Illustration, photography, and all-around geekery
There were 69 entries total, and the lucky winner of the “happy etsy-versary” contest is… number 29! Congratulations, Stephanie
March has me quite blogged out, I have to admit, so I think I am going to celebrate the beginning of April by relaxing with Tim and making more button pins and magnets. Have a good night, all!
I’ve been up to my neck in custom work lately, which is why I’ve been absent for the last couple days (also absent-minded, but that’s the typical state of affairs no matter what I’m working on). I don’t know if it was the Real Simple blog feature a few days ago or what, but Calobee Doodles has been overrun by custom requests. Not that I’m complaining… quite the opposite! 🙂
And today I found one of my photographs featured as an “Etsy Find” in the Storque! Yay! I’m having a good day, indeed.
T & I took a much-needed break last night to go out to dinner and a movie, as it’s been eons since we’ve done a “date night.” Of course, we didn’t bother to read any movie reviews before we selected our movie of choice for the evening. We stuck to the synopsis, which sounded good in theory… but was bad–very bad–in practice. Always read the reviews; always. It will save you the trauma of spending good money to watch a rotten tomato like Doomsday.
Wow. Just… wow. One minute you’re in the midst of a 28-Days-Later-esque scenario in London, and the next you’re thrown into a society of punk-ish anarchy in barricaded Scotland. Ten minutes later, you’re whisked away (by train, of course) to a distinctly medieval society ruled by a crazy mad scientist king, where you discover that the “cure” is not so much a cure, but a rather obvious matter of genetics. And then, oh, I don’t know, let’s throw in a gratuitous car chase! Just for the hell of it!
All the while I’m trying to figure out whether I’ve just missed something or if this is a “Choose Your Own Adventure” movie… where the plot can take a 180 degree turn at any minute! No cohesion necessary! And the cinematography, if you can even call it that… urgh. I actually had to close my eyes and cover my ears at one point to get my bearings. I wanted to be sick, but I don’t know if that was because of the jumpy transitions or the terrible acting. Quite possibly both.
But that’s par for the course for us. Tim and I have a bad habit of picking the absolute worst movies to see in the theater. If you told me I had a choice between a movie with substance, plot, and good acting and something horrible with Colin Farrel and bad dialog, I’d pick the latter nine times out of ten. I’m a glutton for punishment, I guess. 🙂
Booyah! Back from Boston and feeling surprisingly energized. Maybe a vacation from the day job was exactly what I needed.
While I was away, celebrating my birthday and figuring out how to use MBTA public transportation (with the help of my friends, of course), my photography was featured on Artist a Day! Yay! I find it a bit odd that the show pieces they chose were from 2004 and not something more recent, but whatever. The extra link-age was a nice birthday gift.
I’ve got another custom doodle to tackle tonight. My shop has done exceptionally well this month–in fact, it’s been my best month for sales yet, so pardon while I brag a little. 🙂 If you don’t want to watch my head swell, you should check out some of these links instead:
Yesterday was a Good Mail Day.
First, ThisNext sent me an awesome Gelaskin (designed by Steven Daily) for my MacBook. Now my laptop is all pink and sexay.
Second, my Secret Santa gift came! Yay! My Secret Santa was revealed as being Janette of liberatingomoni.vox.com. And the loot: A hand-knit scarf made of the softest purple yarn, a bar of gourmet chocolate (the good stuff – 41% cacao), and a handful of roly-poly jingling cat toys (because kitties love Santa, too!).
Janette obviously did her research. The scarf is perfect. I always wear a scarf on cold winter days (of which we have so many, living somewhere between Better Put On A Sixth Layer and Oh My God I Can’t Feel My Fingers), and this one is so soft and thick, and my favorite color, too! The chocolate was delicious (note the use of the past tense… I have no self control) and the cat toys were promptly distributed to their respective locations under the fridge, a chair, the T.V. stand and the kitchen table, not to be seen again until the year 2015, or the next time we move–whichever comes first.
All in all, a great success. Thank you so much, Janette!
I’ve decided that I really like Good Mail Days, and I think I should have them more often. So, who wants to send me stuff? 🙂 Otherwise I might be forced to spend all my money on Etsy, and wouldn’t that be terrible?
Ok, so here’s the obligatory, “I’m only doin’ it for the BloPoMo,” post. Look, I don’t intend to miss a day this month, but this stuff is rough for someone whose blog presence is normally sporadic – usually I post once a month, once a week at most. I’m not used to thinking this much, and it hurts, and what’s that smell? Oh, hey, my brain’s on fire.
In the meantime, here’s a list of my recently-starred entries from Google Reader:
Cadbury kittez – lulz.
Monster Factory @ Cutable – I’m a sucker for strange plushies.
Unexpected Guests @ sfgirlbybay – I want to hire her to decorate my house.
Ffffound! – never lacking for visual inspiration.
Kapow Jewelry @ Indie Fixx – love love love, and I don’t even wear jewelry!
Feelin’ foxy @ Modish – a nice diversion from the birds/deer motif.
Petit Four @ Little Splurge – allow me an ultra-girly moment to say, I heart lip gloss!
Yesterday evening I attempted to post a blog entry from Blogger, but found that I couldn’t publish to my server via FTP. Travesty! How am I supposed to NaBloPoMo when I can’t publish to my blog?
I did a little research and discovered that WordPress is not difficult to set up, and I particularly like that it resides on my host and is powered by my database. Customizing the layout was tricky, but I was able to squeak by with what little PHP I know. So I have a new blog! One that’s much easier to update! My blog can be accessed at the same old address, http://blog.sixhours.net.
This evening I came home to a neatly-wrapped package of treats from ThisNext–my reward for being a ThisNext Maven. I really can’t say enough good things about these guys. Their Web site is sleek, their people are friendly, and they love sending me goodies. If I weren’t already tied down, I’d consider moving to California and marrying them.
My Maven welcome package included a Moleskine notebook, a tin of ThisNext M&M’s, and a mini parsley planter from Buzzy Seeds.
Not only that, but ThisNext also gave me the opportunity to test drive a new designer wallet from DB Clay. Or, I should say, I held the wallet in my hands for all of 5 seconds before a certain husband snatched it up in an “Ooooh pretty gimme” moment. The wallet in question disappeared into his back pocket and I haven’t seen it since, which tells me DB Clay is on the right track with their new design.
I’ve been focused so much on posting and participating in online communities that I haven’t had much time to read my blog roll or do any commenting recently. Being that half the blogging community is partaking in NaBloPoMo, there’s a LOT to catch up on. I logged on to Google Reader to find upwards of 1k unread blog posts waiting for me. Admittedly, 700 of those were photos from Flickr contacts, but still! People! I can’t keep up!
So if you get a comment from me on a post that you wrote six days ago that has absolutely no relevance now, I apologize. In blog-time, it’s still last Tuesday.
Speaking of slow things, did I mention that I have a laptop now? It’s a little iBook, a retired veteran of the Maine Laptop Initiative program. It has an 800 Mhz processor and a whopping 128 Mb of RAM. It took me fifteen minutes to type this paragraph because the cursor can’t catch up to my typing. That’s how slow it is. I type a sentence, then wait five minutes. It’s an exercise in patience. An agonizingly slow exercise. And I’m going to need to stop using big words like “agonizingly”, because the computer almost choked on that one.
My iMac is much more “with it”, as they say, but it’s so nice to have a laptop when I just want to curl up in my chair and surf the Web from the living room.
Currently I’m enjoying:
ArtAndGhosts – surreal art and prints
Beehive Kitchenware on Cutable
New art prints at The Shiny Squirrel
The new Indie Fixx Shop
I blame lolcats for the new kitten
… and about a thousand other blogs in my catching-up travels that are so very slow, because it takes ten minutes to load Google Reader. But whatever.
Also, a huge thank you to Kerryanne of solobooks.etsy.com for the blog feature last weekend!
ThisNext goodies!
Originally uploaded by calobee
Oh, I am stoked. Why am I stoked? Just look at what showed up on my doorstep yesterday and you’ll know why I abuse the word “stoked.”
As you may or may not remember, back in May I won a neat wine gift set for participating in a contest on ThisNext.com, my favorite social shopping site.
Last week I realized that I hadn’t seen the wine set come through yet, and it’s been over a month, so I sent an e-mail to one awesome ThisNexter to ask about it. She looked into the issue and sure enough, the wine set shipped much later than expected. This was actually a relief, as we’ve had disappearing-package issues at our place recently (very frustrating), and I imagined that somewhere in my neighborhood roamed a very full, very drunk guy with a pink wine backpack slung over his shoulder.
Thankfully this was not the case (although the mental picture kept me amused for a good five minutes), and the awesome ThisNexter said that they’d also send along a second prize to make up for the delay. I thought it might be a gift certificate, or maybe some stickers or promo materials, which is why I was really surprised to find a sizable box on my step yesterday evening. I was even more surprised to open it and find all sorts of wonderful kitchen goodies from Tovolo! Eee!
I’d never heard of Tovolo until now (read: I’ve only shopped for kitchen stuff at Wal-Mart) and the design is really something else. Our current setup is basic – we have the essentials, but none of it is very pretty to look at, and most of it is well-loved (read: old, and from Wal-Mart). But the Tovolo stuff – I want to frame it and hang it on my wall. It’s solid and sturdy, too – I can tell these pieces will be with us for a long time. So thanks, ThisNext, for giving me the opportunity to ditch the old Wal-Mart spatulas and mixing spoons for something more chic.
Oh, and the S.O. thinks I should win things for him more often, so maybe ya’ll could hook me up with an iPhone in the near future. Just sayin’. 😉
It is entirely unlike to me to win contests of any sort, which is why I was so pleased when I got an e-mail from one of the staff at thisnext.com, saying I’d won a Wine Excursion Backpack Gift Basket for participating in their entertaining contest last week.
Squee! Double squee!
Never mind that the S.O. and I know nothing about wine, nor do we drink it – who cares? I won something! YAY!
And while I’m on the subject of free stuff, Moo is giving away 1000 packs of 10 minicards each to Voxers who are quick on the draw. I’ve already snagged my 10-pack – it contains my most recent flower photos. I may have to pick up one of these handmade Moo carrying cases from Etsy seller splatgirl to go along with ’em!
Other items on my “I will buy this next month because we won’t have to pay the gas company or the bank because of my leet bookkeeping skillz” wish list:
Also: The underside of my caramel rice cake looks like brains. That is all!
It’s about that time again. Here are two Etsians I’ve had really great shopping experiences with recently!
WoodcraftsAndCandles – wood crafts and (you guessed it) candles
I freely admit that I have little in the way of decorating sense. How do I compensate? Candles. Lots and lots of candles. If my house doesn’t look polished and put together, at least it smells good enough to eat. So when I found WoodcraftsAndCandles’ shop, I knew I was in trouble. Thankfully, Mother’s Day gave me an excuse to spend money, and I purchased these margarita candles for my mum. Of course, before they made their way to her hands, I snuck a whiff for myself… and I almost didn’t give them to her! Hah! But I did, and she loves them, and it’s only a matter of time before I go back and fill my home with more luscious scents.
donnapool – buttons, magnets, and puzzles
Donna Pool’s shop is proof that keeping a blog can help your sales. I first found these vintage camera buttons via Donna’s blog at Vox and they’re the perfect accessory for a photo geek like yours truly. My set even has my favorite film SLR – a Pentax K1000. I opted to have them made into super strong magnets to decorate my fridge. Donna also makes these unique plush puzzle balls, which are great for kids, or for those of us who are kids at heart!