UPDATES: Finger's healing, Theo's growing, and I listed some new Etsy Items!

The past few days have been busy, for sure. Thanks for checking in - here's what we've got:

New Etsy Items

I've had an idea for making some tea light candle holders similar to the snowflake and holiday star candle holders I'd made in December, but my finger injury last weekend had put me out of commission for a while. I was itching to get out to my workshop on Friday, so I found a couple slabs of wood to experiment with. After finding a valentine graphic on the internet with pleasing proportions, I scaled it up to accommodate a tea light in its middle, then traced it onto my first piece of wood, a small piece of pine. Long story short, I liked the way it turned out well enough to finish it up with some bright red paint, and the result is what you see above.

I found a scrap of mahogany leftover from the snowflake and holiday candle holders, so repeated the process on it, yielding the three candle holders shown above and below:

I'm even more fond of the way these turned out. The woodgrain of the mahogany is so intricate (click on the above photo for a good view of the woodgrain), I figured it'd be a shame to paint them, so I finished these with several applications of danish tung oil, and polished them with a mixture of beeswax, carnauba wax and orange oil. If I do say so myself, I think I'm getting much better at wood finishing, a process which I'm slowly starting to de-mystify for myself.

The really neat thing about the mahogany candle holders in particular is that because I used a non-encapsulating finish on them, you won't have to worry about them getting wet in the long run. Why is that so cool? Because you can float them in the bathtub for some atmosphere during your romantic little rendezvous!

Theo Update
It's starting to look like Theo's not going to grow into a large dog at all. When Mrs SmileMoon had him checked out at the vet's office, she was told he'd be maybe around 40 pounds, which is pretty good because we were looking for a medium sized dog. Of course, that'd be downright minuscule if Theo was a full-blooded lab, but we're starting to think he's mostly terrier with lab added only for coloring and shaping. He'd be a bit large for a terrier too, so I guess he's a happy medium. He and Indy exhaust each other with their puppy shenanigans, and the photo above captured a rare daylight moment of rest.

My Finger's Getting Better
What - no picture?!! Keep dreaming, sicko. It's bad enough I have to look at it when I redress it. Actually, it seems to be healing rather nicely. There's very little opportunity for the wound to be transmitting any pain to my brain, except for when I bump it while driving (for whatever reason, that's the place most likely for that sort of thing to happen). Then I make up a whole bunch of new swear words I wish I could remember afterward. The dressing still looks huge to me, even in comparison to the injury. It just kinda calls attention to itself. [Yes, I know that's not unlike me just writing about it here.] With all the questions I've been getting about it, I've got my story down to about three sentences, and still manage to get that "Ewww!" face from everyone who asks. Hopefully by this time next week, it'll just be in a regular looking Band-Aid or something.