Heart shaped rock I found in Mexico (and sent to my mom!)

Hello everyone! Where have I been? Visiting my husband’s family in Mexico for the holidays!! It was warm, sunny, relaxing and we had an awesome time, but I have to admit that it feels really great to be reconnected to the internet (and to all of you!) and to have my business back up and running!!

This plowed field on the lower slopes of the mountain is more rocks than soil!

Before I left, some people remarked that I’d probably be bringing back rocks from Mexico to make jewelry with. Sounds reasonable, considering what I do for a living! Well, I found a few that might work, but on the whole I came up with zilch in the rock department. Now you might think this was ironic considering that where my husband is from in Guanajuato is a mountainous, rock-filled paradise, but there are a couple of good reasons why I had a hard time finding rocks for jewelry making:

1. The mountain that their town is nestled against is an “extinct” volcano! Which means that all the nearby rocks are igneous rocks which are hard to drill.
2. There are no streams or rivers nearby. Which means that all the rocks are big and chunky and raw from the ground. Rivers or large lakes are essential for wearing down big, rough rocks into thin, smooth stones for necklaces. (There is a good amount of groundwater, a lot of which is thermally heated and naturally warm. That’s why “extinct” volcano is in quotes. There’s actually no such thing as a truly extinct volcano, they’re all just biding their time!)

My husband, Raul (right), and brother-in-law, Angel (left), climbing down from a huge tower of rocks pulled from that field over the centuries.

There was cool orange lichen growing on some of the rocks in the tower!

There are a couple of large lakes within driving distance, but they’re super shallow and I don’t know if there’s enough wave action on them to pare any rocks down to a nice manageable size and shape. Some year I hope to go and check it out, but the atmosphere in Mexico is so chilled out that we always end up staying very close to home. I haven’t even seen the famous mummies of Guanajuato or driven over to see the Aztec pyramids by Mexico City yet. There’s just too much sun and nature and happiness right here in La Luz to go traipsing around looking for tourist attractions!

Anyway, it’s great to be back here with all of you! I’ll see if I can create anything beautiful for you to wear with these little pieces of hardened lava that I brought back!!

These are all the rocks I brought back. Slim pickings!