The Beginnings of a Store

Hello, Hello,

Wow, counting the weekends and MLK day yesterday, the boys were out of school for ten days straight! Today everyone is back to where they are supposed to be and the snow is melting. Wahoo!

Today's to-do list is 2 pages long...
web updates
new work on Etsy
store sign
oh, I will save you from having to read it all.

The most exciting part is I am finally setting up the store portion of my studio. I got the studio up and running for making buttons pretty quick, all the extra stuff is taking time. With the holidays and snow getting in the way of progress, I finally feel like I might be making some. I got two tables built today. The parts for the tables have been on the floor for two months, so seeing them up and in use is amazing to me. I even started a bit if a display. I need to drag out all of my display stuff and really get to work but that will have to be later in the week. Oh and the really big part of setting up the store...making things to sell.....I have nothing right now. The holidays wiped me out.

So you see number two on my to-do list is new work for Etsy. I just photographed some of it this morning...I am hoping it's up by tomorrow. I will let you know when it happens.

Have a great day,

Day 3

We have built a snow woman, played games, taken walks, watched movies, and slept a lot over these past three days. There is still no school and now it's not going to be over 30 degrees until Saturday. That means no melting and from what I can tell that's Georgia's snow removal plan.
I think I a starting to feel a bit trapped today, so I am going to have to come up with something good to entertain myself.

Here are the duct taped pants I promised. We don't have snow pants or boots so I put a pair of pants on the guys and the fashioned some duct tape garbage bags as pants. We put another layer of pants on over the top. That was just in case we saw friends in our neighborhood. How embarrassing to be wearing plastic bags! They stayed warm and dry though and we did see friends.

I apologize about orders still not going out. Even if I could get to my studio to pack the boxes, we still don't have mail service.

I have been feeding the birds and squirrels with all our old crackers, they are loving it. Poor things don't get the Weather Channel to know it's going to snow. I am trying to help out.

I am rambling on here.....I guess that's what happens when your snowed in :)

Stay warm wherever you are....

Buried

8 inches of snow fell last night at our house. We have been warned about this since Friday and we and everyone else around here prepared for the storm. Still, we weren't expecting so much. It's always a mad dash to the grocery store before a storm. The stores stock extra bread and milk because everyone panics. I have to admit I have become one of those people. There is no way you will get me out on the roads with Georgia drivers in snow. So the first Krogers I went to yesterday I drove around the parking lot four times and could not get a spot. There were tons of people looking for spots, double parking, etc. I gave up and drove across town to a Krogers that has a giant parking lot. Inside was the craziest experience. Every Kroger employee was there stocking the shelves. Imagine the busiest Christmas eve shopping day and double it. That's how busy the store was with customers. The shelves were cleared of bottled water. You would have thought it was the end of the world. Peoples carts were piled high with essentials like water, milk, bread, and fire wood. It was very calm and they were playing soothing music. It was amazing to me because right before I left Nik and I were talking about how the pictures on the weather channel were showing empty grocery store shelves. We were wondering how they staged those photos because there was no way they were really empty. Boy were we wrong!

We're going to make the best of it, we have big plans today for playing in the snow. We cleared the driveway last night of our cars. One at the top for emergencies because there is no way to get up it in snow, and the other in the garage. Were thinking the driveway will be a good sled run. My boys haven't had snow pants or boots since we lived in Wisconsin 4 years ago, so I am working on some plans now for garbage bag and duct tape pants to keep them dry. It should be fun for one day. I am a little fearful of the ice coming this afternoon. I don't want to be home another day, I might go crazy. So if you placed an order at the end of the week please be patient and I will ship it as soon as I am back in the studio....hopefully tomorrow.

Enjoy your day!

What's Going On

I thought today I would do a post about the happenings in the studio and outside. I have been working hard around here and haven't had time for much else. This always happens right after the Buyers Market so it's not surprising to be so loaded down with things to do. But first of all, it snowed. See the Heynen Hula Hut? That's part of our tropical hangout on the back porch...not very tropical, eh? I just have to keep reminding myself, one of the days we'll have leaves on the trees again and I will be complaining about how hot it is.

Enough about the weather...back to beads. I have been making beads and buttons during the day and then at night I sit with the TV on and assemble jewelry. Here a box all sorted out and ready to go for bracelets. I love to see all of my beads lined up like that. Below are my seed beads that also go into many of my pieces. I have had to reload my bowl three times now because I am using so many seed beads.

Last but not least are my buttons. I told you about my line of fabrics for In The Beginning. Well, for them to sell and distribute my buttons, they need samples. These are the buttons that will be glued onto the sample cards that the stores will get to order from. Only a few more to come out of the kiln and they will be shipped off. And only a few more weeks until I can show you the whole collection. I can't wait.

As you can see I have been a very busy bee, I like to be busy so all these projects make me happy.

Have a Great Day,

Snowed In

We are officially snowed in here. 6.5 inches of snow in Georgia is a big deal. Most of you know I lived in Wisconsin before and this snow wouldn't have slowed anyone down, but here it's a different story. There aren't snow plows or shovels so we just wait for the stuff to melt. That's what I will be doing for the next few days....