Time continues to fly by

And just that fast the end of August escaped me & here we are in September already. I had planned to write a bit more about our Labor Day weekend, but it seems the month ended before I had a chance to get it logged in the August file.

We had quite a nice weekend. After a slow start Saturday morning we ended up deciding to go to Deception Falls. Pack some snacks, load the car, & off we go. Dog in tow even. It was about a 90 minute ride to get there. We even had to pass thru a bit of rainy icky stuff up on Steven’s Pass. But things leveled out & we had wonderful weather when we got there. Well, I say wonderful … it was mostly overcast & it did try to drizzle once. But to me it was perfect. I had one of my kids, & my hubby with me. I had great light for general pictures of the forest & the falls. No bright sunlight to try & compensate for when snapping off endless pix.

So the falls were nice. The forest loop trail was even better. I think I enjoyed myself more in the forest walk than just seeing the falls. As we wandered thru the forest, I felt a photo book coming out of me. So, we’ll see if I can make that materialize.

After the falls, we headed back towards home but made a stop at another place. It was called The Iron Goat Trail. What a cool place. It is a trail built right over what used to be where a railroad ran. I’ll have to get more info on it so I can write about it correctly. The walk we took there was really cool. We got to see what was left of a wall from an 1800 foot long snow shed & part of a tunnel. Neat stuff. We plan to go back to explore other parts of that trail too. Some of the other areas have more cool “ruins” from a time long ago. Like 1916 long ago!

We hung out Saturday evening doing not much, after our long day out exploring. Oh .. I took 169 images at Deception Falls and 62 at the Iron Goat. That also includes taking the same scene multiple times while changing settings. So afterwards, I took 139 & 45 respectively. I haven’t gone thru them yet to see how many of those I’ll end up keeping.

Sunday Connie worked. We went to the Unitarian service. It was their annual drumming service. Oh how cool that was. My friend Amy was there, with her daughter. We saw Johnny from the market but didn’t get to say hello. He’s such a cool dude. Nicknamed, or known as Johnny Bamboo, he is working on getting his own clothing line (I think) of clothes made from bamboo. Not everyday that some nice looking guy tells you “here, feel my shirt!” The service was really neat tho. It wasn’t the same drumming feeling of a Pow-Wow, but it was cool. Afterwards Tim was chatting with the guy who heads the drumming group during the week there. I think he may try going to see what it’s like. Makes me happy. I like seeing him make new friends & get involved in stuff.

After some lunch, we ended up wandering into town to get a couple things from Wal-Mart. After that we met Joe & his family down by the loop trail on the Wenatchee side. Was nice to have a reason to go take the dog out. Tho after her very long & exciting outing the day before, she had plenty of exercise for the weekend already. Took a few more pix …. I know, as if the well over a 100+ wasn’t enough right? I seem to go thru spurts.

Today was another good day. After a quick & easy breakfast, Tim & I worked on cleaning out our other fish tank. It was time for a complete tank cleaning. But hey, knowing that fish water was good for plants, I knocked off “outside plant watering” from my to-do list!

Before the fish tank stuff, as we were sitting here at our respective computers in the morning, I got a wonderful phone call. Laura had a chance to see my websites & check out some of my work. Who is Laura? She is the Life Coach who owns In Touch Life Strategies & Drop Dead Fabulous (we'll have to get her online, or at least get some pix up there). We had stopped & chatted with Laura & Rhonda, the wonderful lady who makes her own scented lotions & also runs the store the day we wandered the sidewalk sales downtown. They have transformed what was our old Metaphysical shop. So she is a lady who deals with a higher end clientele, & likes nice things. She likes my work! We had talked about me bringing some stuff by in a couple weeks. Well, she wanted to see them now! When she called this morning, she said my stuff was “stellar”. How cool is that? So I spent about an hour getting a bit of everything together as samples to show her. From 1 this afternoon, until 330, we sat & talked while I showed them my stuff. I have a feeling my stuff is going to sell very well in their shop.

I’m excited. I feel like I’m turning a corner here. I have finally closed the farmer’s market chapter of my business life & now I’m opening a whole new chapter. She is offering me a great commission rate. For that I also get her “marketing the shit out of my stuff”. Her words! We have agreed that she will be the exclusive carrier of my items in town. She wants people to have to come to her to get my artwork. And, my prices are too low. She has some of the same feelings that Marshal was trying to get across to me before. If your prices are much lower than other artists, people will indeed wonder what is wrong with yours. Got it. She will be helping me figure out a better “in range” price for a few of my things.

After all that excitement I got home to my honey being in pain. Damn. Not good. I hate when he hurts. He had one of his lovely shooting pains in his lower back that then shoots down his leg. We were supposed to go to Joe’s for a BBQ. I told him if he wanted to cancel, we would. No biggie. Joe would certainly understand. But, being the guy he is, we went. It was nice to go visit. The food & company were both good. We only wish our trip home was as easy as walking next door into our own house. But, that’s another vent.

So, I have my work cut out for me between now & the holidays. I need to have stock not only for the mall, but for Drop Dead Fabulous! What a fun & exciting problem to have. Looks like my week is shaping up to be busy. This post has links ... I'll have to make the next one with some pictures ...

The last quiet evening of July

Well here it is the last quiet evening of July. It’ll be August in an hour. Where the heck has the year gone? I really am amazed at how quickly time goes by these days.

So on the mall front, we’re just waiting on the contract/lease papers to come back from the mall big wig to Stacey. I’ll go sign them & we’ll be all set. After a couple more emails earlier this week, we got things straightened out. I pointed out a few things she could not ignore, & told me we could do it my way for this year. This year is all I’m asking for. We don’t know what next year brings, so I’m not gonna worry about it now.

Vacation. I got the tickets bought for the trip to FL. In the week we took to get things in order, the prices went up. Thankfully not over the money we got. I had to check carefully because several airlines now charge you extra to bring ANY bags with you. Pfft. I don’t think so. So I found some that only charge extra for the 2^nd checked bag. That should work for us. We fly out on Halloween in the evening. We’ll hop over to Seattle, kill about an hour, then catch a nice long flight to Atlanta. We’ll arrive in Pensacola at 9am Saturday morning. Should be cool. We’ll be there until the following Sunday morning. Then we leave FL at 9, get home to Wenatchee at 630. Fun. Hopefully it’ll be a good time.

For the first time in quite awhile, I’m not nervous about a show. I’m excited about it. I’ve never actually been to Ellensburg, so that should be cool too. I’d really like it if we can have the profits pay for dinner before we head home. That would be fun. I’m really looking forward to meeting some of the Etsy team people too. I spent Wednesday making a bunch of bookmarks. I finished up this morning then worked on some slight sign alterations. I’ll get them printed from Office Depot on Friday. Then I’ll get all my containers out, go thru them, see what needs to come, what stays, & get them packed to go.

We finally got my honey set up with a Yahoo messenger ID and a Gmail email address. Look out internet world here he comes! Until we get him a system built from the 3 towers we have, he’s using my laptop. He’s pretty happy.

Hmm .. what else? Guess my brain isn’t wrapping itself around much right now. So I’ll close for now, get this uploaded, & unwind a bit before bed.

Monday again already?

Wow… I’m really slacking. I don’t even know what to write or where to start. I just figured it’s about time I write a little something.

**And just after I wrote that, the man came home. I had figured I had at least 20 minutes before he got home. Was nice to see him a few minutes early. So now we’ve showered & had dinner. Wrestling is on the TV. He’s relaxing with an iced coffee & watching it. I’m back here where I can just glance over & catch a bit here & there. Another 40 minutes & he’ll be off to bed.

I’ve had a fairly busy day today. I spent well over an hour this morning vacuuming. No, our place is not that big. We have one of those bagless vacs. Well, apparently I’ve neglected the floors a bit too long. I had to stop & empty the cup numerous times. I’d see how full the cup was, empty it and go vacuum over the area again. I went over the living area 4 times, the entry way 3 times, the hallway twice, and our bedroom & bath area 2+ times. Teach me to let the vacuuming go. I swept the kitchen too & stuck the rugs in the wash. I spent some time going thru our rather large closet in the bedroom too. I packed up some winter stuff. I pulled out & rearranged boxes to make more room. Even added a couple things to the yardsale box. So now I have a place to store some more packed boxes. I don’t have any more packed yet, but at least now I have a place to put them when I do. I like that.

As for the past week that I haven’t written about … I don’t know what to say. Guess I’ll leave it alone for now. Even market politics suck.

Last week Office Depot had a sale on their color copies. .29 instead of .49 each sheet. Add .06 for each sheet of card stock & I was on my way to get some book marks printed. I also had a coupon for 15% off my print order. Well, I made 30 book marks. I got 20 of each one printed. They came out fabulous. I am happy with them for sure. I didn’t get them cut & laminated in time for the market on Saturday tho. I did make a sneak peak folder thing so people could see what was coming. Cute & clever idea… but only a couple people stopped to look. No matter. The fact anyone looked made me happy. I’ll be working on cutting them apart & laminating them this week. I hope to at least have a few ready for Saturday.