Your questions please!

My original idea for my last post was to do what I'm doing in this post but when I sat down to write this post I couldn't concentrate on what I had planned on writing and instead you got my thoughts on a truly terrible situation that to be honest is still on my mind but I'm pushing past it and getting back down to business.

I'm gearing up for the return of the 5 question feature. I've got a list of shops and artists I want to feature and I'm truly excited about getting back into the swing of things.

The questions I use for this feature are a compilation of random questions that I find interesting to find out from artists I admire. To keep things fresh, fun and interesting I'd love to hear the questions that you'd ask the artists and artisans you admire.

Leave me a comment with your questions and I'll add them to my roster, with props to you of course!

I've been lax

I keep telling myself and posting about how I'm gong to keep on schedule, keep up with weekly feature posts, keep up with regular posts, keep up with posting at least three times a week to at least post.... see a pattern here?

Summer is catching up with us we're out more often, for play dates, birthday parties (because it's birthday party season) weddings and berry picking. Blogging time just kind of melts away and will be slowly returning as summer turns into autumn.



In addition to all these real world happenings I have plans to add to, tweak and organize TMCPhoto and my business plan for TMCPhoto and for PeanutButterPie. I have plans and I also have no idea where to start or how. Of course we'll figure it out and by we, I mean me. I started out on Etsy by just diving in. I've had a year to see how things work and now It's time to set things up to work better. I have goals; I want more views, I want more sales, I want to feel like I'm moving forward each week instead of treading water or coasting.

5 questions will be back in September; The last feature I did on TubbyTabby resulted in a direct sale as a result of the feature and I couldn't be more excited and pleased and happy for Jodi of TubbyTabby. I couldn't have been more pleased if the sales were mine. I'm a firm believer in the rule of three, what you put out comes back to you threefold, if I can help out a fellow Etsian I'm also helping myself. I'd love to have more sales for my feature artists result from my features. And this is where the title of this post comes in. I'm giving myself permission to slack off for the rest of summer.

Last Monday was the Peanut's Birthday

and we spent the day doing whatever she wanted to do from tea party time to building a bridge with blocks. She helped to bake her birthday cake and ate all of her dinner (scrambled eggs, toast and bacon with watermelon slices, as per the peanuts request) and still had room for cake. We frosted the cake with lime butter cream with cherry jam filling and decorated the top with three of the juiciest raspberries from our garden iced with chocolate frosting dots to look like ladybugs. It was a great day and a little sad too because now at 3 the peanut is no longer a toddler but a pre-schooler, next year I won't be able to call her a baby anymore. She had her birthday party this weekend, followed by a BBQ party at our friends place. All in all it was a busy weekend and I think I need a nap...

While I'm sharing, did you check out the amazing give-a-way from last week yet? I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I win the grand prize.

If you're interested in finding some great new blogs to read here are a few of my favourites:

Confessions of a Pagan Soccer Mom is a new one for me, I've been following Mrs B on Twitter for a while but only recently stumbled across her blog and boy am I glad I did. She has links in her blog to some other wonderful blogs as well as recipes, art, pagan parenting, kitchen witchery and of course some wicked product reviews. In amongst all that fabulous stuff is the odd give-a-way, on of which is for the most amazing Tarot Decks ever. full of retro 1950's housewife images it's just too kitschy cool.

With my own recent addiction to caffeine in full swing, and my obsession with following creative blogs, I started following Caffeinated Frenzy way back when I started my own. Frenzy was one of the first creative blogs I encountered and I've been following her ever since. In addition to writing about her adoration of caffeine, Frenzy also blogs about her knitting and other random things that she just can't help but share. She's a good read and I have to say that I have been known to covet some of her sweaters and hats.

This and That

What with one thing and another things are happening around here. My list of Blogs to follow is growing at an almost alarming rate. Keeping up is getting a little rough and yet whenever I think I'm going to go through the list and cull I just can't do it.

I'll be honest, I don't religiously follow all of the blogs on my list, I'm loyal to about a dozen or so and I drop into the others on a semi regular basis. They all have something to offer be it a laugh out loud comment or a heart rending description of a perfect moment. I try not to be a lurker, but in the case of some of the more popular Blogs I notice that I'm a little more shy and less likely to comment.

It's funny how personality traits tend to cross over into the digital realm. I'm painfully shy in person. I don't know where the shyness comes from but I'm sure that my emotional state of mind has a heavy hand in it, I tend to stand back in social situations, I become unable to gauge how to act, and interact in groups of people I do not know well so parties are painful for me and the first year or so in a new school was always uncomfortable for me growing up. Moving anywhere is a sure way to get me to crawl back into my shell. I'm reading Sense and Sensibility right now and one of the characters makes a comment about how shyness is an indicator of self worth (at least I think that's where I read it) and I have to say that it makes sense.

It's the same for me in any sort of web based community. I tend to do more lurking than interacting at first. I'm working on that though. The hurdle of stepping forward is a little less daunting when it's in the virtual as opposed to the day to day. And watching how my daughter easily welcomes new people into her life each day is a pretty good example to follow. So I'm putting myself out there.

And so we come to the part of the post where I tell you what's been happening around here .

Last Friday was Etsy Day, I revisited some of my favourite artists and then went on to read some of the posts about Etsy Day that were on my dashboard. One of these posts had a contest in honour of the big media blitz. This particular blog; Stacey Winters is full of the most glowing photographic entries. My hands itch to pick up the camera and go out and shoot when I visit and I covet the quality of light she manages to capture. the prize for her Etsy Day draw was a package of goodies from her shop and I was one of the winners.

I'm so excited to have won and I can't wait to see what's in my package. I'll be posting pictures here when it gets here.

I've been toying with the idea of doing a give-away myself. I've held off on the idea (see reasons above) and think it's time to give a little too. I'll keep you updated on how things are progressing on the giveaway front.

Sometimes being a pushover pays off. I'm one of those people who find it hard to say no, case in point: I once opened the door to a couple of Jehovah's witnesses because I when I looked out the window to see who it was I wasn't wearing my glasses and I thought it was my sister at the door. They kept coming back for about two weeks until my parents told them not to come back any more. When telemarketers call I feel bad about hanging up on them so I end up listening to their whole spiel before I tell them I'm not interested, most of the time anyway.

Last week I was one of those times. Turns out the telemarketer was calling on behalf of Stats BC and they wanted people to take part in a literacy test. Sure I said, I'll take part. And what do I get for being so easy going? well there was the two hours guaranteed quiet at a computer and the monetary reward of $100 which wil certainly come in handy once the new year kicks in and we need to stock the cupboards.

Sorry, there are no photo's for this post. to make up for that I'll put up an all image no text post next week.

it was so obvious now that I think about it.

I don't know if it has been apparent in my last few months worth of posts or not, but I've been experiencing a little bout of the blues. I did write about my relationship with depression in October and unfortunately the fug has managed to stick around a little longer than I would have liked.

Normally I'm pretty aware of why I'm feeling any given feeling at any given time. I'm an internalizer who reads a lot and I often find therapy sessions (when I have them) to be troublesome because of this.

This time around I haven't been so aware of where my sadness is coming from. I thought it might have been sleep related, or possibly that it was my way of mourning for the lost time devoted to my art because of being a mother, or because I haven't seen a single member of my family since last January. I mean any one of those things and a hundred others would cause a bit of the Down In the Dumpses but really they were just extensions of the real cause.

So here's my moment of clarification, and it came to me as I was catching up on a few Blogs yesterday. I was reading about a the latest in a series of emotional sculptures by ArtMind (see photo to the left) and then I went on to read a very sad post from another one of my favourite Etsy artists The Dreamy Giraffe, she was writing a tribute to her recently lost pet Buddy and it occurred to me, that while this past Wednesday is the anniversary of the day we found out I was pregnant, it also happens to be the anniversary of the day my Dad passed away. This year is a little different for me because I am now the same age he was when he reached the end of his life. It's a bit of a bummer (Understatements are my speciality).

One of my Aunts once told me a story about a dream my Dad had. It affected his whole life and was eerily prophetic. In his dream, a tear-away calender began to flip through the days in a month. As it got closer to 30 and 31 it flipped faster and kept going until it reached 36, where it stopped.

For almost all of his life he lied about his age, even convincing my grandma at one point that he was in fact the youngest child in the family and his little sister (my youngest aunt, who is about ten years older than I am) was older than he was. He made it to his 36th birthday and then died in his sleep about a month later, while he was away working on an oil rig in Northern Alberta.

Now that I'm looking back at the last few months I should have known what the problem was and I'm feeling a little relieved that it's a naturally occurring sadness and not a chemical imbalance. So I've been missing my Dad and a have been a little freaked out over passing this age milestone myself.