Beautiful Biloxi

We just got back from a mid-week getaway in Biloxi, Mississippi. We stayed at the beautiful Beau Rivage Hotel and Casino.  We love this part of the country. Mississippi is very dear to us as we built a home there several years ago. In fact, we purchased the property the spring before Katrina!

And then there was Katrina.

Having a house there, we were able to experience and watch from a distance the tragic touch of nature…but nothing like the folks that lived there and called Mississippi home.

This is not our house – our house wasn’t built before Katrina. But many beautiful ones were and left like this. I have to truly say that I have never seen this type of devastation at this scale before in my life and I still am in awe of what nature can do.

But this blog entry isn’t about tragedy. It’s about beauty – about rebuilding.

Driving around Biloxi we saw beautiful new buildings and homes going up along I-90. Not the beauty of the pre-civil war homes we saw in our first visit. This beauty reflected a renewed faith in the Gulf Coast and a willingness to invest to start over and try again. The homes we saw were breathtaking. Unfortunately, I forgot to take my camera with me for the drive. Maybe you may have to go there and check it out for yourself?

We stayed at the Beau Rivage, also destroyed in the hurricane. After the hurricane, the Beau Rivage was one of the first casinos to step to the plate and start rebuilding. And rebuild they did…

And oh – the colors! These colors speak to my soul…our house is decorated in the same color scheme…but not like this! Exquisite integration of color throughout like the carpeting….

But wait! There’s more. I was enraptured by the beautiful mosaic work in the lobby areas. It took my breath away. My photos don’t give the work the justice they deserve.

I’m inspired. My kitchen project seems so minimal now.

Nice work Biloxi! We’ll be back!

OMG – They’re delightful!

Wow!  I can’t believe they arrived this fast! I just ordered them this week after blogging about it. I’m talking about the beads I ordered from the BeadforLife organization.

And they are delightful – these little paper jewels of color.  As I run my hands over each of the little beads, I can’t help from getting misty-eyed and wonder of the woman who touched this bead. How different her life must be from mine and how hard her fight is to have a life of dignity and raise her children with hope.  In the package, was a little note thanking me for my purchase – this is what struck me:

BeadforLife is a non profit organization providing impoverished Ugandan women an opportunity to life their families out of poverty by making beads and beaded jewelry oout of recycled paper. Many of the beaders are HIV+ mothers or refugees, all of whom have been living in extreme poverty. In spite of their hardship, the beaders are resilient, hardworking and resourceful.

I’m going to make beautiful things with these beads – but nothing could be more beautiful than the women who made them.

I’ll be making jewelry from these beads and donate 10% of all my sales to BeadforLife – if you get one from me as a gift – consider it a special gift.

A fish fetish

Wonderful brass charm that found a home in one of my "charmed" bracelets

I bought a fish charm a few months back from a bead store in Oberlin, Ohio. It is a “fish fetish” from Ghana. I immediately became fascinated with what a “fetish” could be – particularly as a fish! I always associated the word “fetish” in a sexual context….as in foot fetish.

What I found out is:  (from wikipedia)

A fetish (from the French fétiche; which comes from the Portuguese feitiço; and this in turn from Latin facticius, “artificial” and facere, “to make”) is an object believed to have supernatural powers, or in particular, a man-made object that has power over others. Essentially, fetishism is the attribution of inherent value or powers to an object.

So my fish charm has supernatural powers – or believed to – cool! It’s now in one of my “charmed” bracelets along side with turquoise, World War II coins from India and my own lamp work beads.

Features a fish fetish charm from Ghana