Desert Rain Designs

7/22/08

Hi Y'all,

Well, I finally did it--set up my own online shop to sell the jewelry I make. Mark has been encouraging me (we are always having money problems due to being on a fixed student loan income, and I guess me spending a gazillion dollars on my jewelry habit wasn't helping...). So instead of just giving it all away, I thought I'd try my hand at selling it. I'm not expecting friends and family to buy everything, so don't feel pressured, but I do want to get the word out as much as possible.

I've signed up with a website that is a forum for buying and selling handmade items called etsy.com. I spent half of Sunday morning trying to come up with a username that hadn't been taken yet. I had wanted to name it Esperanza, but after several other attempts and perusals through baby name books (Mark comes in: "What are you looking at those for??"), Dancing Rain came to mind, but then I thought Desert Rain might be better since a lot of my stuff is Southwestern. So the name of my shop is www.desertraindesigns.etsy.com

I finished listing my first 10 items at around 1am this morning, and already had a lot of hits. (Apparently, there are a lot of insomniacs who stalk the website waiting for new stuff to pop up) I looked just barely, and now it's up to 80 viewings! Woo-hoo! But anyways, you'll never find my stuff by random scrolling. Just today there have been about 100 pages of new jewelry postings, so just search for desertraindesigns. I am excited and hope I'll be able to be successful. I have already noticed things I need to do better next time I take pictures, etc., but at least I've got my toes in the water.


Well, in other news..Mark's car needs a new transmission, so we're going to be out another $1,000 in addition to the $500 we just spent on new tires, rims, and alignment. Sigggggghhhhh (Although it has motivated me to get my behind in gear, jewelry store-wise). We would just make do with one car, but Mark is leaving for his OB/GYN rotation (in Silver City--230 miles away) in 2 1/2 weeks and Madelyn and I will be alone in Albuquerque for a month and a half. There is NO WAY I'd be willing to do that without having a car. I can tell you right now I would go insane. I've just gone one week without one and I'm ready to go AWOL.

Oh, well. We're plugging along the best we can. And now for the random pictures of the week:

Madelyn scaling Mt. Garagepileofsuff Mark stacked super high a few weeks ago. I knew this would eventually happen.

So, this is how she fell asleep last night. No clothes (at least the diaper is still on), covered with more marker scribbles (trust me--they're there), with an open can of crunchies. Now can you see why I thought she had fallen asleep on the potty like this?

Speaking of Little Miss, I've got to run and see what she's up to. Last time I saw her, she had ditched her diaper and had gotten out the toilet plunger....