Friday, March 6, 2015

What I've Been Up To

What have I been up to? Most recently, shoveling snow. But it's been a long time since I posted. Yes, it certainly has if you're looking at the calendar, but it has been so busy I just haven't been keeping up, and it does not feel like several months have gone by since I last posted. Here are some of the things I've done since October.

In mid-November HG's school held their annual Holiday Faire, at which I consigned 40 or 50 items. Naturally I had planned to write about this wonderful event BEFORE it happened, but I did not get to that. Between Halloween and the Faire I madly sewed all those items, and also kept in mind that I would need to have additional things available for the Etsy store for Christmas and Hanukkah, so I tried to get ahead on those too.

Starting just before Thanksgiving customers began placing orders for Christmas and Hanukkah. This year was incredible; about 70 orders came in for the season (that's a huge amount for me in such a short time period), and I also made presents for my family. It was pretty nuts around here for a few weeks.

Right after Christmas my grandparents' house in rural Maine sold, so I drove up there and spent a weekend packing up and moving all the books that were still in the house, removing mattresses, and cleaning. I don't remember now how many boxes of books I (and the movers; thank goodness for the movers!) carried around. Something like 50. It was a gigantic relief to have that all taken care of during school vacation, but the speed with which it needed to be accomplished and the coordination required was a bit rough.

In January I rested! I closed the Etsy shop for the entire month and spent the time trying to do tasks that had been put off, resolving various other issues that appeared, and holding down the home fort while husband was on business trips. Incredibly, I also received orders while the shop was closed, so I did make those items. Who wants to wait a month for a shop owner to get back from vacation??

I took this photo this morning, after we received another 8-10 inches of snow yesterday. 
That brings us to February. The story of February is snow. As most people know New England has been hit by more snow this year than has been recorded in any previous year, ever. It's a lot of snow. We've been shoveling at least twice a week and entertaining HG at home since school has been closed quite often. On some of the days when school has been held I've been substitute teaching. So although my shop has been open I have not spent much time on it, and I haven't been writing here either. I find certainty makes planning easier (don't most of us?) so the difficulty of knowing each day whether school will be held the following day has made it hard for me to plan out new projects. Some have squeaked through, though, and I'll post about them next.

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