pin it

Sunday, April 29, 2007

Aluminum Market Debut

Well I finally managed to get my butt and all my stuff to the market this past Saturday. Once again the weather forecasters were mistaken in their predictions but it was good enough. No, it was not warm and sunny for most of the day, but overcast and chilly. It took me forever to set up as I discovered all the little things that I could have done earlier to make things go more smoothly. Luckily I had little pieces of scrap aluminum wire to keep together some of the hanging displays that were missing crucial screws that got lost somewhere along the way.

And that's not all that aluminum is good for. My new line of big bold aluminum earrings were a hit! I sold about 8 pairs once I figured out that I needed to have a little sign next to them saying " Light Weight Aluminum Earrings". The light weight factor is the key since they kind of have a big heavy industrial look to them that could scare you away.

As I lay awake at 5:30 am this morning after the annoying cat woke me up for no good reason other than he couldn't get outside because the screen door was closed and covered up his cat door, I thought of some new earring ideas and came up with these:


I call them "Ebb and Flow Swinging Spiral Aluminum Earrings".

Today the allergies officially began for me. The itchy eyes, face,nose,sniffly snorty coughing scratchy annoying allergies that can make me irritable. I usually don't get this way until June but it has come early this year for many people and I knew my turn was coming. Oh well.
The other spring related news is that Nick finally got our trusty old DR Mower running. We knew we were getting behind in the mowing when we were losing the children in the grass in the front yard.
I'm off to snort and sniffle now and dream of aluminum spirals.

Saturday, April 21, 2007

Wimped out

Well that's what I get for publicly stating that I am committed to something. Now that whole world or at least the 3 people that read my blog can know that when I say I am committed,it really does depend if it is actually raining and cold at the time.
It is 7:28 am and I am still at home. It is raining and 42degrees. My hardcore committed friend and fellow lifelong marketeer ,Nome, called at 7am to say she is bailing out. It shattereed my confidence. I called the market and the lovely friendly Beth the market manager said yes, it is indeed raining. I said Is it cold? and she said "I have a chill in me like I did not have last weekened." I told her I wasn't coming and she said I was the 3rd vendor to call her to cancel out.
Well it's a good thing I don't have to live on the streets (yet). A few more crazy weekends of indecisive weather related rapid decision fluctuations and who knows where I will be blogging from. The mental hospital?
We used to do the market every single saturday no matter what for over 10 years. Then we had kids and Nick developed his Taig business. It's still a big part of our income but we don't need to depend on it solely. And that's my story for today...

UPDATE:
Wow, I'm so glad I did not go today. It rained all day long and was cold and miserable. Here is a big thanks to Nome who figured out not to go and gave me the early morning call. This is her website-Blessedbeads.
She does amazing work!

Friday, April 20, 2007

Food Fun, Dragonflies and Inspiration


So what is this happy boy eating?


Pizza with Mac n' Cheese embedded on top of it! Another testament to my fine parenting skills. It was Henry's idea. It isn't his usual favorite Spongebob Mac n' Cheese but the Safeway brand well designed Organic Mac n' Cheese with White Chedder instead of the usual neon orange we're used to. The Safeway Organic was actually cheaper than the Spongebob by Kraft so what the heck. My kids deserve the best in crappy food.



These are my newly revamped dragonfly wirework earrings. The older version had only one set of wings. It was a little too minimal . Also I admit that I never really realized that they generally have two sets of wings. I haven't researched it to see if there are dragonfly species with only one set of wings. But once I started looking at dragonfly stuff it became apparent that they usually are shown with 2 sets of wings. So two it is.
The weather forecast calls for light showers in the afternoon or rain for tomorrow (Saturday). This is the same sort of forecast I heard the last two Saturdays that convinced me to stay home and not go sell at the Saturday Market. But they were completely wrong. So I figure if I go it will rain and if I stay home it won't. So I'm going, even if it's hailing when I wake up. I'm committed!
Last satuday we watched "The Pursuit of Happyness" with Will Smith. It was a moving and inspiring story of a single Dad in San Fransisco in 1981 who struggles to make it, spends some rough times homeless but perseveres and eventually becomes a very successful stockbroker. The guy would study at night while riding public transportation because he had no place to stay and worked his ass off all day in a non paying internship. It's a true story.I felt like such a weak little boob not going to the market because it might rain and be a little cold. So I'm motivated for now. We'll see how it goes.

Saturday, April 14, 2007

Smashing


This is the hammer and anvil that I use to smash ,I mean delicately forge,my wire with.

This is the part of my thumb that I also recurrently smash. It's always the same spot. It gets better and then a month or two later ,perhaps when a child is screaming for my attention and I am trying to get something done quickly, or just when my mind is wandering off in one of it's millions of directions thinking about all the things that need to get done , I inadvertantly smash the side of my thumb again. There's some sort of lesson here that apparently I am not learning.
It is also what I would like to do to the weather forecasters who told me that today would be cold and rainy. After bailing out on last weeks Saturday Market I was once again freaking out trying to decide whether or not to go again today. All the forecasts called for cooler,colder,rainy showers. I made Nick do the data research and decide for me. He is the most logical person I know who operates generally without emotions getting in the way. His analysis after studying the various weather sites and our financial situation was that it did not make sense to go today. It rained all night and then when I woke up at 8:15am (or rather when Henry woke me up) it was not raining. It hasn't rained a drop all day. It has been partly cloudy which means the other part has been SUNNY. It has been warmish and a little breezy. I curse those weather bastards and if I had a hammer and anvil near their thumbs or other appendages , well,... I think you know where I'm going with this.
Well I have been trying to put up a picture of a new pair of earrings but Blogger is having some sort of technical difficulties and won't let me so you'll just have to be left with that blood clotted image on your mind instead of a lovely pair of earrings.

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

More rituals

The hunt....

It was perfect egg hunting weather. The grass was appropriately overgrown (unintentionally).The boys were equipped with the Luftschein/Carter official all purpose candy gathering equipment.We even had our friend Ethan join us .

The boys had built a little nest for themselves out in our field and were gorging themselves on their well filled eggs.


Ethen looks a little quesy .... Henry looks a little giddy from his sugar rush...

It was a fun holiday which was made even more pleasant by a surge in sales. This aluminum swirls and spirals medium barrette has been a big hit this week. It looks heavier than it is but due to the miracle of aluminum it is actually quite light.
I intended to go to the Saturday Market this past Saturday for the opening day. I actually got up at 6:30am, drank my coffee and drove down almost all the way but the rain kept pounding harder and harder. The sky got darker the closer I got to Eugene and panic started to set in. I couldn't face setting up in the pouring rain and spending 12 hours down there being miserable. So I turned around, called Nick at the first turn I take towards Cheshire and acted like a crazy woman. I really hate making decisions. Especially about the weather and what my potential profit would be for the day. I drove a little further towards home and then the market gods mocked me by making the rain stop. But by then it was too late to turn around again . But I still called Nick just to try and force him to make the decision for me. He told me that the online weather site said there was a 100% chance of rain. I came home and went to our little 4 year old friend's Princess themed birthday party and had a lovely time but of course the sun came out and it was a glorious warm,yet windy day. So annoying...
I later spoke to a friend who told me she saw other marketeers turn around on the way down to market and that it did rain again in the afternoon. It was a tough call. But Etsy has been awesome this week.So I guess it all evens out. Or something...
No more chocolate for a few days, maybe...

Thursday, April 05, 2007

Festivities


Happy Birthday Max!. He turned 2 on Tuesday April 3rd. His big brother has been saving the "4" candle from his birthday cake in November and insisted we use it on Max's. He intends to use it on every birthday for the rest of his life until he is a "man".


The official mauling of the cake using the candles as implements of destruction and occasionally as a fork.


In order to meet the requirements as a good mother I purchased once again the official Paas egg dying kit. I stuck to the basic simple kit instead of all the fancy new ones they've come up with with different themes like motor vehicles. Call me a traditionalist.

Here's the set up with the over excited boy who was whining for days to do this project.


I curse you lame egg holder that either squeezes the egg too tight that it cracks or else the sucker flies out of it. Of course as a wire worker I could have come up with some sort of ingenuous device to hold the egg properly while dipping. But I was too lazy to take this any further. I'll curse instead.


Now that's a good egg.
Henry thought all the cracked ones were perfect for eatting right away. Of course my picky eater removed the yellow yummy yolk of each one and ate only the whites. Note to self: that's how you stay so thin.




Here is the festive final product.
There may be a special place in hell for me for this all inclusive misappropriation of ritual or else I have all my bases covered. But it looks so pretty.




Sunday, April 01, 2007

Twenty years ago today...

Today, April Fool's Day, is our 20th Anniversary. We dug through our photo albums and Nick scanned a couple of pictures of us from that first year together. He has a more flattering one of me in his blog. I look like I have some sort of weird blotchy tumour growing on my nose which I think I would remember if I really did have a weird blotchy tumour on my nose at some point in my life.
Ahhh so young a fresh (and blotchy) we were back then. We seem to have matching khaki's and I believe that is a tie dye headband in my hair that inadvertantly matches Nick's groovy tie dye. All I can say is thank god for the advances in the past 20 years in hair products for girls with Jewish frizzy hair. And thank you Clairol for helping me to maintain the illusion that 40 is the new 30.




In honour of this special day we went to the coast and went to the Oregon Coast Aquarium.The kids were well behaved and Max didn't have a single tantrum or meltdown. Maneuvering the cheapo Kolcraft double stroller was a challenge. The wheels seem to prefer to run perpendicular to the direction one is intending to go.


This picture was taken after Max peed on me while I was trying to do a stealth stand up diaper change.
Max was entranced by the fish in the very cool walk through giant tunnel aquarium.
There was a girl on her cell phone in the middle of it saying, "Can you hear me now?"

They had a little kids play area with stuff like this to play on.
We were done in only 2 hours and the day was sunny and lovely so we headed off to the beach. As we descended down the cliff walkway to the beach , the icey wind ripped into my ears and reminded me of why I'm really not a fan of the Oregon Beach outside the comfort of my car. The views are lovely, the wind is brutal. But of course the kids had fun and we'll have to return for a better prepared extended visit with lots of pails and shovels for proper sand castle building. And a big warm hat and parka for me.

I couldn't do a blog post without hawking at least one item. I randomly relisted a hanging vase yesterday and within an hour we got two large orders for assorted hanging vases. One was from Kansas and the other was from Oklahoma. Some sort of weird Middle America vortex found my vases and felt compelled to purchase simultaneously making a happy afternoon for me.
This Wide Flat With Purple Accents Hanging Vase was one of the ones purchased and now relisted.
They make unusual Mother's Day gifts for the right Mom.
Happy Anniversary Nick! I love you more than ever!