Spring Training

OK, this is not me, but my goal. Got an email from Fitcorp yesterday. They want the old members back, so they are giving us a "Alumni Spring Break", $39 for 20 visits. That's increditable, consider how much you pay normally. Of course, it has a deadline, May 31. I cannot go on the weekends, since I have too much to do around the house, never come into the city. Counted the weekdays, there are only 33 days. So, I basically have to go everyday to every other day. Wow! That's a lot of mileage, like running a marathon, just in 20 days instead. That's not too bad! And I do want to lose that last 10 lbs of baby weight, so I accepted it as a challenge to myself. Just came back from my first visit, not as bad as I thought. Maybe carring a 20lbs baby around all the time helped a little. So from now on, till the end of May, I will be in the gym in the morning, and have lunch at my desk, instead of the Cafe, to make up some time. Hopefully, by the time we start going to beach, I will have my body back. Really hate to have those "muffin top" kind of body. (Read that on Family Circle lately, and thought that's mercyless accurate, and very funny.) Sorry there won't be any before and after pictures for this. It's too embarassing.

Snow Emergency?

A big one is coming! I had to come into the city because of a doc apointment, but probably will leave around lunchtime. Just hope last year's mess won't repeat itself. Last Dec. 13th, we had a very wet storm, everyone left work around 2pm trying to avoid it. But the road condition and visibility was so bad, entire boston area was deadlocked. Nobody could move, lots of smaller cars stucked in the muddy snow, or slided into each other. Most of the windshield wipers broke because of the heavy sticky icy snow. DH spent 4 hours on highway, which is normally a 25 minute drive. My trainride was not bad, but I had to wait 3hr for him to pick me up. And from the train station to my house, the 10 minute drive took us more than 1 hour. I was walking in deep snow, besides the car, half the time, trying to clean the windshield with the ice scraper. Most of people were stucked on the way home for 5 hours. And there were some poor kids stucked on their school bus longer than that, I think some of them finally got home after 9pm, they left school around 2pm! They were scared and hungry. So, hope this time we will do better.
Oh yeah, last night, I waited for one and a half hour at my train station! DH said I95 was so bad, they were moving slower than snails. And he didn't see any accident or broke down cars. Just one of those crazy traffic days. At least today, I have one of my favorite magazine with me.
Good luck everyone!

BTW, we watched the NCAA women's volleyball semifinals last night. Stanford and Penn State won the games, but very tough, both played 5 games, and won by just a little bit. I played volleyball for 8 years in highschool and college, and our team was the champion in our province. I haven't really played for about 10 years, but whenever I watch a good match, I always jump around, screaming, very excited. The final will be tonight, we won't miss it for the world.

Etsy Find Of The Week - PromosInASnap

These days I have been busy making promo items. Forgot if I ever mentioned this, on Etsy, we try to help each other out by accepting promos from other sellers, and put everything in the goodie bags. So, our customers at the crafts fairs, who get the free goodie bags, will enjoy cute little promos from different Etsy shops. This is a great cross advertisement. I sent out two sets of promos already, still have two more to go. So, when I was designing and making my promos, I went online for inspirations. Surprised? You don't google for inspirations? Liar! :) Anyway, I found this great Etsy shop, called PromosInASnap. Actually I found her on Flickr first, then went to check out her store. She makes all kinds of great promo stuffs, from stickers to buttons and mirrors, from business cards to customized notepads and lots of other product labels. I am thinking about getting some stickers from her once I am done with my logo design.Her promos are so professional, they made me thinking more about mine. The first set I made was the post-it cover thing, with pictures of my items. It's cute and colorful, but the problem is people probably will throw it away once they are done with the post-in notes inside. I want to give people something they like and will keep for a while, and has my signature designs. That is why I chose my button knot earrings. If they like them and wear them, their friends and family will be interested. It will attract more traffic that way. I have lots of scrap cords from making other necklace or decoration pieces, and they are perfect for the button knots. And I am going to use all sterling silver and 14k gold findings for my shops, so I have to find a way to use up all my gold or silver plated findings. Even though these earrings are little bit time consuming than printing out a bunch of stickers, they are the easiest to make and I can do it while watching TV. The second set of promos I sent out was these button knot earrings, and my business cards. Then I had this light bulb suddenly turning on moment. You know what I mean. PromosInASnap put the promo items in plastic bags with product tags, very professional. I haven't really decided on my logo, so no product tags for now. So, I just stapled my business card to the little zip plastic bags, and I think it's close enough. And this way, my promo earrings and business card won't be separated in the goodie bags. I will show you the pictures of my newest set, I think they look great!

And here is PromosInASnap's studio! It is so clean and well organized, and love the color she used. Wish I had a studio like hers. But I am grateful and happy in my newly organized basement crafting zone. It's much bigger than a couple of TV trays and the dining table, and I can make huge mess and don't have to worry about friends stopping by unannounced and see my messy side.

Final Olympic Medal Count:

Country	G	S	B	T
China	51	21	28	100
USA	36	38	36	110
Canada	3	9	6	18

More Origami Flowers

Remember the origami flower tutorials I posted a while ago, I found more.

I found this lotus flower on Flickr. And here is the instruction video.

And here is an instruction of how to make a lotus flower with A4 paper.

And check out these flickr sets from these very creative people. I was totally amazed how beautiful they are. This first set is from amandakay82.

Sherry has a set called Paper Fun. It has lots of great creations, but I cannot download it for whatever reason.

This one is from joostlangeveld's set Origami Flowers.

This is from beatbigearth's set All Paperwork.

And this last one is from Quadradinhos de Papel's ORIGAMI.

Olympic Medal Count Update:

Country	G	S	B	T
China	46	15	22	83
USA	29	34	32	95
Canada	3	7	5	15

Etsy Find Of The Week

I was look for some unique handmade cards on Etsy, and this one caught my eyes. Check out these from BeCreativeStationery. I like the simplicity of her cards, and the way she display them. Yeah, I know, I am really digging green now, but she has lots of other colors as well, and all the colors she used in her cards or other stationery are very much in harmony. Her designs are so simple and modern, yet very elegant. Replace those boring store-bought thankyou notes with these chic, unique handmade cards, and whoever receive them will know that you put lots of thought into this and will definitely appreciate them much more. And did I mention her price is very affordable for such high quality, handmade cards? So, go check her out.

Olympic Medal Count Update:

Country	G	S	B	T
China	45	14	20	79
USA	26	26	27	79
Canada	2	6	5	13

Have To Share This With You

Yesterday, the fabulous Jessica Jones from How About Orange posted a picture of Ms. Bakerella's orange cupcake pops. (BTW, if you never read my blog before, Jessica's blog is my favorite.) It looked so good, I had to check out the source. Let me tell you, it is super fun. You be the judge. Look at these yummy cupcakes, can you resist that? And Bakerella is kind enough to share some recipes and tricks. I can see lots of kids will have a wonderful birthday party soon. So, all the moms please check out Bakerella.


Olympic Medal Count Update: (OK, uxcritter complained to me yesterday about not posting Canada's medal counts. So, from now on, Canada will be in this short list.)

Country	G	S	B	T
China	43	14	19	76
USA	25	26	27	78
Canada	2	6	4	12

Pictures from My White Mountain Trip - Craft Show, and Flume Gorge, part 1

I have been so busy with the house and the garden, didn't have time to process most of the pictures from the trip. These are from the last day, which was the only sunny day we had during that week. We went to the Castlebery craft fair (annual) that Sat morning, and I guess lots of the vendors cancelled due to the bad weather. (But it turned out to be a great sunny day.) So, instead of 100+ vendors, there were only about 30-40 of them. But some of them are truely talented. Here are some pictures from the craft fair.

And I finally got to take some pictures of the Loon Mountain from my balcony before we checked out. The mountain was covered by clouds and rain in all the previous pics. There is a tennis court right under out balcony, so we got some surprise visits from those young kids and their balls several times. To the left, there is the beach volleyball court and kids' play yard. And that tent in the background is where the BBQ and potluck party happened. Yum! Oh, need to focus. Just look at the mountain! What a view! And we got to listen to the nature, the flooded brook next to the building, all the time, and actually saw several chipmunks running around.

And here are some pics from our visit to the Franconia Notch State Park, the Flume Gorge. Words just cannot describe its beauty. Even with the drizzling rain, the tree and water and everything else just make you feel like you are in a fairy tale. If you ever visit NH, you have to stop by the Flume Gorge. I will upload all the pics to my flickr account. Here are just some of the most beautiful ones.
A covered bridge built on top of a fallen tree. See that the horrizontal tree trunk right underneath the bridge? Amazing! And the view from the bridge is stunningly beautiful.

This is the "wolf's den". Very tight squeeze. I had to give DH my backpack and sweater in order to twist, climb and craw myself through that tiny opening between the rocks.

I took tons of pictures of the water in the park. I will show you more once I get them off DH's laptop.

Here are the famous glacial boulders and the amazing trees growing on top of them.

Because of the heavy rain for the past two weeks, ferns and mushrooms are doing great. Here are some cute mushrooms, and I finally figured out what was eating them, slugs. Oh, there were also lots of indian pipes.

Olympic Medal Count Update:

Country	G	S	B	T
China	39	14	14	67
USA	22	24	26	72

Happy Bday, Honey!

Almost forgot DH's birthday! Oops! There is still time to buy flowers before I leave work. But I have to come up with some smart excuses for not getting him a perfect gift! I will take him out for a romantic dinner, and buy him a gift of his choice this weekend. Guess no crafting for me tonight! Just before I left for vacation, I responsed to several fellow Etsy seller's promo item call. But only managed to finish and mail out one package. So, I have been quite busy these nights, making more promo items, while watching Olympic games. I made some post-it covers for the first package, but decided to use my cute button knot earrings as the promo samplers this time. So, around 60 of lucky shoppers out there attending those shows will get my earrings. I am very excited. Since lots of my friends wanted shorter chain, I decided to use half the length I used in my shop. So, these cuties will be about 1" long total, instead of 2". And I just thought of some cute earring card design, so will try them out later. I will post the pictures here after I am done.

Oh, a_beaded_affair asked for a picture of my button knot earring, I haven't taken any pic of my promo items, but here is a pic of the 2" long button knot earrings from my store. The promo one is half the length, with the same knot.

Olympic Medal Count Update:

Country	G	S	B	T
China	22	8	5	35
USA	10	9	15	34

Have You Ever Heard Of Home Stager?

I saw an interesting show on HGTV while stucked in my resort during last week vacation because of the heavy and never ending rain. Apparently 'home staging' is a quite popular concept in the real estate market now. Since housing market is so low now, there are more sellers than buyers. So, how to make your house stand out, impress more buyers to get more and higher offers? The answer is call a home stager. Traditionally, when selling a house, it involves team work between the home owner and the agent. But there is a new team member now, the stager. They can come in and help you redesign or re-arrange your entire house, in a way it will appeal to wider viewers. The agents also love their involvement, simply because the staged homes sell faster and make more money for the owner, and of course the agent get more commission. Staging fee ranges from several hundred dollars to several thousand dollars, depends on the size of the house and the amount of work stager had to put in. In the show I saw, the stagers have a close relationship with some decorating warehouse, which has everything the stager needed, from furniture to carpet, from window treatment to bedding. The stager first check out the client's house, then go 'shopping' at that warehouse. The warehouse will moving all the pieces to the house and stagers will set everything up. And the warehouse will send replacement if something doesn't fit. It's kind of like rent some nice stuffs for the open house day.

So, what if we don't have that several thousand dollars for this fabulous service? Are we doomed? Not necessarily. Here is some tips from WISH website. So, as long as you have common sense and follow the tips, your house should be off market soon. So, start decluttering and clean like you never did before. Oh, you can also google 'home stager' to read more articles and advice. It's time to get the market moving again.

Olympic Medal Count Update:

Country	G	S	B	T
USA	10	8	11	29
China	17	5	5	27

Back From Vacation

DH and I went to White Mountains in NH last week. It was magic! We used to live in NH eight years ago, I loved it there. Even though it was raining most of the time last week, we still had a wonderful time. We took the COG railway up the Mt. Washington, went shopping at North Conway, saw several covered bridges, went to the Flume Gorge at Franconia Notch State Park, rode the Aerial Tram up the Cannon Mountain and hiked to the "edge of the world", went bike riding and saw bear show and circus show, and visited several small museums at the Clark's Trading Post. Oh, I also did rock climbing there too, badly bruised my left knee on my way down, which caused me twisted the left ankel the next day. And we attended the Castlebery Crafts Fair before we left, drove around the golden pond and went to the NH Mall at Manchester. We had lots of adventure and fun, I took about 500 pictures, so it will take me a while to sort through and pick the best ones to post here.

What else we did on the rainy days? Oh, we watched the Olympic Opening show! That was super exciting. As Chinese, we are so proud now, wish we were there and helping out or watching the games in person. I also watched lots of HGTV shows. Since we don't have this channel at home, I always watch it at the hotels or resorts whenever I get the chance. I told DH not to buy this channel, because it will glue me to the couch :). And we used the swimming pools and hot tub a lot. It's fun to swim or relax in the hot tub in the rain. You should try it sometime.

Happy Monday, everyone!

No More "Manny Being Manny"

Manny is GONE! I am a RedSox fan, but not as big as my DH. I have mixed feelings about Manny over the years. He is a great hitter, no doubt about that. But he sucks at defense, and when he only get a single instead of double for a deep hit, I wondered what was he thinking? I know he runs slower, but running slow is still much better than standing there staring the ball and starting to run only when it hits the wall or ground. And his attitude about those "Manny being Manny" errors/moments is not very refreshing, definitely not a role-model for kids. But I still feel sad to see him leaving. Did RedSox make a good trade? I cannot say, since I don't know Jason Bay at all. But trading Manny, plus two other players (outfielder Brandon Moss and reliever Craig Hansen), and paying the remaining $7 million to get just one Jason Bay, it doesn't sound very fair to me. Maybe Jason Bay is a great player, or better teamplayer, or better personality. Let's just hope so. I won't turn my back on RedSox like the father and son on TV last night. If you love Manny so much, how about turn yourselves into Dodgers' fans, instead Yankee's. It just doesn't make any sense to me. You love Manny, so you hate RedSox, hence you have to be a Yankee fan? Cannot understand it!

Introducing TranquilBaby

New line of products for my shop. This one is called 'Fashion Girls', and it's absolutely gorgeous! And this one is "Victorian Garden Red".
I am having so much fun making all these baby gifts, can wait for my new fabric labels to come, so I can put it on my items and put them in my shop.

And here is another set I just sold to M's friend. It's double sided and fit for both baby boy and girl. Two burp clothes and a tag blanket.The tag blanket.The fabric bag that holds everything, can also be used as a travel diaper bag, enough room for a couple of diapers and a small box of baby wipes.

My train this morning was packed with Celtics fans. People at the last 3 stops couldn't even get on. Almost everyone dressed in green, and surprisingly lots of teenagers. Guess they don't have to go to school today. When I finally got out of North Station, the streets were already closed and thousands of people waiting on the sidewalks. The Boston famous duck boats were ready in the parking lot. Everyone was super excited about this parade, and I had to cover my ears sometimes because of the screams.