I had a great birthday!

My birthday was yesterday and it was great! I really appreciated all the texts and calls with good wishes! It made me feel loved! Thanks!!!!
I got to spend the day home with my husband watching movies. I finally got to see the new "Night at the Museum" film and it was super funny! We rented it from Redbox.  I love comedy action movies! We also watched a really funny movie on Netflix called "The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec". It's in French with English subtitles, but it has mummies, a dinosaur, and crazy adventures.
My husband made me a wonderful birthday cake. It's chocolate chocolate chip with dark chocolate cram cheese icing and coconut. It's the best birthday cake ever! Some chocolate chip ice cream went well with it. I really believe there is no such thing as too much chocolate, but this cake almost did it!

Yummy!

A few days before my birthday, while looking for special beads for a worry bead strand for a friend I came across this great little cross in a box of beads and findings I inherited from my mom. It's simple and substantial with a nice curve to it. I immediately wanted to make prayer beads around it.

A gift.

I dug around trying to find the right ones for it and started off with it on a string of rose quartz, but I have never liked stone beads for prayer. They make great accents, but they feel cold to me. I decided to take apart my normal strand and use the wood beads from that. It would be my birthday gift!

Pretty flower bead.

I found this flower bead in a box of them I had collected to make earrings and such for etsy. I remember the day we got it and how excited I was to use it. Then it went into a box and waited for the right project. I finally had the right project for it.

Smile!

My husband took me to the local bead store to get some wire to string it with. I wanted the fancy 49 strand wire. It acts like thread and is really flexible. He got me a spool and this wonderful stone skull bead for my birthday.  

I was having trouble finding the right final bead to use as marker in my recreated prayer beads. I have tons of different types and styles, but none of them seemed right. All the other beads in the strand had meaning, even the wood ones and their tiger eye end bead meant something to me. I couldn't just throw any bead in there.

The perfect fit.

On Saturday we went to deliver the worry beads. She had an old box of glass beads that she let me look through. I found two that she gave me for my birthday. I now had the final piece! I spent most of the rest of the day figuring out what order to put them in and how to safely and neatly crimp off the wire. It came out great! They will even fit in my pocket thanks to the amazing wires flexibility!

A gift of many sources!

The finished prayer beads came out great and when I worked with them yesterday I couldn't help but smile. I may have put them all together, but it took family to make it happen. It's the best birthday gift I could have ever hoped for, the gift of love.

It was the best birthday ever!

On a side note. If you ever accidentally crush a garnet with your pliers, don't pick it up with the tip of your finger. It's like tiny glass shards  that stick inside and you have to use tape to get them out. Tweezers don't work it just breaks them off shorter. Use a dust pan to pick up the shards instead!