When I try to think back to what started my love of jewelry, it brings me to a very specific memory.  Our family trip to Mexico.

I grew up in Oklahoma.  My father was in the military and while stationed in Germany, met and married my mother.  When my German relatives would come for a visit, we would have to really show them the Wild, Wild West.  On the agenda would be any rodeo or pow-wow within driving distance.  Our town was about 20 minutes from the Wichita Mountains Wild Life Refuge.  Trips included sightings of long horn cattle, buffalo and prairie dogs.  We would take a picnic lunch and ride up our little mountain, Mount Scott, which rises to the glorious height of 2,464 feet.  We would stop at the strange little souvenir store at the base of the mountain to see the real live rattle snakes in a box with a plexiglass front.  There were holes drilled in the plexiglass.  The holes could have been for air, but I think they did it so you could hear the snakes shake their rattles as you walked by.  We would find a picnic table and make sure that there weren’t any rattle snakes nearby.  My mother would “set the table” with paper and plastic wear.  We would then spend the rest of our meal trying to hold down the paper napkin and paper plate and paper cup in the whipping wind that never seems to stop in Oklahoma.