Oh gee!

How about some garden pics to start off my post? (Also since I can't seem to put the photos where I want them, argh.) The garden outside The Whatever Shop is quite famous in town, and it's all thanks to my mom's green thumb! Here she is outside the shop.)

This is a portable garden--it's not really in the ground. It's on a plastic cover over icky gravel! It turned out great!

The perennials are amazing this year! The sun here is incredible.

I am completely horrified to find a stack of comments that never posted. I'm so excited y'all are reading this, and my apologies for not posting them! I am still figuring out Blogger. They should all be visible now! Thank you!

I flaked out on posting pictures like I promised last time. I won't make any more promises--I promise! I am the most distracted person on earth. Ooh look, something shiny just went by...

See what I mean?

Here's what I have been up to lately.

1. SECRET PROJECT. Those of you who know about it, hush! ;-) All will be revealed soon.

2. The pugs. They are getting bigger and more well-behaved each day, which is quite shocking. I bought them this Iams food that promises "SMARTER, MORE TRAINABLE PUPPIES". Ha! They obviously have not crossed paths with Penelope the Terror.

3. Redecorating Frivolites top to bottom. I am starting the 'getting ready for fall' blitz. No actual fall is out yet, don't worry (although I saw some awesome Halloween things at Von Maur last week!), but it takes me about a month to reconfigure everything, move my light stuff to the back, white painted furniture and lamps, all get shoved into the dark corners of the store to lighten them up, while I bring out darker woods and heavier textures into the front to display the autumn goods on. My goal is to have ALL of my fall out by Dexter Daze (August 14 & 15), which is ironic, since I now close this store for Dexter Daze so I can be downtown. Where I am not putting out any fall this year. The irony kills me.

4. Getting ready to become an ASP. No, not the snake. An Accredited Staging Professional. I am going to run off to an exotic locale (like maybe Kentucky) sometime in the next 4 months to learn what I already know, but I will have the paper and the little letters by my name to prove it. I have dabbled with some lightweight home staging the past year, but I am ready to go at it gung-ho after I get the designation. I will always be happy I tried out a real estate career, because that's what led me to discover staging as a profession. I love it because I can do design looks that are not normally anything I do in the shops. (i.e. industrial loft). Which is something I will really have to emphasize in my staging marketing. I am not going to turn your house into a shabby pink paradise with cupcake trinket boxes all over. (Unless that's you're thing. And cupcakes do work well in urban lofts, I'm sure.)

5. Tying up all the loose ends of life. Or at least some of them. I have been on this nearly maniacal organizing spree the past few months. Oh yeah, you wouldn't be able to tell that, looking at my counter and all...but I am trying to sort through and condense everything. One of my happiest accomplishments this year is that I finally got my arse out of Space C. Space C, as you non-locals will not know, is the empty space next to Frivolities, in the shopping center. My landlord gave me the key back in 2002 to store things there 'for a little while'. That 'little while' stretched out to almost 7 years. If I got a 20 box order, it went in there. If it was broken, it went in there. I stored the shop Christmas trees in there, the things that were 'too complicated' to deal with at the moment (like this big-ass cherub fountain), and boxes to crush to recycle. It was a pit!

To distract everyone from the public mess I had made, I stuck a stuffed anteater in a glass conservatory in the window. Named him Stan, posted a sign warning everyone not to feed him. Stan: Dexter's Most Famous Anteater took on a life of his own, and attracted quite a following. Even more so when he moved out of the conservatory and onto my skateboard in the window. (I say 'my skateboard' like I'm a cool punk, but alas, I just bought it for a Lady Frivvie window scene.) I had a woman stop me and say that seeing Stan there all the time made her day. Stan got so popular that I had to order a bunch of them to sell and sold out. I move Stan and his skateboard over to my window, along with the same sun-faded sign warning against feeding him. (I don't like ants in the store.) And I happily got EVERYTHING out of Space C. That is a huge monkey (and anteater) off of my back. I had some good stuff over there that was never unpacked! All the crap is residing in my basement at the Whatever shop now, safe from my public view! And that big-ass cherub fountain? BROKEN. That will teach me to unpack things right away. The cherubs were okay, so they now reside in my backyard.