Soft Summer Breezes and Vomiting Cats

It smells like poop outside today. Ah, the lovely summer breezes wafting through the dairy farms and freshly fertilized fields on their way to Bakersfield!

Today is payday and since we have direct deposit I've already paid the bills except for the electric bill which isn't here yet and after we buy some food and household necessities we'll be broke again. We had nothing in the house for dinner last night so we went over to Los Hermanos for some Mexican food. We love Los Hermanos, it's a cross between Taco Bell and a real sit down Mexican restaurant. You order at the counter but they bring your food on real plates with real silverware and it doesn't cost much more than Taco Bell but tastes a WHOLE lot better.

And now I'm trying to figure out cheap meals for the next two weeks so I can make my cheap grocery list. Scrambled eggs for dinner will be on the menu, along with bean burritos. Maybe some sweet and sour chicken too, that's fairly cheap to make and actually has a vegetable or two in the recipe.

They've been showing that Publishers Clearing House commercial where you could win (fat chance of that!) $5000.00 a week for life. Which would be really nice. I always wonder how they can give away so much money, is selling magazine subscriptions really that lucrative? Maybe I should enter, because SOMEBODY has to win, right? And it might as well be me, right? Like that would ever happen.

And yesterday was the day of vomiting cats. I don't know what was up with that, if it was the cheap Boots and Barkley cat food from Target or what, but it seemed like EVERY cat in the house was hacking and gagging and leaving little presents for us all over the house. All over our already crappy carpet. Then late last night, and I'm so glad I was still up to catch it, Lucy vomited all over, and I mean ALL OVER the top of the entertainment center. ALL OVER it. She likes to lay up top there and if I hadn't been there to wipe it all up, it would have been up there forever, because how often do I climb up on a ladder to clean in places that I can't see? Not often.

We threw away the cheap Target cat food just in case that was the problem.

Oh, I do have some new beach glass pendants in the shop.

I did some with wiring and some with a bail. I found some really good glass glue at Michaels, like a super glue where if you get it on your fingers better not touch anything or you'll be permanently attached, either that or lose your fingerprints trying to detach yourself.



I've pretty much decided to just concentrate on the one Etsy shop for now. I tried the second shop for artwork and did get some sales, but I'm going to close that one after all the listings expire and just have everything in one shop. I'm going to close the Artfire shop, too, even the top sellers over there don't sell much. Yes, you get your listings uploaded to google shopping, but what good is that when nobody is buying those listings? There is a new site that is free to list, efreeme, but if it's like all the other start ups, not much will happen there, either. I think that if anyone is going to buy handmade, they are going to go to Etsy first, even if half the crap on Etsy is not handmade and is exactly that, crap. I might give efreeme a try, since right now they are paying you $5.00 if you list 20 items. I'm sure a lot of sellers are listing their 20 items just to get the $5.00 these days.

Recession Pricing

The other day a thread was started in the etsy forums about whether or not to lower prices in an effort to sell in this recession that we are all affected by.

My answer was that I already had lowered my prices, but many etsyers won't because 'we are not competing with walmart and target and handmade should be more expensive than something that you could go to walmart and buy'. Yes, but are people buying handmade in these uncertain times or only buying the absolute necessities at places like target and walmart? I know I'm not buying much in the way of non-essentials these days, and I'm certainly not buying expensive handmades.

We are in a retail business, no matter how much you want to romanticize the 'I'm an artist' thing, the bottom line is that we are selling things that people can live without. So, we either need to make things that are so unique that they create a want, or affordable enough for that little impulse luxury buy. Kind of like buying that premium cup of coffee once a week, or treating yourself to a movie out. We still want to have a little luxury in our lives no matter how hard times get.

So, I've lowered my prices and am working on some new little trinkets that I can sell for just a few dollars (but still make a little profit on). The soldered wood pendants just didn't come out as nice as I wanted, and I don't like to sell things that I'm just not happy with. I'm working on pendants made with chipboard since unlike the wood, I can cut it to any size that I want with a paper cutter, and the supplies are readily available and don't cost a lot.

Plus, I'm having a lot of fun fooling around with this idea!



This is one of the new paper and chipboard pendants, and I'm also working on some inexpensive little pins.