My blog was on Vacation last week

So I decided to take a vacation too!

One week in sunny Puerto Vallarta!

This was one of the highlights of my trip!

That's not me in the photo but I was right there,

 being swarmed by dozens of Pelicans.

It was so much fun!

Of course having so many Pelicans so close I got alot of pictures.

Last year I had an awesome Pelican Experience,

completely different than this year.

Click HERE to see last years photos.

And of course with this many Peli's flying around

Some of them land on nearby rooftops!

In case you couldn't tell, I think Pelicans are amazing!!

I'll probably share more pictures from our Vacation over the next few weeks.

I hope you enjoyed my Pelican Palooza!

Kristi

PS I've added this post to the World Bird Wednesday blog,
 I only just discovered it and if you like birds you'll love this blog!
http://pineriverreview.blogspot.com/

Puerto Vallarta Part Dos

In my previous post Puerto Vallarta Part 1 I shared the beady finds I got in Puerto Vallarta when we visited last week. I can't believe how long it's taking me to get back in to the swing of things this week, this cold I was bless with the day we flew back isn't helping matters.

I've been thinking about how much I didn't realize I fill my daily life these days, after having been away for a week and trying to catch up it really made me very conscious of it. Even without the cold I'd probably still be feeling behind. This 3 day weekend I hope to get somewhat caught up.

Load of bronze in the kiln, that's a good first step. I've started this load a week or 2 before our trip I think so it's ready to be cooked!!! Some new shapes and textures in this load so I'll be really excited to see how they turn out. I've actually cleaned them and put holes in them since this picture, this was my BTW photo this week. Should have blogged it but see previous paragragh about trying to catch up lol!



Ok, this post is titled Puerto Vallarta so I guess I'd better get to the PV photos huh. I'm not like most people...I think when most people travel they get lots of people pictures, me at the beach, me at the, restaurant, us at the.....you get my drift. Well, I took around 1,000 pictures and only got 1 of me and my husband and 2 of our traveling companions. The rest are Pelicans, Sunsets, Beaches, etc etc etc. I'll have to try to do better at getting pictures of us next time.

Without any more blabbing here are some photos.

 I'll begin with what is I think THE picture of the trip, the Sunset with the Ship.

Then several other very nice sunset or near sunset photos.

And I adore this one!!! This fisherman, a very tiny little guy was fishing most of the time I was taking Pelican photos which I'll show next. These little bird is a Cattle Egret (there were actually 2) stood waiting patiently for little castoffs from the fisherman. The bird seemed to be in no hurry, he knew if he waited there would be plenty of spoils for him.

Here are the Pelicans, I had so much fun standing on the beach shooting these birds!! I honestly think I probably could have stood there for the entire day, but I had my very patient traveling companions waiting and they were kind enough to let me spend quite a long stretch taking pictures while they waited for me.

They often flew in groupings of 3-4 as well as alone, it was fun to start to be able to read them and anticipate when they were about to dive in to the ocean.

Here's one in a sudden change of direction, I'm fairly sure he was in the process of diving. My camera was challenged keeping up when I had it set to shoot continuously. Unfortunatly I don't know enough about photograghy to have my camera set properly so it was on Auto. I didn't want to miss getting as many decent shots as possible. Next time I'll know alot more!

Here's the group dive, they completely let themselves go when they dive, the 2 on the right are almost on their backs lol

This one flew right over my head, there were actually 2 but I just barely got this one in my sites before it was out of the frame again.

I hope even though I may not have given you traditional vacation photos of PV that y ou still enjoyed seeing them, I sure enjoyed taking them and sharing them with you.

Today I'm going to Ben Franklin to shop for beads, not only do I have a 20% off entire order coupon, I know the person who runs the bead section was at the Tuscon Bead Show so I'm hoping for some major scores!!! I'll either post about that or about my newly fired Bronze, one tomorrow and one on Monday in whatever order they end up. I like having lots of subjects to blog about and having to juggle them, doesn't often happen that way.

Thank you for taking a look!!

Kristi

http://dreamsome.etsy.com/

http://www.artfire.com/users/KristiBowmanDesign

Puerto Vallarta Part 1

I'll warn you, I'm going to ramble on a bit on this one, not my usual pictures without much text. But there are pictures at the end...trust me!!! Bead Porn at the end of this post!

Just returned from a week in Puerto Vallarta, we had a wonderful time. Perfect weather, warm but moderate. Got lots of sun, did lots of walking, ate great food what more could one ask for.

Before I left I searched online to try to find places that carry beads, didn't really find any good leads. So we spent a good amount of time walking from place to place following the directions of local shop owners and our Concierge trying to find bead stores. I am very thankful to my traveling companions for going along with me, and for supporting my obsession with Pelicans, more on that in a future post.

First of all, trying to convey to them exactly what I was looking for was not easy. My Spanish is very poor, I can pick out words here and there but this was beyond my meager abilities by a long way. I was sent to a couple of places that had small sections on the wall of small seed beads and small plastic beads, not what I was looking for.

On our last night we were on the way back to our room after having dinner and my husband spotted a store where he saw lots of ribbons and said we should check it out. After a number of disappointments I was not convinced it was worth our time to look, but he convinced me to go in. Yup lots of ribbon and flowers and crafty items, I thought we'd hit another dead end. Then I hear my husband calling from the doorway of another room so I went to see and there they were, a small room with 2 big walls full of beads and stones, not the little ones but the big ones, we had finally found the mother load!!!

Many of these beads I could probably have found elsewhere but it's fun to use beads I've purchased from another country, ads to the back story of the jewelry made with it don't you think. My big regret that I didn't buy the black coral they had, now I've come to find out it's not that common. I've searched for it now that I'm home and I see that would have been an excellent purchase. We did try to go back the next day but the store wasn't open early enough, we had to get to the airport for our return flight so couldn't wait for it to open.

OK, here are most of the stones I got in Mexico.

Above you can see Pearls in Diamond and Heart shapes, have never seen those before. Then Pink Turquoise, the red beads she called MOP which typically means Mother Of Pearl but we both agreed they are not. They are very pretty, very red but have a sort of matte finish. there are rounds, smaller faceted rounds and disc shapes. Then Composit Coral and really light blue turquoise in 12 and 17mm rounds. So rustic I just LOVE THEM!!

Beautiful Pink Turquoise Briolettes in 2 sizes, so soft and pretty but with all that matrix a little rough around the edges too.

Turquoise and Tiger Eye Carved in Butterfly shapes, these are so pretty!!

If you're ever in Puerto Vallarta and you want beads go to Manualidades La Perlita and speak to Ingrid, she's very nice and we had fun talking to her. I'll be happy to share the address and phone number if you contact me.

I'm sorting through the 1,000 plus photos I took and will post non jewelry pictures in a post in the next few days.

Kristi
http://dreamsome.etsy.com/
http://www.artfire.com/users/kristibowmandesign