InALather (a fellow INCrowd-er) has put together a fabulous little treasury and included my Thank You Card – International! How nice!

Lookie what I got in the mail today!

Bessie, from thelaughingmouse, is the creator of this beautiful clutch and I am in loooove with it! When Bessie contacted me recently about possibly doing a trade, I jumped on it! I checked out her shop but took forever deciding on which fabulous item in her shop I wanted! There were, like, 5 things that I just kept going back and forth to and finally decided on this. I’m actually using it to house my MacBook and it’s perfect! It’s so stylish that you would never guess that there was a laptop hiding away in there!

Bessie wrote about her trade (a Blue Paisley 2009 Planner & matching gift set) on her blog – check it out here. And while you’re at, check out her Etsy shop too at the link above!

Just wanted to pop in for a quick update!

The day job is still stressful but now for a more positive reason. Without going into great detail, there have been some changes in staffing that has really helped to make the work environment so much more positive! It’s sad but I have to say that I actually like my job again! I am still stressed but now more because of all the work we have ahead of us and the energy it takes and not so much because of one person that’s bringing down the whole team. So yay!

As for my “fun” job, I’m getting back on track with Etsy business which is always nice. I’ve realized that I’m sticking to somewhat of a schedule nowadays. Brady is usually in bed by 8:30 p.m. and thank goodness for wireless internet and the baby Mac so I can get some work done upstairs. It’s typically right before our bed time that I go to the shop and do another posting or relisting, check out the blog, and answer emails, etc.

I read one of those “Quit Your Day Job” interviews on Etsy (can’t remember which artist it was) and one thing say said was how important it was to continuously create new items. This really struck me because I’m great at relisting, but not so much with creating new things. I get on a kick some days and get a whole bunch of new things created and then the spurt goes away. I was thinking about my buying habits and I realized that if a place like The Gap (one of my favorite stores!) always had the same thing each time I came to the store, I would probably stop going there after a while. I realized my customers probably feel the same way – stop by the shop, see the same things, and go on to the next who may have listed some new things.

So…I’m determined to list 3-5 new things each month. I started this month and I’ve noticed that my number of hearts have steadily increased since. Not only that, creating new things has me always thinking about the shop in the back of my head and everywhere I look now it seems I see inspiration for a new product.

That’s all for now – hope to post a new “Take 5″ interview soon!

Check out one of the new products in the shop!

The set includes a medium notebook, 3 blank flat notecards, 3 envelopes, 3 stickers/envelope seals, and last but not least 2 binder clips. All the items have matching patterned paper – this one in Amy Butler.

I loved putting this set together! There is another one in the shop in another pattern but I’m looking forward to putting more sets together.

Get yours here!

The Jack Johnson variety, that is…not Jack + Coke.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been stressed. A little bit of everything has come into play but the good thing is it’s not been over anything that really matters like health or family. So why stress then? Well, it’s about my day job (damn day jobs!) and it’s been big enough the past few weeks that it’s actually gotten me down.

But tonight was different. My parents were kind enough to take the baby and the hubby and I could get some R & R time to ourselves. I opted to go upstairs, sprawl out on the bed with various magazines, my trusty Nintendo DS, and the MacBook.

The best part of all – a little Jack goes along way. I popped that CD in and just let the good vibes flow. After about an hour, I felt like myself again!

It’s been a little while since I’ve written a post so I thought I’d pop in for a minute to say hi!

Here in Indy we got over a foot of snow in about a 24 hour period which caused my “day job” office to close on Wednesday. It was a nice surprise and we took full advantage of the snow day and hibernated all day.

I’m back to work today although I would much rather be drowning in all the paper goodness at home. It’s been so long since I’ve been able to work on creating new things and I think I’m in major need of a mental health/crafting day. With the holidays, planner orders, Brady’s birthday party and so on, it’s been a never ending slew of events and things to plan/work on.

I did recently purchase Adobe Photoshop Elements for the baby Mac (MacBook, that is) and I’m looking forward to learning it and finally putting some pages together for Brady. He’s got a ton of pictures – none of which have been scrapbooked. (Bad mommy!) I’ve never worked with digital scrapbooking – I’ve always done the old school traditional books but with time at such a premium, I figured that by the time I get set up, complete a page, and put everything up, I could have a digital page done. That and when Brady goes to bed, I can take the laptop with me and work to my hearts content and still be able to stay close to him!

Ahhh…multi-tasking. And I thought I was good at it before but as a mommy I find that I just keep learning to do it better!

Happy Monday!

Leigh Anne and Sherra from iLashGirls.com contacted me through Etsy recently and asked if I would be interested in taking part in a blog giveaway. Their website is “a gathering place for women by women.” One look at their site and I knew I had to do it!

So…check out the post here. All you have to do to enter the giveaway is leave a comment at the bottom of their blog post for Keepsake Couture by midnight PST, Friday, January 9th. Three (yes, three!) winners will be chosen at random on Saturday, January 10th.

Good luck!

Yesterday, on Jan. 2, Amy from The Peach was kind enough to tell me that I was on the front page. I got her message just in time to see it live on the front page and take a screen shot of it. Check it out!

January 2nd of every year is always the busiest for me as I try to wrap up all book keeping activities for the previous year.

Wrapping up 2007 last year was a little rocky – I has just started KC and still trying to figure out what I needed/wanted to track and how to best do it. It was then that I decided to make a new, all-encompassing worksheet that divied everything up by categories (as selected by me and some by my tax preparer) to track all my spending from craft supplies, shipping supplies, shipping costs, etc. It is one big worksheet!

So today I”ve spend the day wrapping up the numbers for 2008. Some conclusions I’ve come to so far are:

• I nearly doubled my anticipated expenses for the year. Wow – this is not good. (But there’s a good explanation for this – see below.)
• Of my total yearly dollars spent, over 55% of it was dedicated to technology type items, i.e. my trusty old Dell had crashed in the spring and I had to get a new computer…and another one…and a new printer. Not to mention the software I needed to get going. (See, I told you I had a good explanation!) This total alone nearly explains why my expense budget nearly doubled.
• The other larger percentages weren’t all that large – 11.13% on craft supplies (patterned paper, card stock, chipboard, spirals, etc.) The third largest category was shipping costs which came in at 6.38%

I’ve decided that for the upcoming year, I’ll go by the budget I had set for 2008 and I don’t think I’ll have a problem sticking to it, given that I don’t have anymore computer problems.

I’m excited because over the past 1.5 years I’ve acquired so much stuff and I’m looking forward to actually USING those things instead of shopping for more, which should help out tremendously with overall costs!

Happy accounting to all!

I got a nice convo on Etsy from Myfawny to let me know that she’s featured one of the KC planners in her last treasury blog post of 2008! Thanks Myfawny! Check out the blog post here!