A fresh start?

It's been a while. I seem to have allowed my blog to flag and fade. And that's sad. It used to be such a great outlet for me, and it was a creative place for me to talk about my many projects. But I'm still here. I think the blog being forgotten has coincided with the advent of parenthood.  This blog followed me through my hard times. Through infidelity and the salvation of my marriage. Through my projects with the Oregon Regency Society, and through failed pregnancy after failed pregnancy. I did not write about my miscarriages, because those were so devastating to me. 

But then you can see the moment on this blog when I tried to secretly reveal my pregnancy before the three-month 'safety' time, and then the pregnancy, and the joy of having my beautiful son. I've tried to show him growing up. Which is all-too-fast. They really don't lie when they tell new parents to soak it in, because it is so damned quick. 

He's going to turn 8 in November. He started second grade today. We had a late start because we are dealing with the issues caused by the Oregon Fires and COVID. But he is at it today, working from a school-issued Chromebook and whiteboard, doing his work diligently. I have to keep him focused. But I think this might be okay. 

What am I up to? Well, momming for one. I'm going a little crazy. I developed an anxiety disorder that appeared when my mom and brother arrived from New Hampshire.  My mom passed away five years after my father did. And as it is with any Narcissist, life has been easier now that she is no longer around to drive me insane. But the anxiety issues never went away. 

Honestly, lately, I have not done much. I've been weighed down by the heavy burden of depression, and all the things that I love have sort of fallen to the wayside. I've also allowed myself to get too absorbed in social media and let the current political climate to crush my spirit. But I feel like I'm crawling out of this pit of despair and am able to see the light of day.  The fact that my kid is doing structured things during the week is a good thing. It has forced me to focus on his needs and not allowing him to spend the day playing Fortnite like a little screen-addict. Yes. It's insane. At seven, he's obsessed.

I have been doing some miniatures stuff and trying to finish some of the four books i have in mid-progress. Having too many books in the same series going at once has caused a hideous stall, and I have produced no new books for almost two years. It's terrible! I'm at 90% on one book, so I've resolved to finish and get it published so I can attack the next one. As my creative juices are starting to flow again, I need to be certain to finish one project before starting another, but I can't help getting sucked into the trap of new ideas. I need to learn to write the ideas down and leave them until I'm done working on prior projects.

If you want to see my other social media sites, where I've been marginally current.

Crafts and miniatures

Instagram for Feffie's Cottage: http://instagram.com/feffiescottage 
Facebook for Feffie's Cottage: https://www.facebook.com/FeffiesCottage

Authoring:

Instagram for Miranda Mayer: https://www.instagram.com/authormirandamayer/
Facebook for Miranda Mayer: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorMirandaMayer/

Anywho.... Here are some pictures and videos I harvested from Facebook and whatnot to give you an idea of what I've been up to.

This year we had some losses, and some gains. We lost Simon, who was brutally killed by a Vacation Renter's malamute dog. But we found Miss Violet Rose, who has taken his place in our hearts. This was in May of last year.

We lost OC this year. This hit me a little harder than I thought it would.
He was a good kitty.

Alex met her the first time here, getting off the bus. This was a pretty sweet moment.

Here are some of the miniature things I've been working on. I continue to plug away at the McKinley. I'll make a full movie of the progress soon. In the meantime, here are some pictures I took along the way.

Miss Huxley's Magic Room

Adding ivy to the front of the townhouse

Soldering leaded windows

The library. I will be replacing the wallpaper

The Baby Cello project. I got this instrument from Kennedy Violins. It was
doomed to go into the burn-pile as it had seen its best days already. So I repurposed it
and turned it into the residence, workshop and shop for Mr. Patkany... the mouse-luthier.

Ms. Pok lives downstairs in the cellar apartments. She supplies
the silk for the violin-strings.

The middle floor is where Mr. Patkany enjoys his meals and
relaxes after a hard day of making instruments.

Making violins and a cello

The street-scene project was fun. 

Some rando pics of life at Casa Hungarican Chick.

Feffie's Cottage is a thing.

My gorgeous son. He's grown a little.

We are legit. We have a logo.

My son and the cat, who is not supposed to be 
allowed in my shed.

The local bookshop and cafe are featuring my books. <3

My kid's feet next to my own. He's growing
too quickly. Make it stop.

Some summer illustrations for my sister's vacation rental.

Masks R Life nowadays.

More silliness for my sister's vacation house.

Yes. We were right in the thick of the fires, but we were
lucky and they surrounded us, but never came into the 
mount hood corridor. This is an image my brother-in-law took of
the Riverside fire from Sandy. Scary huh?

Our shit neighbour has been doing some particularly douchey things lately.  Although now I know his secret to staying thin and trim; aside from meth and booze, that is.

Home schooling has begun after fire and calamity and plague.

Here are some one-second0a

This is me singing a song.

This is me making a THC tincture.

That's it for today. I keep saying I'll post again soon. I am trying to mean it this time! Now that I have to sit through the school day with my kid, I guess I could fill the time actually creating content for this blog. It's been around so long, seems a pity to just let it die. <3 TTYL the HC

I haz a podcast!

We shall see if I can manage to be consistent with it. It seems like an excellent way to blog -- hearing myself talk! So here's my very first podcast. Enjoy! I'll try to post some of my artwork as I'm doing a little drawing lately. :) Please excuse my baby steps. I'm learning this whole podcast thing.

The Hungarican Chick is still kickin'

Yeah. I'm alive. My poor blog, which has been going strong for so long, has been criminally neglected. I'm so focused on my Author stuff, and Feffie's Cottage, I tend to forget that I have this wonderful place where so much of my life and experiences have been shared for so long. (Feffie's Cottage INSTA and Feffie's Cottage ETSY)

My readers have followed me from my infertility through my unexpected pregnancy, to the birth of y beautiful son. Through the loss of 45 pounds (and the subsequent re-gaining of it). Through a tough stage in my marriage, where I experienced infidelity, to the ups and downs of my Regency life. My costuming posts are still my most popular.

I have not given up on the Hungarican Chick. I'm still here, Hungarican-chicking around.

So let's catch up.

I don't have chickens anymore. They brought rats. So that was not okay. Although there was a great plus side to having chickens and that was my rooster, who crowed at all hours of the night, and that in turn affected the ratings of the vacation rental next door, so there was that. But I miss my kippies and their fresh eggs. A lot.

Six years old. Taking his first ski lessons
at Timberline Lodge. Stop growing,
little man.

Alex is now SIX YEARS OLD. Can you believe that? I can't. Every day, I look for the secret rewind button hidden on his little body somewhere, so I can have my baby back again. He's in Kindergarten, and he's using five dollar words--with their own unique pronunciations like: Lidderly, and Use-a-liss. And the best one was last week, he said they were learning the Peasant of Egpyts (the Pledge of Allegiance).

On Valentine's Day, my dog Simon was killed by one of the vacation renter's malamute. He was partially eviscerated and it was devastating.

Hubby is having the hardest time dealing with this loss. This was his dog through and through. We are puppy hunting. Turns out Jack Russell Terriers, particularly shorties, are pretty hard to find around Oregon.

Minatures-wise, progress is slow, but it is happening on my McKinley re-structure & remodel.  I've been working on building my Feffie's Cottage business both on Facebook and on Etsy. Right now my big project is a 'Witchly/Wizardly Workshop Kit, which has a variety of elements, pictured below. The element in progress right now are tiny mortars and pestles, which I have been working on with my new miniature lathe. So here's a little pictorial of stuff:

So my little living room area is heading towards completion. This stage is before I put the flooring in.

Installing the flooring was fun. 

One of the kit prototypes. I made it pretty quickly and pulled the upholstery too tight. That is real leather, something like .5oz weight, which was super-fine. I'll get it better next time. Gotta try it a few times to get it right.

I soldered this little rack to hang pots, pans, herbs, and cured meats from. Kitchen has been coming along slowly as well. 

I made a little iron fence and gate for the front. Still another work in progress. I will be starting on the exterior pretty soon. As soon as I finish converting the victorian roof to the hip roof. I have the right tools now (a 4" table saw, yes, really.)

This is the .5" oz leather. A-frickin'-mazing. Look how prettily it tufts! I wish I hadn't cut it so small or pulle dit so tight, because look how adorable that is.

This is a tiny tub I made. At present it it still bottomless. This was after the first application of the patina chemical.

This is after several chemical applications.

A settee for the parlour.

Miss Huxley, giving it a test.

This is the 'stained glass' window for Miss Huxley's 'witching room'. It will replace the window that's in that room at present. I made this with #6 plastic from a take-out clamshell box and a few coloured sharpies. It shrank down nicely, but it did not shrink completely evenly. So it's not perfectly round. But oh well. It'll do.

The witching room in progress. I drew the rough placement of the new window. The other one will be boarded up and bricked over like it never existed. I made some built-ins for this room. 

Experimenting with copper and solder. Just sold this on etsy. All the linens are hand-stitched.

Some of the Witchly Workshop Kit elements. Most of these are my personal ones for Miss Huxley's supplies.  Jars of eyeballs are a witchly necessity.

A snapshot of what we've got so far. A skull in glass; a geode (real), some bones, a crystal wand, a magic book, an orbiculum (or crystal ball), a jar of eyeballs. There are already more things to be added to this image. 

I had to add this image of the little chess set I got for the price of shipping alone ($2) from Wish. Too fecking cute. It's in the Huxley House library.

These are the additional books and the bottle of poison for the Witchly Kit. There's one more book that I haven't shown yet. Next... the Mortar and Pestle. I will only be selling 4 of these kits.

 I'm still drawing, of course. But since I'm no longer working an office job, my Office Specials are a thing of the past. But the occasion comes of for me to draw. Inktober was fun. I did that.
These are my two favourite from this year.

This is a time-witch, stealing your time. She is inspired by my beloved friend Maryanne Piro, an artist from New England, who did witches and halloween like nobody else. I have not been able to reach her for the past couple of years, so I've been missing her. 

My whale. I think he's cute. He needs to be remade in detail, I think.

I have not really been doing anything with the Oregon Regency Society for a long time. After having heard a lot of nasty things being said about me, I simply got tired of it. It wasn't fun anymore. So I passed the responsibility onto some people who had been critical of my efforts. I was asked recently to take it back, and honestly, I'm not sure I'm 100% ready for that workload again. I've been approaching it as baby steps, but even small amounts of effort seem daunting to me right now. I don't even feel compelled to sew, which is pretty telling.

I miss my girlfriends from this group tho. Like crazy. And have missed them. However, I've found a crew to hang with up here on the mountain, and they've been like an injection of life for me, and have helped keep me from diving into a terrible depression. We call ourselves the Mount Hood Coffee Coven because we can be found pretty reliably in the mornings at the local coffee house (Coffeehouse 26) cackling like a bunch of hens, playing ukulele and just generally loving being around one another on a given weekday morning. It's been a lifeline for me. And I love these women like my sisters.

This is our logo. Yes. We have a logo. And we have matching coffee cups. Because.

Yes, I'm still K-drama obsessed. I watch them rather regularly, probably not quite as avidly as I did last year, but they're still a big part of my life. I have found another favourite actor, his name is So Ji-Sub and he's fucking beautiful and I'm going to stalk him like the 48-year-old chubby mom that I am. Isn't he just noms?

This is So Ji-Sub. He is my next husband.
He is beautiful.

So that's my update. Let's hope it's not an 'annual' one. LOL. Here's a picture of a hedgehog mom carrying her little baby. Because hedgehogs. Please bring your attention to the baby's feet in particular. No reason except... look at the feets!