Procrastination Situation

What I should be doing: working on the July newsletter and calender. What am I doing? Blogging. I don't know what it is about planning the calender, but I dread it. And so, I procrastinate! It's what I do best.

Yesterday and today were productive days. I was able to put out a lot of the inventory I acquired in Chicago and Arizona (my dad picked up a bunch of strands for me on his business trip! Way to go dad. He's got an eye for color.) And yes, I DID get some Swarovskis. I don't know though, they just don't excite me. The most exciting thing about Swarovskis is that they have a color named "erinite". Naturally, I got some of that. But I would much rather a sparkly natural gemstone any day. I also re-arranged all of the seed beads, oh, AND I found some great wooden trays in varying shapes and sizes at Wegmans. I think the beads look much nicer against the wood than the glass and grey velvet they were in before. So the store is getting a warmer, more inviting feel (at least that is my perception of it). Today I took the purple schwag, oops I mean "swag" off the front windows. I also took out the weird picket-fence things that were holding ribbons and gemstone chip strands. The purging of those items completely opened up the store. It is so much brighter, and looks much bigger.

I have some rather crappy photos, but I'll post them anyway. The first shows how I re-arranged the strands by color. The reds/oranges are the most striking, however that photo didn't turn out well, so here are the greens/blues:

And here is an even more terrible shot of the seed-beads I rearranged. I was attempting a kind of artistic, interesting angle, but I seemed to have missed the mark on that.

In other news, Gonzo is becoming quite the beloved store dog. He is so well behaved, it's hard to believe I trained him myself! In the morning when I first arrive, he wanders around the store while I turn on the lights and put my sign on the curb. Then he curls up right by the check-out counter on the little welcome mat. When customers arrive, I put him in the back room with a make-shift gate across the door jamb and he just hangs out back there with his bones. Every time someone new comes in, he gets up and sits patiently at the gate. If they don't immediately notice him he starts to whimper a little bit until invariably someone exclaims "Oh! A puppy, is he friendly?" to which I respond "oh yes, very!" and then he gets lots of good lovin. I think he's pretty pleased. My last photo of the day is a decent shot of Gonzo, albeit not in the store. But I owe you at least one good picture.

AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!