along with his dad), my eye doc since 1975, saved my sight by catching both my detaching retinas in 1993 when I had NO symptoms, and is the ONLY eye doc I trust), wander about my old stomping grounds, and meet my BFFs & new Facebook friends at Marty O'Brien's on 2nd Ave., and take 'em all to Macanudo's for scotch and cigars! So PLEASE click, vote for me, & Share! :-)

Empowered...

Nothing quite so empowers one as hitting a fairly small target at a decent distance with a 20 gauge shotgun. :-)
The other night, whilst I was Facebooking & Twittering away at the computer, adding such pithy 140-character-or-less bon mots as "Train Tweets: The Pocahontas RR is chugging past the http://www.elkhorninnwv.com! #railfans #trains" to the tweeting universe (and patently oblivious to the rest of it), Dan went out back and shotgunned a copperhead snake that was freaking out the dogs.
Totally immersed in the computer, I heard not the dogs freaking out, nor the Boom of the shotgun- Nada. This was Not a good thing. Plus, I later wondered, what if I had? This was not the first time we'd had the dogs freaked out by a snake, but it Was the first time the dogs were freaked out by a Poisonous snake, and the possibility of it happening again at some point is a good one, so Boo-Boo better better be able to Deal, as they say...
And so yesterday I went out back w/Dan & "Li'l Betsy", our antique gift shotgun from NY friends who inherited it, and picked out a couple of targets in the creek (the shadow in front of a piece of drift wood, a sunlit spot on the water) and successfully blasted 'em. Boom! Reload! Boom! Reload! Boom! Reload! Woo-hoo! It is SO nice to be able to step out back of one's home and blast away at things in the peaceful quiet of one's own backyard, with no neighbors to p-o...
Li'l Betsy has a bit of a kick to her, but today my shoulder is neither black nor blue, and I now feel Quite empowered & Much more capable- of taking out a poisonous snake, among other things! :-D

We've had a number of guests at the Inn over the last few weeks, including many Railfans, which has been a lot of fun. Our littlest railfan guest this week (age 6) was enchanted with the inn & all the trains, especially as the Pocahontas' RR engineer's "tooted" him on the RR horn! We've had several guests book the Inn's "Ultimate Railfan" package, too, which includes two nights at the Inn, a Chef Dan Dinner at the Inn, and a signed copy of one of James Porterfield's books- either "From the Dining Car" or "Dining by Rail" www.jamesdporterfield.com. The best news this week is that we've just learned the Elkhorn Inn & Theatre is featured in the October issue of TRAINS Magazine, as well as in the Sept. issue of the WV State Journal! TRAINS Magazine www.trains.com is an especially big deal for us, as railfan guests truly are the backbone of our business; Trains and Railfan & Railroad www.railfan.com are THE magazines most of our guests read, and for the Elkhorn Inn to have been featured now in both publications is a great thing for us and McDowell County.

We have several upcoming festivals in our area, too, so we've been getting ready for our guests who'll be coming to enjoy them:

Sat. Sept 5th (Labor Day Weekend) there's an "ATV pig roast" and live band up on the mountain, and Dan & I are planning to ride our ATV's up and enjoy that- hopefully with our guests! Sat. Oct. 3 is the October Sky - Rocket Boys Festival in Coalwood with Homer Hickam & the Rocket Boys of book & movie fame, and

Sat. Oct 10 is Oktoberfest in Bramwell, with live music and a microbrewery beer sampling... and the "leaf-peeping" should be Gorgeous all the way through Halloween!

Dan & I Finally got to do a bit of ATVing this week, riding all over the mountain for 6 hours, nice-and-easy, and found a "secret" valley where we had a fun picnic. It was a Gorgeous day, mostly sunny and in the 70s, and everything is still that wonderful deep, summer green... I will NOT LET SUMMER GO! I do not want to hear ONE thing about fall, sweaters, leaf-peeping, holiday gifts, "rich & hearty warming stews", or ANYTHING that even IMPLIES that summer is over! We get 8 $%&*!!$! months of winter here every year and I want to drag summer out as long as I possibly can! We harvested a whole Mess of oregano last week and made several quarts of REALLY good oregano pesto, and we've been harvesting tomatoes, as well, and so cooking up lots of tomato-basil sauce. Like the wild-blackberry sauces & salsas we make, I like to freeze them so we can have a "taste of summer" when we badly need it in the winter! Chef Dan treated me this week to a couple of glorious "foodie" meals: seared sushi tuna one night, accompanied by a truly fine saki our friend Cindy gave us, and the next night tiny scallops sauteed in garlic and oil with almonds over pasta with a Maycas del Limari 2006 Chardonnay from http://www.wine.com/ that Dan got from the "puppies" on DogFather's Day! As you can see, it is almost Impossible to diet in this house, but I have managed, over the last 6 months, to actually lose some weight- the proof was getting boots zipped all the way up that wouldn't even Begin to close back in May... The only "trick" I can attribute this to was writing down Everything I put in my mouth (and its calorie count) for over a month, which made me Think about what I was consuming- and cut it down. And I Do try to drink 5 cups of green tea a day, as this truly does help me lose weight more rapidly...

As readers of this blog know, for the past several weeks I was like, you know, Totally Obsessed with the http://www.purplelabnyc.com/ "Huge Lips Skinny Hips" contest on http://www.brickfish.com/, and whined, wheedled, plead, & otherwise drove all my friends nuts begging them (you) to vote for my entry. Well, the contest ended the other day, and as I have not yet received The Phone Call, I gather I didn't win the fabulous fashionista trip to NYC... Such is life! It was fun, and actually quite a learning experience, vis a vis the promotional usages of "Social Networking" and "Social Marketing" to create "buzz"... I now have another 5 entries on Brickfish (!), and I will add links to my entries on this blog, but I will not (for the moment, anyway) drive y'all crazy with them...

As I write this, Lucky Kitty- the most appropriately named kitten in the world- is asleep on top of my computer printer. Lucky has become, obviously, a House Cat, with all that this implies: he now has a litter box, a cat collar with a tiny bell (that's still too large, & which he pulls off), and store-bought kitten food, it's spoiled rotten already, & is about to get a Scratching Post with the $10 gift certificate to Petco that The Sweeps Queen won on www.GoPetFriendly.com (a great site about traveling with ones pets), before he even Thinks about damaging any furniture. Lucky has spent his first week @the Elkhorn Inn tweaking the Tiger- literally.

One Incredibly Self-Assured Kitten from the minute he strode into the bldg. like he owned it, L has taken to perching on the the back of my office chair & whacking at Tiger-the-Pit-Bull's nose with his paw, while T attempts to lick it like a Mommy Cat! Watching the two big dogs play with the tiny kitten and chase each other around (practically bouncing off the walls of my office...) is pretty funny and incredibly sweet... At night Tiger, Lady, & Lucky all curl up in the big dog box, and T even lets kitten drink from his water dish! They are now a Complete Animal Family: Mommy Lab, Daddy Pittie, & Baby Kittie! And that is IT! The Elkhorn Inn Animal Farm is CLOSED! Note to all strays: It's over! Finito! We're officially Full! Chiuso! No room at the Inn! Go away!

Trains in the snow... and other signs of spring...

It's been a Very busy train day at the Elkhorn Inn & Theatre...

Lots and lots and Lots of trains coming and going past the Inn thru the powdery snow... Dan,

with his militarily-honed hearing, can hear a train Long before I do, & yelled "get the camera!" early enough that for once I actually got out there in time! (I actually stood out there in the snow w/my camera muttering ''why?" for a good, cold several minutes until I heard it coming...)

I've gotten so used to ol' Pokey that I don't even hear her most of the time- I grew up in Queens, NY, smack under the plane-path 'tween JFK & Idlewild airports, & my father had an apt. right under the El in Woodside, so I have a long-standing & well-developed ability to tune out Really Loud Noise- I think it's called the "oblivious gene". (In July of 1976 I slept thru the planes flying low over our Kibbutz on their way to Entebbe... no one else did!) But today was truly a Railfan Day if ever there was one- and it continues thru the night as I write this. Tres picturesque, & I finally managed to get some decent pix with our 'toy' camera, at least in daylight... It's now dark, and when the trains go by in the darkness in the snow, the headlights making the wind-swept snowflakes sparkle in the blackness, it is Incredibly cool looking, but our little camera won't take any decent night shots :-( It is still snowing fit to beat the band, as they say, as it did all day; truly beautiful, esp. if you don't have to go anywhere! We have Inn guests arriving tonight, & hope they're okay out there in this picturesque snowstorm...

Segueing from holiday to holiday as we do, Dan deflated Valentine's I Love You Bear, & inflated Mr. Leprechaun, getting him all lit up & on display just in time for the snowstorm... I changed the Inn's tabletop decor from V-Day to St. Pat's, storing away the Valentine's teddy & red-&-white heart napkins, & festooning the green floppy-eared bunnies with rings of shamrock tinsel surrounding a pot o' gold (candies)... Disappointment of the day: WalMart had no green taper candles! ;-) (Believe me, I know- this should be the worst dis of my life!)

The finches have been flocking to our feeders all winter, but they are terribly camera-shy, & so I have yet to get a photo; Dan filled the big feeder w/thistle seed for the finches, as the fat, greedy doves kick the tiny finches out of the way to get to the sunflower seeds... Read a blog about the possibility of poisoning birds w/tainted peanut butter (shades of Tom Lehrer's "Poisoning

Pigeons In The Park???!) & so opted out of proffering suet-peanut butter cakes this year... The spring bulbs have sprouted (yay!), & we pruned back the butterfly bushes & Dan repaired the fence... This morning Dan discovered- just in the nick of time- that a fuse had quietly blown & shut down one of our freezers, & so we managed to save everything in it... but as a few things had defrosted, we had chili for lunch, and tonight I'm making Chicken Mole, Dan is doing a 10 lb. corned beef (& he makes THE best corned beef in the known universe- & I say that as a devout & drooling fan of the 2nd Ave. Deli), and we're both doing something TBD (FoodNetwork.com here I come...) needing several quarts of peach puree- the bounty of last summer's harvest... We've got a Truly roaring fire going in the fireplace AND one going in the potbelly railroad stove in the back of the building, and so periodically I hear the happy sound of Dan mitre-sawing giant hunks o' tree into manageable logs...

The new thing I do when it's too cold to do almost anything else, is to sit on Facebook... & it is fun, esp. when you set it to "Live Feed'' & all the things your friends are doing (or not doing- because they're sitting on Facebook, too...) pop up... We now have a 'fan page' for the Elkhorn Inn on Facebook and we invite you to join it, and share it with your friends; there's a coupon on the page that's good for lodging at the Inn or our on-line gift shop, & I've downloaded railfan photos and lots of other links and cool things... & when we get to 100 fans we'll have a sweepstakes for a nice gift from the Inn's Gift Shop!

Another sign that it's been a Really cold winter is that the dogs have taken to Totally Refusing to go outside when they deem it too cold; after enduring one particularly foul snarl from Tiger when I 'invited' him to go outside, Dan & I simply decided to let them lay in their beds until They decide it's time... And they do let us know, thank goodness... For two foundling strays, trolling the garbage cans for scraps in the cold, they've become awful soft, much preferring now to loll all day in their cozy, blanket-covered bed (preferably on their backs w/their tummies in the air)

in front of a heater... lucky dogs! It is fun to have these two dogs around us all the time, full of cuddles & puppy kisses, & to know that we've given them the Life of Riley... This giant building Truly had an empty, dog-shaped space in it after my old lab, Trapper, died, & one at a time, these two magically appeared on our doorstep & more than filled it :-) Tiger is sitting behind me in my chair as I write this, attempting to slather me w/puppy-spit- the 'Tiger Dog-Spit Facial" as I fondly call it... Nothing fixes depression or the winter doldrums better that puppy kisses!

Well & truly fed up w/winter, last week I jumped the gardening gun & planted the first of our spring veggie seeds in their little peat-pot, table top greenhouse, full of hope that come early April we'll be able to set them out in their Cozy Coats & so harvest veggies 1 1/2 months early! I started watermelons, cantaloupes, pumpkins, squash, herbs, & the Tabasco pepper seeds I brought back from Avery Island, LA in Nov.; we'll buy tomato & other plants as soon as they appear @the garden store... How you get thru the cold of winter w/out going totally ga-ga is by dreaming of spring!