Minor tweaks

Over the weekend, I saw a LOT of family. (more in the next entry) Some of them complained - and rightly so - about the lack of latest Flickr photos in a prominent, above-the-fold area.

Actually, it was more like “Where the heck did your pictures go? Sheesh, bring ‘em back will ya?”

So I’ve tweaked the header just for you. I need to tweak it further, as I’ve never liked how the thumbnails link to just a small picture. I want it to go right to the Flickr page.

EDIT: I updated the plugin, so now it does that! So click on any pics above.

Anyway, we had a busy weekend. You can look at the pictures with captions and comments over here.

Lots of changes

So. If you popped round here lately, you’ll note I changed the theme. again. I am probably going to keep this format, as it fits into my long-term plans. I’m still tweaking, so it may change gradually, or quite a bit, depending on when you check next.

Another thing I did was ditch the BlogherAds. They had changed their payments (understandable) and with some other things, I felt the amount of space they were taking up wasn’t worth the money I was getting back from them. I’ve already replaced their ad strip with a gallery of my etsy shop.

Oh yeah, I opened an etsy store. Etsy is a site to sell handmade goods and vintage items, two things I have a lot of.

I have an upcoming server move and software upgrade/changeover to come too, but no idea when that will happen yet.

And yard sale season has begun

We held a yard sale this weekend - part on Saturday, and part today because it was a holiday, and also the day the community up the road help their annual yardsale. I figured we’d get traffic from people driving by and we did. We didn’t do too much business on Saturday, probably because of the weather, but today we did a whole lot more and the weather was still lousy.

I plan on holding more yard sales because I have a pile of crap to go through. We managed to get rid of the small tv, the stereo, a whole huge box of romance novels, and some other books and VHS movies. We also sold Emma’s play kitchen and accessories to an adorable little girl also named Emma.

I took a break since I’ve been getting up at the butt-crack of dawn, and Sarah & I headed up the road to check out everyone else’s yard sales. We headed out late, so a lot of places just had the dregs, and on our way back, some had started to close up. I did hit the mother load at once place. A lady next to the Mennonite church had sold her house and was moving out after 30 or 40 years. Her kids were handling everything, she seemed to be the neighborhood darling. I loaded up armloads of vintage goodies, some of which they threw at me to take as well.

- a 1969 Sears Christmas wish book
- a box of fabric for $2
- aprons
- embroidery patterns
- table linens

I’m a sucker for all those on the worst of days, so this was awesome. Even better, I scored on some random things stuffed in the boxes.

Ron was exasperated when i got home, because we’re trying to get rid of stuff, not add to the piles. Oh, and not spend all the money. But! I’ll be filling up my etsy shop with the vintage & crafty goodies to share the love. I also added some shots on flickr so you can see the “before” I fix them up.

Tons of shots up at the flickr place.

Then my friend Anna showed up and told me all about a huge stash of vintage stuff & paper goods at this one place I skipped. I resisted driving back down the road.

(there’s always next weekend, right?)

One of those recaps

The gopher is driving us nuts. It’s like a pet we didn’t ask to have. The hunt is on though, and even the neighbors are in on it. He dug up a bit under our front walkway and that was the final straw.

Ron needs a haircut. Actually, he’s needed one for at least a month. At least now it doesn’t stick up any more.

In addition to the gopher/woodchuck/annoying rodent digging up holes in the yard, I moved a couple of plants around. Found a couple more peonies struggling and put them in a hopefully better spot.

I think if Saturday looks nice I’ll have a yard sale.

In addition to that, I signed up for an Etsy account and started putting things in it. I think I could probably take two whole days to list everything I have that I could sell there. Not just handmade stuff, but supplies and vintage. I’ll let you know when it’s open, of course.

I got a stack of books from Penguin Canada that I need to write about too.

Oh yeah.. last night Emma wandered into the office, grabbed our little toolkit we keep in here and said, “I’m looking for a screwdriver…” I asked why and she said “To take apart my chainsaw.”

I gave her a head start, then found her downstairs with Daddy watching her PLAY chainsaw with the cover off. We talked about circuits & pulleys & gears.

Happy Mother’s Day

I love my mom.

And my kids love me.

What more can you ask for?

Which hand?

I keep asking Emma if her hand bothers her. “Only if I think about it and really concentrate. Then I can feel it. But mostly I don’t.”

Ron keeps telling her to not use it so much.

“Which hand do I write with?” She flings her right hand in the air. “This hand.
Which hand to I eat with? This hand.
Which hand do I use the remote with? This hand.
Which hand do I use the Wii with? This hand.” I raise an eyebrow. “Oh yeah, and this hand.”