Playing Catch-Up

SOLD!

My Handcrafted Jewelry Open House all done and it went great! I don't have pictures of the rest that sold. Taking pictures of everything is something I need to work on, even if I have no plans to list or post them anywhere.

Now I get to play catch up on everything else that fell by the wayside. One of which is very important to me ... my Skiwggazine Network Featured Blog Group!

I missed posting about Debi and her family blog: Who Says 8 Is Enough? Eleven. Children. Amazing! Check it out! I feel so "not worthy"!

Last week was Karen from Cherished Dreams. She makes beautiful quilts! Really, really beautiful quilts. It's been quite a while since I've done any quilting. Must not let the quilt bug bite ... not enough time! I'm running away now ...

Next Open House date: November 15. Plenty of time to create and make and get all the details taken care of on schedule. It's not fun running around in the last minutes. I hope to be taking lots of new pictures this week!

Busy in Preparations

Hostessing my first Open House this Saturday, the 11th, and I've been swamped with all the collateral issues. I'm feeling very, very nervous. My home is clean and decent, but humble in comparison with many of the households here. I happen to live in what is considered to be in the top ten most affluent suburbs in America.

We live in the older part, much more middle-low of the middle class.

The house needs updating. It needs a fresh coat of paint. It needs a lot of things, but then, all these things cost money. Hopefully I'll make some pocket change to help along those lines, but the public is being welcomed into my humble home as it is.

I hope they'll see comfort and contentment. After all, when it came to our decision of what and where to buy, we stayed in our budget. We bought no more of a house than what we could afford in a place where the public schools are excellent.

I hope what they see and appreciate is a family who is not burdening them by being part of a $7 billion dollar "rescue" plan. So no, it ain't fancy, but it ain't costing any American taxpayer a single penny, either.

Prototype of New Product Packaging

I'm still not over Google's spanking, but one can only take one's licks and move on. I have followed their instructions by submitting a sitemap, which was very confusing for a non-geek person like myself. But I muddled through the lack of clear, concise documentation and figured out how to use my RSS feed as the sitemap. Blogger doesn't allow for a user-generated XML ... or whatever ... sitemap to be plunked somewhere in the template. I've submitted my blog for reconsideration so now it's a exercise in patience. I've also asked them about the "duplicate title tags" since I don't have a clue how to fix that. Blogger is THEIR product so it should be usable without creating havoc with another of THEIR products.

I did say something about moving on, didn't I? No more mention of PageRank unless or until I've been bailed out of search engine jail.

Today I took the mess you see on my dining room table in the opening photo and turned it into this:



I didn't use the boxed flower components in the first picture because after I opened it up, I realized there wasn't enough for duplication (there's that baaaad word again!). I need to make oodles of these packages so I opted to use cardstock, a couple of punches, and brads of which I have plenty. Not bad, don't you think?

I learned this technique last week when I attended a local stamp club that is run by a talented and creative Stampin' Up demonstrator here in the Plano area. If you'd like her contact information, contact me. She'll humbly tell you that she's just following the directions of other talented and creative people, but she has a gift for teaching.

In her class, we used double-sided paper so that the inside looks as good as the outside, but in the interest of not driving the prices of my handcrafted jewelry too far to the roof, I've opted for one-sided. I couldn't find any that matched my branding image, but I think this is close enough to work for now.

I'm having an open house in my house starting October 11th and continuing until further notice on the second Saturday of every month. If you live in the Dallas/Fort Worth area and are interested in coming, drop me a line with your e-mail address and I'll add you to the e-vite list. Just about everyone who I have met personally through the various network events I attend will be getting an invite. I'll be using my new product packaging at the open house ... or I HOPE to that is!

Trying to get people to commit to a home show has been virtually impossible, even with a generous hostess package in the offering. I've asked those I know very well, and those who are in the Mastermind group with me "Why?" and the answer is what I expected. Hostessing is a LOT of work. I know that because I've played hostess myself plenty of times.

So for now, I'll play hostess and invite the fashion jewelry loving women in my circles to come over to my house and play. And the entrepreneurial women are more than welcome to bring their business cards for networking.