Foggy Mist

I was very excited to find these websites today. I read a number of stationery & paper-related blogs and forums but most seem to be written by women in their 20s and 30s. That's cool because I'm learning this business along with them. But it was nice to find a few sites by women closer to my age. I have a lot of reading to do on all of these sites yet. Just wanted to pass them along. (Ann, I'm looking at you in particular, since this is something we discuss frequently!)

lifestylepreneur - the art of self-employement - this link is to the blog that accompanies Maria Sariego's business site

Believe Street - this is Maria's personal blog.

Carol Ross & Associates - not a blog, but looks like Carol has some great articles on self-employment and life in general.

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I have recently found myself in a wonderful position, in terms of Pine Tree Designs. One of my business mentors, Allison, of Blue Turtle Studio, has offered to show me a few sample layouts of how I might produce promotional sheets for my cards. I had told her about a wholesale inquiry I received (and have received another one since then – a coffee shop in Iowa!) She asked me what I was doing about catalogs or promo pages. Uh, nothing. So she offered to put something together to show me. She’s so nice. There’s a chance she might go to the National Stationery Show so we might get to meet in May! (Her stuff will be there in a booth anyway, so at the very least I'll get to see more of her cards and jewelry anyway.)

About this same time, I received an email from a local jewelry artist, inquiring if I’d be interested in selling her jewelry on my site. (She included pictures.) I’m not and told her my new focus is going to be just on my cards. But I went on to tell her about Celebration Gifts and The Wine Trek Gift Company as possibilities. She lives in the same town in which The Wine Trek is located so I wasn’t surprised to learn she already has some pieces there. She said she’d check out Celebration Gifts.

For two years I’ve been absorbing every bit of information I could get my hands on – from soaking up the words of the other vendors at Celebrations Gifts, to reading the blogs of other paper artists and studying their sites. I’m finally at a position where I have just enough experience to be able to pass some of that on, with words of encouragement to others. I’m still learning and reading all I can get my hands on too.

This feels so good – and is so much fun!

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We have had a couple different table top fountains in our living room over the past few years but we’ve been fountain-free for many months. I’ve been passively looking for a new one all along but haven’t found anything just right. I posted a Wanted on Freecycle and had two replies. One was too far to drive and the other, the woman said she’d be in touch when she found all the parts. It turns out Mom and Gretchen both have fountains they no longer want – so I’ve accepted both of those. I picked up the one from Mom the other day, and driving home, I realized the perfect place for it is in our newly redecorated office. (The office and ladies room both need just a couple more finishing touches, then I’ll take pictures.)

I told Steve that I decided to more actively look for a new fountain and of course Mr. eBay had to hop on the eBay site to see what he could find. I’d already looked there, but you can’t keep Steve off of eBay! We were looking for a tallish one but couldn’t find just the right one.

I didn’t even know these misting types existed! This is ours, a glass bowl full of glass ice cubes. The mist is produced by a metal and ceramic disk that vibrates at ultrasonic frequency, which turns the water molecules into vapor mist. Still looks like magic to me. (It looks like dry ice actually.) It arrived today so I set it up tonight to surprise Steve when he gets home from work. It’s not tall but it’s pretty cool!