Rainy Day, Great Day

It rained all day today, and we even lost power for about an hour, but it was a surprisingly good day. The girls had a blast playing with their flashlights in the dark, and I took some time to clean and organize "my space".

Back in Killeen, I had a small bedroom for my business (100 sq. feet), in the place we are renting now while we wait for our house and the new studio to be finished, I have about 30 sq. feet.

If you can see all the labels, that is a bit of my OCD coming out, but I think everything looks so lovely properly put away and organized. I know, I am big nerd!

Hope you all had a good weekend!

30 days and counting...

This is where we started back in January:

And this is where we are today:

30 more days and we will actually have a home!

Small Indulgences

My latest purchase (I know, I am a big spender, lol) one bottle of perfect for summer pedicure polish in See Ya Later, Sailor:

I LOVE it!

I am exhausted!

Steven had a 24 hour staff duty the day before, so I used the opportunity to stay up into the wee hours of the morning updating the website. I am SO tired, but hopefully, it was worth it. I did a lot of updating that was long over due, deleted old items, added new fabrics, new purse styles, new accessories, etc. Anybody out there reading this, I'd love to get your feedback on the site!

This is my new most favorite item:

I love it because I can put my driver's license, ID card and credit cards in it, and it still fits in my pocket!

Good night all!

Hosting photos

So updating my photos was on my "to-do" list today...

This is a pain to me, because everyone I see lately is using flicker , but its not a photo hosting site, its a photo sharing site. For photo hosting, you have to either use your own website, or you can use a site like Photobucket, which is what I have been using. Since I had my ebay store before my website, I have LOTS of pictures hosted on photobucket. Moving them, or renaming them, breaks the links to them that you have anywhere else (like on eBay or Etsy), so basically it would be one big HUGE mess to even try. So in the end, I just decided to start a flicker account and put copies of all my pictures there. Well, not all, but most all. It isn't perfect, I think a few of the pictures might be on there twice, and the clothes aren't in the best order, but it will do for now.

Here they are, all 662 of them:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/heroonmyarm/collections/

I set up 3 collections, the first has all our Hero On My Arm items, the second has Polka dot Door Boutique Clothing, and the last one has shopping cart covers, graphic designs and personal photos.

Enjoy!

To watermark, or not to watermark...

This is a tough call for me, adding watermarks to all our pictures. I just can't decide if its even worth it! I don't want it to be distracting, and I feel like if someone is going to be dishonest and use any of our pictures in an inappropriate way, they are going to find a way around the watermark. Plus, it would be SOOO much work to do.
Could I just ask everyone to please be nice, and don't take and post our pictures without our permission?

UPDATE: My husband's advice was to go ahead and watermark all the pictures, so I did. And it didn't take as long as I thought, since I was moving them any way.
Thanks

A Very Personal Project

I was so excited to get this package in the mail today from the Navy Exchange! This is for a personal project of mine, a purse for my mom, inspired by my grandfather's Navy uniform. A vintage Dress Blue jacket for the outside, and I haven't decided on the interior fabric yet. My mom has been waiting on this for almost a year, so I am setting out to get it finished before we move into the new house. I hope.

Thread, thread and more thread...

This is when you know you've officially graduated from HOBBY to BUSINESS- when you stop buying thread in 200,300 or 500 yard spools, and start buying the 6000 yard spools.
I got an order of thread in this week, its crazy how fast we go through it!

A new pet, maybe

There are cat people, and there are dog people.

I am a dog person. But I have fallen in love with this cool kind of cat. They are called Highlanders, and some friends of ours have one, and I just love it. My husband said we could get one for the new house!
Pets will, of coarse, not be allowed in the studio, but since its not on the main level of the house, it won't be a problem.

New House, New Studio!

We are only 30-40 days away from being able to move into the new house and studio. I am SSSSOOOOO excited, I can hardly stand it. We'll take a new picture again this weekend, things are going very fast now.

I got to pick the color for the new studio, its called Fun in the Sun:

It doesn't look the same on my monitor, as it does in person, but it is cheery and bright.

Cleaning House...or Computer

I had set this week aside to get a lot of non-sewing related tasks done, like starting this blog, going through all my pictures, updating my website, etc. But since it is already Friday night, and I am just now getting to the blog, well, you can tell how well that plan went! I will be organizing all of my photographs tommorrow, and will be getting to the all important website updates on Monday, but this also means I had all week to think about what I wanted to post here, hence all the random thoughts I am in the process of posting, lol. Just in case you were wondering...

One of the things that I did get finished already was to clean out the bookmarks on my internet browser. I am a bookmark junkie- I had over 500. The problem is, of coarse, that bookmarks are supposed to make things easier to find, but not when you have so many. So I deleted away! It was a little bit sad, because I had the best of intentions about reading some of them later, but I have to be honest with myself and admit that I just don't have the time.

So here they are, my new, fewer bookmarks (maybe you'll find something interesting to add to your bookmark list!):

First, the basic stuff:
the business blog www.heroonmyarm.blogspot.com, my eBay store http://stores.ebay.com/Polka-dot-Door-Boutique and my website admin page.

I don't get to read a lot of other blogs, but the ones I have bookmarked are:

1. fabric designers, Anna Marie Horner http://annamariahorner.blogspot.com/ and Heather Bailey http://heatherbailey.typepad.com/

I love reading the blogs from these super creative women, and the photography is beautiful, too.

2. military spouse blogs from Army Wife Talk Radio http://awtr.blogspot.com/ and Spouse Buzz http://www.spousebuzz.com/

I'll admit, I read these to try and stay "in the loop", but honestly, since they both employ multiple blog writers, I find it hard to stay interested and follow, since each post is written by a different spouse.

3. A few other military spouse entrepreneurs http://www.joyfulabode.com/blog, http://campfollowerbags.blogspot.com/ and http://thepaisleypalmettogirl.blogspot.com/

I got to see Joyful Abode at the Piney Woods Arts Festival this March, and I just love their vintage stuff (plus Mona got to chat with them and said they were SUPER nice). I just love their tag line too- Domesticity by Trial and Error
I love looking at Tia's quilted creations, they are beautiful art pieces. And I just discovered the Paisley Palmetto, I was so excited to read about speech recognition software that she uses, I can't wait to get some too!

4. And a few left overs from my days as an eBay designer http://www.designing-minds.blogspot.com/ and http://ipbyamelia.typepad.com/

The first one is a snapshot of the "custom boutique" world on eBay where I was born as a designer, and the second is a former eBay designer turned photographer, who takes amazing pictures.

So there it is, a peak into my computer!

This is me...

I decided to go ahead and start a separate blog for myself, instead of blogging about personal stuff on the business blog. Not really sure how many people are out there reading, but what the heck!

So this is me, Seneca:

I wanted to use this picture:

But my husband said it looked too "Glamour Shots", (which it is!) so I decided to use the first one instead. We are going to have family pictures taken again in the fall, I'll try and get a newer one of me then.

For anybody that doesn't know me, like I said, my name is Seneca. My husband is an Apache Helicopter pilot in the US Army, and we are stationed at Ft. Rucker, Alabama. We have two beautiful girls, Sydney Claire and Sophie Elizabeth:


I am the owner of the Polka dot Door Boutique, LLC. You can visit our website via any of the following links (they all take you to the same place!):
www.polkadotdoorboutique.com
www.HeroOnMyArm.com
www.HeroOnMyArm.net
www.HeroOnMyArmPurses.com

I began my business making shopping cart covers, then children's clothing on eBay, and now military uniform purses and gifts. I have authored a few sewing eBooks, tried my hand at template designing, and my newest goals are turning our Hero On My Arm purses into a direct sales business and writing a book.

I hope if you are a military spouse (or even if you aren't) juggling being a wife, a mom, and running your own company (or contemplating starting one), that you find my ramblings helpful, maybe even insightful. If you ever want to reach me, my email is:
seneca@polkadotdoorboutique.com