Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Tuesday Tea

nearly every British and Irish home owns a Brown Betty Teapot. The dark brown and black color won't show staining and it's round pot-bellied shape causes the leaves to be gently swirled around as boiling water is poured onto the leaves.

Sunday, June 28, 2009

Sunday, Hot Hot Hot!

I believe I owe Ms. Lisa over atLilfish Studio a picture of where her awesome reclaimed leather sunflowers ended up ^_^



My flower beds are also a riot of color right now. I could've swore I pulled up all my gladiolas from 2 years ago because of a bad bought of rust, but I've had some troopers pop up here and there. Maybe I'll put some more in next Spring.




Check out my salvia too!

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Tuesday Tea

Dim Sum, loosely translated as touch of the heart, began as a mid to late afternoon snack and has evolved into breakfast and lunch. Restaurants serve small samplings of delicious foods such as steamed dumplings and turnovers which are always accompanied by tea.

I REALLY wish there was a Dim Sum in our area much less our state. I can dream!

Monday, June 22, 2009

Sometimes....It Really IS That Funny



Sing the jingle for more hilarity. For the record that is not my cat. It's one of the many LOLCats found on icanhascheeseburger.com
Some mornings are alot like this. You win some, you loose some. Right now the wedding invitations are totally winning all my free time and this makes me sad. I do plan on trying to take at least the next 3 days to diligently plot out 3 more cushions, sew them AND take pictures. But wedding invitations are SLIGHTLY more pressing at the moment.

It's been on the drawing board about what to do with Tumus. I've been pondering it quite hard the last few weeks as a friends on Etsy and IRL can tell you. There may come a point where you have to cut your losses and go with something new. The "new" Tumus has been running circles around in my head, how do I transition, SHOULD I transition or just do a clean cut, will this be a good business move, what on earth do I do with all that inventory? The last part is especially baffling because, not to whine and moan about it, but my beloved bunnies and cats just have not hit like I was convinced they would. This depresses me greatly. I have decided that Tumus will move towards a more seasonal and slightly "primitive" genre.

Not to worry though! The dog ornaments that so many loved last Holiday will still be available thru Tumus with a few more breeds added into the mix :)

Where does the day go?
Did everyone have a good Father's Day?

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

I'm Creating I Promise!

I've been dreadfully lax on my photography as of late and promise a well deserved blurb of photos and a new pincushion over on Pinpinn soon.

The invitations have taken over my dining room table so my one space to photograph products has been in use for about 2 weeks now. I will have to improvise soon :lol: I discovered that there's no way I'll be able to hole punch all my invites and this will require me having to have Chris help me out. This is because my hand strength is definitely compromised with as much typing and data entry I do in a day. My tendons and joints flare up more frequently and frankly I can't keep taking Advil to mask the pain.

I'll have to suck it up and get to a doctor about it very soon :( If only I had a job in gardening or something OTHER than data entry. It would be alot easier on the ol' hands.
Would you believe that sewing doesn't aggravate it nearly as bad?

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Stormy Midwest


I have a love hate of thunderstorms and a bizzare fear of tornadoes. Though I've never personally been in one I can say I've had some VERY close calls with them and I've witnessed first hand the damage to my house, our neighbor's houses and my community. Still I'm fascinated by the weather. I want to find these storms and document them and study them. I want to know why they happen and how I can become more aware and help others read the sky.

Here you can see how strong the upper levels were when this storm rolled thru. Look at how it's shearing off the top to create that classic anvil look. This was a hail producing storm over Dayton about 2 weeks ago.



You can see it rolling in on itself here. I believe there might have been a possible
tornado warning with this one but no damage other than the hail and wind were reported.



And somehow my pepper plant survived it all.

Tuesday Tea

Back in 2000 it was estimated that the US only had approx. 200 active tea shops, compared to today 2009 where there are over 1,700!

Tea totally wins.
We even have a new tea shop that's local and serves, from what I'm told, a fine cup of high tea. I REALLY need to seek this place out.

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Riding A Tsunami Or At Least That's What It Feels Like

My push to get my name or rather Pinpinn's name out there is proving successful. Like ridiculously successful. But I know all too well that even though front page success comes hard earned and hard fought it doesn't always lead to a sale.

That's okay though. Here's where my new advertising push comes in. It's started yesterday and already my stats are showing a nice steady rise in views and I'm feeling more driven by all the interest I've sparked. I've hit the nail apparently and am just astounded that it keeps coming. I never believed in self-marketing until now. I mean for real. It really works. For my inital investment it's just paving the way to marvelous things!



I've also been super busy with getting few more orange and pear pincushions made and getting more wedding invitations cut out. AHH my poor hand! Silly OT here at the "9-5" job is also killing any Etsy time I might have at the end of the day. Somewhere in there I'll find sleep, Chris, and maybe finish the laundry.

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Tuesday Tea

Accordng to 18th cen. tea merchants, fake tea was made up of dried, baked ash leaves, steeped in copperas with sheep dung and then dried on the floor.

Ew "fake tea"?!

Wonders never cease!

Monday, June 8, 2009

A fairly successful weekend, woot!

The wedding reality is sinking in a bit more now. While I'm not panicked (yet LOL) I feel a bit more stress as final details are still getting ironed out. So once again I put myself to work this weekend on getting invitations made (I have to make 150). This will definitely be an ongoing process this coming weekend as I need to get all the main invites done and then work on the response cards and find envelopes for them as well.
Deadline for these is August. Should be able to get that situated without much ado.

I managed to get one new pincushion done for Pinpinn and decided to give ye olde ArtFire a go with some of Tumus' items over there. I want to see if the traffic equals the same amount and if I can sell more there since there are NO listing fees, just a flat rate subscription which I must admit is more affordable than Etsy at the moment. We'll see. I'm going to sink about 2 months into it and if doesn't work out I'll pull it and move back to Etsy.

I've splurged a bit and decided to advertise on CraftCult! Woo HOO! This is pretty big for me as it's my first legit advertising splurge and I've been really looking forward to it. I'm very eager to see how much traffic it drives over to the shop. BUT that means I need to get more items out there!! EEP! Pinpinn also managed to get an alternate on one of Sunday's FP on Etsy AND a shout out in a Storque Article in the mini treasury there. Hooray for promotion ^_^

I've had some pretty odd pincushion designs floating around in my head as well as a few basic ones. We'll see how soon they end up coming to life. I'll be sketching at my desk this afternoon working out details as I while away the day.

Sometimes it's like the weekend never existed for me.

Friday, June 5, 2009

Old & Familiar

I keep resurrecting my old habit of going to the library. Whether it's out of my own guilt of having little money to spend on small things like a paperback or my eco-concious worry of how many trees Barnes & Noble publishers have shredded I always come back to the same place. The library.

I don't know why people have forgotten the simplicity of checking out a book. Or having a hard to find, sought after series arrive in your name and sit, waiting on a shelf for you. It's like libraries should almost be put on the endangered species list. Not enough people remember what they used to do there. Technology has absolutely killed our desire to feel tattered pages between our thumb and finger.

I like to think I've become a familiar face at the library again. I'm learning where all the sections are. Where the new books arrive, how fast things are re-shelved. Each library has it's own ebb and flow. Though my local branch is small it's mighty and I can pull books from all over the State and even if no one in the wide network has the one obscure thing I'm looking for they can put it on a suggested buying list.
That's cool.

The library is like it's own little ecosystem of recycled treasure. I went back thru the young children's section the other day and decided on a whim to check out On the Banks of Plum Creek by Laura Ingels Wilder and Bunnicula. I felt a strange familiarity reading them again. It took me back to when I used to read on my hour long bus ride to and from school every day. Devouring book after book. I decided to do a bit of exploration to see if I could find books I'd read all those years ago. I found the Redwall series. Hello God, Are you there? It's me Margret. SuperFudge. Number the Stars. Sing Down the Moon. Old R.L. Stein Books. Indian In The Cupboard, Where the Red Fern Grows, Hatchet, Maniac McGee, Roald Dahl books.......
It was like a very strange rediscovery seeing the book covers again. I can't believe I used to read so much. I'd read nearly anything I could when I was younger.

Now my workdays and Etsy seem to take up all the spare time I ever have. It's no excuse so I have to resort back to reading before bedtime and during lunch. Counting on those old pages to take me out of my daily stress.

Those books that seem so old now still hold a place on shelves and wait idly for the right kid to walk past. I'll never know how I happened on them to begin with, but it made me feel happy just seeing them again.
Like for one tiny bit the world was just a-okay.

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Tuesday Tea (a bit late!)

Apologies for the late tea, but I've been very wrapped up in things and forgot what day of the week it was, ha!

I came across a really tasty butter that you must make for yourself! This would go GREAT with biscuits, toast or even bagels:

Strawberry Tea Butter:

You'll need: 10 oz of frozen strawberries (or fresh) with 1 stick of softened butter, 1/2 cup of powder sugar and about a teaspoon of grated orange zest.

What to do: Puree it all together in a food processor until smooth, then spread on a biscuit and ENJOY!
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