Jumping into a New Year



It has been far too long since my last post.  Sorry about that, but Christmas has a way of doing that to me.  Rather than writing a long post, I am going to ease back in with some pictures of what I did over my Christmas vacation.  My family usually hosts a Christmas day get-together, and since I don’t get anything done unless I have a looming deadline, I talked my husband into putting in a drop ceiling in the basement so we would have room for more tables so that the 30 to 40 people we were expecting could sit down.  We enlisted the help of a brother who had done this before, but it ended up involving the construction of some walls and the installation of some doors.  Yes, I was still painting Christmas Eve, but it got done and we all had a great time.




Cabinets, counter, and door from the house
we demolished.  Grandma's fridge.

 

My favorite part about the remodel is that we were able to use a lot of recycled and reused materials to build a spot that will serve as my new work area the rest of the year.  




A refurbished door from upstairs, repurposed scrap masonite panels, and excess trim from our home installation.

 






A coat of paint on the concrete walls and two tables purchased from the local elementary school for $5 each.  The aren't exactly pretty, but they do the job.


Some old canvas' repainted as a backdrop and I now have a place to shoot items for listing online.  What a luxury!



 





At last, a place for my yarn stash!





My next plan is to find a home for the contents of all the boxes with my name on them.  They will either be kept, donated, sold or trashed.  Anything I keep, I will use.  Now that I have a dedicated place to shoot photos for eBay and Etsy, I can bring some of my dormant photo skills into play and make my exposures and color balances consistant.  I did a test run today, and I must say, things went pretty well.

Now that I’ve broken the ice, I hope to get back in the swing of regularly blogging.  I also can't wait to get back to reading all my usual blogs that I’ve been neglecting.  Thanks for your patience, especially if you’ve sent me a comment and I’ve not replied.  It is on my to-do list.  I promise!

The Butcher





The Ghosts of Jobs Past Parts 7, 8, and 9

AKA The Part time job years

Over the next several years I worked a number of part time jobs that were just as educational as their full time counterparts.  Often I worked a couple jobs that overlapped to accommodate my kids, their schedules and my husband’s ability to watch them.  That right there helped me juggle and prioritize my time.

Banquet Hall Busser

I worked at the Gazebo Banquet Center on and off over a span of five years (with a year off in there somewhere to have a second baby), and this job was my first service job as an adult.  There is something about wedding receptions that can either bring out the very worst or the very best in people, and the wait staff had to roll with all of it.  I learned that:   

1.   Just because there is a party going on doesn’t mean that you are there to have fun.  Have too much fun and you will annoy your coworkers, customers, bosses, or all of them. 

2.   There is nothing like working with Vietnamese, Indian, and Korean women – especially those who are newly immigrated - to make many of your problems seem small indeed.

3.   Even a clumsy girl like me can crank out their signature standing fan napkin fold if given enough practice.

4.   If I find myself at a function there and walk up behind Michael the manager, I can still make him jump by telling him they put out the wrong colored napkins.

Digital Photo Retoucher

About this time we got our first computer, which eventually led to my finding my true love – Photoshop.  I learned some retouching skills and started taking in the occasional side job.  The work was fun and engaging, but dealing directly with customers was not my forte.  I learned that:

1.   Customers don’t come to you, and if you don’t want to go to the customers, you don’t work much.

2.   If you are distractible, working from your home might not be in your best interest.  Even housework starts looking good when you are trying to avoid work.

Elementary School Volunteer

When my oldest daughter started elementary school, I started volunteering.  I was a pretty crummy volunteer too – bitter and resentful - until I read “The Fountainhead” by Ayn Rand.  I am probably the only raging liberal whose sanity was saved by Objectivism.  When I was working on projects that other people found important (bake sales, fundraisers) I HATED it.  Once I got selfish and only took on projects that I wanted to do (mural painting), or got paid for (academic coaching), did I come to enjoy the kids, the teachers, and the work.  Over the approximately ten years I worked in the schools my kids attended, I painted nine or ten murals.  I’m more of a technician than an artist, but how often are you going to get entire walls to work on?  It was especially good for my ego since I’ve never been praised as much.  Of course 5 year olds are easy to impress, but I’ll take kind words where ever I can get them.  I also took teams of kids to state level Science Olympiad and Destination Imagination, and one team made it to DI Global Finals.  All of this because I chose to do only what made me happy.  It worked then, and for the most part it still works for me today. 

The Butcher

Touching Base

This has been a week of juggling a few things online.  My daughter wanted to sell some textbooks (the ones the bookstore wouldn’t buy back) on Amazon, so I now have an account to do that.  Out of the three she wanted to sell, two have been shipped already, so I am pretty happy about that. Amazon has an amazingly organized system.  You list your books for free, and when something sells, Amazon takes their fee (a fairly complicated system they spell out on their site), plus they collect a shipping fee from the buyer that will go to you once the transaction is complete.  Basically, the two books I sold went for a total of $24.00.  The Amazon fee was $8.28 and they collected $7.98 ($3.99 x 2) for shipping from the customers.  Once I figure in my actual shipping cost (around $2.60 each), I expect to realize $18.50 from the sale of the two books.  I found the fees to be kind of high, but it is hard to beat the audience the site has, and with the text book season being limited, I don’t mind paying it.

I’ve also been in contact with a possible customer for some custom work on Etsy.  When I first offered to do custom work on my site, I really had no idea as to how the mechanics might work.  Luckily, the lady I am working with is patient and is really helping me figure out a viable system.  She is interested in some 20” x 20” knit throw pillows with button closures.  I’ve spent one week knitting a big batch of swatches (she’s been pretty specific on her colors, but to avoid misunderstandings, actual samples seem like the way to go).  Once I got the color samples in the mail, I spent another week on an actual pillow, to make sure the size is right and to have an idea of scale when choosing the big, mismatched vintage buttons she wants.  Speaking of big, mismatched buttons, my stash is a little less varied than I’d like, so I’ve also been working with a lady on Ebay to purchase of a variety of colors and shapes.  I seem to be spending an excessive amount of time on this one sale, but by nailing down all the details now, I will be extra sure of my abilities to come up with a repeatable product.



Oatmeal, Charcoal, Espresso, and Plum Swatches

Previews of a future photo essay on drying tomatoes

Of all the things I need to do better across all social media, perhaps the most obvious it to add more photos.  The more blogs I read, the more I realize how important a visually appealing page is to keeping interest and adding to the written content.  For someone with a background in photography and graphics, you would think that this would come more easily.  Just the opposite seems to be true.  I think that this might be payback for all the snarky comments I’ve made over the years about poor design in general as well as all the poorly photographed and poorly edited images throughout the years.  Now that I am the one responsible for the content, I have a new found respect for how much time and patience it takes to accomplish even the simplest task well.  Thank you to anyone who has taken the time to comment.  I really appreciate your efforts and insites. 

The Butcher