Look Back at a Year of Blogging + Grateful for You

Well, Life, KV Style has officially been around for about a year now. Like I've mentioned before, even though I started this blog back in mid 2013, I didn't really jump in until the beginning of 2014. And what else do you do at the end of the year but share your top 10 most popular posts? So here's the highlights of what you may have missed at Life, KV Style:

#10

#9

#8

#7

#6

#5

#4

Amazing April: 100th Post!

#3

#2

#1

And some others that didn't make the top ten but that you should totally check out if you missed them:

The Best Day Ever! {photo tour of my favorite town}

Unfiltered Summertime

So this Grateful Heart Monday, I am grateful for you--everyone reading this blog, everyone who has read this blog over its year of existence, everyone who has taken the time to comment and share my posts. Thank you for making Wellness Wednesday posts the most popular by far (even though Music Love Tuesday posts are always my favorite, Wellness Wednesday posts are a whole lot more urgent and important for me to yell from the rooftops.) Thank you to those who have taken genuine interest in me, my life, my health problems, and my jewelry, and especially thank you to the friends I have gained through blogging, people like (yes, I'm gonna name names ;) Elizabeth, Emily, Mary, Sarah, and more. :) I am especially grateful for the people I have met, the friends I have made, and what I have learned about myself through blogging.

This week will be full of wrap-ups, summaries, and looks back. :)

One Lovely Day

Today, you're getting a double-header post! First, a happy thing: I've been nominated by dear Sarah (thanks, honey! :) for One Lovely Blog Award :D so I wanted to cover that before I forget.

The rules:
~ Display the award logo at the top of your post [Close enough, right? I used my own first. ;)]
~ Thank the person who nominated you and leave a link to their blog in your post
~ Add these set of rules to your post so that your nominees will know what to do
~ Add 7 facts about yourself into the post
~ Nominate 7 other blogs and leave links to each of them in your post
~ Let the people you have nominated know that they have been nominated
~ Follow the person back who nominated you on Bloglovin’ and GFC (if you have one)

Since I've already shared facts about myself here, here, and here, this is going to be a bit harder.

1 || I am not a huge fan of the holidays. You can find out why here. And I've tried to remedy that a bit by rounding up all the Christmas music I do like and playing it all over and over, which music I shared here.

2 || I've discovered I tend to use two phrases a lot: "as big as Texas" and "in the history of the world." All about hyperbole evidently.

3 || I personally think rhyming dictionaries are a joke. You really need a book to tell you that "follow" rhymes with "hollow" and "swallow"? You can't think that up yourself? I met a songwriter once who always traveled with a massive rhyming dictionary and regular dictionary. Really? I'm sorry, if you really need all that...

4 || While I am considered a grammar freak (only "real" jobs I've ever had were proofreading and editing), I have absolutely no problem with splitting infinitives and ending sentences with prepositions. I also find placing a comma before the word "too" very annoying and unnecessary, regardless of what Chicago might say. (Does anyone even know what I'm talking about?)

5 || You will pretty much never see me wear a graphic tee. I can't stand them--they're so not nice looking, no matter what they're paired with. Even if there's one whose subject matter I love, I'll still never wear it. They're in the same ball park as tennis shoes. Nothing about them is my style. A good rule to go by: Would they sell something like it in Cato? If not, then Kacie probably wouldn't wear it.

6 || Nashville is like my favorite show ever. It ties only with Friends. And a runner up would be The Lawrence Welk Show. :)

7 || I am (at least currently) all about gold and clear. Yep. And I made myself my dream necklace the other day:

Don't worry, I made one for my shop too--you can get it here!

Now I nominate:
~ Elizabeth at Elizabeth Loves
~ Emily at Ember Grey
~ Mary at Eat, Drink, and Be Mary
~ Joey at Hodges Podges
~ Katie at Life Is...
~Claire at Refining Bliss
~ Abigail at Rites of Asylum

Second: another happy thing! ;) Keeping with my Grateful Heart tradition, I just had to share about yesterday evening, when Daniel and I had our Christmas. :) (Yes, and he gave me a couple of the gifts earlier too. ;) So this is partly brag-on-Daniel time (though I may have had a hand in the choices...) and also the overwhelming need to share all this gold-ness going on:

A white and gold really warm and soft blanket, lots of gold jewelry, yellow-gold wallet, wristlet from Thimble and Tag...

Love & Misadventure by Lang Leav (a poetry book I'd seen amazing snippets of on Tumblr and really wanted), a water resistant speaker to listen to music from my iPhone in the shower :D, and more jewelry. (Yes, I buy/receive big earrings that I would totally love to wear if I could and make them into necklaces instead. :)

And behold: the most beautiful necklace in the history of the world (yes, surpassing even the gold and clear one above):

Want to see Kacie summed up in a necklace? Here it is. Plus it's vintage!! And here I have all this new jewelry, including pieces I'm making for myself, and this may be the only necklace I wear all through Christmas...

Oh and then we had cake. :D Our little tradition used to be to have ham and egg cups and gluten-free cinnamon cake with cream cheese icing for Christmas breakfast. That didn't happen last year as I was in the middle of my Repairvite Diet, and I wasn't sure I'd get to make it again. But on Saturday (you know, the day before our Christmas ;) even though I still can't eat 8 things (gluten, dairy, soy, corn, refined sugar, nuts [except cashews], nightshades, and yeast) I decided to try it with some substitutions. And while it turned out looking completely different and more like a lava cake, it was still really good. And armed with Brittany Angell's new book, which I raved about here, I was able to try making her version of "cream cheese" icing. Well now...

So I'm grateful for a lovely "Christmas" Day with Daniel in which I was able to be up and do things with him allll day. The little things are huge. :)

Return of the Jello Tree

On this Grateful Heart Monday, we're keeping today's post short and sweet: as small a thing as it is, I am grateful our tree is up (as I mentioned on Friday).

Though this is our 3rd Christmas married, this is only our 2nd year to have our own tree, as we were at my parent's last year. So I'm thrilled to have our orange and gold tree back with our teal tree skirt. I call it the jello tree. :D (Orange jello, feel me? Juicy.)

That little toy horse to the right is one of my favorites, and one of our few "special" ornaments, given to me by my grandfather years ago. (I'm thinking I saw it in a store and loved it for some reason I'll never be able to explain, and he bought it and surprised me with it for Christmas. And I am just remembering those details as I write this.) There's also a matryoshka ornament that didn't make it into a picture from my mommy. ;)

See? Jello! :D

And our newest addition, which I didn't realize would go with our decorations so well when I bought it. 10 points if you know what it's from. ;)

So yes, today, I am grateful our tree is up. And, while I'm not big into decorating much else, our few other little decorations, like a nativity from my grandparents and this antique gem also bequeathed to me by my grandparents are out too.

It plays little Christmas tunes. :) I remember it always sat on my grandparents' piano and for some reason they gave it to me one year. I love it. :D

And considering I seem to have an injured hand (thankfully my left), I'm also grateful almost all of my gifts are already wrapped (if the rest would get here in the mail already I'd be done!).

Come back tomorrow for a Music Love Tuesday all about Christmas music!

Behind the Scenes at Katya Valera

Today I thought I'd give you all a little tour of Katya Valera and how a piece comes to life! (And one of you requested it, so this is for you! ;)

Behold, my happy little work space. It is indeed little but it is also so happy. All those plastic drawers were the most exciting thing ever when I got them several months ago--invaluable additions.

And I should probably clarify that, no, it is not usually this neat and clean. ;) But that little packaging station to the right particularly thrills my organization-loving heart to death, especially considering those little orange baskets have been in my life about as long as I can remember.

Photo print is from the amazing Amelia Kay Photography on Etsy

And this is where all the pieces await being summoned to their new homes. After a couple different ways of storing inventory, this is the best I've found so far. And these are just the necklaces. (If you have an Etsy shop, particularly jewelry, how do you store it all? It's a tricky thing!)

Most of my pieces come about because I have the beads or parts already and decide what to do with them. I frequently "just know" by looking at them what I want to do, and may tweak it slightly as I go. But rarely do I think of a design and then go looking for the supplies to make it. I have soo many supplies that I really need to (and can easily, and do) just look at what I have and decide what it needs to become.

And sometimes, I take the notion to finally use beads I've had for a long time. (You start feeling kind of bad for neglecting them, you know?) This was one of those instances. I have some lovely glass beads in both purple and green and for this necklace decided to go with the green. I also pulled out a couple of accent beads to go with them.

I decided I wanted the beads to stand out on their own and so chose to just wire them into one strand, as opposed to adding silver beads between, for example. One bead at a time...

Once I had them all linked together, I added a couple of beads in matching green and neon green to the ends for a pop of color, and then it was time to choose the chain. I went with a sleek, bright silver style I don't often use.

All done!

After a piece is done, the next step is to photograph it--usually the next day (since I frequently design at night) or the first morning/early afternoon I am up and able and it's also not cloudy out. Which is not as often as I'd like. ;) This is the one part I would totally pay someone else to do had I the money, as it's the most physically straining part. But my photography skills have vastly improved since I began, and I am much more happy with my results now than I once was.

And this is where it happens. I told you I love our big window. Just one more reason: it's where all the pictures are taken. Yes, I have very sophisticated portraiture setup. ;)

Then the next step is photo editing (thanks, Picmonkey!), and listing the item on Etsy. 

And it's offically for sale in my shop!

Fun fact: Did you know my shop is arranged by color? :)

I am always excited about my new pieces and can't wait to list them once they're made. Every new piece becomes my favorite.

The hardest part of jewelry making is probably deciding what to make next. I constantly have several pieces planned/laid out/in mind, and there's never enough time to make them all. Though I'm certainly trying, as you may have noticed I've been adding more and more pieces to my shop in the past couple weeks. Including the piece above, which is available here!

So today, I've mentioned it before, but I am so grateful for Katya Valera. It started back three years ago tomorrow (!!!) as a whim with a different name and no plan and quickly turned into a passion I still can't believe I didn't discover sooner. My jewelry helped keep me sane when my health first went south and has continued to be a recurring creative outlet. Even when I go without making new pieces for weeks at a time (as I did recently), as soon as I get back into it, I am so happy. And my jewelry led to this blog, which led to my other Etsy shop, KV Designs. I plan to continue this venture of Katya Valera as long as I'm able. {You can learn more about Katya Valera and the story behind its name here.}

Is there any part of my jewelry process I didn't cover that you're curious about?

Please feel free to ask! I could go on and on about jewelry!