How did you know?

So my 1 year Etsy-versary was on Saturday, and I actually *blew away* my goal and came in at 56 sales for the year. Holy smokes!

So I am thrilled, and of course, because I am an overachiever, my new goal is 100 sales total for my second year. Kind of reminds me of how Oprah's goal salary when she first started working was to make her age * $1000 per year. I guess she took care of that pretty handily, huh??

Well, here's to hoping I'm as successful as Oprah. Ok, maybe not, because that would mean I would need to open a jewelry and magnet sweatshop in my house, but here's to general success, then. And continuing to use Etsy for my work-stress relief.

And in other news, I am so freakin' old and rickety. I went to the gym two whole days in a row last weekend - a veritable streak for me lately- and then spent the next week so sore I could barely walk. Doing yardwork for the United Way Day of Caring with my team last Friday didn't help much with that either.

I guess I am now of "that age" where I need to maintain a consistent workout schedule or pay the horrible price of sore achy back muscles for days on end. Sad.

And in other fun hammering on metal news, my experiment of making dog tags out of nickel silver, which is a copper/nickel/zinc alloy which doesn't tarnish, worked out pretty well.

I am still experimenting with the best way to apply the oxidation solution to make the letters darker - it's made of hydrochoric acid (yay HCl!) and potentially something else yicky. Fortunately it's pretty dilute so it's not really dangerous, just something I need to be careful with.

The next few I make will have darker lettering - I just need to get a little less skittish about the chemicals. It's been a long time (10 years!) since I handled any chemicals in a lab so I've lost my touch.

And bear with me for one more picture - my parents adopted a new puppy last week. Meet Maya, an adorable chocolate lab/something else mix. I can't wait to meet her!