seriously?

i should not be awake at 6 a.m. on a saturday to blog.

6 a.m. and already showered.

happy saturday!

seriously, though.

fabrics & blogging

lynn & i went quilt-store shopping yesterday. it was my first experience in a store that's completely dedicated to quilt making. and it was fabulous. :) we drove out to princeton, which is about halfway to cornerstone, if that gives any of you a good reference. same place i got my alternator swapped out a few summers ago. same place some sort of work got done on josh's car on our way back home after the last cornerstone. i want to say it's where doug has a friend's mom who makes good pancakes. and actually, it's the same exit as dixon, which of course is ronald regan's boyhood home - and we all know where that is, right? no? okay - it's about 2 hours west on I80. seriously, how hard can it be to describe princeton? yes, yes, especially when no one really cares. anyway ...

we went to princeton and visited a couple of quilt shops. the first one was huge, but a little disappointing. a lot of their fabrics were old (literally old, not just geared towards an older quilter) and the whole place was just kind dull. so then we went to a smaller shop further down the road. and it was very cute. had some good fabric. lots of good quilts hanging on the walls. we bought a couple of patterns, i got a paper-piecing book with some amazing star patterns and we each got a small cut of fabric. very cute store. so we grabbed some lunch & headed home.

so then we saw this billboard as we're zipping down I80 for another quilt shop in peru. we had time, so we stopped. the front of the building proclaims that d's sewing center sells vacuum cleaners, sewing machines & fabric. we were a bit leary - expecting 45 vacuums and one small wall of fabric. wow were we wrong. the store is AMAZING! they didn't just have a few gorgeous fabrics - they had the entire collections of gorgeous fabrics. so every little section of fabric you walked to, you could make one quick grab & have everything you needed for a quilt. it was at d's that i got the fabrics above. i'd been saying that i wanted to do something in fall colors, but not necessarily a fall quilt. and this set of fabric was just gorgeous. and when i say "set of fabric", seriously, there were at least 30 fabrics that all coordinated in this section. they had the polka-dots on brown, green, gold, orange and red. they had the large floral on brown, orange and neutral. they had the small floral on brown, neutral and green. they had the very patterned polka-dot in blue, orange, green and gold. the fabric on the far left is a neutral background with green outlines of leaves - they had that as green on green, brown on neutral and neutral on brown. they had a set of stripes that coordinated on four different backgrounds. plus everything i'm not listing because seriously - you'll just have to trust me they had at least 30 fabrics in this collection. it was so cool.

plus, they were cutting the fabric using this ruler that totally had a stop on the end that automatically squared it up with the cutting mat. how smart is that? granted, they didn't have any in the store to sell ... but i wouldn't have even known to look for it until i saw it in action. seriously a smart tool.

alright, i'm pretty sure i've established my fabric nerdiness. my work here is done.

on to blogging ...

mel asked what i thought about her starting a blog versus a web page with a blog. i'm with jody - i say start a blog. it's free. and free is good. a blog is going to let you post all your happenings, photos & what-nots. and i highly recommend using blogger, because it's so easy to use and has some great templates to choose from. you can customize your colors, link to your friends blogs, list previous posts, etc. you can tag your blog entries, so every time you post pics of the boys you can tag it as "puppies", and when someone clicks that tag at the bottom of a post they'll see every post you've tagged as "puppies".

most people i know who blog use blogger. you just set up an account, tell them what you want your web site to be named (example: melrocks.blogspot.com or melsadoll.blogspot.com or melwantsbeccatovisit.blogspot.com) and it does everything else for you. technically you have your own web page, i suppose - but you're not paying for a specialized name (example: bluehighlights.com) - you're just using some of blogger's web space to post your blog (thus why your web site will always have the ".blogspot.com" in it).

i pay for my web page, which i'll probably stop doing once my contract is up. i bought the name bluehighlights.com, which is cheap - maybe $6 a year or something. and then i pay $10 a month for someone to host the space. so $126 a year. it made sense when i was using it to have a photo gallery & stuff like that. but if all i'm going to do is blog, i might as well just have a site through blogger. especially since right now i use blogger & then just link my bluehighlights.com site directly to it.

i'm actually thinking of starting a second blog to use as my online portfolio. it feels a little cheap - like i should seriously just design something instead of using a template. but i'm not a web site designer, so i'm thinking i'll be just fine doing it this way instead. my point on that is that you can use a free blogger account to do a lot of things. and since they're free, you can set up several blogs (all under one account) & use them for different purposes. so the free blogging services are multi-functional.

yeah, i vote for you to start a blog. if you find you need to do more than a blog will let you do ... then look into paying for a web page.

i'm talking mel into joining an online craze. that's a role reversal, eh? :)

questions

i've found that when i haven't posted for awhile, it's best to come back with a survey. i mean, why not go with something easy, right? :)

Where were you 2 hours ago? at the kitchen table eating dinner.

What do you think of your last kiss? i don't think of it really.

Do you kiss a lot of people? nope, not so much.

Are you wearing socks right now? no.

When was the last time you went out of state? monday night for the cubs game, i suppose.

Have you been to the movies in the last 5 days? no, i'm not a big theater person.

What was the last thing you had to drink? water.

Who was the last person to hear you cry? i don't do much crying around other people.

Who was the last person to make you smile? erin because she used the words "it tickled me"

What was the last food you ate? a cinnamon sugar tortilla chip

What is your last name? this seems like a strange question to me.

Have you bought any clothing items in the last week? nope, it's been about a week & a half.

Do you have a pet? nope.

What did you do last night? looked through some quilt books. crashed early.

If you could be anywhere you want where would it be? a cute loft downtown.

What is the last thing you purchased online? probably the logo stamp for our booth.

One thing you hate about yourself? i'm overly emotional.

What does the 10th text in your inbox say? i don't text.

Do you miss anyone? not particularly. i mean, i could think of someone to miss, sure. but i don't have an overwhelming feeling of missing right now.

Last movie you saw? eternal sunshine of the spotless mind.

What are your plans for the day? i'm crashing soon. early morning tomorrow.

Did you have fun today? yeah, i did.

Who is your last text message from? seriously, i don't text.

Were you an honor roll student in school? yup.

What do you know about the future? that you're never in it.

Who was the last person you rode in a car with? steve & lynn. we went to three floyd's for steve's birthday lunch.

Do you have a tan? i love my farmer tan.

How old do you want to be when you have kids? older than i am now.

Did you meet anyone new today? i don't think so.

Do you have any tattoos or piercings? no and no. though i've been told i need to get my ears re-pierced & have fun earrings with the new hair.

How do you like your soda? cold.

Who was the last person to make you cry? i'd like to say that people don't MAKE me cry. but again, i think i'm overly emotional. how was that for skirting the question?

What are you doing tomorrow? going to a couple of quilt shops in princeton. playing bunco.

What day is tomorrow? saturday.

What is your current mood? i'm tired.

Do you like someone? sure. i've got me some good friends.

Who are you missing? no one. sorry.

Why? i don't know ... i guess i'm just comfortable being by myself right now.

spontaneity

i think it thins my face and shows that i have my mother's features. both of these are good things. the color is a little more pink this time, but i still like it.


side shot so you can see how short i went in the back. they actually dyed my hair all over. whatever they didn't do red they dyed a brown-red. i say "they" because my hair was a group effort. apparently when you call at 4:30 & ask for an appointment around 5 you gotta expect a little chaos when you show up, right? :)

kathy & i had a good time shopping today. we got a lot accomplished fairly early in the day. so we decided to see if we could get appointments to get our hair cut. sure enough, they were able to squeeze us in. yay!

i got the cutest shirt at fashion bug. i will probably be wearing it tomorrow. i probably will not, however, be wearing my glasses tomorrow. i'm hoping they give me a trial pair of contacts at my eye appointment.

early productivity

not bad ... it's 7:40 a.m. and i've managed to reset my etsy password so i can upload jewelry to the shop, made a banner for said etsy shop and added a shop announcement so people know the jewelry is coming.

because surely the masses are just clamoring for our jewelry. ;)

i didn't mention it in my popcorn festival wrap-up, but i was so stinkin' surprised to see malissa, dan & jessica walk up to the booth! i think i may have screamed like a school girl at recess. what a great surprise. you guys rock.

we're looking to do the December 8 holiday show at lake central high school. just so you're all in the know.

i'm not working today. this is a good thing. goals for the day:
- unload the stuff in my car from the festival
- get a few items up on etsy
- figure out an easy dinner, probably involving the crock pot
- stop by the bank
- make it to kathy's by 11

sounds feasible. after all, i've been so productive already. :) i should take more days off.

sunday randomness

today i learned that while the lake county public library allows me to make a list of books i want to check out in the future - it apparently purges that list at some point. i don't know how long it saves it for ... but i know i had a list of 6 or 8 books the last time i logged in and now it's gone. hmph.

i'm ready for the weather to cool off & scare away the mosquito population.

if you've not listened to kelly clarkson's my december, i recommend it. if you have listened to it - don't agree it's quite lovely?

i've done a decent chunk of cleaning today. i'm generally a fairly messy person ... but a good cleaning from time to time makes me feel pretty good. i was hoping to find a better home for my bike in the process. i'm not sure i've accomplished that, but i did get the 6" stack of mail filed. of course, i also decided i need a better filing cabinet. maybe one that's solid & doesn't have hanging bars that fall off every third time i open a drawer. but what's a little cleaning without deciding to spend money? :) i think i'll go black metal.

i enjoy using the shop vac to remove spiders from their homes in my corners.

now that popcorn festival is over, i need to focus on Christmas. i have high hopes. and i think i can participate in a holiday craft fair without making a whole lot more items. so i can get some Christmas creating done instead.

popcorn festival recap

for those of you who couldn't make it today - here's a look at our set-up. we had someone selling scrubs on one side of us & a fried vegetable stand on the other. the fried vegetable stand, as a side note, had the best fried cheese i've had a festival/fair. it was nicely melted, not overcooked, and was a good size hunk o' cheese. but about us ...




views of our three tables. we had to set up pretty early. we were unloading the cars at 5 a.m. sales officially started at 7:30 a.m. we were all pleased with how our booth looked. it felt inviting and thought out, without being so professional it was stuffy. i think we need something better for the jewelry ... i wish it wasn't all just laying out. but it worked well. and it encouraged people to try on the bracelets, which was good.


we got several compliments on the screened frames for our earrings. we ended up with two earring frames - kathy, april & i all made earrings. they weren't our best seller ... but we probably sold a dozen pairs. (side note on this picture - isn't the green fabric we used for a tablecloth fabulous? i'm totally torn on whether to hem it up & keep it as a table cloth or just add it to my quilting stash.)


our magnets were one of the best sellers. they were some of the first things to go - especially the ones made of old pop caps. they were also our cheapest item, at a quarter a piece. i think that had a lot to do with their popularity. we'll definitely be making more of those for the next show.

we're thinking we want to do a Christmas show. we were a little disappointed at our sales today, but surrounding vendors said their own sales were down, too. so i don't think it was necessarily our prices or our products - it was just a smaller crowd than usual and they weren't buying as much as they did in previous years. that's the word of the more experienced vendors, at least. :) so we're definitely willing to give it another try. and we figure an indoor holiday craft show sounds good. people will be coming solely to by stuff ... and we're all willing to drop some extra cash around the holidays for that perfect present.

we're getting together on monday to go through the sales receipts & divy up the cash ... so then we'll have a better idea of what sold. you could definitely see the difference in inventory when we packed up compared to when we unpacked. so that's good. and several people took our business cards & signed up to receive e-mails about future shows. so that's promising, right?

and we had fun. we had fun creating the items to sell, and we had fun experiencing the festival today. a huge thank you to everyone who was able to make it today to support us. you guys are great. and hopefully you didn't just buy things because you felt obligated, but rather because you found things you really liked. and bethany, you're a great dancer - it didn't rain a single drop until we were totally packed up & on our way out of town. :)

too tired

i'd like to read chapter 6. but it will have to wait until tomorrow. i'm just too tuckered out. so tonight you merely get this bulletin ...

31.5 hours until we start selling. current forecast: 77 degrees and mostly sunny. yay! bethany, keep on dancin' baby!

finding us

if you haven't been to the popcorn festival before you may be surprised at how many people are there. i was surprised the year i went. it's basically huge. and so here's a map showing you where the monday night designs booth will be. we're northeast of the courthouse on the east side of franklin.

my screen is currently drying for screen printing the t-shirts. i'm more freaked out about trying to screen print for the first time than i am about selling at a craft show for the first time. humorous, no?

my mantra for today was "okay, so you don't like it ... now what are you going to do about it?" my goal was to keep a positive focus to my energy. dwelling on my dislike for something isn't active enough to fix the situation. and if i'm not actively working to fix the situation i'm just prolonging it. and that's like hitting yourself in the eye with a rubberband ... it's just stupid.

57.5 hours 'til we start selling. current forecast: 74 degrees with isolated thunderstorms. eek!

new jewelry!

so sunday was our practice set-up ... and i came home & made more jewelry. i love making jewelry. it's fun for me.


two necklaces.



and a bunch of earrings.

i thought i came up with a fairly clever way to photograph the earrings, but the photos still aren't the best. better than i was getting before, but it needs some tweaking. the lighting isn't quite right or something. the colors look pretty consistent on my monitor - the pink swirls aren't quite as prominent in person, but the rest are good representations.

i printed our business cards tonight. got my sales tax certificate. got our banner.

80 hours 'til we start selling!

first railcats game

last sunday i went to the railcats game with my mom, holly, wayne & alicia. i was the only one who had been to the stadium before - it was a first for everyone else. but for alicia, it was her first game period. and i'm pretty sure she enjoyed herself.


she got a baseball fairly early on in the game. one of the outfielders tossed it in our general direction & it bounced down to our row. she also had a hot dog - note the ketchup on her cheek :).


and holly took her for the kids' run through the outfield. it's something they do every game - any kids under 12 can run through the outfield. and if the kids are too little to go on their own their parents can go with them. holly said alicia was laughing the entire time. the photo's not the best ... but what do you want? they were running at me. :)

it was a very good time. and the railcats won 4-3. it was fan appreciation day, so they handed out coupons that could be redeemed for free tickets to the next night's game if the railcats won. so we redeemed our coupons and holly & wayne went again the next night. seriously, if you haven't been ... you should definitely go to a game next season. it's a good time.

sunday morning

i just scored 80% on a quiz about tom hanks peeing in his movies. not bad considering i'd only seen 6 of the flicks.

activity ... and photographs to prove it

tomorrow we're doing a practice set-up for the popcorn festival. we need to see how we can best work the layout, where to place all the items, what could we use more of, etc. so that means i had to collect all my stuff for the booth.


i gotta say i'm a little concerned that all my goodies can fit into one shoe box and two wilco bags. but a lot of it's jewelry, and that packages up pretty small.


here's our logo stamp. it's a little hard to see, so ...


here's one of our bags stamped with the logo. i got half of the bags stamped tonight while i was watching the third harry potter movie. i'll accomplish the other half tomorrow night or monday night.

i picked up more beads at jo-anns today when i bought the fabric for the tablecloths. so hopefully during our set-up we decide we have space for more jewelry. :) i need to really look at the inspiration earrings julie sent me so i can try those, too. i really like the set that has the double loop of beads - with the top loop shorter than the bottom loop.

it seems there's something more i should be saying here. but since i can't figure it out ...

needing laziness

i want to do as little as possible today. i want to sit at my computer. i want to take a nap. i want to soak in a cool bath. there is very little that would make me want to be active today. i'm hoping this isn't a sign that i'm getting sick.

we got our logo stamp. it works famously. now i need to spread out all our bags & stamp them. that, of course, requires activity ... so i'm updating my blog instead.

i picked up the fabric today for our table clothes. some brown, some green. i'm not sure yet how i'm going to put them together ... but i think i can kick those out one evening after work, so i'm not concerned with them today.

i got something else for the booth this week, too. but it's a surprise for april ... so of course i can't tell you about it yet. aren't you glad i brought it up?

i need to make t-shirts for the us to wear. i don't have the t-shirts yet. i was going to stop at walmart today, but i just couldn't take walmart on a saturday afternoon. walmart is crazy anyway ... but a saturday afternoon? no thanks. i'll make a run there during lunch one day this week. surely it'll be less crazy then.

the popcorn festival is less than a week away. one week from today we will be a mere three hours from closing the booth. i'm not freaked out by this. not yet at least. i'm excited, though it seems more surreal than anything else. putting one's self out there isn't an easy thing to do. i must continue to remind myself that not everyone will like our stuff. a lot of people will probably walk through without buying anything. i've never been known for dealing well with not being good enough. we'll see if i can separate people judging my work from people judging me. perhaps i really just need to decide that i don't care. regardless, this could be a very interesting experience for me.

i'm adding some sites to the recommended list. obviously i think you should visit them.