Grandma's Treasures and every little girl's dream.

Ceebee-Glitz Glitter Creations. 

Every since she was a little girl pretty sparkly things intrigued her. I would watch with a mother's eye how she would sit for hours, legs curled up under her, threading tiny seed beads on string. I still have many of the sweet little "friendship bracelets" she gave me from years gone by.

Ceebee never wore jewelry herself.  She preferred the clean and simple looks that are classics even today.  It was grandma who was the jewelry hound.  She had baskets of costume jewelry and decorated herself regularly, not with one necklace, but 6 or 7.  If she had been born with 20 fingers, she would have not have had enough for her thirst for the "bling".  Ceebee made it her goal in life to instruct her grandma on the ins and outs of proper bauble couture.

As her mom, I definitely inherited the jewelry bug.  I also inherited all of grandma's jems.  As outdated and massive the selection was, it was quickly obvious that there was little hope for their revival, but Ceebee set out to tackle the task.

 Grandma in her "pretties", where just one necklace was never enough.

What she created was amazing.  The box of costume sparkles became a treasure  chest of goodies.  Thus was born her passion for glitz.  

Today, Ceebee maintains a small shop in the back of the house.  She is very particular about each and every gem she caresses.  They are her special little friends and they speak to her alone.  The same patience and love of intricate detail she began as a small child, now in full bloom.

 

She spends hours with her delicate little friends, mixing and matching them, introducing them to each other and complimenting them on their color and clarity.   

It is this eye for the flair, one sees, when they look at her finished works.  

Ceebee still wears minimal jewelry herself but takes the greatest pride in seeing her buddies shipped off and hopefully lovingly gracing someone else.  Each piece is sent with a hug and a wish that the wearer will feel prettier and happier having them.

• That’s why we say “lovingly handcrafted by Ceebee”.

Black Friday Cyber Monday Origins Exposed - It's not always the TRUTH!

Black Friday, Cyber Monday, the day after Thanksgiving and the Monday following, are the "Buzz" words this week-end.


As Black Friday is the day many U.S. consumers typically begin their Christmas shopping, sales are heavily promoted by retailers throughout the country. Stores open very early and offer amazing incentives to draw people to their shops. The day after Thanksgiving has served as the unofficial beginning of the Christmas season for decades.  The term "Black Friday" has only been traced back to the 1970s and did not achieve widespread use and popularity until 2002.


The term Cyber Monday started in 2005 when Internet use and sales began booming.  Retailers around the world started to wonder if shoppers had just suddenly given up on Christmas shopping.   It was soon revealed that folks were shopping just using the new venue,  the Internet.  A whole new way to engage in holiday shopping had begun


As many die-hard shoppers still love to take part in Black Friday sales and deals, in 2002, online shops decided to use the following Monday as their "Shopping" day.  The best deals online are saved for Cyber Monday.


So now, you have a choice, to avoid the hectic and stressful Christmas Rush on Black Friday, kick back,  relax and wait for Monday.  Bargains abound on the internet.


Here's how Black Friday really happened: According to the site, which specializes in "fictional urbanism," The City Desk.


Laurence H. Black was one of the best floor men in town, working in the men’s department of the old Osberger’s Department Store for over thirty years. He had been with the store since its humble beginnings as a menswear store on Richmond Avenue in the late 1920s. Except for a very brief stint in the service during World War II, he remained with the store as it grew, eventually settling into its later eight-floor retail palace on North Geary Street. Black was a fixture in the store, presiding over the suits, shirts, ties and millinery in his ever-present black suit (”That’s how they remember me. Black suit, Mr. Black, see?”) with a red carnation in the lapel. In a very cutthroat industry, his was one of those rare cases in which he was respected by everyone in the city’s retail trade, regardless of store affiliation. His reputation was even cemented throughout the region, as Osberger’s expanded in the 1950s and Mr. Black would often be called upon to train sellers at the various stores.


But it was the downtown store he loved the most. He was typically one of the first there in the morning (just behind Wharton Osberger) and one of the last to leave, which is exactly as it was on November 27, 1964. Toward the end of his twelve-hour shift, as the massive brass clock overlooking the restaurant in the store’s Grande Center Court read 7:48 pm, Laurence H. Black collapsed, felled by a heart attack. Old man Osberger closed the store the next day and clerks at the city’s other retail palaces wore black in tribute.


The following year, on the Friday after Thanksgiving, all of the employees wore black suits and dresses, highlighted by a single red carnation, with a moment of silence at 7:48 pm, a tradition that carried on year after year and was picked up by many other stores in the city. But, through many consolidations and sales and employee turnover and whatnot, the reason for the tribute and the tradition itself has been lost, save for a few old-timers who still remember. The small Osberger chain was dissolved in the early 1990s and the old parent company is now the owner of a chain of movie theaters in Australia. If you trace back through approximately fifteen mergers and acquisitions you’ll find that the old Osberger stores themselves are all now Macy’s.
:: RJ White


I loved this story and wanted to share it with you.  At first, I thought it would be nice to feature a picture of Mr. Black along with his epitaph but extensive search online revealed 2 things....


1. The origin of this story is a very creative columnist who writes about a fictitious city in somewhere America.  (It's just a neat story).


2. The story is mentioned 100's of times online with a thorough google search and has become the TRUTH in many cases.

Just because you read it online or heard it in a chat room, does not make it fact.  More than one legend has been created from readings on the internet and this just might be one of them.....


Think about that the next time you pass-on something  you found On Line!

Giving Thanks Day to you and you and you........

I made a last minute stop at my local Wal Mart today.  Just a few extra things I needed, before my big cooking day tomorrow to round off the menu.

The store was packed.  Everyone was pushing heavily loaded baskets, filled with a plethora of foods from turkeys to pizzas.  As I tried to maneuver the aisle to get another package of coffee, I found myself stalled behind 3 more wheeled baskets.  Annoyed, I started to push my way out but stopped and decided to take advantage of the chaos.


I surveyed the folks around me, families with children merrily running up and down the aisles, discovering yet another goody to add to their treasure baskets, an elderly couple almost afraid to budge lest someone jolt them and cause them to slip or fall and a young single girl pushing a fairly empty basket, yet filled with a pretty little spray of flowers (no doubt a gift for her hostess for the holiday table).  Everyone of them engrossed in their own thought and dreams of the perfect holiday gathering.


It struck me, that as bad as the economy is portrayed by the news, we are still shopping, filling our baskets and anticipating well filled bellies tomorrow.  We are buying groceries as if we have never been shopping before or food has been scarce somehow.  We are preparing to share our bounty with the ones we love most and in some cases, with the ones, our loved ones love as well.

 Americans are an amazingly resilient bunch of folks, dang the economy, puie to the negative sayers, and hang the gloom,  it's our holiday, as unique to this country as pumpkin pie is.


We call it Thanksgiving Day but it seems more appropriate to me, this year, to call it

Giving Thanks Day.

From Glitz Glitter Creations, we say,
Amen.....


Any thoughts?

What a world

Woke up early this morning to update a few sites, facebook, artfire, twitter, digg, ebay, etsy, etc.  The list goes on.  It struck me as ironic that even before I had finished my updates on 1 site, through the magic of computers, another site was already announcing to the world just exactly what I was doing.


They, we, & I are all interconnected in some magical way.  The paradox to all of this is that I am promoting a venerated art form using quite modern technology.


Everything I need is at my finger tips, thesaurus, typing apparatus, picture gallery, and my thoughts.  I can buzz across the world in a matter of seconds.  Some little tidbit of knowledge that just might be lurking in the shadows is but a mouse click away.   In the grander scheme of things, we might not really matter but for a moment we are propelled into the limelight for all to see and know.


Yesterday, I facebooked with an old friend over 3000 miles away and 35 years ago in my memory.  An ex-brother-in-law.  someone who probably mattered to me very much back then.  A person, forgotten with time.  Today, I see him as he is now, much older ( so I am reminded that I am older too!).  Unimaginable technology back then that we would be able to sit simotaniously 6 time zones apart and share the gaps of what has happened in the between time.


To the young, who take this technology as a given, I envy you in some ways but unfortunately you will never know the anticipation of waiting for a letter, or thoughts and memories that stay rigid in their own time because bubbles aren't burst so easily when connections take months, even years. or never.


The world we live in is amazing, the speed of communication mind blowing which leads me to a photo I saw last night while "surfing" the web;

Any thoughts?

Homemade

I was just thinking about handmade things....

My mother age 13 Sonia Berkovitz (Russia 1927?)

which always leads me to think about my mom...


She was born in Russia on a Kolchoz (Commune) a few years before WWI.  She was a simple woman with big strong hands that could lovingly split an apple into perfectly equal pieces, exactly enough for her two children.   (I have yet to meet a man in this country who can perform the same trick.)


She raised us to crave education.  She held up that shiny star of "Advanced Education"  as the perfect diamond.  Learning was the prize!  her favorite saying was " study and you will be popular".  Of course we believed her, but somehow it just never made me very special in school.  It wasn't until much later that I realized she didn't mean popular in school, but in life.


Her own education had been interrupted by "life".  At age 13, the government tore her from her family home and sent her off to a school 3 days train ride from her parents.  She was 33 years old before she saw them again.


It would be an easy guess that she raised herself and the lessons she learned from her unusual life are the lessons I cherish in my own heart.


It's hard right now.  The dollar just doesn't buy the same amount of groceries it did a year ago.  My heating bill has increased, the water bill, the same.  The News is warning us that we will pay double for health care if the government has it's way.  As everything appears to rise in cost, my salary is not keeping up.  I worry about small things, like how will I pay my bills, will there be anything left over to buy holiday gifts for my loved ones. or how much more can I dial down the thermostat to save a few pennies and still not be too cold or burst the pipes in the house.


Then I think about mom.  When she was growing up, there was no heat.  They had a big fireplace that doubled as their heater, their stove and at night, their bed was made above it.


Mom knew how to make starch, soap, preserves, she made her own pickles, bread, cakes and cookies from scratch.  She sewed our clothes and I learned the "eye" for quality by her side.  Anything and everything that came from her hands was finished.  You could turn my clothes inside out and wear them in public.  Just that clean was her pride in her work.


I played with homemade dolls from old rags she bought at the Salvation Army store.  She furnished the house with discarded furniture she refinished herself, making them look elegant and new again.  She sewed the curtains that covered our windows to keep the dangers away from our house and she darned socks to the point that you could call them handmade, they had so many patches on them.  Mom even made towels from material she purchased from the Mill End store.


I just saw her as mom.  I appreciated those things she did but I never really thought about them.  It was her job, her motherly duty to provide me with clothing and food and a roof over my head.  How she accomplished this feat was no concern of mine.  I confess now,  she was the real craftsman, the real handmade artist.  She did it out of necessity.  Just 50 years ago, it was the way everyone did things.  They just called it "homemade".


Today, homemade is something special.  It is something different that is not manufactured in a factory.  It is a knitted cowl, or a batch of fudge with organically grown nuts inside.  It's homemade bread or a stool to reach that high shelf turned out by a fellow in his basement.  To give or receive something homemade today is an extra special something.  Not everyone can make things from raw materials.  Few of us are crafters anymore and even less of us hold stock in those special talents.  Today, to turn out by hands working carefully and diligently to create something unique, special, is called HANDMADE.


This time of year when we are looking for something special for someone dear,  think "HANDMADE".    Your gift will be doubly appreciated, whether it comes from your own hands or the hands of someone still practicing the art of Homemade.


Visit: http://www.etsy.com or http://www.artfire.com for your holiday shopping.

Irena Sendler A Story worth repeating again and again and again......

A Memorial of Irena Sendler and for Humankind
http://irenasendler.org

Irena Sendler


There recently was a death of a 98 year-old lady named Irena. During WWII, Irena, got permission to work in the Warsaw Ghetto, as a Plumbing/Sewer specialist. She had an 'ulterior motive' ... She KNEW what the Nazi's plans were for the Jews, (being German.) Irena smuggled infants out in the bottom of the tool box she carried and she carried in the back of her truck a burlap sack, (for larger kids..) She also had a dog in the back that she trained to bark when the Nazi soldiers let her in and out of the ghetto. The soldiers of course wanted nothing to do with the dog and the barking covered the kids/infants noises.. During her time of doing this, she managed to smuggle out and save 2500 kids/infants. She was caught, and the Nazi's broke both her legs, arms and beat her severely. Irena kept a record of the names of all the kids she smuggled out and kept them in a glass jar, buried under a tree in her back yard. After the war, she tried to locate any parents that may have survived it and reunited the family. Most had been gassed. Those kids she helped got placed into foster family homes or adopted.


Last year Irena was up for the Nobel Peace Prize ... She was not selected.
Al Gore won, for a slide show on Global Warming.

Tips from the Web - Organizing your workshop Cheap!

(Click the pix/link for more details.)
This is standard plumber's PVC pip that has been cut, sanded and glued together in interesting ways to make a very sturdy and delightful organizer.

(Click the pix/link for more details.)
These "Fork Minders" are a great idea for keeping notes, business cards or anything else you might want nearby. A quick trip to your local Good Will or Salvation Army store can uncover some great treasures. (Check your cutlry drawers as well for lone forks-great way to preserve old memories)

Welcome

Our first blog ever.  Not even sure what a blog is or how to start.


Maybe we need to introduce ourselves first.

Glitz Glitter Creations is a family collaboration.


There is Celia! (She is the "Artist").
It is her imagination that creates the stunning baubles you see when you enter any of our shops.  This wonderfully talented young lady is also the photographer.  After all, she handmade each item and knows the inner depths of beauty hidden within.  Only she can coax them into shinning for the camera.



Next is Malia! (That's me)
We laughingly call my job "The grunt work".  I maintain the sites, do the mailings and keep Ceebee well supplied with coffee at all times.  Sometimes I get to even add an idea or two while she is in creation mode.


Here I am again, maintaining yet another site.

Glitz Glitter Creations is our love.  We both maintain full time jobs as well.

In addition to the family are our pets:

Top left:  The "Girls" The Empress Padparadscha (Paddy) & Princess Akoya Pearl (Princess) who, BTW is very active in helping Ceebee with her creations.

Top middle:  Romeo,   who loves Ceebee and I do mean LOVE!  This cat cannot breath if Ceebee is out of sight.  He waits outside her workshop door for her to finish and talks to her as she works.

Top right:  Bubba  who is Ceebee's righthand fella when she is taking pictures.  Bubba has been around the longest, poor guy, so many cats to contend with.

Bottom left:  Willow Our newest addition to the family.  We are not sure what her role will be yet as she is too frightened of everyone else now to make her mark.

Bottom right: Yoda (Schmutchkie)  When we first opened, we were so in love with our new kitten that we made him our Avitar.  Unfortunately he was recently separated from him manly parts and has become sullen and grumpy.  Could it be he is unhappy with the newest addition to the family?  LOL

So now you know who we all are.  More to come.......