my name is amy, and i am an addict....

I can't believe it's been a week since I've posted. I'm not sure where the time has gone, although I'm pretty sure I spent most of it watching dogs :) We had about 30 dogs boarding over Christmas. About half have gone home, so things are getting back to normal, but one of our employees is off until New Years so we've been working a lot. Especially Jeff, bless him. He's put in at least 12 hours a day everyday since Christmas Eve.

As for today's topic, yes, I am an addict, but not to anything dangerous or that will turn me into a mugger or anything (I don't think).  I'm addicted to Pyrex. I can't help it. I see it and I have to buy it. As long it's at the right price, of course. I think the best thing about selling vintage is that I can enjoy the pieces I find until I sell them. And since my house is slowly turning into a warehouse with all the inventory I have, I decided to make use of some shelves I have in my kitchen to store/display Pyrex. Here it is:

I have one shelf left, so hopefully I will sell a few pieces before I find more :)

Happy hunting!

more good luck

Yesterday, I was fortunate to be featured on the front page. I ended up selling four of the spoons that were featured.

My luck continued through the day. First, I found a silver dime. I know, it may not seem like a big deal, but I've been checking dimes for years and never found one.  Then, the treasury that I put together climbed to number one! It's not unusual for it to take an hour for me to put together a treasury. Yesterday was a crazy day though, so I threw one together in 15 minutes - and it went to number one! I think I'll start taking less time from now on :) It's still in the fourth position this morning with over 3500 views!

Here it is:

It seemed that my luck had given out when I fell down the stairs to our basement. These are the most steep, narrow, and treacherous stairs that I've seen outside of a European cathedral (circa 1400s), so everytime I go down them, I mentally tell myself NOT TO FALL, NOT TO FALL, NOT TO FALL. I've fallen down them before (can you tell?) and I'm always afraid I'll do it again. The good news is that I only fell down the last three. And I didn't crack my head open. So, hey, more good luck!!

I guess it's all how you look at it :)

FRONT PAGE!!

I woke up to the exciting news that one of my items was in a treasury on the FRONT PAGE of Etsy! I can't tell you how happy I am! Here's a screenshot - the spoon/bottle openers are mine (sorry, I know it's a little hard to see):

I logged onto my shop this morning just like always and I noticed that one of the spoons had sold. I also had two "convos" from folks asking about the spoons and which ones I had left. I thought it was strange because those things had been posted for months and I had only sold one of the 8 I had. Anyway, after responding to the convos and doing some other stuff online, I went over to Craftopolis to check my shop views. That's when it hit me - I had been on the front page. By 8:00 am my time, I had twice as many page views as I've ever had in a whole day! And 16 people had favorited my shop. I once had 10 people favorite my shop in one day, but the average for me is 2-3 a day, so 16 is amazing!

Just when I thought I would have no more sales until after Christmas, I've had 8 in the last 3 days! Hooray! Of course, now I have to go stand in line at the post office. I was there yesterday though and it wasn't so bad, so maybe it won't be bad today either, especially since if you are just shipping today, it's not going to make it by Christmas anyway.

Hope everyone has a great day!

favorites

Well, we're less than a week until Christmas. Hope everyone has accomplished everything they've hoped to by this point and, if not, well, just have another spiked egg nog and relax. Stressing won't get it done any faster (although if it did, I would always be the first done at everything - ha!).

After having a great first half of the month, the sales dried up three days ago. I knew it would happen but it was still a bummer, although I'm happy to have a few days off from the post office! Here's hoping January brings lots of customers with Christmas money to spend.

Anyway, today I thought I would share some items, both handmade and vintage, from my Favorites list. At least what's left - seems like half of my favorites or more were snatched up during the holiday rush. Guess that means I have good taste :)

I have a thing for clocks. In addition to the red art deco clock that I missed out on, I also had a beautiful turquoise and chrome model on my favorites list that was sold. When it comes to clocks, simple is better in my book. I really like this old school clock:

The time clock at The Barkway is on its last legs. I found this really cool vintage one on Etsy, purely by accident. I mean, I never even thought to look for one there. If it hangs around for another week or two, I might convince Jeff to get it.

I think these fingerless fleece gloves are cool and I really love the turquoise stitching against the dark gray (although it's hard to see in this photo)

This rectangular Dansk enamel pot is to die for

Ditto for this Catherineholm turquoise enamel pot

This retro looking tea towel would look perfect in my kitchen. So cute.

Isn't this clutch great? Love that color combo

Speaking of turquoise and brown, these mugs are groovilicious. Love the pedestal.

One of the items in my faves that sold was this cute little vintage tackle box. I think it was priced at $45.

Although it's not vintage, I picked this up for $10 over the weekend at this surplus store down the road from us. It's plastic inside instead of metal, but I still love the look of it.

Happy hunting!

this, that, and the other thing

I've been pretty good about posting everyday, but this week has gotten away from me. It's true that time speeds up the older you get. Remember when you were 10 and the days took forever (especially the school days)? I could use a couple of days like that right now.

We are still trying to finish up Christmas gifts - being the year that I quit my job, we are doing all homemade gifts this year. I'm hopeful that we will finish everything up this weekend and get it shipped on Monday.

I finally found a topper for the tree - well, at least something that works as a topper now that I cut the bottom off. So, FINALLY, the tree is done. I want to wait and take a picture at night, so I will post it tomorrow.

And I found the item that will be the giveaway item. I'm anxious to show it off, but I really think it would be better to wait until after the holidays, so look for that around the first of the year.  In the meantime, maybe I will find a second item and pick two winners.

On a completely separate topic...earlier in the year I bought a Groupon (if you don't know Groupon, you have to check it out - http://www.groupon.com/) for a discovery flight. By way of background, a have a slight fear of flying (as well as a fear of small spaces and doctors, the latter of which can be a problem since I'm also a slight hypochondriac!). I think my fear of flying is a control issue - I have none when I'm in a plane and I have no idea what's going on, so that makes me fearful. Anyway, I thought taking the discovery flight would quell my fear of flying if I knew essentially what went on in a cockpit.  Well, I loved it!! It was one of the best things I've ever done. So, since then, I've wanted to take flying lessons. Problem is they are expensive (it's about $9-10k to get your license). The other problem is that I discovered this desire after I had given notice at work so I didn't even have the opportunity to decide whether it was worth it to stay in my job a little longer in order to take flying lessons. Of course, they are completely out of my price range now. But I still really want to do it.

So, the question is, do I take the money out of my 401k to fulfill what has become a dream of mine or do I just wait and hope that someday I can afford to do it without taking money out of my retirement investments? Which really brings up another question for me (and this is not a new question, but one that recurs every so often) - is it better to live the life you want to live now or to secure your future? I could get hit by a bus tomorrow. And Jeff and I don't have kids, so I have no need to leave anything behind. I would be fine dying penniless, but only if I don't have to live the last years of my life that way.

By quitting my job, I already made a huge argument this year in favor of living the life I want to live now. So, maybe I'll put off the decision on flying lessons until next year - one major decision per year :)

If you have any thoughts on the topic, I'd love to hear them! Have a great day :)

one more thing...

Cul-de-Sac Shack, one of the blogs I follow, is having a giveaway in celebration of reaching the 100 follower milestone. You can check it out at the link above - all you have to do is leave a comment to be entered!

Speaking of giveaways, I'm planning to do one here soon as well. I will admit it - it's a ploy to get new followers and to get comments from those of you that I know read but never comment. :) It probably won't happen until after Christmas, but stay tuned....

weekend wrap-up

Busy weekend! First of all, we hit our 50th sale yesterday! Hooray! I'm so excited by that; just hope that it doesn't stop completely after the holidays are over.

Saturday I was at the thrift shop, still looking for a topper for our tree (at this rate, it will be new years before I find one) and I was strolling through the housewares section, as I am known to do, lingering particularly long in the aisle where the Pyrex hides, when I turned to the pots and pans aisle just as a man was picking up what looked to be a beautiful Descoware orange flame dutch oven. Immediately, my stomach dropped. If only I'd turned around 30 seconds sooner, I would be holding it instead of him! I stood there for a minute while he looked it over, all the time silently willing him to PUT IT DOWN, PUT IT DOWN, and then he walked off with it. I was sick. I couldn't believe I had missed it. Distraught, I continued on through the store, although I couldn't stop mentally kicking myself for missing that pot. When I was done, I decided, just for the heck of it, to stroll past the pots and pans aisle again, just in case he put it back. Believe it or not, HE HAD!! I snatched it up so fast, the lady standing there looked at me surprised. I carefully removed the tape from the lid, expecting the inside enamel to be trashed, but it was almost perfect. I just couldn't believe it. And, as I suspected, it was Descoware. I brought it home, listed it that same day, and it sold on Sunday!

Although we didn't get a ton of stuff listed this weekend, the stuff we did list got a lot of interest. We had this perpetual calendar that we bought a few weeks ago, but it was difficult to photograph given its size and I wasn't sure how we would pack it (at it's shortest, it was 30 inches long). We finally got it photographed and posted. I checked on it 10 minutes later and it was SOLD! Only two people even looked at it, including the person who bought it. And it's going to NEW YORK CITY (sorry, I always think of that Pace commercial when I say that). My humble little item is hitting the big time :)

Saturday was also a great day because I got my hat that I ordered. And I love it. So I figured this was a good excuse to crawl out of the shadows and show myself to the world. I'm just kinda bummed cause it's so warm here that I don't even need a hat right now. I talked to my mom over the weekend and it's been colder in FL than it has been here! Weird. But, the cold will catch up to us eventually, no doubt.

Happy hunting!