Thursday, August 27, 2009

Mark your calendars: "One Roof"

Mark your calendars for another art show! This time the lovely folks from Wild Goose Creative are hosting us MAW ladies for a wonderfully collaborative art show. We will be exhibiting our work as well as work from our kids! My son and I have been scheming and talking about our art pieces all week with the hopes that execution will be in the next few days, considering drop off is Monday! (Yikes!) He is truly an apple that does not fall far from the tree, as we both are guilty of over-thinking our pieces.

But we have finally narrowed it down.

For a sneak peek, our art will have something to do with this creature:

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Suddenly last summer

So today is the last full day of summer vacation for my oldest son. And technically for my youngest son, too, even though he doesn’t start preschool until September. But his daily buddy will be gone for the weekdays after today, and so the house will return to some sort of rhythm again; a rhythm of early bedtimes and early mornings, packed lunches and homework sheets.

They are good brothers to one another considering their age difference. My youngest son does everything my oldest son does, and luckily he has been a good role model. Summer has been fun with them this year. Reflecting back, I've never been able to spend this much time with them during a summer vacation before. And so I think in the future I will look back on this as a good time, even though there had been a lot of upheaval.

So while it’s a bit bittersweet that they will now both be in school soon, I welcome the change. I welcome it because I think my youngest is very ready for school. Time for him now to understand, too what this time of year means as well. Change is in the air.






Sunday, August 23, 2009

And the Winner Is....

I would just like to thank the players of our regular contest, "Caption This!" It's always hard to decide, but after some valiant efforts it was really hard to top the first entry.

Introducing the next winner of the "Caption This!" card line from Revelry Press:



Caption written by the funny and talented, Barb Friedman.

Thanks for playing everyone! Next "Caption This" coming up on September 18th.

Friday, August 21, 2009

Caption This!

For those that don't know how to play, click here.

For those that do, have fun! Let the one-liners begin.



Click on the image to enlarge. Leave the captions in the comments.
Good luck!

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Giving back to the universe

This past week has opened me to a whole new prospective on the site I use to sells my wares. As you know I have a shop on Etsy, which is kind of like eBay for the handmade marketplace. What I hadn't learned until just recently is that there are golden nuggets of opportunity to get your shop noticed and hob knob with all sorts of talented Etsy artisans.

I posted about Etsy not long before, when I mentioned the great advice I got from a local seller. That advice is still true. What also is true with Etsy, is that it seems like if you give to the universe, it gives back. Over the last couple of weeks I had been featured on a couple things and it's been so delightful to see the response. I'm getting excited over shop "hearts" know like I used to get excited over blog comments. (They like me! They really like me!)

So anyway, back to the adage of what comes around goes around, I wanted to start featuring my favorite finds from Etsy every week. Just to give back. And show a little love. There's a few blogs out there that do the same, so I wanted to jump on the bandwagon.

My newest favorite shop is from digital artist, John W. Golden. I love his artistic style, and while it was difficult to decide what to get from his shop because he had a lot of camera themed art (and you know how I am about cameras!) I purchased this:



Lowtops Black on red in 5x5 square

I own a pair of black and white lowtops and so figured it was totally appropriate.

And the rest of this week's favorite finds with no particular theme in mind are as follows:


Fun Print Headbands


Take this job and LOVE it


City of fun carnival



Snoopy and Dennis the Menace Books



Cashmere Slippers (these are adorable!)

For more of my favorites, you can click on the widget to the right.

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Flower Power

As summer moves forward, here is a bit of a pit stop.






Monday, August 17, 2009

Click away if you hate re-cap posts

I sort of really hate re-cap blog posts, like the ones you read that say, "Another great weekend with the family, we went to blah, blah, and they were so cute, and then they said the cutest blah blah thing," and well, you know the rest. But I have a little blah blah to re-cap.

It occurred to me that last week I never posted anything about the "Yummy!" art show that I participated in. Here's some pics from the opening reception. It is going on through September 13th at:

The Matchbox Gallery
@ Junctionview Studios
889 Williams Ave.
Grandview Heights, OH 43212








So more blah blah is that Saturday was my 11th wedding anniversary. But most of the day was spent working on craft orders and getting ready for Artisan Sunday at North Market. But by nightfall, Dave and I were lounging on the back deck with a nice bottle of wine with our feet up, listening to great music, and shooing the bugs away under the canopy of lights that I strung in the market umbrella over our table. But is was nice. Calm, peaceful, and nice. A better celebration is planned for this Friday when my sister in law is taking the kids for an overnight getaway at a train-themed bed and breakfast. And no, I won't be re-capping anything about that. That blah blah is my blah blah.

Thursday, August 13, 2009

Blog links and belly laughing



When I was eating dinner tonight, I all of a sudden began to feel a little weak. I was eating a delicious meal of barbeque chicken--thanks to my husband--along with a healthy glass of red wine. I had drank about 3 bottles of water throughout the day, so I couldn't have been dehydrated. I sat still for a second, let the moment sink in, and realized I was exhausted.

I have been running on adrenaline the last few days and by the end of today I had shipped all but 2 shipments of new orders that I received this week. But seriously, what a great feeling! I like the feeling of being tired from putting in a hard day's work. I love to feel like I've accomplished something. I recall the endless wasted hours in a corporate office where no one really accomplished anything, just passing the buck in emails from one person to another, waiting for someone to finally have the nerve to make a decision about something, which never came. But we were all paid well. I walked out of the office everyday having made a good paycheck. And yet I felt like I had accomplished nothing. And now, I'm making 1/10th of what I made (probably even less), and I've never been happier. And of course it needs to be about the money sometime, like at the end of the month when the bills need to get paid, but there's something in me right now that says, "I'll figure it out." I told my mother the other day not to ask me about the future because frankly I don't have an answer. This week was about luck tapping me on the shoulder and it's not going to last. The wave was high this week, but in all likeliness it will return to a steady calm again. What I tell myself is to keep moving forward and try to keep up the momentum.

Press has been great this month. My blog was featured in Columbus Monthly magazine. Then this Monday as you know, the chalkboards were featured in Etsy's blog The Storque. Then Lazybride.com picked up the Etsy story about the chalkboards and posted an article. Then Washingtonian.com picked up Lazy Bride's blog post and posted the link. I'm truly humbled by the chain of events, which I know are not huge considering the fame and acclaim of some other talented people out there, but for a new business owner like myself I'm like yipeee!! The business has been skipping here and skipping there throughout these past 4 months and I've had several moments before of feeling like I found the rhythm and direction of this business, but not insomuch as I did this week.

Oh, and a side and final note, I hear children belly laughing from the other room. No better soundtrack to life than that.

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Makin' the chalkboards


It’s a bit of an assembly line around here. Of course, don’t mistake me for a GM plant, I’m only one person, but it’s amazing what a little free exposure on Etsy can do to your sales. As it so happens, yesterday when I posted my new kids version of the travel chalkboard and being all excited about selling the adult version thinking it was a fluke, an Etsy writer, Emily Bidwell, had simultaneously compiled a list of picks about vineyard styled weddings with autumnal hues. What I didn’t know at the time, is that my deep red floral-designed travel chalkboards happened to be one of the picks on her list to use as décor and favors. In a matter of hours my site visits went from say an average of 15-20 a day to nearly 1,300 yesterday.

So now I have several orders to fill, most of them being chalkboards, and I am, what you could say, a little giddy from it all. And hopeful. That’s really what it is. This is a feeling of hope. Hope that this business may actually turn a curve, get some direction, and keep up the pace with other riders. I know this little brief peak in exposure won’t last, but if anything it was a true validation that someone else out there other than me believes that what I created is good. And beyond the numbers, at the end of the day, to me it’s what it’s all about: creating some good art.

Monday, August 10, 2009

Art on the go

Last week I introduced a new item on the Etsy site and I sold my first one today! I had just happened to be designing a new kids version of it as well at the same time. Here's my 3 year old son, Andrew graciously modeling how well the travel chalkboard fits into little hands. Give him this little chalkboard and a bowl of parmesan goldfish and he's good to go!


And if you're so inclined for more product shots, click here.

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

On mommy blogging

Last month I was contacted by a local writer for an upcoming interview on Columbus moms who blog, thanks to a referral from Christina. My first reaction was "Oh man, I'm going to be quoted and I'm going to say something totally stupid..." but I really wanted to participate. (Plus, FREE PR!) Well, as it turns out, my paranoia was a bit exaggerated and the quotes she used were just fine. Although I sound a bit like a walking poster child for mother's guilt. And I stop to think, why do I sound that way? Because truth is, I thought I overcame that issue, but I think I still carry some guilt with me for being a working mother. And what is that emotion really... guilt for working? Men don't seem to suffer from this at all. The emotion is truly ironic, because truth is, we're doing well by our kids by showing them the value of hard work and setting a good example as a woman that we can do more than just master domesticity, which I think will in turn benefit my sons when they grow older and choose relationships with women. I don't imagine my sons will ever end up expecting any woman to cook and clean for them, which is an extremely important lesson. But alas, all that is far in the future, and for now all I seem to say is, "I can't play checkers with you right now... we'll go on a bike ride later... no, I can't go get ice cream right now..."

So while I don't really blog much about the daily grind of my motherhood anymore, it's still there in the back of my head. I think I've vented plenty on the subject in older blogs and this one on occasion that I don't really feel the need to put much emphasis on it anymore. But there's a great community out there of other women bloggers going through the same thing, at the same time. And it's always been very reassuring. I started blogging back in 2006 as a way to deal with the emotions of weaning my last son, which was an extremely bittersweet time: blissful for not being tied down to breastfeeding anymore, but sad in knowing that this was my last child and therefore I would never be doing it again. I found a great community who understood exactly what I was going through.

Thanks to Susan Owens for the article in Columbus Monthly. It's about as close as I'll ever get to Dooce: my name on the same page as her picture!







Monday, August 3, 2009

Columbus from the pavement

Yesterday we all went as a family to the Columbus Art Museum to catch the last day of the Charles Burchfield exhibit, and then went exploring around the city a bit. Having been city dwellers for quite some time before moving to Ohio, my husband and I really like to get out of the suburbs and hit the dirty pavement once in a while. While Columbus is by far the cleanest city we've ever explored, it has some interesting nooks and crannies when you just walk the streets taking in the sights. Here's some I found:




Saturday, August 1, 2009

Stay for the Buffe

I was back in the motherland again---Zanesville, for those who are not familiar with my posts about my parent's hometown---for a family reunion this time. After a long day of catching up with relatives I hadn't seen in years, my mom, me and the kids were exploring the downtown searching for this old paddle boat that I used to ride on when I was a kid. It's called "The Lorena". I loved riding that boat when I was a kid. Me, a Jersey shore kid, and I thought this paddle boat going down the Muskingham River was the coolest thing.

Anyway, a short walk from the Lorena was a little area of shops and a small train-car themed restaurant. And it gave me yet another classic shot of Zanesville: