Joyful Abode

Things that have been going on around the Joyful Abode:

My friend Liz told me that I needed to cut back my avocado plant (It was about a foot tall, maybe taller, with big healthy leaves) so that it would become a bush instead of a tree. I was kind of nervous for the plant… I thought if I cut off all of the leaves it wouldn’t be able to photosynthesize and it would die! But I did it… and sure enough, it soon sprouted an extra “arm” with a couple of buds for more.

Now, a couple weeks later, the main new “arm” has 5 healthy leaves! I’m proud of my little avocado baby. It’s about a year old now.

Some of the things I’ve been making for Joyful Abode… they’ll eventually be online. I promise!
Annum napkin sets - with four napkins, each depicting a tree from a season of the year.

About a million aprons. Stripes, paisley, toile, coffee prints… something for everyone!

Other Joyful Abode news… you might notice some new links at the top of the page. I’ve added a link to my MySpace, so if you have one, please add me as a friend! I also added my Flickr link, and I’d love to have new friends there too. In my opinion though, the most exciting new link up there is to my portfolio at Trunkt. I’ll be adding more pictures to that, but it will serve as my portfolio to show prospective wholesale customers. So if you have a shop near you where you’d like to see my things, you’ll be able to give them my Trunkt URL so they can see if they’re interested in carrying my line!

I’m also working on a new web shop that will allow me to have more things listed in a more flexible way, and a new homepage for the website, so that is all very exciting!

I also have new helicopter change of address cards and birth announcements to add to the shop, and T-45 Goshawk moving cards and baby cards are coming soon!

Also, I wrote before about where I’ve been, and I mentioned that on May 8th, we’d find out what lies in the future for my guy’s training. Well, we found out that he got what he wanted! We’re going to Meridian, MS for him to train to fly “tailhook” which basically means planes that land on carriers. He’ll be learning on the T-45C Goshawk, which is a hot jet compared to what he’s been flying.

But guess when we’re moving!!

This FRIDAY!. The movers are coming on Wednesday, and we’re driving up Friday with everything we need for several weeks… The on-base housing is full, so we’ll need to stay in a hotel when we get there, so we can go house-hunting. What an adventure! I’ll keep you updated on what happens!

I can’t believe I’ve neglected my blog so much!

But then… given what’s been on my plate lately, I CAN believe it.

Let’s see… I think some of you know that I’m a preschool teaching assistant. For the past month, we’ve been getting ready for their graduation ceremony, and it was on Friday. The kids were all dressed up and SO CUTE. They all got stage fright simultaneously though, so the songs we had been practicing sounded like they were being sung by a chorus of semi-mute mice. It was really sweet.

The weekend before last weekend, my parents came to visit. We took them to the Naval Aviation Museum at NAS Pensacola, to the beach, had a cookout, and went to a few restaurants.  It was a pretty awesome visit.

Then last weekend (the one that just finished), I was an exhibitor at the Gulf Coast Women’s Expo! It was a huge thing to get ready for, and I was so nervous. Now that it’s over, I’m a little relieved, but I’m glad I did it. I handed out tons of business cards and free recipes, met some awesome people, and made some sales. But now I have a LOT of stock to add to my online store! It’s going to take me a whiiiiile.

In addition to prepping for the kids’ graduation, my parents’ visit, and the expo, I’ve also started two new writing jobs. I now am a co-blogger at Start Cooking which is quite awesome! I get to write about food-related stuff that’s very different from what I do here on Joyful Abode. They’re more professional, informative, primer-like articles, rather than the trial and error recipes and step-by-step how-tos I do here. I also landed a sweet position as a tea blogger for TippyLeaf, and I’ve been having a blast reading, researching, and learning about tea, and then sharing my knowledge (and awesome tea finds and events) with the world.

So… that’s where I’ve been.

I can guarantee you’ll see more of me in May than you did in April! It’s going to be a fantastic month.  To everyone who’s reading this: Thanks for sticking with me even through my little bit of down time. And to my BRAND NEW 90 subscribers (I’m up from 340 to 430 according to Feedburner), welcome! I hope you enjoy what I have in store for Joyful Abode in May!

Also… the Guy is almost finished with his primary flight training as a student Naval aviator. On May 8th, we’ll find out what track he’ll be on for Advanced, and if/where/when we’re moving!  It’s going to be so crazy. Wish him luck!

So, there’s no creative space to feature today. Several people have sent me partial entries, or entries that need to be formatted differently in order for me to work with them. At the moment though, I’m “fresh out” of complete features!

Fortunately, there’s a bright side to this. The features this month have been amazing, and really inspiring. I hope you’ve been as engrossed in them as I have! I’ve made some new “blog friends” and subscribed to a lot of new websites, and “hearted” a lot of etsy shops.

I’ve also learned some things about how to host a feature:

1. Figure out what you want to do, completely, before you throw it out there. If I had had the interview totally prepared and ready to send, complete with directions for attaching photos (how many, what size, etc) BEFORE I asked for contributors, it would’ve been a lot simpler.
2. Make a deadline for submissions. That way I’ll know exactly how many contributions I have. I had hoped to make “creative spaces” a month-long feature, and I had over 60 people contact me about featuring their spaces. Unfortunately though, not all of them have followed through (and it’s very possible that some of that may be my fault, like if I’ve lost emails!) and I ended up with many fewer than I had hoped for.
3. Maybe not make interviews so long… the editing takes a very long time. A word/picture limit might be good, if it’s going to be a daily thing.

Does anyone else have any advice for me, or ideas, that could possibly make future features run more smoothly? I’ve had a blast with this, and I’d love to do it again, but not if it’s going to be so exhausting every time (I don’t know if you’ve noticed that my “personal” posts have dwindled in the last week or so…).

I’m also open to ideas for future features. Of course, anything domestic is fair-game. Don’t let this feature box you into a “crafty” mindset. I have a couple floating around in my head… and I’d love to add to my mental idea pool. No promises though!

PS If I have a partial feature from you, like only the interview, or only photos, or if you needed to change the format of your submission, go ahead and send me the rest! I’ll still feature your space when you get it to me (I’ll give you until March 3, which is a Monday, so you’ll have two weekends).

Meanwhile, check out one of my all-time favorite craft spaces.

This gorgeous space belongs to Tricia Royal of bitsandbobbins. I especially love (and have coveted for years) her card-catalog, which she uses to store … bits. You know, and bobbins. (Well, and zippers and buttons and such.)

Right now, all of my posts about food have the tag “food” whether or not I have included the recipe (or technique, as it sometimes is). If it has the recipe or technique, I also include “how-to” as a tag. But I also use “how-to” for tutorials like the jewelry storage board or recovering your office chair…

Basically, I need to devise a tagging system that will work better to help people find posts about a certain topic in the long run.

I was thinking I’d still use “food” but add “recipes,” get rid of “how-to” in favor of “tutorials,”… and then I realized that over time, I might get so many recipes posted that it will be hard to sift through them all. Should I tag differently, adding “pasta,” “chicken,” “pork,” “salad,” etc? I don’t want to have so many tags that they’re no longer useful either…

Should I add tags for different crafts? Right now I have “sewing” and “crafts” but should I add “paper” and “needlework/embroidery”?

Or should I try to make a page which catalogs all of the recipes by category? When I posted a new recipe, I’d also have to update that page, but it might be easier to keep up with than 50 tags.  (Of course, I’d make a tutorial page with the tuts cataloged too.)

Does anyone have any input for me? I’d love to hear it before I try to take on this daunting task… Did you know I’ve written over 200 posts for Joyful Abode so far? AHH! Re-tagging will be a nightmare! But hopefully worth it.

Lately, I’ve been super-busy at Joyful Abode. I have been trying to determine a plan for 2008  (which almost satisfies my never-ending love for making lists). The plan includes new products, new apron styles, more publicity (or “putting myself out there”), and hopefully more…people…noticing me. Of course, this will happen bit by bit, so don’t expect world-shaking changes all at once!

One thing you may have noticed is that I’ve switched out the ugly and boring google adsense ads in the right sidebar for sponsorships. I’d much rather give other independent crafters and artisans a place to promote their businesses! So, if you have your own business, blog, or even a favorite charity you’d like to support, please consider sponsoring Joyful Abode.

One thing you probably have NOT noticed is that Joyful Abode has been more heavily traveled of late. When someone comments on an entry, I get an email about it no matter what. BUT if it’s a new person who has never commented before, I must approve the comment before it’s posted. Well, I’ve been getting lots of new commenters lately. Welcome, all you new people! Also, the number of subscribers, unique visitors, and pageviews have been inching up quite a bit. It’s pretty exciting!

I am also part of a new team on etsy called Homefront. I’m heading up the development of a blog for the team, and if you take a peek, you’ll see there isn’t much there yet. I’m pretty excited though, because a lot of etsy teams are location-specific, and that doesn’t work out too well for military families who move often.

Besides all of that newsy stuff, I’ve been sewing baby blankets and hand-appliquéing little pictures in the corners. Pictures will come soon, I assure you. They’re VERY cute, and definitely worth all of the time that goes into them. They’re made out of 100% cotton flannel, and the batting is something like 97% cotton (the website says 100%, but the store says 97%). They’re warm and snuggly without being suffocating. Keep an eye out!

Take a look and let me know what you think.

I need to play with the header so that when you make your window smaller, all of the houses still show. (And I need to get rid of some pixely noise that happened for some reason.)

And I think I will probably get rid of the diamonds on the left, right, and bottom. Or maybe just turn them green (like the grass in the header).

Update: I think I’ve fixed the header. Please let me know how it looks with your monitor and browser settings!  I’ll worry about the diamonds later… they’re not really bothering me.

I’d like to say goodbye to 2007 by recognizing some of the posts which have served as anchors for Joyful Abode in its first seven months.

1. Solving the Jewelry Storage Problem: My elegant solution to storing AND displaying jewelry in a way that lets me easily add it to my daily wardrobe.
   
2. Applesauce Spice Cake: This delicious (and deliciously simple) recipe is one my mother-in-law shared with me while I was in college. It’s become an autumn staple.
   
3. Ice Cream Bread: A novel idea, but not so delicious… though it would be fun to make with kids.
   
4. Bowtie Ballet (pasta dish): A favorite among my friends from Winthrop University, and embraced by dozens more via Joyful Abode and Craftster.org. Try it. You won’t regret it!
   
5. How to Clean Nasty Drip Pans: A disgusting problem, with a simple, flammable solution.
   
6. Inspiration? Decorate (No.2): My approach to a unified living room, including custom-made artwork (by me).
   
7. Chicken Taco Nachos: A spur-of-the-moment pantry buster recipe that turned out so well we might just repeat it on purpose.
   
8. How to Make a Gorgeous Bulletin Board: Just because it’s called an office doesn’t mean it has to be drab!
   
9. How to Re-Cover an Ugly Office Chair: You know, to match your gorgeous bulletin board.
   
10. Hook Me Up! Crochet: Links to all of my free crochet patterns, from my previous life at hookmeupcrochet.com (You can find me in Stitch ‘n’ Bitch: The Happy Hooker too)
    

Did I leave out your favorite post? Let me know what your favorite was in the comments.

And have a fabulous (and SAFE) New Year celebration tonight!

After posting every day in November, I thought it would be a breeze to keep up the pace in December. It wasn’t.

Things got hectic-feeling… and I scrimped on Joyful Abode a bit.

So I’m going to take an official time-out this week. I’m traveling with my guy to South Carolina, from whence we hail, and we’ll be spending the week with our families. I am looking forward to taking a break and breathing in this:

And possibly snuggling in front of one of these:

I’ll be back in full force in 2008, so watch out! You’ll be inundated with fantastic recipes, fantastic crafts, and more. Big things are planned for next year.

There will also be more shop updates once January rolls around. I’m VERY excited about that. (If you order anything between now and the end of the month, it will be shipped January 3rd, just to let you know.)

I joined. I joined a while ago. I wasn’t going to, but then I realized I was already about halfway through the month and had posted every day. So… I joined. And then I was halfway sort of a little ashamed that I jumped on the bandwagon, so I didn’t tell anyone.

Some really neat people have visited my Joyful Abode because of it, so I’m happy I did! I’ve also read some fun blogs on the Randomizer. So… I’m coming out and saying “I’m a NaBloPoMo…Fo!”

So in the vein of blogging about blogging (meta-blogging?) I want to mention a few other things.

• If you view Joyful Abode in internet explorer, it will probably look weird (You’ll have to scroll down to see the posts). Internet explorer evidently fixed their issue of adding extra padding (and screwing up formatting) in their latest version, so update to ie 7!
• If you read Joyful Abode through livejournal’s RSS feed, please do not comment in the feed’s comment area. If you want me to see a comment on one of my posts, please click to the website. LJ doesn’t notify me when there are comments on the feed, so I might never see them. Thanks!
• I am still overrun with spam… it stopped for a while after I added the “Did you pass math?” commenty thing… but then it came back, especially on my highest-ranking pages. Anyone know what to do about this?
• To the NaBloPoMo people who “tagged” me for the 7 things… I already did it. Sorry!!! I know you just joined in during November, so you didn’t know… but there it is.
• And… you all rock. That’s just the truth. You seriously rock.

And… say goodbye to Petunia! She’s going to her new home in Pittsburgh.

And Allison should be in Georgia by now. Along with three sets of recipe cards. Yay!

Pick up your own recipe cards, aprons, and bias tape at JoyfulAbode@Esty.

Mrs. Dragon tagged me a while ago, and I’m supposed to give you 7 facts about myself.

So here we go:

The Rules
1. Link to your tagger and post these rules.
2. Share 7 facts about yourself.
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post and list their names (linking to them).
4. Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment at their blogs.

My Tagger

My tagger was Mrs. Dragon, who makes some pretty nifty cards with flowers on them!

My Answers

1.  While I am a huge proponent of decluttering and I’m firmly an anti-clutter person, I am addicted to office supplies! When the guy and I moved in together, he had a shoe box of office supplies, and I had a big Rubbermaid bin full. That’s not including the dozens of empty binders and brand new folders (hey, I’m a teacher). I downsized a little, and consolidated our things, but we still have a LOT of office supplies.

2.  Speaking of my downfalls… I can organize almost anything, but I cannot keep my paper stuff under control. I have piles of papers in various stages of action… and I thought I had it contained, but now I know I’ve lost it again.

3.  For a long, long time, I was afraid of cooking meat. I never knew if it was done, and I’d worry about overcooking it in fear of leaving it too raw (chicken, pork especially). After 2 months of being married and cooking for a man, I’ve lost that fear. I can cook anything!

4. I did not really start cooking and baking until college. I could make basic stuff, and deal with a lot of pasta, but baked goods weren’t my thing. This is mostly because my little sister was “The Chef in the Family” and doesn’t share the kitchen very well. So if WE wanted to bake cookies, SHE baked them and maybe let me stir the dough like a little kid. But dang… those are some fiiiine cookies.

5. Autumn is my favorite season, and this is evident in my color choices for many things (mmm…pumpkin, sage, goldeny, salmon). I also love Autumnal flavors like chai, pumpkin, and gingerbread year-round. But I do enjoy hot summer days on the beach. Pensacola’s good for that.

6. As much as I love writing in Joyful Abode, I can’t stand paper-and-pen writing. I also never liked writing papers for school, cover letters for job applications, or any other “official” writing. It was such a pain… I’m not a slow thinker (haha) or typist, but a 1-page paper could easily take me an hour or longer to write.

7. I’m living proof that you can get a guy by semi-stalking him. Maybe I learned that from my oldest sister… hmm… She’s living proof too. And we’ve got some great guys. Ever wonder why the good ones got snatched up so quickly? Stalkers.

I Choose… (and if you haven’t visited these, DO… they’re fantastic)
1. Love and Olive Oil
2. Not Martha
3. Pink of Perfection
4. Montessori by Hand
5. CraftLog
6. SouleMama
7. Make Your Own Damn Dinner!

Lately, I’ve been getting dozens of spam-comments a day here at Joyful Abode. It’s pretty irritating to say the least.

I just downloaded and installed the “Did you pass math?” plugin for wordpress, but I’m not sure if it’s working. Can you please help me test it by making a comment in this entry? Thanks!

I’ve been super-busy lately with last-minute wedding stuff. I’ve been wrapping gifts and calling everyone (DJ, photographer, officiant, parents, etc.) and generally being exhausted.

The wedding is Saturday, and after that we’ll be honeymooning in Georgia until Thursday I think.  Then, a few days later, August 1, we’ll be packing up and moving to Florida!

I may post between the honeymoon and moving, but I’m not sure how the schedule will work out. If you want to make sure you’re notified of updates when I come back, look on the left side of my website for the “bloglines” button and the email subscription service. Pick which one you want, and sign up to stay informed!  If you use Livejournal, there is also an RSS feed you can add to your friends list here.

If you’re lucky, I may even make a post (a real one) before the wedding. Haha. I have many ideas for things to write about, but it takes me a while for those ideas to actually manifest here. I guess it’s better than having it be the other way around though.

I am driving to Pensacola, FL today to look for a house and a job. I have about 10 house possibilities and 2 job interviews. Wish me luck!

I will not be updating while I am in Florida, but you can make sure you’re notified of new updates when I come back. Look on the left side of my website for the “bloglines” button and the email subscription service. Pick which one you want, and sign up to stay informed!  If you use Livejournal, there is also an RSS feed you can add to your friends list here.

So… Tell me about your househunting experiences. I want to hear it all: the good, the bad, and the unspeakable! Spill.

Thinking about starting your own blog or website?

Just for you: A year of web-hosting for less than $25 with my maxxed out promo code!

(You can see the chart better at my flickr.)

Dreamhost.com is a great webhost… I’ve been using them for years with no problems. Customer service is always quick, and they are very patient with non-code-savvy people (like me).

When you sign up for hosting with them, you may use a discount code that another user creates through their rewards program. Most people set theirs to be 50 dollars off, so they can keep some of the reward money. I’ve maxxed out the discounts for you (as shown in the chart).

Why? Because that makes my discount code The Very Best… so you get the best deal. Seriously? A year of hosting for less than 25 dollars? Awesome.

And if you refer someone, I get $5 because it’s a second-level referral. So I only get reward money if you refer someone, and you win by getting the very best deal on webhosting. (And you can make your own 97-dollars-off coupon code too, to do the same thing).

Promo Code: JoyfulMax

Happy birthday to me, and happy birthday to Joyful Abode!