Now I’m wading through the world of the offbeat bride and non-traditional wedding. I’m picking through what everyone thinks a wedding is, and I’m deciding what I want to include and what I don’t… What works for my fiancé and I and what doesn’t.

The first thing that people ask you when you’re wedding planning is what your colors are going to be. The first thing to go out the door was a two-color palette. In fact, the only color I picked was yellow of some shade (my favorite). I ran over a million colors in my mind that would work. I’d settle on one. Then I’d change my mind… This is my M.O. Maddening as that is to everyone around me.

However, the colors in the last week or two have seemed to sort of pick themselves. I’m great with it, because I like them all. I’d settled on having absolutely no scheme at all, but when I started placing things into my giant box with the word wedding Sharpied onto it, I noticed that oddly everything… Well, matched.

This is the color palette:

This weirdness of the colors picking themselves started when I put out a request… My fellow jewelry designers and artists are amazing ladies, and I love them all to death. We’ve forged great friendships over the years. Personally if I had my way, my budget would be large enough to fly them all in from over the world on my own dime. Sadly, I am on an incredibly tight budget… Like the type of budget everyone tells you having a wedding on is impossible.

I sent the request to my friends that they send me each a pearl or other bead or two, so that I could have a piece of them in my bridal jewelry when I make it. That way they could all be there in spirit. They’ve all been so good and generous to me! I’ve been delighted with each and every little gift that I’ve gotten so far in the mail.

These are from Kristy of ShinyAdornments… Huge round peacock pearls with a beautiful luster to them, which happens to be hard to capture in photo with le crap light conditions.

These are from Alison of All About the Beads… Deep teal keshis. Another hard pair to photograph, but they are stunners. I find myself playing with these in the light to see all the color change.

These are from Belinda of Bel Lee Beadz… Pretty pinks! A chalcedony briolette, pink coin pearls, and rose quartz… I don’t think I’ve told Belinda this, but rose quartz is my favorite stone. I’m tickled (pink?) to have some for my jewelry!

Last but not least for the time being are pearls from Ginger of MsBelle. She sent me a mix of white and teal pearls… And oddly enough, the teal matches what I’m about to show you next nearly perfectly – Call it kismet or serendipity…

The summer after I graduated from high school, I was involved with the SCA. My mother bought me a sari to wear to events. I’ve kept it all the time, thinking some day I’d use it for something… Anything. And when I pulled it out six months ago, I thought maybe I’d begrudgingly cut it up for the wedding.

I told my mother about my plans, and she basically begged me not to do it. She’s an old hippie with a soft spot for saris. This one has sentimental value for her and I both. So instead of cutting it up, I suggested maybe she’d wear it for the wedding. She loved the idea. She’s over the moon excited, and her happiness over it has been contagious.

So… The date is set, the colors are picked out, my mother knows what she’s wearing (which was apparently a giant worry for her), and… The wedding planning continues.

Jasper gets in on checking out what we get each week in our box.

Thursdays have turned into my favorite days of the week over the last month.  My housework schedule is set for watering the houseplants and planning the meals for the upcoming week so I know what I need to look for at farmer’s market and one of the local grocery stores.  Most weeks it’s a continuation of laundry day for me, but it’s also important to add that most of the time Andy takes that over for me.

Thursday is also garbage day, which you’d not think was something to take pleasure in.  However, I get a sense of satisfaction over how, as we move away from single-use items more and more in our house, our garbage bags are dwindling in size while our recycling bag is staying the same or maybe even growing a little.  As soon as I start vermicomposting, our waste and recycling are both bound to go down in size.

All of this is great.  It makes for a relatively lazy day.  But it’s not why I’ve come to live for Thursdays.  Thursday is our Missouri Bounty Box pick-up day.  The Missouri Bounty Box is a subscription program much like a CSA, and it’s a service provided by The Root Cellar in Columbia, MO.  The Root Cellar (which I hope to get a post written about once they get moved to their new location), is a grocery store that sells local and Missouri-raised food.  It is awesome.

I’m a big believer in CSAs and supporting your local agriculture; this probably won’t be a surprise to those who have heard the news that I’ve decided to go into farming.  I’ll talk more about this at a later date, but this is why our home chose to join in on the Root Cellar’s subscription program this year instead of a traditional CSA.

• We couldn’t decide on a single farm to buy a CSA share from!  We have a great variety of choices here in Columbia.  When it was time to sign up for CSAs for the summer, I just couldn’t bare to choose one farm over another and decided to support all the farms I love by continuing to attend farmer’s market instead.  With that said, the service The Root Cellar’s providing allows us not only to support a wide variety of our local farms through their program, but it also helps us support The Root Cellar as a local business.  Because we want it to stick around!  When the summer market is over, and many of the farmers choose not to do winter market, I will rely on them for more food than I do now.  They also provide me with Missouri-grown rice and flour, which until I started shopping there I couldn’t come by.
• The price is right!  Andy is a student and I pick up odd jobs as they come to me right now.  While the price of CSAs are excellent, we couldn’t afford the upfront, one-time membership price of anywhere between $400 and $800 depending on the farm.  These prices are absolutely fair, and we wouldn’t have been paying for food all summer.  But we just couldn’t do it this summer.  The Root Cellar, on the other hand, allows for me to pay weekly at pick up.  It’s been easier for me to scrounge together $28 plus tax a week than it was for me to gather up a larger one-time sum this year.
• They sometimes put in non-produce items, which is great for us getting a chance to try things we usually wouldn’t buy.  So far in this area, we’ve gotten a bag of rice (okay, we already buy that but it gave me a week off of buying rice separately which I appreciated greatly) and a dozen eggs (excellent quality and kismet since I used a lot that week in baking).
• The variety is awesome!  As you can see from my produce porn picture of this week’s Bounty Box, I get a lot for my money – In between 5 and 10 items.  This week’s box provided me with kale, rhubarb, tomatoes, romaine lettuce, English peas, green beans, blueberries, beets, cucumbers, and yellow squash.  Past boxes have given me shitake mushrooms (OMG, so good.), amazing strawberries, and English cucumber among of a plethora of wonderfulness.
• I get to go to The Root Cellar every week, which is a great experience on its own.  They always have something for me to sample, the prices are fair for all involved, and the atmosphere leaves you with a lovely feeling between their friendly staff and knowing you’re buying local.
• I have the option of adding in 2 dozen eggs and a half-gallon of milk for $10.  That’s a great price that would save us money if and when we need that much between two people in our home, which is likely to happen at some point when I get into baking mode.
• There’s something kind of funny and great about everyone in my home gathering around a box once a week to see what we’ve gotten.  It’s always a surprise, since the deal is I can’t look to see until I get home.  And the fact that such interest is being taken in our food from seeing what we’ve got to looking at the paper telling us where it’s come from the challenge of expanding our food horizons when we’ve not had something before makes it worth it all on its own.

What I brought home today! Look at all the beautiful colors!

So if you live in Columbia, I highly suggest this program.  With a vegetarian household, we could eat all of our produce simply from this box if I didn’t compulsively attend farmer’s market weekly and have a garden.  Since we have those two other sources, though, we eat like kings and I’ve already been able to preserve our surplus.

If you don’t live in Columbia or near enough to buy from The Root Cellar, I encourage you to look into a CSA or maybe you’re fortunate enough to have a store like we do that provides the same service.  Look around!  You never know what you might find.  And for those of you wondering if this sort of thing would work out for you or your family, I would highly encourage you to give it a try.  It has the potential to turn into something you look forward to all week like it has me.

Something about not having my studio space unpacked and not taking the time to dedicate housework time to myself has really thrown me off – As did the death of my almost 20-year-old cat a few months back who shared the room with me.  I haven’t seen my torch since last year…  Or I remember vaguely maybe seeing it, but have no idea where I decided to stash it.

On top of all of this, I’ve just sort of lost the focus or desire to be a full-time jewelry artist.  This happened a while ago.  So I just don’t see myself producing as much as I did a few years ago.  Don’t get me wrong, I love creating, but I genuinely hate the brain-bashing online business-side of it.

The last few months have been riddled with indecision.  Should I continue to sell on Etsy?  Should I put my focus elsewhere?  Considering I’ve already admitted to having to do promotion for myself, it’s not really a logical move for me to be moving away from Etsy even if I have my issues with them.  That’s where I built my little business, and that’s where people seem to find me the most…

I’m rambling.  I’m still around.  M. Augusta Woodland isn’t a dead company…  It’s just hibernating, plotting, and debating while evolving stylistically in a manner I never saw coming…  One I’m scared people might not like.  Another thing to ponder.

Roll out bad pictures of stuff that is not complete yet!!

Two-Florin Necklace

I’m making new things now, and before anyone had seen any of it I was asked more than once if I was going in a different direction with my business. At first I said no, because I’d not really thought about how different my new pieces are. While a lot of the pieces still have my old style to them, I’m finding that a new voice and purpose is coming into being with it…

When we moved to Missouri over the summer, I started looking at things differently. Having family around me with backyards really turned my attention back to the world around me, and I started collecting things I found – Butterfly wings, feathers, really neat bugs (naturally expired, of course). I started finding facsinating rocks that were by no means the faceted beauties I worked with, but their character seemed to touch a very deep part of my soul.

Moving also caused me to realize that I am a collector. Okay, so I knew that before, but something about moving all of my amassed stuff this time around caused me to really consider the situation. I am by no means a classic obsessive compulsive hoarder. My general “alternative organization” (some may call it a cluttered, disorganized mess) does sometimes leave me wondering when I look at pictures of those apartments where people die and everyone goes inside to go “Oh my God” at all the stuff the person has shoved in there. Where, exactly, does the collecting things that have personal value and meaning, or future use, and being a cluttered mess end and the mental illness start?

I’ve gone off on a tangent here. What I’ve been considering in the situation isn’t my hoard-curious lifestyle. No, it’s how I’m going to make it all into something – For the most part jewelry.

Objects are magical.

In our lives today, as shown to me by my final year-and-a-half in Iowa, we are capable of moving so quickly from this to that, worrying about getting where we’re going on time, and all the other accoutrements (cell phones, I’m talking about you!) of modern anxiety that we lose complete sight of the world around us. Sometimes, and on a very serious note, resulting in death due to stupid things like texting while driving.

Still despite that rushing about with your mind stuck in all of our modern worries, this constant busyness is interrupted by say… A penny on the ground. You notice a penny on the ground. The worth of a penny to an American is basically nothing, but you still noticed it.

I’m taking a wild guess, but I bet a lot of people still mentally recite the Find a Penny poem or at least think about it even if they pass it up. Some people even have more rules to this little ritual – If it’s face down, you turn it over for someone else to pick up for luck.

It broke you out of your own thoughts, and if you are like me a plane could fall into a store I’m in and I’d barely notice. For a brief moment, that penny forced you to practice mindfulness, which is in some spiritual path a key part of attaining enlightenment. There was a flash where an object caused you to live in the world around you instead of the one in your mind.

If that isn’t magic, I don’t know what is.

I guess in a way I’m trying to capture that through utilizing found objects, and embracing a cabinet of curiosities approach, to my jewelry. Yes, I will still make filigree. Yes, I will be more than happy to create grand, history-kissed elaborateness; that’s my thing.

But when I’m digging through a flea market with my mother and aunt for doilies, or I’m walking along and find rock that speaks to me, I want to incorporate those pieces. I don’t fully expect people to find quite the same meaning to life in them as I do, but I hope they’ll serve as a pretty reminder to at least slow down and live in the world around you.

This brings me to the other night when my fiance asked, “Why is there a bug in that container?”

You see, I’d found a honey bee on the driveway.  It was in perfect condition, wings unbroken, all its legs intact.  I was elated, and I carefully put it inside a jar and brought it inside – Plotting some lovely resin pendant, naturally-expired bee on moss green velvet, covered by clusters of clear quartz and oxidized silver.  I set the jar on our coffee table, and then I promptly forgot about it until Andy asked me about the bug.

To which I exclaimed, “It’s my bee!  I’m gonna make a necklace.  Isn’t it awesome?”

“You’re just going to kill it?” he asked in return.

“It’s already dead,” I responded.  However, then I looked down at the jar to realize that the bee was not dead.  The bee had been hibernating, and our warm home woke him up.

I feel like such a goofball for not thinking about hibernation.  Needless to say, I took the bee back outside.  I’ll think twice before bringing bugs inside once the weather gets cold again.

Add to them the hand-fabricated earring wires that have been hammered into a flattened-nail design, and you have the perfect little bit of gothic beauty for any outfit. All metal is oxidized sterling silver for easy care and that lovely antiqued finish we love at M. Augusta Woodland.

Measures 1 ½” from top to bottom.

Add these to the Ophelia Necklace available in my shop for the perfect combination.

The seeds have been implanted into the peat pellet.  Now all we can do is hope and pray that they actually sprout.  You’ll hear back about this when they finally do.

Ways to Enter (And yes, you can enter more than once):

1. Blog – Go to my Etsy shop and pick out your favorite piece then go to my blog and leave a comment telling me which one it is.

2. Sign up for my newsletter – Don’t worry, I won’t spam the crap out of you.

3. Become a fan of mine on Facebook

4. Follow me on Twitter

5. Tweet about this giveaway – Be sure to put @msmeganne in there so I can be sure to keep track of you.

6. Blog about this giveaway and provide a link back to my blog. – Either leave a comment on my blog about it or email me at Meganne(at)maugustawoodland(dot)com to show me your blog.

This contest runs until August 1^st and is open to both domestic and international folks. Please be sure to leave me a way to contact you via email. The winner will be chosen at random and will have 48 hours to confirm after being contacted before another winner is picked.

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