Can't slow down

I'm having the same dilemma I've had several times since 2009.  Do I keep running my Etsy shop or is it too much?  It's like having an apple pie sitting on my kitchen counter.  It doesn't seem right to throw it away even though it's not what I should be eating.  I love eating apple pie.  But if I eat as much pie as I want, I feel crappy both long-term and short-term.

Ok, maybe not the best analogy as running my business isn't making me physically ill.  But it's stressful.  I can't seem to dial it down.  If the shop is open and I'm taking custom orders, I'm either working on orders, figuring out how to get more sales, or feeling resentful that there are so many similar shops on Etsy and many with more sales than I have.   Is my pricing ok?   Am I offering unique enough products?  Should I invest time and money into selling my work in person at shows?

I'm not a competitive person, but something about having my own shop really brings out the worst in me in that sense.  I obsess about whether my shop is getting enough views and people marking favorites.  I wonder if I should place Google or Facebook ads.  I renew listings to get them to show up at the top of the search, even though they haven't expired yet and it costs me money.

I'm at 70% of the aggressive sales goal I set for myself this month, with several more days to go in the month.  And every time I take a break, I get several past customers asking when I'm reopening, and I hate to turn them down.  When I do reopen, I'm rewarded by the little email pop ups of new sales notifications.  Clearly this shop is satisfying my need for external validation and "gold stars", which is something I'm not terribly proud of.




my product photographs have gotten so much better since 2007!

Don't get me wrong - I love making things.  I love that people think my work is good enough to give to their spouse on their wedding day.  Actually crafting the pieces puts me in a GREAT frame of mind - calm and peaceful.  I've learned a bunch of other skills from running this as a real business - dealing with taxes, product photography, customer service.  I'm thrilled that even with a toddler and a tech career, I can make time to do something artsy and soul-satisfying.

But here's the thing.  When I made my Mondo Beyondo list, I had no goals for my business at all.  And that didn't surprise me.  I've already proven what I set out to do - I wondered if I could ever be successful at selling what I had made.  The answer is yes.  I don't have other "big goals" for it beyond that.

Since T was born, I've taken several breaks from it when it felt like "too much".   But I keep coming back.

I feel guilty about the supplies and money I've invested over the years.  I feel like I should at least "use up" the consumable supplies before I quit.  The other part is feeling like I'm wasting an opportunity.  People work for years trying to build up a freelance career or flexible side business to make some extra money.  I already have that "big idea" and it's clearly working for me.  It seems crazy to give that up.

I know for sure I never want to quit my job and rely on my crafty business income.  That would be the surefire way to kill the fun and skyrocket my stress levels.

But on the other hand, I hear stories of how my pet ID tags ensured lost dogs found their way home.  Or how someone cried when they received the item I made (hopefully not because it was hideous!).  And the woman who watched her husband open the gift I made over Skype because he was serving in the military in Afghanistan. 

Obviously there are tons of people out there who can take my place, and tons of folks who *are* doing this as their sole source of income.  Of course they are going to have the time and inclination to maximize their sales.  I know I have too many other priorities.  But when I'm away from it for too long, I miss it.

I'm just not sure how to keep it in balance and not make it all-consuming.  Thoughts?

Doing Taxes for my Teeny, Tiny Handcrafted Business

I'm totally cheating by recycling a post I wrote for my now-defunct 1000 Markets blog.  I have a vision of consolidating all my blog posts here, so I'll slowly add in the ones from my short-lived work blog as well.  Some I'll just import into the date I wrote them, and others I'll actually update/repost as "new to you".  :)  So if your feed reader gives you deja vu, that's why.  Sorry for the confusion!

When you're an official business in the great state of Washington, business taxes are due on Jan 31, if you're small.  If you make more money, you need to pay monthly or quarterly.  I don't envy those people!

And of course, every year I wait until the last minute to do this truly unpleasant task and swear I'll start earlier next time.  Here it is, Jan 17 and I haven't even started yet.  And Mama Weekend Away is coming up, and lord knows I DO NOT want to do taxes then.

The first time I did this 3 years ago, I sat down with the forms and realized the process was totally incomprehensible.  That made me angry. I have a Master's Degree in Molecular Biology, so I like to think I'm reasonably intelligent.  And I couldn't parse that stupid form.  I can't even imagine what folks do when English is not their main language.  Sigh.

So I broke down and set up an appointment with a CPA so he could walk me through the form.  I still wanted to complete it myself, but he helped me understand what the state was asking for.  And he also gave me the cheerful news that I have to keep better track of my cost of goods and inventory info for my federal taxes - oh joy.

With his help, I realized that the state tax form for retailers is actually pretty simple.  That, and my reports from Paypal and Amazon Payments helped me fill everything out in about an hour.  Which isn't too bad.  Totally worth the $50 I paid him.

After doing it for a few years, I have an Excel spreadsheet that handles most of the calculations. There's a ton of manual work to download the data from PayPal, add in receipts manually, and pull out non-business related transactions. Setting up a separate PayPal account for my personal stuff is something I've been meaning to do every year, but it's such a hassle that I just suck it up and deal with the manual work at tax time instead.

The outcome of the January tax party is that I figure out how much I owe the state in sales tax. Fortunately most of my Etsy customers are out of state, so it ends up being a pretty small check I have to write.  And over the years, I've gotten better at collecting the tax, thanks to Etsy and Paypal doing the work for me.  So the difference in what I've collected and what I owe out of pocket gets smaller each year.

The other cool result is finding out how much I spent on tools and supplies (!), what my total sales were, and how much profit I made.  I've been lucky to be (minimally) profitable every year.  2011 will be the first year I'm not, and that was by design, both for our tax situation *and*  just because I was so busy I didn't take many custom orders on Etsy all year.

This is by far my least favorite thing about turning my hobbies into a real business.  But I think it forces me to use parts of my brain I don't normally use, and gives me more confidence each time.  TJ normally does all the tax and finance-related stuff in our house because he likes it better.  I don't like doing my business taxes, but it's good for me.

What about you, my fabulous readers?  Are you the one that does taxes in your house?  Do you have a business to account for as well?

Everybody's Workin For the Weekend

 

It's been a busy few weeks at Chez Creath. Once the holidays were officially over, it was time for me to figure out what I am going to do about work when my maternity leave ends next month. Since we are lucky to be a two-income family, we have the luxury of making some choices. I don't want to engage in the "Mommy Wars" so I'm going to keep this post specifically to what we wanted to do as a family.

For those not familiar with the "Mommy Wars", that's the age-old debate of stay home with kids vs. work outside the home. It's a stupid term, and doesn't encompass a bunch of other viable options, like (gasp!) the dad staying home, working part-time, working from home w/ childcare, etc. And Internet discussion boards and blogs always have really annoying viewpoints on both sides, so I try to stay away from those as well.

Rewind back to the late 1990s. I read an article about some college students who already knew that when they had children they would quit working, assuming their spouse had a healthy income. I was infuriated by this, and thought they were "letting down the sisterhood" and already preparing to "waste their education". (Stick with me here, I swear I'm not judging *now*.) At any rate, I couldn't imagine staying home with kids all day, especially after a long, painful, and expensive education. (I think the wounds of Caltech and grad school were still healing at that point, and I needed to make myself feel like it was "worth it".)

So for many years, I assumed I would either a) not have children, or b) go back to work as soon as I could in the rare event I did have any. a) was the option until the aforementioned biological clock alarm went off.

When I got pregnant, and we were reasonable sure it was going to be ok, it was like a switch had flipped. Suddenly I GOT IT. I understood why people would *want* to stay home with their children.

It wasn't for any of the sanctimonious reasons I read about, like "I want to raise my own child rather than daycare/nanny/etc doing it". That particular one bugs the crap out of me. Because someone chooses to outsource the mundane tasks of daily childcare while they work, it doesn't mean someone else is RAISING their kid. Duh. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to keep a baby entertained, cleaned up, and fed, so I totally understand why people choose to pay someone else to do this while they go and exercise their brains and/or make money.

But we agreed not to make any decisions about what to do until I had really experienced my maternity leave, and the day to day drudgery. And we were really lucky in this regard. First, I have a nice long maternity leave, probably one of the longest in the US (12 weeks paid plus another 8 weeks unpaid). Second, our baby is awesome. She was a good sleeper from the beginning (knock on wood!) and seemed content to eat every 2-2.5 hours. And third, the whole birth thing was easy-peasy, and I recovered really fast.

So after the first 8 weeks, or so, we got to the fun part of maternity leave. I tried to get out with her a few times a week, to have lunch with friends, or hang out with other baby/mama pairs. We went for walks, we read books, we did a lot of cuddling. I tell you, there is nothing better than a happy, smiley baby. We have spent a lot of hours staring at each other and making noises, because she's just so cool. Of course, we also spent a lot of hours trying to get her to go to sleep, or figure out why she was crying, but I'd say it was 80% fun/20% not-so-fun.

And I was surprised to find I liked it. A lot. the Internet helps here too. I have a bunch of friends on Facebook so it was like having a lifeline to the outside world. I read a few parenting blogs regularly. I read the New York Times and USA Today on my iPod while I'm feeding her. (Go multi-tasking!)

So, the New Year came, and with it, the end of my leave is fast approaching. The plan we were developing slowly started to come together. TJ and I both felt like we aren't ready to leave her with anyone else for childcare yet. (At least not on a regular basis.) Even on the fussy, yelling, spit-upy, diaper malfunctioning days, I can't imagine *anyone else* handling it.

And more importantly, *we* want to spend that time with her.

She's changing so fast that I don't want to miss any of it. As dumb as it sounds, the first time I saw her grab a toy and pull it towards her, I squealed with excitement (which promptly made her drop the toy). And if I do miss some milestones, I want TJ to be the one who sees them. (Like the time he saw her roll up on her side. She's only done it a few times, but the fact that he saw it first, made it ok for me that I didn't see it at all.) I waited a long time to have a baby, until I really felt ready for it, and now I want to experience it in all its awesome, messy, fun, crazy, difficult glory.

But, we also live in a not-exactly-cheap part of the country. And we've got a certain lifestyle we've been accustomed to. We could scale it back, but relying on one income is a very tight balancing act. Not to mention the fact that my job is very cool. I have a great manager, nice teammates, and I actually LIKE the day to day work. Oh, and they seem to like me too. That's pretty hard to find.

So the pie-in-the-sky idea was to get some extra months of unpaid leave, then go back to work around 2 days a week, with a little bit more work from home in evenings and on weekends. And then maybe TJ could rearrange his schedule to be home on the days I am in the office, and do a compressed work week. HAH! Like that would ever happen in this economy.

Except that it seems to be happening. TJ's boss was fine with him rearranging/compressing his schedule. And then my boss said they could accomodate a part-time schedule for me because there is a job-share slot opening on my team. And 2 days in the office with some hours from home would be fine. The tradeoff? I don't get the extra unpaid leave, but I can take some vacation to ease back into work over a few weeks.

So how could I *not* go back? This is such an amazing scenario. I get to keep my very cool tech job, but scale it back so I can also keep my new awesome non-technical job, hanging out with my baby.

TJ gets to spend 2 days a week with just the baby himself. (We realized this week that he's never taken her anywhere by himself yet! Yay for daddy-baby field trips!)

And Trillian and the pups will have someone at home with them all day. Win-win-win for everyone!

So I'm actually excited for it now. We have some things to work out, like getting together enough milk for TJ to feed her on the days I'm at work. Surprisingly we have made it to 4 months of exclusive breastfeeding. I can honestly tell you I never saw that coming. And luckily she takes a bottle just fine (almost too fine!) so that's one less headache for the back-to-work transition.

The one thing that's likely to suffer here is my small handmade empire. I am super-busy on my Etsy site, and getting steady orders on 1000Markets. I'm definitely going to have to scale that back when I start working, so I'm not stressed about filling orders when I should be enjoying time with my baby. I'm still working out the best way to do that - maybe by offering more ready-to-ship items, or having a set number of "slots" for custom items each week.

I'd love to hear some thoughts from you about how to balance work and babies. I'm sure there are lots of experienced mamas out there who are doing this!

Dress you up in my love

Long time, no post, I know. Long enough that my advertising network suspended their ads for me for not posting. Oh well, a girl can't do everything, right?

I'm at 34 weeks now, and my "pregnant buddy" Jenna had her baby a couple of weeks ago, so it's beginning to seem REAL, especially since we met baby E yesterday (so cute!). I'm looking forward to it, but only once we finish some of the remaining house and cleanup projects.

We've gotten rid of a ton of unused house stuff through charity donation or Craigslist, and also acquired a bunch of baby stuff, as you might expect. I've been extremely lucky to have generous friends who have given me clothes, toys, feeding stuff, and a fabulous crib so we didn't have to drop thousands of dollars all at once. (I'm sure that'll come later...)

As per my baby shopping Bible, "Baby Bargains", I've also been scouring Craigslist and the Microsoft internal baby and kid classifieds for good deals on new/used baby stuff, and I'm pretty darn proud of what I've gotten. I don't have the patience to go picking through garage sales, but responding to Internet ads is no big deal since I'm in front of a computer all day.

Yesterday we *finally* found a solid wood secondhand dresser. It's sort of a midcentury modern looking thing and at some point I'll probably paint it, but for now I'll just clean it up and use it for BabyX clothing storage and the top for our downstairs changing station. I could have spent $1500+ on a solid wood, fancypants new dresser, but it's just not that important to me in the grand scheme of things, and surely BabyX isn't going to notice for a while. Plus I'm guessing she'll want to have a say in the furnishing of her room at some point.

TJ painted her room this weekend, in a lovely shade of pale peach called vomitously "Blushing Belle" from the Home Depot Disney color line. It's a really nice warm luminous shade, and I'm hoping it'll look good even during a long cold grey winter here. That's why I didn't pick green, like I would have preferred - I was afraid it would make the room too cool and dark.

Sometime during the week, or next weekend, we'll put up the dog prints and very cute paw print vinyl wall decals I bought from Etsy and 1000Markets.

The other big score from the ads was 4 huge garbage bags of baby clothes in 0-3 mo and 3-6 mo sizes. I knew that I wouldn't want everything, since I'm super-picky about my baby not wearing what I consider annoyingly girly stereotypical stuff. I'm just not finding new baby clothes shopping that fun, except on Etsy, but those items are a bit too expensive for me to outfit BabyX in them entirely. (The regular retail stuff is just way too blah and pastel typically.)

So I kind of liked the "grab bag" idea and the price was right. Of course, there's some buyer beware when you buy used stuff - someone else's "like new" is not quite the same as mine, and of course there are widely differing tastes. But I took a chance.

I was starting to worry that I hadn't bought enough clothes given my friends' stories of diaper blowouts and spit up episodes that necessitated multiple outfits per day. And honestly, if I could go 3-4 days before doing laundry, that would be awesome.

And so I sorted out those bags of clothes last night. Out went the "Drama Queen" and "Daddy's Little Girl" and "Pretty Princess" onesies, along with a lot of the cotton/polyester stuff that just doesn't hold up well through washing. I'm a firm believer in 100% cotton, yo, but I do also have an unhealthy love of fleece living in Seattle - that's the one polyester exception I'll make.

Clearly the woman I bought these from loves pink more than me, so some items went out
just because I didn't think my daughter needed *that* much pink, esp in that shade of Pepto-Bismol I especially hate. I can do pale pink and fuschia no problem, but it's the in-between shades that get to me.

Also tossed in the charity bag: little tiny old-timey flowery prints (like you find on bedsheets), things with excessive lace and frou-frou, itchy synthetic fabrics, elaborate outfits with dresses, bloomers and tights (on a tiny baby?? really??), and icky sickly sweet words like "sweetheart", "cutie", "pretty". I hate the idea of labeling my kid already. What about things that matter like "smart" or "strong" or "ambitious"? I'm only half-kidding.

The funny thing was that all the stuff I loved in those bags seemed to be hardly worn - the blues, yellows, greens and purples. I bet those were gifts :) Those stayed. Now I have a nice collection of onesies, cotton sleepers with feet, fleece sleepers with feet (which look REALLY too warm until I remembered that my baby doesn't get to have a down comforter in her crib at night), a couple of cotton dresses and little romper thingies, and some more baby socks. It was a screamin' deal, and I'm guessing that BabyX might not even get to wear some of these things more than once or twice before she outgrows them. And of course she has the new stuff her grandmas (and great-grandma) bought for her, plus the handful of adorable dog and geeky onesies I bought on Etsy.

So now I feel confident that BabyX will be outfitted well until she weighs about 15 lbs or so (maybe more - who knows how these baby sizes work??) and I can save up doing laundry for at least a couple of days.

Today I'll be playing catch-up on lots of Etsy and 1000Markets orders. I'm agonizing on how/when to close my shops as I don't want to miss out on the Christmas season, plus *not* making stuff for months will drive me absolutely batty. I think I'm going to stop taking custom orders around mid-September, but leave the shop open for the pre-made items until I'm ready to start making tags again, probably in late Oct/early Nov.

And yeah, yeah, yeah, I know having a baby will change everything. If I hear that again, I'm going to poke that person in the eye. Affectionately, of course :) But I don't intend to give up everything I love doing now - I am determined to make it fit.

OK, now have I made up for not posting in ages? Because it might be a while before I post again!

Dancin days are here again

Another season of "So You Think You Can Dance" is upon us. And I am oddly compelled to watch it. Thank god for TiVo so I can fast forward through all the crying and Mary Murphy's heavily-botoxed screaming.

But it's perfect guilty pleasure TV, and it turns out I'm not alone in watching it - lots of my Facebook buddies do too, and amazingly, some of my geeky coworkers as well. Awesome.

The dancers are pretty amazing - I guess as the series does more seasons, more (and better) people try out. And I can sit on the couch with my round pregnant self, eating pie and watching other people exert themselves. Yippee.

So I'm somewhere around 6 months now and I think I finally *look* pregnant, not just like I'm hitting the donuts too hard. It's still not as bad as I thought it would be, but I'm also still not like "OMG! Miracle of Life!" BabyX and I have a peaceful coexistence, but someday I'd like my normal size feet back.

Thanks to the miracle of the Internet and sheer luck, I've got 30 Etsy orders pending. Which is scary and cool at the same time. So I'm gonna stop wasting time and work on them. Yay.

Give it away, give it away, give it away now

I'm sure there's some more elegant way to cross-post between blogs, but I've written a new post in my 1000 Markets blog about my crafty charity project this weekend.

In other news, my fabulous husband cleaned out our hot tub this weekend so I could soak in it. It's got a temperature control so we've got it set low, because among the other 87,000 things you're not supposed to do when pregnant, sitting in a 101+ degree hot tub is another. They should issue some sort of handbook with a positive pregnancy test - "The HUGE List of Things You Can No Longer Do". Of course, maybe that's a consequence of having kids, too. Sigh.

I'm getting rounder and huger by the minute, but am looking forward to wearing my shiny new maternity clothes.

Must go pack up a couple more Anandi's Laboratory orders. One from Amazon.com (finally, yay!), one from 1000Markets, and one from Etsy. Yippee.

Faster than the speed of light

Wow, lots of things happening at the House of Peanut. So many that blogging has fallen by the wayside, not unexpectedly. I almost feel like I should be geeky and make a bulleted list :D

Most excitingly, we just found out that BabyX is a GIRL! YAY! And though TJ won't let me dress up our dogs, I sure am gonna dress up our baby. Woo hoo!

I also seem to be growing larger by the minute, quite alarmingly. But I still have a few pairs of normal pants that fit so I'm ok for now :) I have busted out the cute new maternity clothes, though, and they are *so* comfy. They should make all womens' clothes that comfy... Though I will say I was startled to find out that most maternity jeans have no buttons or zippers. So they're kind of like old-lady pants with all that elastic.

Otherwise, I'm surprised to find that I don't hate being pregnant like I thought I would. Of course, it's still early, and being 8 months pregnant in the middle of August may change my mind :) A friend of mine said it was like being a "walking science experiment". Which describes it perfectly.

On the crafty front, I've been having a GREAT time. I played around with a new technique last weekend, and will post pictures soon. I set aside some time to make some jewelry, after making 15 pet tags (!) and had fun with that too. I loooove making jewelry, even though it doesn't really sell in my shop. I figure I can just keep it if it doesn't sell after a while, right? :)

And in super exciting news today, Etsy featured my Periodic Table keychain in this blog post which is currently rotating on the front page. Not only that, but it made their weekly "Etsy Finds" email that goes out to their subscriber list, so I've gotten a *ton* of hits on this item, and a handful of sales today. And something like 30 people have added me to their Favorites list. Yippee!

Of course, with the good comes the bad. I have sold nothing on Amazon yet. I'm probably going to cancel my account at the end of this month (you know, that thing about not throwing good money after bad, or whatever.) So I'll need to find alternate strategies/venues that work better for me.

And then our Windows Home Server machine chose this weekend to die. Well, maybe not die, just give up in protest of the hot weather. My smart husband figured out it was overheating which made the drives fail. We didn't lose data (yay) but now need to build a machine with more air circulation/bigger fan so this doesn't happen again. It's got all of our digital pics on it, as well as our ripped music so we *really* can't afford to lose it.

But all in all, life is good. Really good. Yay! Thanks to everyone for their good wishes!!

Till I'm satisfied

Yes, I know. I've been ignoring this blog mercilessly, for its shiny new counterpart over at 1000 Markets. I'm featured on their Community page so I feel like I should make the most of it, and write new blog postings frequently so people don't have to stare at the same old posts all the time.

I have a bit of a new project. I just got the Bon Appetit Fast Easy Fresh cookbook and I am *so* excited about it. I think it might be exactly what I need to get me out of my food rut, and actually make yummy food at home. I look forward to fewer nights eating cereal for dinner because nothing sounded good. It has snooty food recipes with minimal ingredients which works perfectly with my crazy schedule.

So after planning what I was going to make, I ordered groceries from Amazon Fresh. I had to supplement it with a trip to Trader Joe's because the meat-buying experience at Amazon Fresh is not so good - the product descriptions are somewhat lacking, *and* meat seems to be nearly twice the price per pound there.

So this morning, I woke up and made the recipe on p.510:

Smoked salmon and leek scramble with Meyer lemon creme fraiche


Yes, I know that sounds totally random, but I chose it because I had leeks in the fridge from a recipe I didn't make last week, and my parents brought me back smoked salmon from their trip to Alaska this summer. Also, any scrambled egg recipe that uses whipping cream in place of milk is A-OK in my book.

And seriously, I've never had such lovely, fluffy scrambled eggs. Next time I'm switching to half and half, though - I don't think I can indulge like that very often.

They came out great. I used Tillamook light sour cream instead of creme fraiche because it was less expensive *and* better for me. That's the best light sour cream I've ever had. I also halved the recipe because Lord knows TJ isn't going to eat scrambled eggs with leeks and smoked salmon and I don't cook that fancy for the puppies.

So now I have leftovers for the week ahead, or maybe just lunch today. But so far I'm very impressed with this cookbook. It has a great index by ingredient and the recipes are all pretty simple. I wouldn't say they can be done in 30 minutes or less, but they definitely don't require a lot of crazy, hard to find ingredients or techniques that involve steps that need to be done days in advance.

(Subtle product placement here. But no, they're not paying me to fake-review their book.)



Oh, and yesterday we tried the Amazon Fresh "attended" delivery, which is the one where you need to be home. That worked really well - they don't leave the big plastic totes so we're not tripping over them in our entryway now. I still like the convenience of the doorstep delivery, esp when I need something before I wake up the next day, but if I know I'm going to be home, I'll do it the other way.

And in exciting crafty news, I have reached 200 sales online, between Etsy and 1000Markets! I'm very surprised, and also very busy. So life is good :)

I also got my first sale on Dawanda, which is a European handmade site (a girl's gotta expand her audience, right?). That was a bit surprising because I had listed a few items there months ago but hadn't seen much action there.

In the New Year, I'll probably list a few more of my "made to order" items to keep up a presence there. And if I'm feeling really brave, I may try my hand at listing in French or German, if I can remember anything I learned. That's apparently how to get more people viewing my products since it's a German site.

Later today, I'll be making "Indian" curried shrimp from the Bon Appetit cookbook. YUM. I'll report back on how it goes.

It all boils down to the parts that we play

Yikes, I haven't blogged in ages! But that was intentional, because I got cleared by the Project Management Institute to sit for their certification exam, and since I had taken a prep course for it a few weeks ago, I wanted to take the test as soon as possible. I ended up scheduling it the day I wrote my last blog post, so most of what I've been doing between then and now was either filling Etsy orders or studying for that exam. My brain is a little fried right now.

But the good news is, I PASSED. I'm a certified PMP (no, it's not pronounced like 'pimp'). Yay!

So now I can de-stress, and go back to making stuff. And maybe attempt to get our house back in decent shape. It looks a bit like a tornado hit it, since neither TJ nor I are good at putting things back when we're done using them.

And Spike rolled around in something mighty stinky on his last trip to the park, so he needs a bath, STAT. Maybe that'll be my fun activity for tonight - wrestle unruly beagle into the tub and keep him there while he's wet and squirmy. It's quite a workout.

Projects up ahead:
1. Make 6 dog tags plus 1 periodic table copper keychain
2. Package up and send out a magnet order
3. Finish personalized charm bracelet for a coworker
4. 4 pairs of earrings for the winner of my donated item at the company charity raffle.
5. Necklace and bracelet, plus barrette on request from my parents.
6. Figure out exactly how much money I've spent on supplies since 2007. (yikes.)

And that doesn't count any of the things I need to make for the upcoming Holiday Bazaar at REI. Yikes! But I am really looking forward to it, now that I don't have that PMP exam looming over me like a little black rain cloud.

So, what are y'all up to??

The places we exist

We've had an eventful past couple of days here at the House of Peanut. Unfortunately not all of it good, or of our choosing. But we're getting back on track now :)

Sunday I finished and mailed the necklace and earrings set for Katie, the winner of my custom jewelry set in my high school's charity auction last spring.



Monday night, Dave and I went to see DragonForce, a power metal band. I wasn't a HUGE fan of them, but liked a few of their songs, and it was an inexpensive show and you all know how I love metal. So I was only marginally excited pre-show. And then we got there, and it ROCKED. The two opening bands, Powerglove and Turisas, were INCREDIBLE. Powerglove plays metal renditions of old video game music.

Turisas dresses up like Vikings and has an electric violin and an accordion as part of their band. Oh, and they're from Finland (of course!) Here's an awesome cover of a disco song by Turisas:



It was the total rock spectacle and so much fun! Totally worth the $25 and I found 2 new bands I like. Not a bad way to spend an evening!

Tuesday was Election Day! And my guy won! I voted in the morning, didn't have to wait in line, and got my sticker.

Unfortunately, yesterday was also the day that TJ's appendix decided to call it quits. Our doctor sent us to the ER instead of having us come in, and we sat around and waited, got some tests, and then TJ had to get the stupid thing removed. He also got to spend the night at the oh-so-luxurious Chez Overlake in Bellevue, and got to come home this afternoon.

I do have to give props to Overlake Hospital for their free wireless Internet so I could keep up on some personal and work email while I was waiting and also obsess a bit over the election results.

Sadly, I had to miss the Matt Nathanson concert tonight (what is it with concerts and illness??) and the next time he returns to Seattle he'll probably be playing at Key Arena given the number of times I've heard "CMon Get Higher" on the radio. Oh well, such is life. The Microsoft dude I gave my tickets to (for free!) better be having a good time, dammit!

Oh, and Trista received her birthday gift from Paul that he designed and I made for her. So I could finally post this custom personalized bracelet in my Etsy shop, in time for potential holiday shopping. This is what I wanted to blog about earlier but couldn't.



I am really pleased with the way it turned out. I was so nervous to work with the more expensive sterling silver sheet after spending all my time on copper and nickel silver, but I guess the practice paid off. And I cannot thank TJ enough for introducing me to my Dremel for all the polishing/finishing steps. Rumor has it that Trista likes it, so that makes me happy.

I'm working on another one for a friend's wife, but since it's a Christmas gift, I can't post that here until next year. But it'll be fun.

In other exciting Etsy news, I doubled my first year sales already in the past 6 weeks! (Actually, it happened before that because I got orders for 10 stamped ID tags and for 5 tags and lumped them into the same order, so Etsy only counts those as 2 sales even though they were 15 items total.) If it continues, I'll hit this year's goal of 104 sales in a couple of months. Woot!

Well, it's that time, and I should get some sleep. Tomorrow is a loooong work day ahead of me to catch up on the past two days, plus making sure TJ is supplied with pills, English muffins, and hot chocolate.

Hopefully your past couple of days have been good ones!

I'm going to the moon

Ahhh, it's finally the weekend. I get to finally catch up on Etsy and jewelry orders. Which is an awesome place to be, business wise, but since I'm the kind of person who doesn't like "action items" hanging over me, I am kinda anxious to get them done.

The maddening thing about working on jewelry during the pre-holidays is that it's almost always a gift for someone, so my big blabbery self can't talk about it or show you pictures. I'm really thrilled about some of the pieces I have on deck, so maybe in the New Year, I'll post some pics and you can really understand what I've been so busy doing! Or maybe I'll actually dust off my Flickr account and really start using it.

The Seattle Times Pet Dish article definitely got me some additional doggie tag orders (at least 6 that I know for sure), and that was boosted by the fact that the article was actually linked from the *front page* of the Seattle Times website for about a day. The CityDog editor sent me an email letting me know, which was really nice of her.

In other news, I kinda sorta realized that I have a very limited time left to take my Project Management Professional (PiMP) certification exam. Like, only a couple of months. And given my Etsy business picking up, plus the fact that I signed up to sell my warez at the REI Holiday Bazaar (which went swimmingly last year!), it's just another thing to add to the schedule. But it has to be done or else I would need to go through their uber-painful web application process again.

So lucky me, Microsoft is paying for me to take an exam prep course next week. But when I tried to register for the test, I found out I am one of the lucky few PMI chose to audit. Grrrrr. So I need to track down some previous managers, and then submit a bunch of paperwork and hope that the PMI folks approve my application quickly so I can take the exam before all the cramming falls out of my head. ARGHHHHHH!

On the bright side, the 4 day intense prep will likely cut my studying time WAY down. Also it'll get me back into the test taking, studying frame of mind so that when I'm finally cleared to take the exam, and schedule it, I'll be ready. Then I'll be BIG PiMP'n.

But right now, all I want to do is cuddle up with my big down comforter and maybe a dog. So I'm off. G'nite everyone!

Here Comes the Flood

Title courtesy of Peter Gabriel and last week's Grey's Anatomy episode. I totally love the fact they name their episodes after song lyrics too. I think it means we're meant to be together :)

And speaking of meant to be together, my fabulous husband finally convinced me to learn how to use a Dremel (excuse me, I mean a rotary tool) for the finishing steps on my dog tags. He couldn't find his, so we took a late night trip to Sears yesterday and bought their last one. OH MY GOD this thing is amazing. What used to take me 15 min or so *per tag*, for filing and polishing, now takes just a few minutes!

I made about 6 tags yesterday and didn't cut myself once. When I was filing by hand, I cut myself nearly once per tag-making sessions. I'm all for suffering for your art (sort of) but actual injury seems a bit excessive, right?

Summary: I LOVE my new Craftsman rotary tool.

Tool excitement aside, something REALLY BIG AND EXCITING happened to me yesterday. I was minding my own business at work, trying to actually get some work done, when I noticed the email notification that I had a new Etsy 'conversation', which is the internal messaging system on Etsy.

So I clicked over to see what it was - I've gotten a couple of interesting potential customer requests lately about custom made orders, and the Etsy system does not think highly of spam, so the signal to noise ratio is pretty high.

And ZOMG, the message I got was from CityDog magazine, asking if I could send them some sample tags for a photo shoot they're doing for their holiday gift issue. Holy zoiks!

Now even if it had been "Granny's Cross Stitch Quarterly Newsletter" with a circulation of 3, I would have been stoked for the free promotional opportunity. But this is a magazine I've actually paid money for. More than once! It's available in most swanky pet stores in the area.

So of course, I fired off an email saying I'd be happy to make them some sample tags with fake info on them. And that's what I was doing until 1am to make sure they'd get into today's mail. Behold the sample tags for Peanut, Spike, Ginger, and Frank.

Frank is the longhaired mini dachschund I don't have yet. Right now he lives with a family in a Belltown condo, but once they have a baby and decide to get rid of him, he'll be all mine. (Note: Frank is purely fictional, but someday I will have a dachschund. And he will be named Frank. I just thought I should have a good story to go along with the tag I made for him.)

So I guess before I start counting unhatched chickens, I should temper that with the fact that they probably requested products from lots of different people, and I might not make it into the issue. So I'm trying to be cautiously optimistic here.

But I am still secretly very excited. And of course, will post here if I do make it!

And even better, for the instant gratification, the editor of CityDog also writes an online column for the Seattle Times called Pet Dish (cute, I know!). So yesterday she also told me she was going to feature me there too. Yippee!

Check out the article and leave a comment there so I'm not the only one, please :)

Thanks everyone for your support and reading my blathering about crafty subjects.

And we all shine on

Wow, I guess a woman's got time for crafts, keeping the house in decent shape, or a blog, but not all three :)

These past several days have had the theme of "Crafty Good Karma". I got an Etsy 'Conversation', which is like an email, from a local seller who needed help setting up her shop. Since I was all relaxed from my vacation, I said "sure, why not" and set up a time to meet her at a local restaurant with free wireless Internet access. She gets help on the technical side of posting items on Etsy and I get to eat a fabulous quesadilla, so everyone wins.

I met her at the restaurant and walked her through the process of listing a new item, how to resize pictures, save them in a folder to organize them, and then upload them to Etsy. All in all a couple of hours, not too bad. She offered to pay me in cash, but seriously, I didn't need to be paid for that. But when I saw her gorgeous jewelry, I asked her if she would make me something cool. I am so excited to receive the necklace she's making me. You'll see why when you check out her Etsy shop.

She makes the cutest necklaces out of old rosaries and prayer medals and all sorts of vintage, upcycled components. Very awesome.

The next event in my theme of "Etsy Good Karma" was that the winner of a charity auction for my high school finally contacted me. I had donated a custom-made necklace and earring set back in the spring, and had exchanged a few emails with the winner, but she went on vacation, and I went on vacation, and no progress was made on this project. But finally she told me what she wants, so I'll get started on her project this weekend. Yippee!

And then it hit me. I love making jewelry, but it's not the majority of what I sell on Etsy. My magnets and stamped dog tags sell *much* better than my jewelry. And yeah, I could make lots of jewelry for myself (I'm working on it!). But I realized I could satisfy my jewelry making fever by making gifts for people, and *also for donations to charity auctions and raffles*.

So I can actually *do good* with my jewelry. How cool is that? So far I've committed to another custom necklace and earring set for my company's Annual Giving Campaign raffle, and also for a final fundraising auction for Barack Obama's campaign.

I'm not really down with giving money to political campaigns, but Obama has a way of making people want to give him money :) Maybe that makes him a really good (salesman) politician, but whatever he's selling, I'm totally buying into it. Smart and articulate? Sign me up, dude.

I suppose that's an indication of how low our standards have gotten for politicians. Speaks in perfect sentences, check. Coherent and makes sense, check. Top notch college and graduate degrees, check. Bingo, you are now the best candidate for President of the United States. Seriously, anyone can win, even raging idiots who drive drunk, can't speak, and are on vacation all the time, so if you meet the criteria above, you must be preordained.

So anyway, I can assuage my conscience by not actually giving him money, but donating a custom jewelry design option for an auction event to raise money. You can see my donation as well the details and signup link for the Halloween Bash here.

Pretty cool, huh? And now I'm off to make more jewelry. Because I'm pretty close to getting *behind* in my orders now. Yikes.

Back home again

Yay! We're back home, safe and sound, with one day left before I have to go back to work. It's really nice to have this extra day of "vacation buffer". In my case, I'm working on 13 stamped tag orders, so I'm a very busy girl today. I found that filing all those tags is easiest while watching TV, and I caught up on a couple of episodes of Law and Order and last week's Project Runway.

Why, oh why, can't they get rid of Kenley on PR? Oh right, because annoying == good TV. Sigh.

This morning, TJ, puppies, and I went for a brisk walk at Marymoor in an effort to become less flabby. Though Peanut managed to lose some weight on our trip by following the Peanut Diet, which amounted to skipping breakfast and then eating only 3/4 of his total day's food (if we were lucky) at dinnertime. Now we can see his waist, which is cool, but a little sad for him and his disrupted eating schedule.

Funny though, the minute we got home and fed him in his own big ceramic bowl, he ate every last bit. I guess he really is sensitive about his routine, huh? I think he had a good time, but is REALLY happy to be home, with his own food bowl, bed, and lazy habits :)

Now I'm off to take a bit of a nap. ZZZZZ.

What about today?

So yesterday I left work early to go get my hair cut and colored. I was planning to get the red highlights I liked so much before, but my hairstylist actually talked me *out* of it. That's how I know she's good, because she passed up the opportunity to charge me multiple $100s of dollars for the much cheaper one-color treatment.

So yeah. I'm at the point now where I need to color my hair at least every 6 months or the miscellaneous grey hairs start popping up all over the place. And with black hair, I can't exactly hide them. That's pretty suck-tastic but since it's only twice a year, I can deal.

I got a shorter haircut than I was expecting, which was sort of my own fault since I gave her carte blanche to cut some of the old, badly-colored parts. Apparently the previous salon I went to used a "1" and they should have used a "3", whatever that means. To me it all looks black.

But anyway, after I got home, I needed to do a bit of work before shutting down for our vacation. And I realized when I got on the computer that the Etsy Treasury West was just getting ready to have an opening.

For those not familiar with Etsy Treasuries, there are a limited number that can be created, and you get 2 days before they expire. So all through the day, treasuries are expiring. Once they get below a certain magic number, it opens up for new ones to be created. All very mysterious.

But I had the amazing luck to be there exactly AT Magic Number + 1 and had to wait only 15 min for that last one to expire. So I snagged a spot, and came up with the theme of Pumpkin Pi:



Yes, it's because I'm a dork. But since all those nice folks in my EtsyRain group included me in their 4 (maybe 5?) treasuries last week, I thought I'd repay the favor and try to use all local Etsy shops in my list. Which wasn't too hard, until I got to the "Pi" item. Apparently no one in Seattle does anything with Pi. Sad.

So I was pretty proud of myself, and thought the list looked good and was sort of dorky and clever at the same time.

And then I woke up this morning to find out it actually made the FRONT PAGE of Etsy.com. Holy crap! It's only the 4th list I've put together. I've always tried to make a list that was so fabulous it would get picked for the front page, but it takes a special "look" and the whim of one of the Etsy employees to pick it.

I'm still surprised they picked mine. Of course, it was before I woke up, but the happy Etsy community managed to get a screen shot and post it to Flickr.

So, again, because I'm a good Etsy sheep, I used this to promote other Etsy shops besides my own (plus I've gotten a ton of exposure and consequently, I think, a lot of sales over the past couple of weeks), so I didn't really directly benefit from this treasury. But you know, that's ok. I had fun picking the items, and it was the first time for some of the EtsyRain folks to have their items on the Front Page.

Since I'm not totally heartless, that was enough to make me happy about that :) You know, good will, good karma, and all that.

So I guess at some point my goal is to have one of *my* items make the front page. A girl can dream, right?

And speaking of dreaming, remember that I mentioned Oprah last time? So it's not going to make me as rich as Oprah, but the day after posting that blog post, I got an inquiry from a woman about my nickel tags.

She wanted me to create 10 tags with her band's name on them, as keychains for their upcoming record release party. How freakin' cool is that?? And if that wasn't cool enough, I went to check out their page and they are an all-female METAL band, from Seattle. Wow.

Now, they're a bit too growly death metal for my liking, but the music part of it is pretty rockin'. I'm stoked to work on this project, which I'll tackle when I'm back from vacation. If you want to check out the band, go to http://myspace.com/greydoom, and rock on.

With a little help from my friends

I am truly a lucky girl.

Last night I got to see Nightwish *and* Sonata Arctica last night, and the sound was actually great even though it was at the ConcreteBox SoDo. Sonata Arctica was awesome live, and of course Nightwish did not disappoint. Yay for Finnish metal!

Dave and I grabbed dinner at the very awesome Steelhead Diner in Pike Place Market, which features all local ingredients configured into yuppie versions of standard comfort foods. Plus they have poutine, one of the few places in Seattle (heck, probably the US!) that does.

And today I exceeded my numeric goal for 1 year on Etsy, with even a few days to spare, thanks to Leslie, who rocks. I am lucky to have such sweet friends who think of me even when they are super-busy and sleep-deprived. :) And she didn't even have to do it, because right after she bought her GeekMagnets, I sold another custom pet tag. So yay and thanks again to everyone who has put up with my Etsy Obsession over the past year. (Because really, a geek has to have some project to obsess over, right?)

So all of that is totally wonderful, right? But wait, there's more! It also grates and slices!

I was wandering through the Etsy Treasury today, and found *4* treasuries with my items in them. Holy cannoli!

For months I don't think I've been featured in anyone's list, but now I'm in four? And with four different items from my shop, no less. Since I haven't posted any pictures in a while, I'll leave you with some pretty treasury pics:

Gardening, Anyone?


Manliness


Bite of Seattle


I Saw Red


I'll just hang out here, floating on my little happy cloud for a while :) Hope your week is going as well as mine seems to be! Cheerio.

I will buy you a new life

Quick post before I fall into bed. Apparently all that working out has made me very tired. But on the happy front, my pedometer recorded over 9000 steps today. With not a whole lot of effort. YAY.

And you know how I know that? Because Amazon Fresh brought me a new pedometer battery before 6am today. I love this. Not to mention the DVD copy of Juno they also brought with our week's groceries. I can tell this is going to be dangerous.

But I can't wait to watch Juno again. I only saw it once and totally and completely fell in love with it.

*and* I sold another custom copper hand stamped pet tag today. Woot!

Sadly, I had to cancel one of my previous sales because the buyer never paid me. Etsy has this weird checkout system where you check out on Etsy but then need to complete a second step on Paypal to actually PAY. So there are some small % of buyers who don't make it all the way through and thus don't actually pay for the item they "bought". Which is disappointing :( I tried to contact this person several times without any luck. Hopefully she's on vacation or something and will come back and try again later. I was looking forward to making a doggie tag for her.

But now it's off to bed to get some beauty sleep. Cheerio!

My mind is racing

I am paralyzed with indecision right now. I want to be crafty but cannot settle down enough to pick one thing to work on. My mind is full of ideas of things I want to make, and some of these ideas are ones I've had for months.

Arghhh. I know I just need to pick one and get started but I have all these lovely new and old supplies in my craft room and they're all calling to me. And it doesn't help that Kristine sent me a surprise package yesterday, which contained some gorgeous beads, and also a bunch of her old bracelets that she's giving me to recycle into new things.

Kristine is awesome. Yay Kristine.

I also need to make some more GeekMagnets, in case I get another rush of orders like I did last week. Of course, that frenzy seems to have slowed down, so maybe I need not worry too much.

And to fuel my creative fire even further, I saw Vienna Teng (yes, again) at The Triple Door on Thursday.

Favorite singer + favorite venue + friends = Triple YAY.

As always, her performance was flawless, though I definitely wish she had played different songs. I don't actively dislike *any* of her songs, but there are definitely ones I would have preferred to hear, given the short setlist.

But she closed with "Harbor" and totally made my day. Yay Vienna Teng.

And work is calming down just a little bit. So I hope to have more crafty time, and less stress. Yay for that.

And my one year Etsy-Versary is next weekend. Think I'll sell 2 more things to hit "my number"? I'm not sure, but I'll definitely try :)

Safety of shoreline fading away

Wow, I sure have been a busy girl recently. There was a sudden explosion of sales in my Etsy shop last weekend - I was getting at least one sale per day of both GeekMagnets and copper pet ID tags. And then it trickled to nothing again, boo hoo.

But I really can't complain, because I'm now at 50 sales and I have just a week left before my Etsy-versary. So maybe I won't quite make "my number" but I'm *really* close, not to mention the tons of jewelry I've sold offline.

Thanks to my mom, I sold another 5 pieces to her when she was here this week. At some point her friends are going to get tired of gifts from Anandi's Laboratory. Good thing she has a lot of friends :)

TJ is off zooming around the local racetrack today on his Ducati, so the pups and I are enjoying a quiet weekend at home. I think there will be some craftiness in the plan - I got a shipment of metal pieces to try out, in different gauges, so I'll probably make some test pendants to see how that works out. I got some aluminum, so I want to see how that works out for stamping ID tags and keychains, since it's doesn't tarnish.

I also have a cute cross-stitch design to work on - it was the only kit at Joann Fabrics (yay 40% off coupon!) that didn't have Jesus, precious little country scenes, annoying florals, or romanticized images of Asians or Native Americans on it. It's a cute picture of a cartoon doggy with bones and balls, and because I'm crafty like that, I'm changing some of the colors in the pattern so it should be colorful and fun when it's done.

Three people this week have made fun of me for doing cross stitch. Dude, it's so much fun. It's mathematical and soothing. It doesn't require a lot of practice to get decent at it. What's not to like?

(Besides the usual hideous country samplers, Jesus, Precious Moments, and offensive ethnic designs, that is.) I suspect the same people who design jigsaw puzzles also design cross stitch patterns and kits. BORING, BORING, BORING, or just plain fugly.

Subversive Cross Stitch offers some cute patterns, but they're not exactly things I'm comfortable hanging in my home or office. But I definitely love the sentiment.

So as soon as I get back into it, I'm going to start designing my own patterns for me to stitch. Apparently it just requires some graph paper and patience. I've got the graph paper, anyway. Cheers!

Are you lost or incomplete?

So my Etsy shop has been in existence for nearly a year. When I started, I wasn't sure if anyone would actually want to buy anything I made. I was lucky to be rewarded with a couple of sales right away, which in Etsyland is pretty rare - some people wait months for that exciting first sale.

Depending on how active I've been each month - making new jewelry and magnets, renewing items so they pop up higher in search results, re-taking photos until I'm happy with them, I've had varying levels of success. There are a few months where I sold nothing at all, and a few months where I've had 2-3 sales. Given that this is a serious hobby, and not my actual source of income, I've been fine with that. My goal is to consistently get one sale per week.

In July, that didn't quite happen. I sold one pair of earrings the entire month. Kind of disappointing, but my crazy work schedule prevented me from dwelling on it too much.

In the meantime, because we ditched our home phone and I got a new cell phone (yay iPhone!), I realized both Spike and Peanut needed new ID tags for their collars. So armed with my metal stamping skillz, I made a couple of tags for the pups.

I was quite pleased with how they turned out, so I posted a new listing in my shop for a custom pet ID tag last weekend:



Of course, I'm always excited when I add new stuff to my shop, but the reality is that the world doesn't flock there to buy tons of them right away.

The Etsy message boards are filled with people lamenting about their lack of sales, and there are tons of posts about being very slow. So I wasn't expecting much for August.

And then suddenly my shop exploded in a flurry of activity. I've sold several magnet sets and I've sold three of those pet tags in the past week. For me, that's total craziness. And to top it all off, my friend Alice bought four pieces of jewelry from me today (yay Alice!).

I am thrilled! It means I have even more reason to make new items! It also brings me precariously close to averaging 1 sale per week for the past year. Way, way closer than I thought I'd be. Woot!

So a big THANK YOU to all of my lovely customers, whether you're a stranger, friend or family. Thanks for all of your encouragement and validation (you like me! you really like me!) because I really *love* this low-tech, making stuff with my own two hands, kinda thing. It keeps me sane and gets me to do something else besides work all the time. Yay for all of you.