It's Friday Already

And it's payday so I just paid the bills but couldn't pay all of them because we haven't gotten the electric bill yet. Which will probably come today since I've already paid the bills. If you don't pay your bills online yet, I highly recommend it. So much easier than writing out checks and stamping envelopes and then forgetting to mail them. Who still writes checks these days anyway? I'm always kind of stumped when I see somebody paying with a check at a store, don't you have a debit card? Or are you just floating that check for a few days? Until payday?

Speaking of money, this is the first year since I can remember that we've actually had money to buy each other gifts for Christmas. We decided to get some stockings and we'll put some small gifts in them and since we don't have a tree any bigger gifts will get put on the bookshelves where our stockings are hanging. They are hanging on the bookshelves because we don't have a fireplace never mind a mantle. I had to specify things that I could use for Keith to go buy because he really has no clue and he specified things that I could get for him. I'm just about done with his shopping but he hasn't even started mine. I just hope he doesn't pull a Homer Simpson and shop at the Quickie Mart on Christmas Eve.

I'm seriously thinking about buying some long underwear for this winter. I mentioned it to Keith which might have been a mistake because I might find long underwear in my stocking and they'll probably be the wrong size. Seriously, our local weatherman said that December is our coldest month here and I definitely believe him. I just can't seem to get warm enough and don't even want to go outside these days. Not that it snows here or anything and for a lot of people our current 34 degrees outside would be positively balmy not to mention the highs in the 50s during the day. But, I'm cold.

What else is going on? I think the Christmas Rush is kind of done with on Etsy, November was wonderful for sales but December is kind of slow so far. I guess I got spoiled with multiple sales a day in November and now only a sale or two a day seems rather anti-climactic.

Next week is Keith's vacation. He is supposed to work on all the unfinished projects around the house but I have a feeling he will be sitting in his underwear watching Oprah part of the time.

October

Well, as you may have seen I tried out one of the new formats for this blog and while I like it, I also thought it was a little confusing having to click on the post title to read the whole post without it saying something like 'click here to read the whole post' so for now I'm going back to the old easy read blog style. Plus the new style didn't allow for any extra stuff in the sidebar and I'm still hoping that someone somewhere will stumble across this blog and see the wonderful stuff for sale in the sidebar and actually buy something.

Septembers sales were okay but a little disappointing after August being a top selling month for me. I did sell about $100 more in the Mimi and Lucy shop in September than August, with almost daily sales coming this last week, and remember my prices are wholesale type prices so $100 is actually quite a lot of goods sold, but the supply shop went down quite a bit from last month. And I've been doing way too much supply buying to make stuff for what I'm hoping will be a busy holiday season so I spent more than I made last month. Yikes.

Speaking of spending more than you make, even with keeping track of how much we spend on food and other necessities we still spend A LOT of money for just two people eating. If we didn't have this darn low carb thing we are supposed to be doing we could probably save a bunch of money on food since mac and cheese and ramen noodles are really cheap, but we can't eat that kind of stuff, so... good meats and vegetables and all are kind of expensive! And getting really boring.

And despite what the calendar says, last week was ridiculously hot for the last week of September and I'm tired of being hot and I'm really hoping that summer is over with, hello, it's October now!

Not much else is happening around here other than the usual fun and games. Today is going to be shampoo the carpet day, I marked the calendar with big chores like that so they would get done on a regular basis, and the timing is right since Harri threw up all over the hallway last night. Keith is going to take the car over for our free oil change, when we took it in for all the work we had done in the spring, we bought an oil change special buy one get three more free and it's time for an oil change, so...I think car dealerships sell these specials hoping you will forget about them or be too lazy to bring your car back in, kind of like those gym memberships that people buy and then don't come back after the first few visits. Smart marketing.

Wrap up of the Week

It's Friday and the weekend is not starting off too well for most of the country, what with stock markets crashing and everyone losing their 401K investments AGAIN, and fears of another recession. Another recession? I think millions of other Americans who are still looking for a job after the first recession hit would agree with me that we never got out of the first one.

But some of the big businesses are doing well what with GM or Chrysler or whoever it was that we bailed out reporting huge profits once again, and Apple apparently having more money than God.

Anyway, it's a little scary out there.

We have decided to go ahead and get a room for tonight in Vegas even though we really shouldn't spend the money, but I would really rather have a nice hotel room to stay in. James has been cleaning out the house and there are 45 garbage bags of clothes (with more clothes still to go) in the living room that even Goodwill doesn't want and are waiting on a dumpster rental to put them all in, and I'm wondering if there is even any toilet paper in the bathrooms because James is on his last few dollars and I'm sure is not thinking about things like toilet paper. So, I went online and after a frustrating 20 minutes or so trying to figure out where these hotels are in relation to her house and I really don't want to stay in a casino, I found a Best Western in a quieter area that is just a Best Western, no casino and hopefully no casino customers drunkenly stumbling through the hallways at 3am, waking us up. With our AAA membership discount it comes out to $85.00 and doesn't look like a fleabag hotel and hopefully they don't have bedbugs.

I'm figuring that we'll get to Vegas around 8 tonight and then we'll get up early and if James is awake we'll take him to breakfast, then load up the cats and get back on the road. We'll have to make any stops on the way home very quick stops with one of us staying in the car with the air conditioner running so that we don't accidentally fry any cats in the desert heat.

And here is an update on Gimpy The Three Legged Cat, who did indeed have his leg amputated. He is recuperating at home and of course having to wear the Collar That Cats Hate so he won't lick the wounds. Poor Baby!


My Etsy shops started out this month with some good sales and I was hoping that things were looking up and the sales would keep coming but after yesterday's economic news now I'm fearing the worst, so we'll see how it goes.

And that is about it, I'm going to do the laundry so we have clean clothes to sweat in on our trip, and I'm going to get the lawn mowed and house cleaned so that we can come home to no chores tomorrow afternoon.

Nice Weekend

We had a really pleasant weekend weather wise, with temps getting up into the 70's and some sunshine. It didn't last long, though, it's getting cloudy and windy today with rain maybe later in the week. But it was nice to actually open a few windows in the house and I made Keith go for a bike ride with me on Saturday. We rode up and had pizza for lunch so it kind of counteracted the bike ride thing, but oh well.

I got some good sales in the supply shop over the weekend and have a bunch of new charms to paint for the shop. I did a few batches of charms yesterday, now just have to take pictures of them all and list them. I'm glad I decided to get back into supply selling because the jewelry side of things is still pretty slow and certainly isn't getting the bills paid right now.

I watched part of the stupid grammies or whatever this week's give me another award show was last night. I missed Lady Gaga coming out of the egg, so sad I missed that let me tell you. I do like some of her songs and am impressed by her talent but come on already, quit being so very weird. I guess my senior citizen status is showing because half of the people up for awards were people I've never heard of and the last band that played with all the screaming and flashing lights just really annoyed me. I was wondering how many epileptics in the viewing audience were going into seizures from those lights. And how many people did like me and put the mute button on the volume. Ugh.

And mean old me was glad that Justin Bieber DID NOT get the best new artist award, and again, I'd never heard of the girl that did win. I'm just about sick of Justin Bieber and can't wait until his voice changes and his career is over. We'll be seeing him on Celebrity Boxing or something in about 30 years.

And I do like that Lady Antebellum song but enough already with the awards for it.

And poor old Bob Dylan. That was pretty awful. But Mick Jagger can certainly still rock it, can't he? Speaking of senior citizens. I was wondering if he has to dye his roots black every day because his hair MUST be gray by now, he's what, about 70?

Oh, I almost forgot. Keith got a conditional offer from BNSF on Friday but he still thinks he won't pass all the background checks and whatever else it is they do. In the offer they tell you NOT to resign your job because it's not definite until they do all kinds of medical tests and strength tests and investigate you and he put the wrong dates for one of his jobs and they are so picky that he is pretty sure they will find out and not hire him after all. So he is all worried and making himself sick worrying about it. All we can do is wait and hope that they will overlook it because he is probably one of the most qualified candidates they have for the position. We'll see in 6-8 weeks. It takes that long for them to decide.

Good Day So Far

I woke up late this morning, like 8:15 and felt like more of a lazy ass than usual, got my coffee and checked my email and got an order for 10 necklaces! $114.00 total! Yay!

So, I went over to Target to get a box to ship them all in and spent part of the money on the box and the usual cat food and some dental floss and then transferred part of it to our saving account because we are on a mission to save save save this year, and my goal is to transfer my paypal money to my savings before I am tempted to spend it on something else but I really did need the dental floss and the cats really did need the cat food. We don't want them to start nibbling on us while we are sleeping or anything because we neglected to buy them FOOD!

Then, when I got home from Target there was a recorded message from BNSF railroad for Keith to check his email for info on a job he applied for. Just like the last job he applied for he has to go to a meeting thing and take a bunch of test and all that, but this time he has to go up to Fresno for the testing. It's for a mechanic position, so we'll see how that goes. I think I might suggest to him to drive up the night before and get a motel room so that he doesn't have to drive all the way up there at 5 in the morning in heavy heavy fog. I tried to call him at work and then hear a phone ringing on the counter where he left his work phone. Oops. He's been staying up way too late this week messing around in the garage with his new saw and only getting like 5 hours of sleep a night and listening to me nag him about how he needs to go to bed already. So he's a little foggy and forgetful first thing in the morning.

Last night he goes to bed at like 10:30 and then comes running out into the living room stark naked, runs into the garage, grabs a notebook, runs around looking for a pencil, all the while with his bare butt hanging out and me staring at him like he's gone completely crazy, and then starts writing up plans for some tool that he's got an inspiration for, some tool that nobody makes yet and will make him a billionaire if he can just figure out the plans for it. Or something like that. No wonder he forgot his phone, all that naked running around late at night, and not enough sleep. And plans to be a billionaire on his mind.

Anyway, a good day so far.

Building an Ark

Okay, Californians have enough to worry about what with the constant threat of earthquakes and the prediction of the 'big one' that might strike at any moment. Now we are told that we can expect massive flooding at any moment, too. So, if the earthquake doesn't get you, the flood will.

Why do researchers like to scare us with these dire predictions? So that we will be prepared and stock up on flotation devices? If there is going to be a 100 year flood here in the central valley, where the entire valley from Bakersfield to Sacramento will be filled up with 10 feet of water, what the heck kind of preparations can we make? Get lots of helicopters at the ready to go rescue people from on top of their roof? Buy huge quantities of rowboats and make sure everyone has one? Get the hell of of Dodge and head for higher ground at the first sprinkle of rain?

I don't know, but we are thinking of starting to build that ark. They are predicting 40 days and nights of rain, after all.

We finally, finally have some sunshine today. It's been so dreary and gloomy and drizzly and cold here lately and it's nice to see blue skies for a change. I was vacuuming the living room this morning and actually started to get hot from the sun streaming in the windows.

Other than worrying about floods it's been a quiet week so far. I did get a nice sale in my mimi and lucy shop yesterday, which came just in time to fill up the car with gas and pay my Etsy bills.
I had a couple of good supply shop sales, too, so things are looking up and hopefully will continue to look up.

On the other hand, my Artfire shop is just sitting there, no surprise that, but I'm about ready to give up over there. Just seems like nobody wants to shop there. I'll give it to the middle of the year and then make a decision. It's only costing me 5.95 a month, but if there are no sales, then 5.95 is even too much. So, we'll see.

And that is about it. I'm so boring.

Monday Morning

And while I really miss the money I'm kind of glad I didn't have to get up and go to an office job this morning. I really really do miss the money though.

After a rather long dry spell I actually have a few orders to go out in today's mail. I have been working on redoing my pictures YET AGAIN! with just a plain white background but some of the pictures come out kind of gray or blue instead of white so I have to lighten them up a whole lot in picnic, therefore I've been spending a lot of time the past 4 or 5 days sitting here messing around with pictures and editing my listings and wondering if it's all worth it. I was renewing all the etsy listings as I edited, hoping that somebody somewhere would see it and buy my crap already, but that 20c a listing really starts to add up after a while. So, anyway, glad to see a few sales come from my efforts.

There is a website that ranks etsy sellers by items sold into top 100 and top 1000 lists. I'm actually at number 79 in the top 100 jewelry sellers, and at 349 in the top 1000 in all the handmade categories combined. I got to thinking about it, there is something like 200,000 sellers with active shops on etsy and if I'm up in the top 100 in the jewelry category, think how many of those 200,000 sellers are like me and struggling for every sale. I was all ready to close my shop at the end of the year, but then I get a few sales and maybe it's worth it to stay on etsy after all, but it costs me SO MUCH MONEY to try and sell there.

I compared Etsy and Artfire on the Alexis ranking website and Etsy is way up there, but Artfire is not far behind. Etsy gets almost all of their traffic from internal browsing, while Artfire mostly comes from internet searches. So, anyway....don't know what to do so I'll see how the rest of the year goes before deciding for sure whether to go or stay on etsy.

What else is going on around here besides not much?

We went downtown to the home and garden/train show at the fairgrounds Saturday morning. Keith invited our neighbors to meet us there and hang out with us, but the only problem with going with other people is that you kind of have to keep up with them and they weren't all that interested in trains, so Keith got his hand stamped and went back later by himself. I'm not all that interested in trains either, so that worked out for me, too. Keith can spend hours looking at all the displays and stuff for sale and talking with all the train guys while I stand there bored out of my mind. We were hoping to see Joe at the train show but he wasn't there that day. Keith did tell some of his train club buddies to tell him hi for us.
I thought it was pretty ingenious for them to combine the train show with the home show, but the poor train show had to set up in a building that is kind of hidden behind the main commercial building, so I'm sure most of the home show goers didn't even bother to venture back there.

We did see some really big fish, they always have the koi club set up at the home shows and some of those fish are HUGE. Very pretty, too.

Then we went grocery shopping yesterday and now it's back to the work week for poor Keith, and back to whatever for me. It's time to go clean the cat box now.

Chocolate Pudding

Last night after dinner we both wanted something sweet (chocolatey), but we had nothing sweet or chocolatey in the cupboards or fridge. Then I remembered the box of sugar free instant chocolate pudding mix that has been patiently waiting on the shelf for enough milk in the fridge to whip it up. Mmm....chocolate pudding would hit the spot and it's supposed to be ready to eat in 5 minutes. So, I mixed up the chocolate pudding and put it in the fridge to impatiently wait for that 5 minutes to be up, and after 5 minutes eagerly went to my bowl of chocolatey goodness and it was NOT ready to eat but instead was chocolate soup.

Lesson learned. You have to use real milk for your chocolate pudding, not almond milk.

We used to buy lactose free/fat free milk, which tastes pretty watery but not bad on your oatmeal or cereal. Keith thinks that he is lactose intolerant but he eats cheese by the pound and that doesn't bother him, so I think it's all in his head, but anyway. We saw this almond milk in the dairy case at the store and decided to try it, it being non dairy and lactose free and all. The original flavor (they also have vanilla) is only 60 calories a cup, it does have a little fat in it but I'm assuming that comes from the almonds so it's a good fat or whatever. It tastes really good, different than cow's milk but richer and creamier than the fat free milk. More satisfying. But you can't make chocolate pudding out of it.

I did drink some of the chocolate pudding soup because I really wanted some chocolate.

Yesterday wasn't quite so boring as Saturday, I did go make a bunch of paper gift boxes just for something to do. They aren't exactly flying off the shelf in my shops, though, so I don't know if I'll even bother listing them. I had the paper and glue here already so at least it was something to do that I didn't have to go buy supplies for on my otherwise nothing much to do Sunday.

I'm seriously thinking about closing my etsy shop at the end of the year if sales don't improve greatly and soon. I haven't sold anything in a week there and just can't keep spending 20c over and over again in the hopes of making some small sale. It costs me $60.00 a month in fees there for the few sales I get. The supply shop does seem to be picking up some and I know how well supplies sell on Etsy, it's just getting the inventory built up and spending the money in listing fees. We'll see how the 'Christmas Rush' goes this year on the jewelry shop and then probably just let everything expire if things aren't looking up.

My bike is making weird loud embarrassing noises when I ride it, the brakes are sticking or something and Keith was supposed to take a look at it and fix it but he forgot of course. It's like the brakes are dragging on the wheel, making it harder to ride and making very loud grinding noises. I am going to write ourselves a note so that I remember to have him look at it today. We both are starting to have serious memory issues unless we write it down. If we can remember where the piece of paper is that we wrote the note down on that is.

3500

I finally hit 3500 items sold in my etsy shop today. This goal was a really tough one to reach, last year was a year of slow and no sales, going at times more than a week without a sale despite my best efforts. I am really hoping that finally hitting this sales number is a sign of good things to come.

I did make the art blocks that I was talking about. I wish the artwork was mine but I've used collage sheets for these. I'd like to do some with my own collages on them but am kind of short on papers and books to cut up for them right now and one of my goals this year is to spend less on supplies!

These are 1 1/2" square to stack on a desk or wherever.


And these are 2 1/2" with holes in the back to hang or stack.


Keith was kind enough to cut the wood for these for me. It's nice having a handy man with lots of power tools around the house.