and man, do i love me some ron swanson!
Raleigh Person Street Holiday Market...
this weekend evan, penny, and i toted my wares the 3 hours to Raleigh to take part in the Person Street Holiday Market put on by Anvil. we've got some friends that live in Raleigh, so this was also a really nice excuse to go visit them for a bit and get in some serious hangs! thank you again Christina and Jonathan for the vegan blueberry waffles, chocolate chip cookies, "chicken" pot pie, and lattes... you made us, and our bellies, quite happy!
you can check out Anvil's site for the entire list of vendors that were there. it was good times for sure!
home goods...
lots of new goodies have been added to the ol' shop recently...
you can check these, and others, out HERE!
oh, hello again!
eeeep... i've been such a bad blogger as of late! these past few weeks have been jam packed with activities and right now i'm going to attempt to catch you up on all of them! here goes nothing...
my birthday was at the end of march and we celebrated by taking penny out to bike night at pinky's.
she stayed sound asleep even with all craziness of the bikes!
i went prepared with a bottle so that mama could enjoy a birthday beer!
after staying up to party for a bit, penny then zonked out on aunt steph's shoulder.
that following weekend i toted all of my goods to an etsy pop up shop event at west elm. this was so much fun and i'm hoping they do it again. there were about 10 or so other sellers, a dj, and smilebooth was even there. good times indeed! evan and penny came along with me to help out and enjoy the fun too...
...and penny might have stolen the show just a bit :)
she rather enjoyed our comfy set up!
and at the end of the day she got a little bunny for being such a good helper!
then april 4th was our 3 year wedding anniversary. crazy how fast these past few years have gone by. funny though, evan and i both forgot it was our anniversary till about noon that day. woops!
and of course there was just some general penny cuteness mixed in...
new shades...
new hair pulling tricks...
sweet new denim cut offs...
new appreciation for her chilled teether...
and new love of standing up!
then to top off all of our activities, we drove down to atlanta to be with my family for easter... and it was chock full of good times!
penny went with her cousins to see the easter bunny for her first time...
with all the fam around mama was able to snag a few minutes of sunny quiet time. it was amazing!
my niece and i covered grandma & grandpa's driveway in chalk...
and our little bunny enjoyed her first easter...
last but not least, i'll end this uber update with a sweet lil' video of our gal getting her giggle on. all you have to do to get a chuckle out of this baby is say her favorite words, poopie, mama, dada, and gaga (short for grandma). oh and pardon the shaky camera work here. i have to hold it off to the side or she gets distracted by it and stops laughing. enjoy the chuckles...
if at first you don't succeed...
yesterday i spent the entire day redoing a job that was already done. ever since i first posted my new autumn goodies on etsy i've been somewhat unhappy with how the photos came out. they just didn't scream festive fall goodness to me at all. so finally i bit the bullet and reshot them.
take a peek at the before and after, and let me know what ya think!
"feast" before & after...
"gather" before & after...
"happy harvest" before & after...
"give thanks" before & after...
with holiday items you really only have a small time frame to make an impact and get your items sold. also, with selling on etsy it's really important to have your photos be as "treasury friendly" as they possibly can be, so as to get the most views. i'm feeling a whole lot better now about the autumn vibe going on in my photos. that's not to say that they'll be flying off the shelves now, but at least i know i've corrected something that was bothering me.
i was actually so pleased with how the white on white set up looked that i started reshooting all of the embroidered items in my shop. i finished a little more then half of them yesterday and i'll be working on cleaning up the rest in the coming days. i'm also toying with the idea of reshooting EVERYTHING on an off white background in the coming weeks. i get bored easily with my shops appearance and i'm always looking for ways to better it. that's what being your own boss is all about i guess. never settling for what you've got, when you think there are improvements you can make. i also know that if i don't do this now, in about 2.5 months we'll have a new little addition in our home that will probably keep me from getting much of anything done at all. it's crunch time!