I just had one tell me they were my dear dear friend and had links for me. Another one went ahead and praised my cards and said how nice they were before linking them to another crafty-type place that does photos and the like on mugs.
They are stroking my ego. But it has not yet worked!
I gots me a new car. Jim doesn’t have to squish his head down when he is in this one. I am now, I believe, a grown up. But I still cried when I left my little green car behind. Oh - yep, I almost just cried again typing that. My little green car was the first new car I ever bought. I bought it all myself. I lurved my car but it wasn’t quite right any longer as it was kinda tiny and really low to the ground and it was starting to just not fit my life as much. It was my grad school car. I had it for 7 years and it was perfect. But yes, this is my new car. Whoo!
Oh sure, this morning it is sunny….
Don’t have a garage sale to make any money. Have a garage sale to make stuff go away. And if it starts raining, make it all go away by loading up and taking to good will. Regardless of the*meh* day for selling, I must say there is a joy in having a FULL YARD of unwanted stuff gone (one way or another) by dinner.
We’re making more money (ie: any money) through some bigger items we’re selling via the uni. Couple dressers, pine shelving units, dryer, couch. There we go…
I don’t want to do too much pimping as that isn’t my style - but if anyone ever sees any cards they would like as a set or mix-and-match, please do let me know. I certainly make up custom orders and can create various sets. On that note, a friend at work bought most of my new cards yesterday - fifteen in total. That was pretty damn exciting!
But yeah, I post my cards because I love sharing what I’m doing. And I have etsy to try and slowly build a little business out of this. But there is some funny little space that lives between these two places for people to send me a note and say “post a set of Koi on etsy please!” or “I don’t want to use etsy, can I just buy some from you?” - I think I don’t say too too much because I never want friends to think they can’t post an “ooohh pretty” without that meaning they want to buy them.
So, with much rambling, this all means that if you ever want anything - please send me a note. If you don’t want anything, please feel free to say they are loverly or what you like best without worrying I’m going to send you a packet with an invoice 
To the okanagan. For real. I have summer job at the uni down there to teach English that might just become a full-year full-time job. Nifty! As Jim has just arrived, we thought this would be the chance to just go before he tries to start up a whole lot in the north. I have given notice at work and am wrapping stuff up. Leone is moving as well (to Vancouver for fancy teacher school) so the gang is leaving the building.
And so the gang is having a garage sale.
I’ll keep you posted
So here is the fruit of my weekend. Or, um, something that doesn’t sound so lame. First pic, all the cards I made:
Detail on the ones I made using the stamp Jim got me. Some were double print, some just had a single print:
The koi Leone is coveting. I think these are some of my favorite:
Grrr! Happy birthday!!
The dragonfly stamp that matches the leaf one Jim got me. I did this one in a few different colours, reds with black, purple with purples (that match the leaf card that follows):
Some stamps I had gotten from NYC and I was inspired to use them as well:
Carmen, I’m finally using some of the Pheobe paper (Basic Grey paper makes me do the dance of joy). This card used the punch I bought with b’day money and the stamp is just WONDERFUL (wishing you joy). The detail on the stamp is astounding and came to me from my dear sweet Melly:
So yes, I got the pictures resized via posting them to the web as flickr has updated their uploader to be workable with Vista. Still a bit of a run-about, but will work while I confirm settings on my camera!
I wanted to post pictures. I had used the smart setting on my camera. I thought smart would be, well, smarter. Is dumb. Pictures are too big. Between wordpress uploading without an option for thumbnail (no, I don’t know why) and my computer refusing to give me a logical process by which to resize in advance - I can’t post these pictures.
I have draw, windows photo gallery, and Photoimpression (came with camera) all which can open the photo and fix red eye and crop it and everything else - but I can’t seem to alter the pixel numbers or crop the file size. The only way I’ve found so far is to email it to myself which is a pain in the butt. I’ve also looked into using flickr and the auto uploader resizer - but when I last checked it didn’t have a version for Vista yet.
Grrr.
Will post pictures one day!
Today I’m getting to play with all my birthday gifts. As well, we went to the Farmer’s Market this morning and then walked over to the craft store most of my gifts had been bought from (Jim and Leone). As their gifts had put me over the $200 in purchases mark, I got my gift card from the store for $20 to spend in the store. Grandma and grandpa sent me some money for my birthday so I used that plus the $20 and got even MORE craft stuff!! Carmen also got me some new cutting tools so I’m cutting and stamping and using new paper and new punches (makes nifty corners) and new colours (ink) and and.. here are some pics of new stamps.
From Jim I got the leaf stamp, and at the store I saw the dragonfly stamp by the same company. I used some of the money from grandma and grandpa for the second stamp so I could make some really cool sets with the two images.
Leone got me this set of 18 mini flowers, vases, and leaves that I can mix and match. Each one is under and inch squared. SO CUTE. Jim got me a set of two (I can only find one pic) watercolour inspired flowers - the smaller image below.
I used some of the $20 credit towards this set of Japanese image stamps. Oh how I love these!
And I’ll post pictures of cards later this weekend (probably - but sometimes I get lazy and don’t take pictures). WHeee!!
Wow, there it is - class is done as of today. I keep having people exclaim how fast that went when I mention today’s my last day of teaching. I then give them the single unimpressed raised eyebrown in return. True - three weeks is super quick for a class to be done. But as the one teaching it and I’m sure as the ones taking it (let alone the ones at my home cooking me meals and rubbing my back and picking up the slack) - we shall say what an intensive three weeks it has been!
So papers are in, exam is written, and I have a stack of marking that will keep me busy for the next week. But no more prep and no more planning. Makes me both breath a sigh and get a little wistful. I love teaching. I loved my class. I’m alwasy a little sad when they end. But I’m SO looking forward to making cards this weekend!!! I got all these amazing stamps and papers and cutters and everything for my birthday. I will post any pictures!
xoxo
Birthday-girl
Okay, today has been… interesting. I’m sick. I had to teach this morning and work other job all afternoon. International movers call LAST NIGHT to say “we’ll be at the customs office at <some random wrong address> tomorrow at 8am, meet us there with international money order you just keep lying around your house for a few thousand dollars USD and here’s a blank-air spot where we’re probably saying our cell number.”
So, um, today has been interesting. Yes. Jim trying to explain where they need to go for Customs (we had already researched all this and I think we’re the only people in northern BC who knows the right place). There was the totally wrong place, the old place, and the new place as of last year. We knew the right one. At the airport - how random is that? And how FREAKEN FAR OUT OF TOWN!! I’m at work as I have to teach. Jim has no car to access. Airport is 20 min away.
Jim manages to catch airporter as it was right around the corner on it’s route. WHOOT! Nine bucks instead of 30. When he gets there the movers are kinda grumbly at Jim about, well, whatever. They are just kinda poopy and demanding and wanting him to have been there quicker (wha? we couldn’t have driven there quicker..).
They all go in to Customs and then they a got finger waggled at them by the customs dude (ha!) as they should have arranged things better - there is only one dude and if he was out or sick or if a flight had come in that could have meant waiting hours or even DAYS…. He tells them their company is not organized and this is not how they should do things. Not totally the moving dude’s fault, but a bit of a confirmation that the gong-show-ness is not from our end.
Then they have our wrong home address. That is taken care of. Then they won’t unload without full payment, I’m busy teaching enough of my class that they feel they got a class (our last week of classes), I’m using my lunch hour super early to run down to the bank and get the money order and run home, they’re threatening to charge us “waiting time” for at home and at the airport (WTF??) claiming they gave up 24 hours notice to get our side in order (not). I arrive to a pacing husband and a sister hearding kitties into the basement. Husband has phone the head office and made it clear how he feels about all this and the notion of a fee for waiting.
The movers? A dude and this little tiny lady. FOR REAL!
So they start taking stuff out and I hang for a minute to see if anything is going to explode. They are unloading all this stuff from other moves (huge truck) and we’re like - okay, if they couldn’t unload our stuff without payment (I dunno, fair enough) they certainly could have staged things a bit with the five other households between the end of the truck and our stuff….
I have to get to work. There is furniture all over the road and our lawn. I’m thinking “garage sale”, but have to get to work. I see this little old couple coming down the road who will probably try to buy something. Almost worth seeing what they want, but little old people at garage sales always just offer you way too little for things. I once had a lady once try to get me to drop the price on a little figuring. She kept pointing out it was chipped. I kept pointing out I was only charging twenty-five cents.
So yeah, Jim just called. The stuff is in the house. The movers are loading up the lawn furniture. The kitties are out of the basement and climbing everything. There was no demand for waiting fees so Jim’s call to head office paid off. Jim kept saying what a bummer of a birthday this had ended up being for me with the stress and the running around (let alone the sick and the working two jobs). But I’m just thinking, for the first time in all of this courtship, in the years and years of paperwork and everything, finally Jim and I have all our things together. We are totally living together, our stuff is together, we’re together.
Is a good birthday.
