GIVEAWAY - It's an ECO Etsy Paper Goods Extravaganza! 2 Winners This Week! CLOSED

AND THE WINNERS ARE- CHOSEN BY RANDOM.ORG

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Anja and ThePricklyPinecone!

Team EcoEtsy is a group of Etsy sellers dedicated to reducing, reusing and recycling and for this week's giveaway, I am offering up my Earth Day auction winnings to be divided between TWO LUCKY WINNERS!

The prizes include:

Journal by Monkey Dog Studio

Recycled Mag Note Card Sets by BrassPaperClip

Eco Art Prints by TanisAlexis

Paint Sample Notebooks by PrairiePeasant

Cards by GreenEarthGoodies

Art Prints by Tanjasova

Origami Plants by Paper Disciple

A reusable T-Shirt Bag from zJayne

These items have a retail value of $130.00 which will be divided between the TWO WINNERS!


HOW TO WIN:

Visit one of these amazing shops and let the seller know your favorite item!

For additional entries:

(5) Follow my blog
(5) Twitter this post
(5) Blog about this contest; linking to this post
(5) Visit a different seller's shop(s) and list a favorite item

Let me know if you have done these things so I can give you additional entries. This contest is open to everyone.

DRAWING:

MIDNIGHT on Sunday, May 23th! Good luck!! CLOSED

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day to all you moms out there!

This is a pic of my mom taken on her wedding day about 10 years or so before I was born.

Most (almost all) of our family pictures were lost in a moving accident and there are very few pictures of my mother around from this time period and from my childhood.

She has been gone a few years now, but I know she is still hanging around here, whispering (shouting) advice in my ear.

Am hoping to be waited on hand and foot for Mother's Day- looks like a family bike ride and a lunch out is in my future!

Friday Finds - going to the chapel ...

Thoughtful Thursday - price vs. value


"Maybe the reason it seems that price is all your customers care about ...
... is that you haven't given them anything else to care about."

Conversation by Seth Godin, Care Bear Collection from halo969 on Flickr

No Whining on Wednesday but maybe a status update since I'm sure you've been wondering

My latest projects - I've been working on new linesheets and a series of new mini lockets,

but more importantly I am currently on Day 4 of my Crest white strips program.

I'm not sure there's any actual whitening going on, except for about 30 seconds immediately following their removal (maybe) and I think they are making my teeth more sensitive.

This sensitivity might be how they actually work. Maybe after a week of not eating or drinking, people are too disgusted by your prominent ribcage and distended abdomen to notice your coffee-stained teeth.

(I'll stick with it though because I am not a quitter, dammit)

This is reminding me that there is a kiosk in my local mall with tooth whitening where a girl in a dentist-like lab coat,

(that just screams medical professional, I think she also sells the $200.00 ionic hair curlers)

does something to you that resembles some kind of dental torture while strangers stare and point and laugh,

(not that this has happened to me)

because I do my tooth whitening at home, like a normal person who has spent way too much time with coffee on her teeth.

My latest injury - I tumbled off the front steps while hanging a hummingbird feeder and smashed my kneecap onto a cement birdbath. I then broke the world record for cursing out hummingbirds with 20 curse words in 20 seconds

(Ripley's is coming out next week; I think the hummingbirds are planning a protest)

What I'm reading - I am on a Swedish detective kick, brought on by The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series. I ran through that author too quickly and moved on to Henning Mankell.

(I am more convinced than ever that I should be doing detective work in Sweden; I think they need me, plus I want to learn how to pronounce all these consonent clusters)

What I'm listening to - Hubby snore and Olive "dream chase" a squirrel while I eagerly await my new Macy Gray, expected on my door step next week

What I'm watching - Life on the Discovery channel but somehow Oprah's voice is ruining it for me- I miss Sigourney ...

I was planning a post for today on pricing our work and will pop one out soon, but the weather was just too nice for me to settle down with something serious- I write my weekly posts on Sundays and it is just too gorgeous here to work today! Happy Cinco de Mayo!


1. Nobody cares about your status updates tee by herrohachi
2. Fingerprint men's tee by nonfictiontees
3. Smile pretty print by thelittleprints
4. Imprintme silver fingerprint necklace by AliBaliJewellery
5. Sherlock Holmes paperweight by Ephemeralogie
6. Hummingbird TTV photo by theeye

Take 10 Tuesday - maybe money really does grow on trees and we just have to reach up and pick it


OK - for this week's take ten let's talk moula (moola?, moulah?)

(that's cold, hard cash for anyone not living in New Jersey)

because as the crafty community's discussion of free

(as in giving stuff - mostly your time - away to build an audience who will later buy from you or attract others who will later buy from you, without devaluing what it is that you are actually "selling")

organically grows into a discussion of pricing and value there is alot of good information out there:

1. Tara from ScoutieGirl's amazing post L-Earning my Worth over at Daily Worth.

2. The 3 P's of Pricing over at Productive Flourishing

3. The Design Sponge ladies on How to Price Your Work

4. Price Points for Handmade Crafts at the Craft Report

5. In an Abundant World, Scarcity is Opportunity by Sister Diane of Craftypod over at CraftMBA

6. Pricing Design Work at Smashing Magazine

7. Professional Pricing for Crafts People and Designers by Simone Walsh

8. Pricing Your Work at Creative Choices

9. Brenda, of Phydeaux Designs post on Pricing for Wholesale at PaperNStitch

10. Pricing Work Based on Value at Freeland Switch

Just Another Weekend in Jersey or untangling myself and Olive brings home the bacon

Saturday was such a beautiful day here and, like many of you probably, I had the need to seed.

Except our seeds are already in the ground, so I headed down to the Pattersons for a couple flats of annuals. They are my favorite local growers where every single family member works their farm and every single family member,

including their 100 year old collie, who I swear muttered "may I help you" as he brushed past me, offered me help. I love that place!

I got back home with my flats and saw that my compost was looking sincerely gorgeous, so I planted flowers in just about everything on my front porch that had drainage potential including my old teapot, garden shoes and my nephew's Tonka.

As I was admiring my newly acquired green thumb and cleverness, Olive came running toward me. She was moving fast, but awkwardly and seemed a bit panicky.

And she had something in her mouth.

And it was big.

It was very big.

(please don't let it be anything cute)

Olive hasn't "caught" anything in a long time, but there were a couple incidents last spring that earned her the nickname (and collar charm) - mole patrol.

She flew right past me into the house with a look in her eyes of conspiratorial panic and victory, as if she were shouting, "I'VE GOT IT! SHUT THE DOOR!"

It was a huge slice of pizza- sausage pizza.

After I wrestled it away from her (she could be lactose intolerant, who knows) and rewarded her with a couple dog treats

(she did try to bring home the bacon - or some other part of a pig - after all)

and planted my minions from the Pattersons, I thought I would check my email and UGH (again) - no internet!

I have been losing internet off and on for weeks. As soon as I schedule a cable appointment, the service rights itself. And even though I know the problem isn't really fixed I cancel the appointment, so I don't have to wait around all day for the cable guy and ...

so I don't have to face the huge tangle of wires behind my desk ...

which is at worst a fire hazard (is this kind of stuff still a fire hazard with surge strips and such?) and at best the kind of disgrace that always gives me a yucky feeling when I see it.

I am no feng shui expert, but I do know that energy gets stuck in neglected places; in messes, in tangles (and not just the kind of energy that gives you access to Google and cable television).

So, I spent the rest of the afternoon untangling, removing plugs to nowhere, removing electrical gizmos that I never use anymore, damp wiping everything off, vacuuming dust bunnies larger than actual bunnies

and with this one little insignificant activity (well, maybe when combined with the beautiful weather and the planting of some amazingly gorgeous new life in the front of my house) - I felt something lighten.

It was like I untangled a whole bunch of wires inside of me as well.

And, of course if you are reading this - my cable did manage to right itself somehow ... again... but this time I'm not going to cancel my repair appointment - since my wires are nice and tidy and easy to reach and I know if I get hungry while waiting for the cable guy, I can always send Olive out for pizza.