Big Sale to Help Little Yoda!

I hope everyone's holiday season is still going great.  J and I had a pretty laid back Christmas visiting with his side of the family.  Even little Yoda got to come and celebrate a bit (Momma snuck her a little cheese).

We've been spending the rest of our vacation either sick, painting, remodeling, or band shows.  Yup, both  me and J are extremely sick.  It's such an awesome way to spend a vacation.  But we've also forced our selves to get off our butts and do a little work on the house.  You can check out my other blog for updates on that.  And of course, we're both sick and extremely busy, so J has to have a bunch of shows.  Three to be specific.  He has three shows while we're both sick and miserable and exhausted.  So much fun.

But enough about us.  I wanted to let everyone know that right now I'm offering 15% off everything in my etsy store from now until February.  Yoda had her check up the other day and they found a few disturbing things.  Not necessarily life threatening at this point, but things that could lead to bigger problems.

First off she has two puppy teeth that never fell out.  This is fairly normal (or so I'm told) in pugs, but they have to do a x-ray just to make sure that there is nothing serious going on in her jaw that is holding those little puppy teeth in.  Then they need to pull those puppy teeth and I wanna take all your money dentist (yup that's right dogs have dentists too), suggests a cleaning.  I'm not sure if we're going to go as far as a cleaning, but we definitely want to make sure her jaw is healthy and those teeth get pulled.

The second major problem they found is some discoloration on her eyes.  Because pugs have bulgy eyes, they have tendency to poke them and sometimes their nose roll rubs on them, causing irritation.  Well Yoda pokes her eyes all the time.  We make sure that there is not damage and try to watch her carefully.  But we found out at her last visit that her eye lids are rubbing on her little doggy eyes and causing the irritation.  And without corrective surgery, she will more then likely go blind soon.  That is not something we want.  So they put her on an eye drop regimen for now, but we'll need to schedule an appointment sometime early in the new year.

Now this news was nothing we were expecting.  We just figured it would be a normal check up with a possible liver panel to make sure her liver surgery is still working.  I mean we just bought our first home at the beginning of the month, we weren't expecting to have to get Yoda surgery to save her sight.  She's only a year and a half old, how much does a little puppy have to go through before she's healthy?  It's just overwhelming in so many ways.

To help pay for the surgery all the sales from my etsy store from now until February will go towards her surgery.  That's 15% off everything.

Thank you to all that helped a year ago when we fixed her liver; with donations, sales, and kind words.  I'm asking you all again to help Yoda.  This time the surgery isn't needed immediately, so we can save a little money before she goes under the knife.  Please spread the word and help us get Yoda the help she needs.  Thank you again.    

Moved in and ready to go!

So we are all (almost) moved in to our new house and have finally got the internets hooked up, so I'm able to post a few things before the craziness of the holiday season falls upon us.  My studio/our home office is coming along nicely.  I've unpacked a lot of the boxes, but there is plenty left to do.  I'm looking forward to getting in there and being creative.

I'd also like to let everyone know about a fantastic offer from ArtBeads.  They are giving away $100,000 in gift cards, FREE.  You just go to there website and fill in ten of our favorite beading friends, and they will receive a $10 gift card to ArtBeads.  How cool is that?  Ten of your friends could get some free beads for Christmas, awesome.  Now hurry on over there, you only have until December 22, 2010 to get your list of ten super people in.  You know you'd enjoy getting beads, now give that gift to your bestest friends.  :-)     

Featured!!

We have a pretty busy week ahead of us (we're closing this week), and I'm going to find it tough to be able to update again, so I'm going to try and get all my updates into this one post.  And I hope everyone had a great weekend, will have a great week, and an even better upcoming weekend.

Okay, now that's out of the way, I can share my exciting news.  My cuff has finally made it's debut on The Curb Magazine's site.

This is a magazine that is run by students at UW Madison.  Each semester they put out a magazine based on a specific topic or idea.  This semester was "women with moxie"  They have a few articles on etsy and they used my Eternal Daydream cuff in their buying guide.

This was pretty exciting, I've never been in a magazine before.  Everyone should go check out the article as well as all the other fun articles that the students worked so hard on.  Thank you Curb Magazine and thank you Julia for picking my cuff for your article.

Also on the art show front,  last Friday was my last show of the year.  It was just a little show here at the SVM, so my clientele were vet students, veterinarians, researchers, and professors.  I sold a pair of my beaded hoops and a guitar cuff.  The woman who bought the guitar cuff said her daughter plays bass and her favorite color is lime green, so I hope she enjoys it.  I see her around from time to time, so I'll have to ask if her daughter liked it.

I know I only sold two items, but I was only there for about 3 hours, so I don't think it was too bad.  It was fun to talk to the woman next to me (which sold adorable painting by the way, you should check out her website) and too see everyone I worked with.  I think I'll do it again next year.    

I'm also working on a cow bracelet for a co-worker right now.  It's a Christmas gift from her husband, who I also work with.  It's like the silhouette horse cuff, but with a happy, jumping cow.  It's actually pretty cute.  It will be done soon, and I'll try to get some pictures of it after the move.  I'm showing her the pattern today, so I hope she'll like it.

And last but not least, don't forget to vote for your favorite entries in the ArtBeads "What Inspires You?" beading contest.  I entered my Summertime Cuff, which is inspired by my love of the beach and my love of old vintage post cards.

Stop by today and vote for your 5 favorite entries in two different categories.  Voting ends December 8th, so get those votes in.  :-)

     

Packing Up!

So tomorrow is my last show of the year.  I'm just doing a little show at the SVM that benefits the Companion Animal Fund.  I thought it was just going to be a fun little show that would allow me to get to know some of the other people here that do arts and crafts.  But of course it looks to be quite the hectic day. 

1st I have a doctors appointment at 9:00 in the morning.  Okay, I asked my grad student to look after my table while I was gone.  That's taken care of.  Then I find out yesterday that it's also going to be a collection day.  Ugh, I don't have time for a collection on Friday and I sure as hell won't let anyone else do the collection.  So now I have to get to work extremely early to get my stuff set up, then rush to the doctors, then sit around waiting for the surgeons to do their thing, which means I'm sure I will be at work late.  I'm hoping that the collection isn't till after the show is over so I don't have to go running out of there like a bat out of hell just to collect and process a tumor.  But if I have to, I can always send my grad student back down there to babysit my stuff. 

Then this weekend I'll be working on packing the last things in my studio.  I only have a few things left to do and I'll be ready to move.  And I can't wait to show you guys my new studio.  It's 1000x better then my current one.  I know I've been lacking in my posts and I'm sure until the new year I'll continue to lack, but as soon as we get settled in I feel like the creativity will just gush out of me.  Okay maybe not, but lets hope so.  I mean it's a pretty nice studio.  :-)