Happy Holidays and an Update

Hello everyone! I hope this post finds you all well and I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving. To those enjoying a long weekend I hope it was a good one for you. :)

I would first off like to get into my absence. I apologize to everyone for lack of updates over the last several months. Toward the end of the summer going into the fall season I haven't been feeling myself. I have been in a long string of a depression funk, one I'm trying to pull myself out of. Things have been difficult for me and they finally escalated over the last month.

For those not in the know I still do live at home with both of my parents. Two weeks back there was something that happened between them and as you can all guess it affected me as well as my brother since we all do still live together. It hit me particularly hard. Naturally all these emotional blows left me falling behind on my orders through Etsy and Artfire. I had sold orders waiting on me since September that just shipped this last week. Before the problems between my parents though we had Halloween to deal with and the last week of October was hectic for me even though I was off from work. We have been in the process of moving for over 4 months now, give or take, so my dad's decision to have Halloween at the other house was a poor one. It meant my mom had to rent a box truck on a Saturday I was scheduled to work. I work nights so I sleep days. Naturally I didn't get to do more than snap a few pictures as they were moving things into the truck. Being carted back and forth from the old house to the new and back again was also a huge chore. I can't drive so it meant I had to have my mom bring me over. Lack of communication meant me missing a few days in the middle of the week.

Now that Thanksgiving has passed (which we had at the other house even though my brother and I still fully live at the old house) we are fast approaching Christmas. I haven't gotten to make any holiday pieces like I wanted for my shops because of all the nonsense going on and my emotional troubles. I also just got a brand new 10 week old kitten just two weeks ago (so he's now 12 weeks) so handling him and trying to work with hemp has been a chore, not to mention just having to get him adjusted to the new house, our other animals, and watching him in general. I have to say he's remarkably well behaved despite his bouts of zoomies here and there and his need to get into plastic bags and the garbage. I have been trying to get my room cleaned a little more each day so that he has more room to roam and I have more space to function in. I am going to try and see about carting some things to the new house but I don't know if that will happen.

My "day job" has also been extremely stressful. The overnight manager and two supervisors I work with are, for lack of a better word, assholes. Things came to a bit of a blowout between myself, the manager, and one of the supervisors several weeks ago. They made me an offer that I know they didn't think I could complete with the promise they would switch me from being one of the truck unloaders to the ad set team that changes the store signs. I met their challenge and they were forced to comply with switching me. The manager had no issues with it but the supervisor has been a real bitch to me because she no longer has me for truck nights (she's the supervisor for the truck). Just about every night I work with her now we butt heads at least once. Just my being there seems to agitate her to no end because I'm not on her truck team anymore.

Long story short I have caught up on my orders. I have one bracelet I need to alter, 7 pairs of my grape cluster glass pearl earrings to make for a custom order, and one vintage macrame belt and bag book to ship all before Christmas, so I have until the end of the week I believe to ship these for guaranteed pre-Christmas delivery.

I have so many pictures I want to upload and post here. Please bear with me though. I work pretty much every weekend now, Friday through Sunday (not always all three days but it pretty much turns out being at least 2 of the 3) plus several days during the week. I don't have a set schedule and because my truck supervisor, who also does the overnight schedules, hasn't yet put me under the ad set schedules, she usually doesn't get around to giving me my updated schedule for following weeks until Saturday nights and Sunday starts each new work week.

I still have shop listings to edit and update as that was about where I was when my activity died off. I still have all those new items to put up in my shop as well. For anyone who is on Etsy and has seen my shop please be aware that in my absence a lot of my listings expired. Over the weekend I posted a lot of them back up again just to boost up my shops stock. Over the next few weeks I will be re-listing the rest of the items two at a time, one vintage item and one of my handmade jewelry items. My Artfire shop is still fully stocked though, items never expire there.

As for sales I have a big Cyber Monday sale I'm going to post up now. On Artfire you can get any of my handmade items, excludes all vintage, destash, and supplies, for 20% off from tonight until early Tuesday morning, eastern standard time. You will be able to retrieve the coupon code from the right hand side bar of my artfire studio page.

For Etsy shoppers you will receive 15% off for Cyber Monday on any of my handmade items, excludes vintage, destash, and supplies, through early Tuesday morning. That coupon code is CYBERMONDAY2010.

I will work on getting another update in here soon and I hope to get back to promoting as soon as possible. It's unfortunate I missed this holiday season sales wise but I hope next year will be better. I'm working on snatching up holiday themed beads though so perhaps I'll be making some stock for that throughout the year as well as next year's Christmas in July sales.

A last note to my Artfire buyer, I haven't yet had the opportunity to edit my new shipping prices into Artfire. Rest assured you WILL receive a refund for all overcharges in shipping once your payment is received and I have packaged and shipped your item. I don't like to issue refunds until I have shipped my packages due to the fact when I weigh my packages for shipping I try to estimate as best I can. It has happened in the past that the post office has charged me more than I thought when they re-weigh the item.