Trying to take it easy this month, as January is the month traditionally has tried to kill me I’ve decided to not “do” anything this month. So that means, no real projects, no deadlines, nothing that “needs” to be done save making dinner cuddling puppies and the odd walk in the winter wonderland to snap some pics like the one above. And lots and lots of TV and movies and video games. Which frankly could only be awesomer if we had a fireplace. Man, I smile just thinking about a toasty fire! Mmmmmmm… fire.
In other news I might have signed up to be a foster parent for a wee rescued dachshund… or we might just adopt one… cuz really, two cats and two dogs is clearly NOT ENOUGH!
And in other other news, for the first time in my life I’m counting calories. Yes I would like to lose some of my cheese-baby, but really I actually just want to track my diet for a couple weeks to see where I’m deficient and over-sufficient. Its only day 4 and it’s very very clear to me that I’m part hummingbird as the first day 1/3 of calories came from HONEY! Perhaps I’m actually part bee? And holy crap do I eat a lot of carbs! I mean, I knew that, I eat pasta everyday, it’s my favourite food in the world, but oh my do I NOT have any fibre in my diet! On the flip side, super low in fat and cholesterol! Again, who knew? I eat butter, but I guess thats ok? Weird. When I’m done I’ll posts some of the charts, cuz the pie charts are pretty funny, like a pac-man made of carbs.
And thats all she wrote.
I’m being quiet, and reading, and watching tv, and buying all the sales clothes in the mall (ALL OF THEM).
No projects, no deadlines, no objectives. Just some slowly percolating ideas about marketing, and photography and events, and really, I have a few months to let these ideas gel before I “need” to do anything, so it’s good. I’m chilling, and taking all my mood enhancing vitamins, and so far, the month hasn’t tried to kill me, it’s get a little stabby if I forget my vitamins, or I’m hormonal or tired or hungry, so really this month is devoted to making sure none of those things happen at the same time, and we’re good. And really, shouldn’t we all take a month and focus solely on making ourselves feel well? Damn straight!
Thank you to everyone who came out the Wandering Winter Craft Shows. Seriously, thank you, without you, there’d be no reason to do this, at all, so really sincerely and honestly, thank you!
Also, check out this! It’s me! And I’m not a total dork!
Seriously, check out the media/press I did this year: http://www.shopcats.ca/WWCSII_Press.html its a bit insane… this is what you get when you spend every waking moment searching for press opportunities and don’t sleep.
Onward and upwards to 2012′s Wandering Winter Craft Show! I do have 12 months to work on it, and trust me, I’ve started already… crazy eh? Ha! If you thinks thats crazy you don’t know me very well!
Now, to make some things, take some photos, and get a mystery application in! WoooOOoooOOO!
So I guess I’m doing something right over on www.shopcats.ca – I just got my first mimic!
The every so lovely www.shopcastr.com – and while they’re not doing exactly the same thing as me, they’re an etsy online sales place clone, of which there are many, and I’m doing actual in the real world craft events that people go to and that get press… ‘
They had the balls to follow me on twitter this morning, @Landfill and @shopcatsca.
Which is odd, so I guess they don’t think they’re stepping on my toes, and I’m here to tell you, you’re fucking stepping on my toes dudes! Not cool!
This is my mission statement over on ShopCats:
“Shop Cats mission is to showcase local crafters and artists; and exhibit their locally made handicrafts and goods at one of a kind pop-up craft markets.”
This is THEIR mission statement:
“Shopcastr is a new local shopping experience where retailers showcase their products for consumers to discover, curate and share.”
AND, they’re Toronto based!
AND AND they just registered that domain on Oct. 6/11.
AND AND AND it’s a RE-Brand of hipsell.com, which frankly is a better name than Shopcastr.
And if you type shopcats really fast how many people do you think get a typo, something like shopcast? In the past the search engines corrected it “did you mean shopcats” but now, with a brandspanking new domain and entity of that name its not going to, and people looking for shopcats are going to go to shopcast. And being a local crafty type sight they’re just going to stay on the wrong site!
/sigh
I know, it’s not really enough to say anything about, and its not really enough to get worked up about, and really its possible that is all coincidental and shit, especially because they followed me… but still, what a weird thing to wake up to!
Perhaps I should talk to them and we could exchange buttons or something… gee Emma, do you think being a rational human being and talking to someone with out flying off the handle might be a good idea? Shhh. I’ve not had my tea yet, so not in the mood to be yelled at by myself yet!
I sold a bracelet to a lovely lady in September.
She loved it so much she wore it out and it broke!
So she emailed me and asked if I could fix it, and even brought to the Gladstone during the Wandering Winter Craft Show!
I fixed it, (of course) and her hubby picked it up from me today, and this is the email I get in return:
Thanks so much for all your time and attention!
I haven’t seen the bracelet yet because I am at work but Sean says it looks great!
Sorry for all the inconvenience.
I will be checking your blog to make sure I don’t miss any of your shows or festival. Have a wonderful Holiday and keep up the great work!
How lovely is that! So to that special lady that I now know is reading this, you’re very welcome! It shouldn’t break again!
Happy holidays everyone, giant-ass blog post coming tomorrow! Woot!
But, you know. I’ve been BUSY! Sorta. It’s been kinda amazing really, the amount of reality television I’ve watched while smothered with puppies during this Oh So Busy period. But whatever. In my brain I’ve been busy!! My head has been thinking up a storm! And then when an idea forms (only after sucessfully overwriting existing memories, like where I left my shoes) I pop on the computer and type up a storm! I’ve been an online promotion making machine gosh darnit, I’ve not had TIME to do things like make dinner, cut my hair, or blog like a normal blogger. My BRAIN has been too busy for any of that! (At least that’s my excuse for leaving my shoes at the Tea Shop!)
SO!
Here I am, and honestly, I have nothing to say. Cuz really, if you’re reading this you likely also follow Shop Cats on FB (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Shop-Cats/135249256525532) or you follow the various amusing twitter accounts (@shopcatsca, @landfilldesign, @lookforthewoman – that last one there, she is a little political and swear-y, so if your ears (eyes?) are precious don’t be reading that one!)
Suffice to say, we’ve gotten a lot of press this year, a Toronto japanese magazine asked for photos to cover us in their magazine… no idea if it’ll come out before the 2nd show as all their magazine info is in, obviously, Japanese. And for the first time I’ve been fielding PHONE calls about the shows! Which is awesome, and scary… also, people are terrible at leaving their phone numbers in voicemail… I’ve tried to call people back, but some of those numbers were indecipherable! And some of the phone people (and web people) have complained that shopcats.ca is hard to find information on! Which is mind boggling, but also constructive. I need to get someone who doesn’t live online to look at my online stuff and tell me what doesn’t work for them. (My old boss will be perfect! This is a woman who told me to stop text messaging at a social media conference right after the keynote speaker had announced the twitter hashtag for his talk… See? Perfect!)
I really should post more about Landfill eh? Fine. Tiny people in resin. Seriously way too much fun. Pictures to follow.
Now, lets see what the puppies have destroyed since I’ve been ignoring them!
See you all Saturday!
***Update***
I could NOT, for the life of me, figure out how to make this post pop above my event calendar posts, or how NOT to have the event calendar posts show up in the blog… so I had to delete this post (copied it all first) and then make a NEW post! Seriously, it’s so good I have a webdeveloper! Woo!
Why you lose an ENTIRE WEEK of prep time is what happens!
Seriously, how it is nearly the 11th already? I swear the last time I looked at the calendar it was going to be the 4th on Friday! How is it possible that this Friday is the 11th? The 11th!? ACK! That means the Wandering Winter Craft show is in TWO WEEKS! Not the 3 I’ve been telling myself all week… cuz you know, “in three weekends” is actually only “in two weeks” holy moley!
HOW EXCITING!
Ok, we’re in the home run, and things are shaping up!
I sent out about a billion press releases last week!
I’ll be sending out about a billion emails this week!
And papering Queen street with a million flyers! Woo!
Things I need to do:
Update the website with all the aweomse online press we’re getting!
Seriously but a much bigger link on the front page for this blog, cuz shit is about to crazy up in here!
Post on the FB page more often, I’m sorry poor FB page, I forget you are there! And people talk to me there! I’m a bad social media maven, bad bad bad! (but seriously, you maintain a website, a blog, a FB, a FB page (and a FB for your cat), plus three twitter accounts, seriously, something is going go, usually it’s just my mind, but this month, it was the FB page, and for that, I apologize, next month it’ll just be my mind promise)
Ok! Back to work! The day job that makes all the rest of this possible! Woot! Time for lunch, and as its “that time” of the month (the time I require wine and chocolate and BF hugs) I will be having fancy lemon and parmesean fries. You can be an emotional teenager about your diet if you want but class it up ladies! Fries and gravy don’t have to be declasse!
I’m so busy I want to throw up. Actually, that might be from the pain of my ankle, that I just re-sprained just standing there doing nothing. Seriously, wth? Ankles can just bite me. Also, having to wear flats all the damn time is annoying. Bah! Now I’m short! AND in pain! AND super busy! How fair is that? Not fair at all actually!
So I’m busy, the Wandering Winter Craft Show is fast approaching! And I’ll be out flyering and postering from now until the show despite my stupid ankle. And when I’m not walking on broken ligaments I’ll be at my computer updating sites and lists and calendars like a madwoman! (Our first press release comes out Monday! Woo!)
And when I’m not doing either of those things I’ll be working hard on making stuff! Cuz I just cleaned my desk! Look, just look at that!
Lookit all that clear open clean space just waiting to be messed up and filled with clutter! Can’t you hear it calling me? “clutter me, clutter me, clutter me, you don’t need to be able to use the keyboard, clutter me, clutter me…”
Ok, so I suppose I’ll schedule in some sleep so the voices go away… I’ll keep you posted on that.
Thats my puppy girl swimming to reach the end! Big thanks to Jeremy for spending a day at the cottage working hard to capture that footage (get it? get it?)!!
I wish I had more updates, but I don’t. I keep meaning to post things, but then I don’t have an image to anchor the post… and I feel it’s not worth it to blog without a photo and then I go and post a video and really, how can craft show updates follow that? I mean it’s puppies swimming! They win! Though I will tell you this… something happened on the internet last week, I got a sudden deluge of would-be vendors asking about tables in The Wandering Winter Craft Show Episode Two: Craft Harder! (I totally just made that up). And I’m sorry to say, we’ve been full since before the end of September. But man o man is my mailing list really healthy now! And some of you new peeps, you got some awesome stuff! Strudel? I mean, c’mon! Where were you guys a month ago! STRUDEL! So not fair! Thinking I should put together some sort of newsletter or something… man, the things I come up with to use up all my non-existent free time! I’m an awesome task-master! Get to work! No sleep for you! Make me soup! Where the bread! Why is my tea cold? Did you finish that piece for April’s Army yet? Why didn’t you blog today? Why do you have three twitter accounts? Did you update your Facebook page? Do you even know how that works? People keep liking it, you better say something! Man, I’m such a nag! Ok, time for tea! (Fresh, not heated up, gross, what are you? A tea-recycler?)
And seriously, how cute are my puppies? Do you know how hard it is to get any work done when they’re in my studio being all soft and cute and cuddly? SO HARD! That’s how hard!
