Notes from A Cottage Industry

Bugs and kisses.

...coz, Halloween, you know.

Hope you have a spook-tacular day! (hehehehe...)

Weekly words to live by.

Weekly words to live by.

Sunday's post is a little late......

Skinny little ghosties.

Have I already told you that my fabulous daughter-in-law is a kindergarten teacher?  Well, she is, and she has twenty lucky little five and six year olds who are in her class. I made some fun little treats that I am sending off for her to give the kiddos at their Halloween party.

They are so easy to make, and they will keep for three weeks or more, although I have never had them stick around longer than a day or two when I make them for us at home, because they are so yummy.

(It's that sweet-with-the-salty thing.)

All you do is melt some white candy melts in the microwave and dip your pretzel sticks in.

Plop a pair of candy googly eyes on the warm gooey-melty stuff, and let them set up on parchment or wax paper on a cookie sheet while you watch an inning of the Cubs -Dodgers playoff game.

Melt a single black candy melt in a cup in the microwave, and using a toothpick, put a little black oval below those googly eyes.

Watch another inning of the baseball game, and they're done.

Easy as that.

Getting your act together in your etsy shop comes to a halt if you have "encription" issues on your MAC.

Last weekend I had the most fabulous time. My daughter and I went to the little town of Silverton, Oregon for some quality me time for each of us, to be able to focus on projects we had been struggling to find time for. She is in the process of studying for her real estate license exam, and I have been wanting to update my etsy shop, and social media stuff.

We met up Friday evening, and we settled in to work on our separate projects. We took breaks for dinner, and we spent the morning with our dueling laptops, in a cool coffee and breakfast place that had wi-fi. A big storm was hitting the pacific northwest, but we were enjoying the grey days and never lost power, so we were happy.

We managed to squeeze in pedicures late in the afternoon Saturday, and then picked up pizza to cook in our room for dinner, and then we both jumped back into our tasks.

Shortly after 10:00 on Saturday night. I was on a roll, adding banners and flags, and oodles and toodles of seasonal descriptions and photos of items to my little etsy shop, and I was feeling all kinds of proud of myself, when it happened.

The spinning-rainbow-wheel-of-death came on my screen just as I was wrapping up a marathon evening of working on my shop. And, it wouldn't. stop. spinning.

Uh-oh.

Had I downloaded one too may crazy fonts?

I ask this because, once, long, long ago, in the early days of giant home computers, I installed one too may fonts from several floppy discs of fonts. (remember those? If not, you are not nearly as old as I am.)

Anyway, when I turned on my computer, it was covered in Chinese writing, all over my desk top.

Enough about that disturbing incident.

That was then. This is now.

(Insert huge, deep breath and long sigh here.)

Well, at this point, panic set in. Luckily my daughter was there to be the voice of reason. She told me to turn it off and let it charge over night, and I followed her directions.

I woke up at 6:00 am and pulled open my little MAC.

No bueno.

I felt sick to my stomach. This piece of electronics is my lifeline.

(I don't back things up hardly ever often enough, and my cheesy print program can't send things to my cloud.)

(True confession here= I have never seen what is actually in my cloud, nor do I know how to get to my cloud.)

When my daughter woke up she insisted I call the folks at Apple. I said I didn't think they would help me without charging me a small fortune. She made me call anyway.

(It turns out that there is a reason they call those Apple workers "geniuses".)

Ohmygosh. So helpful. They gave me hope.

Unfortunately, it was not going to be a fast fix. I needed to be plugged in to a power source, and have continuous wi-fi, which meant I needed to head home to do the repair, when I had been hoping to stay until afternoon at that cute breakfast coffee shop again.

I'll skip all the drama and worry and praying that ensued once I got home and spoke with a guy from Apple, named Gary, who got the process going. Calls later with Trinity, and then Susan, and I am back to working on my Macbook Pro Tuesday night while binge-watching back-to-back-to-back episodes of Fixer-Upper.

(I love me some Chip and Joanna Gaines. I hope fame never changes them.)

So.

My etsy shop is still in progress, but getting there. I lost some cool fonts and I am half afraid to reinstall them, but I'll get things rebuilt over the next few days weeks. In the meantime, everything in my shop is 20% off with the coupon code SPOOKY, and if you've hung in there long enough to read this far into my post, I have atop-secret code for you! Use the coupon code APPLE and get a $5.00 credit towards any purchase of $6.00 or more on my entire site. (I wanted to make it so you could get an item free, but etsy isn't set up for that...) My top secret offer is good through Thursday night at midnight!

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The post where I get my act together in my etsy shop.

...and as a way to celebrate this, I am having a sale!  Check it out, and save 20% through Wednesday night. Simple use the sale code word SPOOKY at checkout!

(In the midst of all of this, my computer had a bad crash..or something along those lines. More items going live tonight in the etsy shop!)

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Weekly words to live by.

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Party hat for a birthday girl.

One of my fellow junkers is celebrating a milestone birthday this week, and we threw her a little surprise birthday soiree, right there in the lit-up-front-window of Camas Antiques.

There were beautiful cookies (I think from this amazing girl...) and presents, and lots of well wishes and laughter. I supplied her with a party hat with a vintage feel. It just goes to show that a party can happen anywhere, and that's the ind of thing that makes for good memories.

 

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A little something for my Hallo-wine friends.

A number of you inquired about my homemade tags, and I am happy to share them with you all. Here you go! Download Hallo-wine-and-boos-tags

Googly eyes, the sequel.

I kinda got on a roll with the googly eye thing. 

(Heh heh.)

Turns out you can glue gun googly eye balls to wine bottles, then wrap the bottle in medical gauze, and create a memorable Halloween season hostess gift. (Thank you again, Pinterest.)

I added some homemade tags and it was ready to go to a friends house for Monday night football, (Download Hallo wine and boos tags ) followed by watching the last eight of what turned out to be thirteen innings of the San Francisco Giants and the Cubbies. (Served up with a repeat performance of my seasonal Pumpkin Crunch dessert!)

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It's amazing what a pair of googly eyes can do for a thing.

How cute are these?

I saw the idea on Pinterest (of course) and decided it would be adorable to do for my daughter-in-law's kindergarten class. A quick trip to the Dollar Tree yielded purple paper cups, and, not only packages of googly eyes, but colorful eyeballs too.

(And as a bonus, I also scored orange and black striped paper straws for the pint sized students.)

I whipped out my hot glue gun and attached the eyeballs in a mater of ten minutes.

Too danged cute.

Weekly words to live by.

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Apparently I have a thing for glassware.

Ya think?

This is yesterday's lunch-break stop at Goodwill. It all made it down to my booth by the end of the day.

Well, all except that cutie-patootie small cut glass pitcher. (It melted my heart and I had to keep it.)

Dealer night.

When you have a booth in an antique mall, they generally have one night a week where vendors are allowed to come in after hours to fluff and update their booth spaces. Wednesday nights are the designated dealer nights at Camas Antiques, and it's always a good time.

 

 

 

Junkers are bringing in new old stuff, and moving things around. The aisles are full of furniture and boxes, and people are chatting and checking out each others treasures. (My booth has taken on a definite Halloween-papercraft theme.)

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It's the most boo-tiful time of the year.

Okay, so I am much more a harvest decore kind of girl than a Halloween diva, but I do like a few touches here and there, with more of an Edgar Allen Poe sort of feel than a Beetlejuice or Stephen King-esque slant to my touches.

(For me, the only exception for more color this time of year is on my little party crows, or if I'm making something for the grand-kiddos.)

Anyway.

I've been gettin' my nearly-nightly craft on the past coupe of weeks, and every Halloween paper craft I've created has inspired another to follow.

I love it when that happens.

Banners of all sizes, and party crows from here to the other side of the bridge to Portland, and most recently, petite gift boxes, perfectly sized to hold candy corn, or a fabulous cookie, or a gift card, or bracelet, or...well any little treat of favor you can think of.

These ghoulishly sweet kraft paper boxes made me think of a fun Halloween themed dinner or cocktail party, or maybe a luncheon with my gal-pals from my big girl job, and that started me thinking about table scapes. (Yep, it's that same old if-you-give-a-moose-a-muffin thing I do...) Table scapes made me think about designing coordinating bingo cards to tuck into nooks and crannies, or water goblets on the table.

Oh, can you just see that?

Yeah, kinda sorta something like that.

I'll have all of this in my booth tomorrow, and in my etsy shop as well, by Friday.

Who knew Halloween could be so inspirational?

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Adding some autumn touches to the mantel.

I spent a decent portion of my weekend tinkering around my home, adding little harvest touches here and there. My mantel is always a focal point, and after borrowing back some pretty fabulous arched side mirrors from my daughter, (I originally found them at the Goodwill bins for a steal, when they were stained dark brown.) I began building out this year's white pumpkin theme. (I still need to add some white taper candles in the holders up there...)

I added two of my latest banners (Available in my etsy shop at at Camas Antiques later this week!) for a fun little Halloween touch, along with a black crow, a spider and a number thirty one.

I still plan to paint my brick fireplace white, as soon as I find the time.

(Ha! A girl can hope...)

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Weekly words to live by.

Well, hello October.

Oh, how I adore autumn. It's the coziest season of all, with crisp mornings filled with cocoa, and toast with jam. The first of so many roaring fires in the fireplace, and my pumpkin spice wax wafting through the house. Boots replace my flip-flops, and big sweaters and scarves come out of hiding in the armoire in my bedroom.

I spent this morning putting away my cheerful summer accessories from around the house, and I replaced them with my sunflowers, and pumpkins, and neutral colors.

October, I am glad you're here.