Gearing Up For A Celebration, Monsters and Robots Style

 In only a few days the Little Mister will be ELEVEN months old! I can not believe the time has gone by so quickly. He's still as mellow as ever (thank goodness) and gaining new skills daily. Eleven months old means we are thinking about a first birthday party! I love first birthdays, we've always done those bigger than the other birthdays. They are just such a milestone, seeing a baby grow from this adorable, little blob of do-nothing to a baby who can move about the world, has opinions about stuff, can do things by themselves, communicate. And we survived it so we should get to celebrate!

I've decided the Little Mister's theme is going to be monsters and robots. I ordered this adorable hat from Fashion Touch on Etsy for his first birthday pictures. He thought it was so funny, not sure we'll get him to keep it on his head for long, taking this picture was a bit of a chore. I'm getting all excited with plans of things to make, decorations and scrappy craft projects then I wonder how I'll even get the house clean for a party, we're a zoo these days!

The Famous Mr. Cash Pugface

Mr. Cash is a model! He's now part of a shop listing in the DoDaaDoggieApparel shop on Etsy modeling the belly bands and bandanna we got him awhile back. I see star potential!

The Year Of The Potter

It all started that fate-filled day in August of 1995. It was orientation week at the U of A when a punked out bookworm was approached by an outgoing, semi-preppy band nerd on the cusp of rebelling against his upbringing. It was a week before their first freshman classes had even begun, she was sitting outside of the library reading The History Of Psychology just for fun and he had time to kill. It was no love at first sight easy romance but he was a talker who made her laugh and think and she was painfully shy, making her an impeccably good listener. Much maturing, dating, foibles and 6 years later they were wed and been happily so ever since!

The Bohemian and I celebrated our 8th anniversary a couple weeks ago and we've been so crazy busy it almost got lost in the mix. But we didn't forget and we both managed to squeeze in themed gifts and a date! Year 8 is all about gifts of pottery or bronze and we love pottery. Our date was fantastic, good German food and beer downtown, drinks on The Arlington veranda, new body jewelry at Redbeard's. Not your conventional anniversary date I suppose but right up our alley!

For gifts I got The Bohemian a mug for math nerds from Karin Lorenc on Etsy. If you love pottery too you have to check out her shop full of fantastic stoneware. My gift I got to pick out myself. Normally I would think this was completely unromantic, but in this case he surprised me by taking me to the Dryden pottery shop where they actually make the pottery and I got to pick my own! As soon as I walked in I was rubbing my hands together in delight, it was so hard to chose. I finally settled on the vase above. The pics just don't do it justice because the colors are beautiful and the shape is so simple and so lovely. It makes me smile every time I see it!

I've Been Scheduled

When I keep a schedule I can keep my sanity. I haven't had one in awhile and it was starting to show. I can now breathe a little! I was working myself up into a stressed out ball of panicked nerves so I finally sat down and wrote out a new schedule. Without that silly thing to look at I either panic at all that needs done and the feeling that it all needs done RIGHT NOW! or I pace circles in the living room carpet trying to remember what I was just on my way to do.

When I very first decided a schedule was in order I tried the schedule-every-cotton-pickin'-minute-of-your-day method. That sort of worked, because I'm a perfectionist control freak, but bored me to tears and put me in a tizzy anytime something unscheduled had to happen. Then I settled on the more relaxed schedule where I have a short list of things to accomplish in the morning (in any order that catches my fancy that day), one for afternoon, and one for evening. These are all things I want to do every day. My afternoon list includes a weekly chore (ex. Monday is clean all floors day) Then after each set of things has been accomplished I consider it my free time That means, barring too many unexpected head injuries or diapering incidents, I can have 3 free times! This is when I will pester people with email, rant incessantly on my blog, make stuff...you know, all the really fun stuff that I would sit around doing all day if it weren't for a schedule.

I'm working on an etsy specific schedule like this where I have things that need done daily and others that would be better as weekly or monthly things. It's amazing how much time I have when I follow the schedule! Yesterday I was determined to stick to my schedule and I did it! Not only the necessary stuff but I had tons of time to do whatever the heck I wanted, which yesterday was:

1. relisting a few items to my shop
2.proof reading all my etsy listings
3.making some minor changes to my shop announcements, policies, and appearance
4. unifying the copy in my listings a bit
5. adding metric measurements to my listings
6. getting a little more done on my craft room
7. emptying a few more boxes

It may not seem like a lot but the etsy stuff was tedious and necessary (though I rather enjoyed it). I actually was a little embarrassed that I had so many spelling errors! I think I need to start reading more or something. I used to have great spelling but now it seems to be on the decline. I blame the internet.

All's Well That Ends Well

Mr. Golden Curls making a heart with his hands. I have no idea where he learned this but I think it's adorable!

Have I said yet how absolutely completely and utterly fantastic it is to have our family of four back together again? Because it is. The Bohemian and I are re-learning how to occupy the same space. We're both passionately opinionated, what do you expect from an artist and someone with a vocal performance degree in opera? And we both think we know the best way to do everything, which makes it hard to be around others. That's why we're lucky to have found each other, no one else would put up with us! Even with that it's more than wonderful and I'm daily reminded why The Bohemian is my perfect balance. And the boys are finally getting used to the fact that when he goes he's just going to work and he'll be back in the evening not a week or so. We have almost all of our possessions out of storage, tomorrow should complete that task. Then I'm going to kick major booty to get the house together so I can start kicking some major booty getting my etsy shop back together again!

For the past few days I've been reading a series of etsy articles from their blog, The Storque, on making over your shop. I've been taking notes and I'm ready to examine all of my listings with a critical eye while re-opening and revamping anything that could be better. I'm ready to get back to it, I even have a room that will be completely dedicated to my crafts ("Mine, all MINE!!!!!!!!) but if I start in on getting my shop up and running before the house is complete the house will never be complete. So house first. It's also time to start thinking about making and listing Christmas items! Hard to think about Christmas when it feels like 110 degrees outside with a massive humidity of why-the-heck-doesn't-it-just-rain-already!

Skunk De-Funk And Other News

I finally had the chance to try and rid Maya of the skunk smell today. I always kind of thought the effects of skunk attack were a myth, but now I know it's not. Maya still smelled awful after 2 days outside! Thank you to glassbead, a fellow aretsian who gave me the skunk de-funk recipe that I now pass on to anyone unlucky enough to be on the receiving end of an angry skunk.

1 1lb box of baking soda
1 32 oz bottle of hydrogen peroxide
mix with a little dog shampoo
add a little water if needed to make it usable
rub all over your dog, working into the skin
soak for 5-10 minutes
rinse

I actually forgot to add the soap in the recipe. What I did was soak with the magic elixir, rinse and shampoo her. Seems to have worked like a charm. Her head does still smell since I didn't want to get peroxide in her eyes, but I can't smell it unless my nose is practically on her so I let her move back in. It's pretty funny to use, the peroxide made it sound like I was fixing a giant bowl of Rice Crispies in the tub!

In other news, we'll be moving on Wednesday. The house that we were supposed to be closing on and moving into on Thursday isn't finished. Actually they don't seem to have accomplished anything in the past few weeks, nor do they seem in a hurry to do so. That's tremendously disappointing but we're moving anyway. We'll all be living under the same roof again at the house of the angels that have taken in my husband. Being the extremely shy, social anxiety ridden person that I am, the thought of living with complete strangers for an unknown amount of time threw me into a bit of an emotional tizzy, to put it mildly, but I'm slowly recovering from that and trying to see the good points. Like the hugely wonderful fact that our family will be together again! The boys are breaking my heart these days. Last week when I told Mr. Golden Curls that Pappa was coming to visit he said to me "maybe if we play lots of really fun games Pappa will want to stay with us." and Lil' Spitfire, who usually watches Pappa drive off and then goes back inside to play, instead stood on the porch screaming "No! No! Don't go Pappa! Come back!" and cried for a good 5 minutes afterward. They're breaking my heart and it's time to go!

The boys have been at Grandma's since yesterday afternoon and I've been kicking some major bootie to wrap up the odds and ends here. There are a lot more of those than I realized! I closed my etsy shop while we move, that was really hard to do. It looks so empty and sad! But I look forward to re-opening with new enthusiasm when we're settled.

Trying On Optimism

I'm painfully aware that the blog I started to be mostly business, crafting, art and etsy with a smidge of personal life is now majority personal with a smidge of the aforementioned. I've maintained a bit of etsy, since I'm still lurking there, but crafting and business have fallen by the wayside. Creating anything has become a casualty of my current temporarily single, stay at home mom in flux situation. It's a little disappointing. I started out gungho, working hard, creating every moment I had, learning about business and had some pretty good sales happening for being a beginner. That was before we learned, only a few short months after I opened shop, we'd be relocating. Now my momentum has been halted and I'm a little concerned I won't be able to get the fire back even when we are moved and settled. Having a dedicated studio/office will probably be a pretty good kick start though!

And about the house, I'm warming up to it and even getting to appreciate it a bit. It's not so bad, pretty cute actually and not so much horribly outdated as it is a clean slate for me to have fun with. We're still waiting to see how it'll all pan out. Financing is tight but I'm fighting my nature and going optimist. I'm slowly beginning to pack, dust, sort and realizing how much there is in our house that I have overlooked on a daily basis but is so blaringly junky, dusty, dirty now that I'm digging in. Whatever happens it'll work the way it's meant to and hopefully I can just take it all as it comes, I'm warming up my zen attitude.