CLUTTERBUSTERS - OCTOBER

Good Morning,

I like the term fark! Good work on the other yard related efforts! I hear you on the house cleaning people. I have a lot of psychological obstacles surrounding this subject. Only certain criteria being met would make me open to having someone come in. One of my sibs lives in high rise apartment situation, though it is fairly roomy, it is very full. She has a cleaning person come and has happened when I was there. I look around and wonder how is she going to clean anything? This makes it sound horribly bad, which it is not, her home is lovely, but there's just a lot of this and that, piles here and there, etc. that I wondered will it look different when the cleaning person is done? And amazingly, it did even though all that stuff was still about. Wierd.

Thanks so much for the compliments on the shop, I really find my internal compulsion to make more, more, more calming down now that I have all those fun patterns available!  I think everything compliments everything else for the most part, pattern and physical items.

Ornament Clarification: When I said sewn, I mean I only had sewn the pieces of fabric to each individual disk. They are not actually fully sewn together yet, this is the hard part, and I find myself walking around finding everything else to to but continue with it as it involves the invisible thread. On this subject, I will have to de-list the first snowman I did because when I attached the cording, I realize NOW as I'm doing the second one here (also after watching my friend on facetime sewing one) , that I skipped a stitch, making the stitches too long, though not really noticeable, unless examining closely but also it mean that possibly the cording is not as secure as it should be, tho it is secure enough. If you were to message me via my shop as if inquiring for a custom order with a mailing address...I will mail you that one for free if you'd like it. I will have to make a new/replacement for it. I did bring my BOse blue tooth radio up to set beside me and maybe if I can get some good music going I can make a concerted effort to get through these things to finish them.

Marketing: I did a pretty major thing....I think...So there are these FB groups, and there are two which I'd confused with each other. One is a just fan page for our college, but the other is a buy/sell/trade page. So I didn't really make the distinction here and thought I'd joined one and not the other, one has 35K followers and the buy/sell/trade has 8K. So I'm looking, realizing it's the buy/sell/trade I joined and seeing people selling new stuff they're making, wood decor, jewelry, quilts, etc and linking their website addesses....so I'm like 'Huh?" I don't know if I mentioned, I removed all the words/letters/building titles from my 2 iconic building designs from the college and I relisted them and refrained from using any words that referred to any of the proper names, titles, initials, etc. in the description of them. So, there should absolutely no problem with these listings. In the listing description I added that end users could add personal embellishment/s during the stitching or finishing processes if they desired such as graduation years, school letters, titles, monograms also without naming anything or suggesting specific letters. So I just copied each of my links and made individual post for each of those to that site and linked my shop. Etsy will tell me the number of times something gets viewed, so I'll be able to see if there's a dramatic increase to these specific listings. Thanks for listening. SOmeone could stitch these and use themed fabric for the backing, would be adorable! I should probably not allow myself back on teh computer to check status of anything until 9:00 PM tonight, that might make me keep my head down and work through it all!

Well, dinner was fun last night, everything remains tidy here. I was able to do a pick up and put away of my "sewing" corner quite easily, which is off the end of our long kitchen table, and then I just set up again this morining! The sewing box is major organizational tool! Okay, I must continue with these! Maybe I'll just get the rounds and cording made for the replacement snowman now.

Z.

Good Morning,

Yes, I did de-list it. If you message me via Etsy, like click on product, any one, and then click "contact seller" and message me like "can these be personalized?". This action allows me to create custom order listing, which would be that specific ornament, for like $1.00 and you choose to buy it or not? THis is how this can work, count as sale, but I don't actually list it, only you see it. How does this sound? You then of course put in your shipping info etc. when you do the purchase. But it's okay if you change your mind or don't want to do.

Glad you were able to proceed with the staining outside!

I finally got through the three vintage snowman icluding the re-do of the skier, and I put an incentive bulk discount in the hopes of a buyer buying all three at once. Not sure if that will, work, I don't really care, but thought maybe it was a shot. I've not heard back that my pattern post is going to be allowed on the buy/sell/trade thing or not. I'm not sure why it wouldn't be, but it probably takes time. I have the embroidery floss, measured out in the red and white for the Santa cookie and cocoa ornaments, also will be three of these, and so I'll be doing the cord making and start stitching those together for the rest of the afternoon. I will be glad to get through these three also.

I've been running laundry and keeping the kitchen tidy while I work through these, that's about it.

Z.

Tuesday Update:
-CB-remembered to empty two more containers of basically dirt....I know, I know...into the trash before they came this morning.  I think this was the last of dead plants, picked weeds and dirt containers from garage by  my car
-yesterday I did a weed pull, leaf pick up of the front yard, looks good.
-I've got one cocoa/Santa cookie ornament finished, it came out well, and I'm part away through another.
-I've put together two  containers, a wire thing and a basket to drop off at a local school district office for an auction they are doing.  I'm doing this for local marketing purposes.  I think they will take a photography and post my contributions to a page also, I'm not sure.  I tried to make them "cute"

So, I need to get showered, dressed and actually go make that delivery then I'll come back and start sewing again to finish.

Shopping:  Um...yes...this has been happening, one reason is I've been looking for rustic, kitchen themed things of interest to set up with my antique butter churn on kitchen cabinets.  So this was a rabbit hole and lead do some absolute impulse purchases, but I think I'm going to like them and I can swap things out for season, interest.  ALso I duplicated a brown crock bean pot I have as that looks lovely at Christmas time, and Thanksgiving, with bouque arranged in it.  However, that pot is currently part of ensemble way up high in my living room and I have no intention of getting up/down to retrieve it and then have a empty hole while up there while I'm using it for flowers.  So this is was an extravagance I realize but I will be using it for flowers regularly.  I won't bore you with the other items, we shall see, there was a lot of clicking going on.  Doink!

Creative:  Okay, so while I will be so very glad to be finished with these next three ornaments, I saw the cutest, holiday  folk art flower and deer combo fabric.  I mean it is just up  my alley and I got some and when it comes, I will be making three more.  it is really unique fabric, so cute.

Z.

-Got the donate items dropped off, will see later if the gal takes a pic of my stuff or not
-stopped by the donation station, dropped two bags of shoes and one medium box of clothes off
-stopped by the store where I was thinking about doing the vendor day, and now I don't think I will do that for really no reason other than, I did not get a good vibe off the owner, so I though, whatever
-stopped in quilting store to see what that was about, it's a place where they have big quilting arms, and threads, not fabric
-stopped by a store to see if they carried something I wanted, answer is no
-stopped by Target and got baby gifts and acouple gift cards to send off which I'll package probably tomorrow to take to the mail.

Hooray on the 911 raking job. Yikes on hail! Good work on the admin work and your steps, You rock!

If you were to just message, like an e-mail, on etsy an include your mailing address, I can just send it to you? This would be the simplest! I'm not going to sell that one and I don't want to go back and figure out how to reinforce what I did on it. Would love to jsut send you. I have an old address in my Pirate Ship Pitney Bowes application but I'm not sure if: 1. it's still valid, 2. I would never send anything without asking first.

This morning I took care of a favor my sister asked me to do. I'm almost finished with the 2nd Santa Cookie/Cocoa ornament. when I'm done stitching this one, I will dress, prepare the gift package I need to mail, go do that, go to a store that does have the thing I'm looking for then spend time outside cutting back my tall Karl Forster grasses, we are supposed to get yucko weather starting tomorrow so would be nice to get this done. IT can be done in spring, but the yard looks tidier when snowfall doesn't crush and splay the stalks all about. I read you can do either fall or spring. I did fall last year so will do again.

Procrastination Stitching: The cause for this is that invisible thread is really a challenge to work with, though I do seem to get some tricks going with it, it's just slow going. But also when you get near the end, it's hard to do the join, twist, join it all together, so it's tidy, don't have a lot of stitches and knots showing, though, you really do have to add a lot of stitchen, go-rounds, and knots at this point of it. I'm not a professional so just muddling through the best I can in a way that looks good, I hope but it's hard to proceed with next steps sometimes, kwim?

Creative: Well, yes, I took my Horned Owl Pattern, which actually was my least favorite between the two owl looks, I added a scarf, then I may have "Jumped the Shark" but yes, I did one with a hat too. Oh well, someone will enjoy looking at those...lol! So that is done!

I took my post off the marketing FB page I was going to do, because something said I might be inviting problems somehow after reading through a bunch of other stuff.

That's it for now, 1. Stitch, 2. Dress, 3. Package, 4. Post Office/Store, 5. Cut Grasses, 6. Carve my Jack-o-lantern!

Z.

Oh no! I'm sorry to hear this news about your family. Good work being able to focus and get through your admin/office work.

Yesterday I did finally find my items at a store, got them. Made a return while out. Packaged the item I need to ship but am waiting on a name verification before writing one of the cards. Came home, cut off/back all the tall Karl Forster grasses and bagged in front yard. I'm very neat about this as Spend time picking up all the little blades and shards and bag those too so they're not messing up the looks of the rocks on our own space as well as where we join neighboring property lines. I love the looks of these grasses, but I don't enjoy those pieces lying about. Then I cut off all the summer stuff out of my two pots and bagged that. DH and I moved the deck furniture and rolled up the outdoor rug, and positioned the furniture for winter.

Creative: I did complete the second Santa Cookies/Cocoa fabric ornament and am about ready to go start on the third now. Yesterday I started messin around with putting a Scrooge Hat, or Frosty the Snowman type hat, on that same owl, and I finished that this morning and also put that in shop.

I'm trying to add followers to my Instagram by following others and did post another reel there yesterday that was a Scottish theme we'll see if that gets views. People are favoriting a lot of needlepoint which is great, sometimes people are favoriting many items. I had more activity with the repeat buyer, interesting, but I like it! The neighborhood person did do aknowledgment post of my donation items, though I don't think many people looked at it, oh well. She seemed happy with what I dropped off which was a Christmas themed basket of items and then an old car/truck themed basket.

Goal for this morning is to finish and list those three new fabric ornaments and then carve my pumpkin. I did make dinner last night and got the kitchen reclaimed this morning.

That's about it.

Z.