The Winter Blues

Sorry I’ve been absent lately.  We are starting to get our lives back to “normal” after the craze of the holidays.  So what has our 2012 been like so far?

Cats: Specifically Sam.  $600 in vet bills later and nothing has really changed.  He goes back to the vet next week to have blood work done again to see if his white blood cell count is back down to normal.  For now, he’s still not using the litter box as he should, but he stopped peeing on the couch (big plus) and he’s still his normally bitchy self.  We’ll see what the vet says next week.

Medical: I’ve had 2 doctor’s appointments myself this past week.  I have finally established with a new doc up here and had blood work done.  I’ve been off of my thyroid meds for a few months now and while it really messed me up now my body doesn’t seem to need it.  My levels are on the border of normal and so they don’t think I need to medicate it.  I still have a severe iron deficiency and so I’ll continue to be on iron pills.  I also have some girlie issues that will hinder me getting pregnant (which we want to do shortly) and so for now I’m on some progesterone pills to even that out and fingers crossed nothing additional is wrong that will cause more visits.

Magnets: I’m happy to say that orders are much calmer now but we’re still seeing sales every day and a little stream of orders is better than nothing.  It’s a nice change to have some additional income coming in but not have to work ourselves into the ground.  We’re at the brink of having a whole new method for creating them which I’m very excited about.  Will cut almost all of our production time in creating and we’ve also found a new distributor to cut our costs.  Definitely excited about that.  And we created a romance set for Valentine’s Day.  No bites yet but I wanted to make sure we got it done and crossed off our list.

Scott’s Art: I’m ecstatic to say that Scott’s art shop is booming!  While January is notoriously horrible for Etsy sales, he has had the highest grossing month ever (holiday months not included) and we still have over a week left.  It seems some of his newer pieces that took so much time are really paying off.  He’s also working on a couple custom items for a customer which will be amazing.  He’s also on the brink of launching another art shop full of cool new styles, I can’t wait to show it off for him!  I need to take some product photos for him today and we’re hoping he can get that shop up in the next week or so.

Flowers: I’ve had my flower shop closed for a few months now.  I’m excited to say that it won’t be for much longer.  I’ve been testing some new techniques to have similar flowers to what I had at a MUCH lower production rate.  I just couldn’t justify the time they were taking me and so I’ve found a way to slice down the time and have a product that is almost the same as I had before.  I’ll keep you posted as I get some items completed. And I’ll need to reassemble my light box to be able to take photos again, ugh.

Overall businesses: Yesterday we decided to make ourselves a schedule.  There are not enough hours in the day for all we want to do and trying to work full time, run all of these businesses, relax a bit plus get all our personal creativity ventures done is proving to be very difficult.  We’re going to try out this new schedule that helps us focus on one area a day so we don’t feel like we need to split ourselves 7 ways at a time and allows us time for personal projects like scrapbooking, photography, Scott’s book, etc and time off to veg out in front of the TV or go adventuring around Oregon.  We’ll see how it goes. :)

Winter: I’m done with winter.  The first few weeks of cooler temps and rain was nice.  But now that we’re knee deep into the rainy season, I’m ready for summer.  It’s cold it’s wet and it’s old.  I was like a kid on Christmas this past weekend however when we had our first snowfall.  Growing up in Chicago snow is no big deal and it’s irritating while trying to get to work.  But when you haven’t seen it in years and you don’t have to commute anywhere, it’s beautiful!!  It snowed on and off for a few days over the weekend, no more than an inch but it brought a smile to my face (and the kitten sat on my desk and meowed at the snow while I worked).  We were supposed to get 4-6″ yesterday but the temps were higher than they expected and instead we got rain.  And now it is rain rain rain all day every day.

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House hunting: Our home buyers seminar was postponed this week due to weather (which there didn’t end up being any of but whatever) and so we have it next week.  I’m excited to learn all we need to know about buying a house which is a main goal for us this year.  We also spent time wandering on the WA side of the river last weekend and found a great little town that is our new fav.  Camas is about 20 minutes East of Vancouver, totally commutable to get to more civilization, but is a smaller town on the Columbia with trees and hills and lakes and is just what we’re looking for.  We drove around the area a lot and have been looking at houses we like.  Excited at the prospects of narrowing our search and lining up more ducks on the home buying front.

That’s it for now!  Hope everyone is doing well.  I need to make myself a schedule to get back to posting more often but happy that I’ve at least caught you up on life in Portland. :)

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Not a Good Start for Cats

So yesterday on our final day off we had planned on staying in, relaxing, doing some business work and generally trying to enjoy our last long weekend.  Until I came down stairs to find that someone peed on the couch.  This is the 3rd time in the last week or two.  Last time was only a couple days ago and we completely took the couch apart, washed the coverings, used vinegar, baking soda and oxyclean to clean the pads, base, etc to ensure the smell was completely out.  We have these cool motion detectors that sense when something is near and then they beep and squirt air to keep the cats away.  He someone either outsmarted the detector or didn’t care and did his business anyway.

Since it has been so frequent, we decided to take him to the vet to ensure he didn’t have any medical issue, UTIs can be very painful and dangerous for male cats so I was thinking that might be the reason.  We were able to get him into the vet right away and they wanted to do blood work, a urinalysis and general exam.  Of course someone was being too upset and so they also had to sedate him.  Most of the day and $450 later, so far nothing is really wrong with him.  The urinalysis came back clean, blood work results will be in today.  She said his anal glands were full, ewww, and those were “expressed” which is to say emptied.

When we got him home I think he was still dopy from the sedation and he was this weird almost good cat!  He didn’t walk around meowing like normal and he kept going to the cusion he was peeing on and licking it.  Odd, but I’ll take licking the couch over peeing on it.  He was VERY alert and generally calm.  Very odd and a bit creepy but it was a nice change!

This morning he seems to be back to his bitchy self of meowing a lot.  Currently he is passed out on my desk in my office.  We’ll see how it goes tonight and we’ll see if the blood work shows anything.  The vet said that he has a pretty nasty tooth that really needs to be fixed and that’s another $950…we’ll have to see what we can do about that.

A couple days into 2012 and all our Etsy money is disappearing more quickly than I had hoped.  Now is the best time I suppose but hope that the income increases and the expenses decrease at an appropriate rate. :)


UPDATE 1/4: After posting this yesterday morning, we got a call from the vet and they had his blood work results in.  Turns out his white cell count was double what it should be, which means a pretty bad infection.  The vet thinks he has inflammation and infection in his intestines.  Sam got to visit the vet again last night to get a couple shots of anti-inflammatory and anti-biotics to help.  We get to go back in 3 weeks to get his blood tested again to ensure that the meds are working, she was pretty concerned about his levels.  Another $100, it has been an expensive 2012 so far! :)

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2011 Business Review

After a busy but successful 2010 holiday season for Scott’s shop, Skahfee Studios we started out 2011 with a laundry list of things to accomplish on the business side of life.  Scott wanted to create more art pieces, I wanted to create new colors and products for my rose line.

Like most years, we are so burnt out after the holiday that we don’t do much for the first few months of the year.  The same was the case in 2011 for Scott’s shop.  I managed to get some new flowers done before the Valentine’s Day rush but didn’t see much in the way of sales.

In the spring when we were planning the move to Oregon, all of the business stuff was put on hold to prepare for our long journey.  We closed both of our shops in May and June to pack, travel and unpack.  Once our new house was all set up we started to jump back into the businesses.

For Scott, this meant creating a ton of new art work, including new Harry Potter pieces, Doctor Who, Warcraft, etc.  He worked his little butt of throughout the summer and fall to get new art into his shop that he knew would draw in traffic.  In the end it was well worth it as some of his newer pieces blew away the long standing Star Wars prints he’s done.

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After moving I was unmotivated to work on the flower business.  I bought a ton of new materials to work on new favor items and after only 1 day of experimenting, I put it all away.  The flowers I create are pretty, but they take a LONG time and I wasn’t in the mood to spend so much time on items that didn’t didn’t sell very well.

Only a few months being here in the amazing beauty of Oregon nature I had a pile of photos that I thought were fairly decent and I decided to try my hand at selling some of my nature art.  I started up the Kelly Smith Photography shop.  I spent a lot of time editing photos and putting items up and I found that photography on Etsy is just as crazy competitive as jewelry.  There is a ton of it and it is very difficult to get noticed.  I didn’t have more than a couple sales, but I’ve continued to take photos and post new items as I can.

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In September in the middle of a long WoW gaming night, Scott and I had the idea of doing some magnetic poetry.  A quick Etsy search found that there is nearly no competition and so we began researching costs, supplies, etc.  Within 1 week we had a list of over 40 themes we wanted to create, we had tested creating the magnets, we had a brand and packaging we are quite proud of.  It took us a few weeks to create a dozen or so themes and get photos and listings ready for our new shop and in the middle of October, Refrigerator Prose was born.  Unlike some of our other shops, this one was a hit right away.  Since we started the shop so late in the year, we immediately started creating inventory and did some last minute new themes before the holiday rush.

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I spent most of November working in my spare time on cutting magnet sets to prep for Black Friday.  After 2010, we knew we had to be prepared for a larger rush and so we had about 100 magnet sets ready to go before Thanksgiving.  We really thought we were prepared for the holiday season this year.  Those 100 sets I thought would get us through the season?  They lasted 1 week.  We immediately knew we were in trouble.  Unlike Scott’s art which is nice and cut and all ready to go, our magnets need to be cut…by hand.  So we spent every waking moment from Thanksgiving until a few days before Christmas cutting magnet sets.  The 18-19 hour days were very rough.  I had a couple meltdowns from exhaustion.  It didn’t help that Nov/Dec is also the busiest time for both of us at work.  I work in health care so 1/1 implementation season is a nightmare.  Scott works for a greeting card company in customer service where everyone gets their holiday cards ordered.  By the time the holiday rush was over we were completely exhausted.

In the end it was a very successful business season for us.  The new magnet shop generated 5 digit sales in the just 2.5 months we were open in 2011.  We sold over 780 magnet sets during that time.  No wonder my hands hurt!

For Scott’s shop, we also saw 5 digit sales and just shy of 5 digit profits as well.  He saw a 400% increase in profit from 2010 to 2011, definitely a success.  We managed to decrease his costs, increase his quality with a new print supplier, better his shipping supplies and almost double the amount of items in his shop.  All of that extra work really paid off in the end.

Our Etsy businesses allowed us to have a very nice Christmas, it paid for a new washing machine after our rental houses’ died, it paid for a new media PC after our old one died, it helped us pay off all of our credit card debt and we still have a nice little pile in savings for a down payment for a house.  We spent $1,000 in the last few days of the year bulking up on shipping supplies and magnets so we can have a bunch of inventory handy.

While everyone else was out partying and drinking to ring in the new year yesterday, we were at home with laptops on laps working on our businesses.  We managed to get all of our income and costs tracked for all businesses.  Scott managed to get all of our receipts scanned and prepped for tax time.  We don’t do New Years resolutions anymore, instead we do business project planning.  I have a nice spreadsheet of 60+ things we need to accomplish this year on the businesses to prepare us for the next holiday season and some of those aren’t small tasks.

  • We’re hoping to increase inventory on the magnets after being very unprepared by the sales numbers this year.
  • We want to increase the items in all of our shops to get more keyword hits and more products out there.
  • I want to try and get back into the flower shop.  I have some new designs I want to try and new products and areas to reach into.  I need to ensure if I do get back into the flowers that it makes sense profit wise for me to do so.
  • We are very excited to potentially have a new magnet cutting method that will revolutionize what we are currently doing – can’t wait to see how it turns out, more to come later :)
  • Scott has a whole new art idea in mind, which would mean opening another Etsy shop (I know I know, we have a lot of them already).  Could potentially be exactly what we need, a high profile item with very searchable keywords, lower effort and time to create and NO work on printing and shipping.  Could be the perfect business.
  • We need to get into more marketing and networking.  The art and magnet shops kind of run themselves in that having highly popular themes allows people to stumble upon us quite easily.  We also want to make sure we have good SEO and can pull others into our shops though.

Besides the mound of business goals we want to hit, we also did a list for personal goals.  And not the “I want to lose 100 pounds” type of resolutions (although that is a big one for us this year, hence the new treadmill).  We get so busy with our day jobs and all of these businesses, that we don’t get time to do the other personal creative ventures we want.

Scott has his first novel on the edge of being complete.  He has another book and a web comic he wants to work on.  I want to learn more about photography, which is mostly personal but could also be good for my business.  I started a wedding scrapbook when we got married in 2006 and here we are almost 6 years later and it’s only about 30% done.  I REALLY want to have time to get that thing done as I know once we have kids I’ll want to focus on baby photos forever.

I’m also excited that after a whole year of crazy schedules, Scott will be moving back to a traditional Monday-Friday work schedule in mid-January.  It has been hard only having 1 day off together a week.  It has made weekend trips nearly impossible and it has meant that our 1 day a week is usually spent running errands together.  Now we’ll have more time to be together (and lets face it, we only have each other here) and more time to get out and explore more of this great state we live in.

We have so much to be thankful for.  Etsy has become a steady stream of income for us.  It has made us true business owners and I believe in 2012 it will allow us to survive without Scott’s day job income when we have kids because the shops will be able to completely replace his current income.  Not many people get to work for themselves and I’m happy to say that I think that day is coming soon for us, at least for half our household.  Thank you Etsy for existing and thank you to all of the people that support small businesses.  We’ve had some wonderful feedback from our customers this year and we’ve heard multiple times that people are buying handmade and want to support us over the big box chains.  We couldn’t be happier with what we’ve gotten involved in.

Now go out and start your own Etsy shop! Happy New Year to all!!! :)

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2011 Smith Year in Review

The past 2 months have flown by in a matter of seconds, thinking back to January seems like 3 years ago.  We’ve had quite a year, so here is a little (probably not) bit about what 2011 was like for us.

We started out 2011 with a huge milestone.  We managed to have a great Christmas in 2010 and paid off all of our credit card debt before ringing in the new year.  It was the first time we were credit card debt free since we were both in high school.

The fall of 2010 we took the most amazing road trip all the way down the West coast and when we came home we decided that we wanted to seriously consider moving from Los Angeles.  We spent the beginning of 2011 researching Seattle and Portland and finally decided that Portland was to be our new home.

For Valentine’s Day we again took advantage of the closeness of Vegas to home and we spent an extended weekend gambling, eating good food and staying at the amazing Bellagio.

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At the beginning of April, we flew to Portland to scout for a new home.  Our lease was up in June so we needed to find a place in just a few days and hopefully sign a lease before flying back to LA.  We looked at a half dozen houses that were twice the size of our LA apartment and for $300-$400 less so we were very happy with that.  We enjoyed some local food and jazz and found a house to rent.  Only catch was that the place was currently vacant and we needed to move in right away.  So we flew back home and had 3 weeks to pack and move to Portland.

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With our car beyond packed and the kitties nicely drugged, we headed onto the open road at the end of May to our new destination.  It was exciting and scary.  We’ve moved a LOT, we’ve moved away from most of our friends and family, but this was the first time we moved away from everyone.  We had friends in LA and my mom for a short time.  In Portland we knew not a single person (and 6 months later we still don’t).  It’s been difficult but well worth it.

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It was our first house, even if it wasn’t OURS.  The prospect of quiet neighbors, no loud parties or barking dogs or slamming doors was amazing.  Upon arriving to our new cul de sac, we found that there are about a dozen kids that live in the 5 houses around us and they allllll play in the street.  And the boys next door play lacrosse in the backyard, hit balls over the fence and then hop the fence into our yard to get them.  Rude!  Our nice neighbor next door informed us that the kids are only crazy for 3 weeks and he was totally right.  Then everyone went off on vacation or camp or something and it’s been fairly dead every since.

We’ve spent a lot of our time here exploring the amazing amounts of green nature that Oregon has to offer.  We’ve been hiking and have visited many parks in the area and have taken advantage of the amazing fresh produce at all of the local farmers markets on our “Sunday Funday”s.  The one day off a week that Scott and I shared that we could leave the house and see the sights.

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After we left LA, Scott needed to find a new job here in Portland.  After only 6 weeks, his old employer called him and asked him to come on as an independent contractor.  He was able to pick up right where he left off and now he gets to work from home.  I’ve been doing the same since 2008, so now we get to be home together in offices next door to each other.  We have no commute which is great on our car and extra time in the day.  Perfect!

Our anniversary is around July 4th so it is always crazy anywhere we want to go.  We spent an extended weekend traveling Oregon again.  A day taking a second trip East to Multomah Falls, Hood River and Mt Hood and a day heading West to the coast, which was on the 4th.  The crowds and traffic were insane in all of the small beach towns but we had a great time exploring.

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Getting more into photography here having such great landscapes to capture, I’ve also been ecstatic that throughout the warm months we have TONS of hummingbirds!

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For Labor Day we planned an extended weekend on the beach again.  We planned to relax on the beach for a day and then drive up the coast a bit and spend a day in Astoria, the most amazing place we fell in love with on our road trip last fall.  After a great beach day we packed up the car and got on the road.  Traffic was backed up, the woman behind us wasn’t paying attention and so we had our first major accident.  We were stranded while on vacation out of town on a holiday.  It was impossible to get a rental car and it took forever just to get a cab to the hotel and we were stranded a little longer than we anticipated.  We tried our best to enjoy the weekend while we could but it was still very stressful and scary.

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Once our car was totaled we got to go shopping for a new car again!  And we ended up with a cute little compact SUV.

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In September I spent 9 days in Texas helping take care of my mom after she had surgery.  It was great to get some time with her and to help her out around the house.  It came only a couple days after Scott threw his back out and I was worried that something would happen to him being back in Portland all alone but in the end his back healed itself after a few weeks.

This fall we were amazed by all the color in the Pacific Northwest.  Los Angeles don’t have a ton of what I consider normal trees and they don’t change like we knew growing up in the mid-west.  Here in Portland?  INSANE beauty!

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We had an amazing time going to the pumpkin patch and to an apple orchard, making tons of fall goodies from scratch.  We spent Thanksgiving alone again this year but had a wonderful feast like we always do.  I took advantage of 5 days off together and had an insane 3-day 40+ hour bakathon and made a TON of cookies for family and friends.

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After Thanksgiving things became hectic with the businesses and we haven’t had a ton of time to do much else but we managed to get away for a few days for our birthday and we spent some chilly time at the beach.

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We paid for those few days away and we spent the next couple weeks working 18 hour days between our day jobs and the businesses.  Luckily we were able to get everything done and enjoy the Christmas season for the last few days.

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All in all it has been a good year for us.  We started the year paying off debt, we are also ending the year paying off debt.  We have some money tucked away to potentially buy a house next summer.  Our new business was a success and our current business almost doubled in sales from 2010.  We have enjoyed time with family and friends and we’ve moved to this beautiful new place that we hope to stay until we’re old.  We have a lot planned for 2012 – new businesses, new products in our current businesses, hopefully a new home and we’re hoping this will be the last New Years with only 2 Smith’s in the house.

Hope everyone else had a great year and if not, may 2012 be the best one yet!

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Until Next Year

Now is the time the sadness usually rolls in.  Christmas is over.  All the presents are open.  There isn’t a big event to get excited about.  The plus side is the insane holiday season is over so our shops are much more manageable.

We have a LOT planned for 2012.  I’m planning on doing some year in review posts on New Years (along with all my trends, costs vs revenue analysis, sigh, I love analysis).  I’m excited for all 2012 has to potentially offer us! :)

So for the next few days the plan is to settle back into normal life.  We have a ton of boxes from presents to break down.  We cleaned the kitchen last night for the first time since before Thanksgiving.  Tonight I want to vacuum for the first time since Thanksgiving (see how busy we’ve been?!).  We’re settling back into having our media computer back up and running (it died and we’ve had 5 weeks of craziness with trying to get a new one back to normal conditions).  We actually have time at night to relax after work.

Santa brought me a ton of new camera accessories.  I have 3 new lenses and a time lapse camera plus a new giant case (SO excited to have more room for everything).  Now if only it would stop raining so I could go experiment with all these new toys!

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New wide angle lens

New Diana lens....you'll see how cool this is when I can take outside photos

New Diana lens....you'll see how cool this is when I can take outside photos

For now, I’ll go enjoy my other present, a cool new treadmill so I can get some of my ass off my ass. :)

Life is good.  Lots to do.  Smiles to be had.

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Pretty Lights

Friday after I got off work, we had a list of light events we wanted to do around the city.  First on our list was to see the supposedly awesome Zoo lights.  Pulling in at 5:00 we could not find a single spot in which to put our car.  Guess we’ll have to do this on Monday night instead, it’s one of the biggest attractions in Portland for holiday displays.

Next up, we headed to The Grotto.  It’s a very pretty church with some beautiful grounds all lite up for the holidays.  We didn’t stay too long.  The chapel was jammed full of people ready to watch some choirs.  We had some hot chocolate and listened to some carolers before heading out and away from the crowds.

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Next on our list was Peacock Lane, another popular stop in Portland for lights.  It’s on the East side of the city in this beautiful neighborhood of Tudor style houses.  The entire street decorates above and beyond with lights.  There’s music, hot chocolate and treats, cops directing traffic and completely packed sidewalks of admirers.  It was a bit insane and we definitely felt the irritation of the holidays crowds in the half hour we spent walking up and down the street, but it was great to see all the lights and displays.

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After successfully coming out of Peacock Lane in one piece we headed across the city again to drive through Winter Wonderland.  The Portland speedway transforms into a drive through light show.  This is similar to the one we used to go to back home in Vernon Hills, IL, but this is the largest holiday light show west of the Mississippi.  TONS of beautiful displays and animated lights, here are just a few.

Starting off was a display for each of the 12 days of Christmas, shown pieced together below.

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And no display would be completely without the juggling Christmas dinos right?! :)

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Merry Moose-mas!

We have had a wonderful Christmas.  We’ve had coffee and cinnamon rolls, had on holiday music, opened presents, had tasty snacks and played with all our new stuff.  But I think Moose had the best day of any of us. :)

All ready to help pull presents out from under the tree....or not

All ready to help pull presents out from under the tree....or not

Did someone say it's time for presents?

Did someone say it's time for presents?

Someone likes his new tunnel

Someone likes his new tunnel

Please don't open these and take my boxes away

Please don't open these and take my boxes away

This burlap sack is mine

This burlap sack is mine

Ohhhh this thing is AWESOME!

Ohhhh this thing is AWESOME!

Hope everyone else had a great holiday!  I have more posts to do, so off I go.  For the last time till next year, Merry Christmas!

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Is it Christmas Yet?

For a brief hour this morning, our magnet open order que was at zero.  That was such a huge milestone for us after the craziness of the last month.  Not only were we able to get all of our orders out on Monday that needed to be received by the holiday, but we also were able to  have a nice big pick up this morning for all the orders received after our deadline.  Now it is back to business as usual as orders trickle in (hopefully) daily as part of the normal cycle.

We have much to be thankful for this year.  Our businesses did very well this holiday season.  I’m currently starting the reporting process of tabulating sales, costs and profit for all our businesses (my favorite time of year!!  Seriously, I love excel and data analysis).  We’ll have some year end wrap up posts after the year has closed out.  Scott and I have a business meeting each year on New Years Day to discuss strategy, project plans, etc and we have a ton to put together for our various businesses for 2012.  Lots of exciting things in the works!

Now that we don’t have to put in 18 hour days fulfilling orders, we can finally enjoy some time to relax.  On tonight’s agenda though…CLEANING.  I have not vacuumed the house in at least 6 weeks so that’ll be fun.  We’re trying to tidy throughout the day but basic dusting and a couple of the bathrooms need to be done.  I want to have a decently cleaned house for Christmas.  Not that we are having company or anything since we don’t know anyone in this state.  It’s just peace of mind and nice to know that I can fully relax on Christmas morning without anything else on my mind that needs to be done.

So now that I actually have a minute to relax and realize what day of the week it is….I’m ready for Christmas!  Only a couple days away but I’m totally ready for tons of good food, music, presents and PJs all day. :)

Happy Holidays everyone!!

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Christmas Ship Parade

We enjoyed our first non-business crazy night last night by heading to Vancouver (Washington not Canada :) ) to have dinner at a great pub chain we love right on the Columbia river and to watch the annual Christmas Ship Parade.  This is a Portland tradition for over 50 years.  Many private yacht owners decorate their boats with lights (many animated) and then they all line up and drive up and down the river.  It was freezing outside, but definitely got us in the holiday spirit with the tons of other people out along the river banks watching the boats.

Trying to take photos in the dark with a zoom lens with no tripod and shivering resulted in a lot of fuzzy photos, but here are a few that turned out plus a short video of some of the ships and the leader giving a little shout out.

All in all a lot of fun and glad we got to relax a bit.  Magnets are scheduled to arrive in a couple hours and then we’ll be pulling a long night again tonight to get the past few days’ orders out the door just so that our que is back down to zero.

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Birthday Weekend 2011 Day 1

This year we opted to spend our birthdays at the beach….in December.  Yeah well we can handle it, we’re from Chicago!  Except that we have California blood in us still so it was a bit nippy. :)

Friday the 9th we packed up the Rogue and headed out to the coast.  Our first stop was to the Oregon Aquarium in Newport.  I love me some marine life and this aquarium is supposed to be the bees knees for Oregon.  Problem is I’m from Chicago and Chicago has an amazing aquarium.  Needless to say, the Oregon version just doesn’t compare.  We arrived pretty late, around 2pm on a Friday afternoon, in December.  You would think it was the zombie apocalypse around there!  There were no more than 10 people in the entire park.  We had lunch in the little cafe with no people around.  We got to wander the small-ish park without encountering any other people more than twice.  It was nice not to hear screaming kids and deal with crowds, but it was a little unnerving to wander around with the silence and feel like you’re being hunted.

 

Sea Squirts swaying in the water

Sea Squirts swaying in the water

They had tons of beautiful moon jellyfish

They had tons of beautiful moon jellyfish

Pacific Sea Nettle - no alteration ehre, this is their color and the color of the tank

Pacific Sea Nettle - no alteration here, this is their color and the color of the tank

Japanese Spider Crabs creepily in the corner.  These suckers are 45 pounds and up to 4 feet across.  Eek!  But also YUM! :)

Japanese Spider Crabs creepily in the corner. These suckers are 45 pounds and up to 4 feet across. Eek! But also YUM! :)

Snuggled Puffin

Snuggled Puffin

Sea lions doing some laps

Sea lions doing some laps

Their 1 otter on display doing laps

Their 1 otter on display doing laps

Stingray in the shark tunnel

Stingray in the shark tunnel

Fresh out of the pool and praying to the sun gods

Fresh out of the pool and praying to the sun gods

Once your dry then it's time for a nap

Once your dry then it's time for a nap

Oregon has some beautiful bridges, and a lot of them.  This is the Yaquina Bay Bridge.

Oregon has some beautiful bridges, and a lot of them. This is the Yaquina Bay Bridge.

After leaving the aquarium and heading back up the coast about a half hour, we stopped at a little ocean side park to watch the sunset and barely made it in time to see the sun fall below the horizon.

 

Beautiful glow

Beautiful glow

So long sun, see you tomorrow

So long sun, see you tomorrow

As the sun finally sets and we turn around to head back to the car, I get to capture the giant full moon peaking right above the tree line.

 

My moon photos never turn out so I was excited this one did

My moon photos never turn out so I was excited this one did

Back up the coast to Lincoln City to check into our beach front hotel.

 

A decent bed, a gas fireplace, a kitchenette aannnnddd....

A decent bed, a gas fireplace, a kitchenette aannnnddd....

...a GIANT whirlpool!  We spent about 5 hours over the 2 days in that tub sipping booze and finally getting to relax

...a GIANT whirlpool! We spent about 5 hours over the 2 days in that tub sipping booze and finally getting to relax

We had dinner at Mo’s, a “seafood” restaurant right across the street from our hotel.  We should have left after walking in.  Long picnic tables with no real chairs.  Ok.  Shrimp artichoke dip with those mini shrimp that aren’t really shrimp.  Ok.  Clam chowder that tasted like ass.  Hmmmm. Ok.  Then the entrees.  I had shrimp skewers which were decent, with mashed potatoes.  They couldn’t have been potatoes.  It was like terrible potato buds from a box that had been sitting in a warming pan for a few days.  Really thick like glue and didn’t even taste like food.  Scott had shrimp alfredo pasta.  Again with the creepy mini shrimp and the sauce,….it tasted just like the clam chowder.  We didn’t eat much and tried to quickly leave.  The waitress seeing our plates mostly full comped one of our meals which was nice but we’ll never feel the need to go back to a Mo’s.  Ever.

Check out our day 2 here!

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