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Sunday, July 12, 2009
The thrill of technology
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Saturday, July 11, 2009
Thursday, July 09, 2009
Gone Fishin'
I'm taking a little impromptu break the next few days and will be closed until July 14th. I literally hung a sign that says "Gone Fishin'" on both shop doors!
The great thing is, I'm doing it just for ME. No family tragedies to deal with. No disasters. Got a little envious seeing all the businesses closed this week, and wondered why I was sweating in there moving furniture and fretting about fall. It's JULY. It's summertime, and the living is easy, right? I know I am famous (infamous!) for my haphazard schedule for 2009. But it hasn't been relaxing time. Now I just want to relax a little bit. I realized that I am probably working a little too hard. I am a workaholic, but why am I having dinner at 10 or 11 every night? That sort of stuff should be saved for the 4th quarter, not now. The shops are running me, not the other way around, and that needs to change! So today I had a three hour nap, went out for Chinese, and ice cream, and am now puttering about the Whatever shop listening to the guitar across the street at Northpoint, and working in a RELAXING manner. Just enjoying the inventory and (calmly) getting ready for Dexter Daze (in a month). I know I probably shouldn't even be doing this much, it still qualifies as work, I should be sitting out in the sun reading a fluffy novel. Maybe tomorrow.
I am tired of living with a sunroom that has tiled floors but no grout! I am going to grout it! It's been two years since it was built, and I put down the tile, and it got too cold to do the grout out there, so I put it off. Time to fix that up. My sunroom is gorgeous, it just needs to be finished!
I am tired of this huge stockpile of ghetto furniture I have been saving up to paint! I am going to paint it! It's me and a can of primer this weekend, baby.
I am tired of living with my late 1990's decor in my boudoir. I haven't changed a thing on the walls since I started the shop. My tastes have changed, and I want to update that. But it's funny, in seeing how much some things have changed, I see how much they have really stayed the same. (How trite.) I was looking at this rose decoupaged vintagey plate I made with a flea market glass plate...back in 1994. That is totally the sort of thing I still love. But I'm a little less keen on taping photos to the wall, so that's gotta go.
It is so much easier to decorate a shop than it is to decorate your own home sometimes. At home, there are things that are Tacky with a capital T, but how can you get rid of them? They are part of your life and part of history. For example, I was soooo ahead of the curve, back in 1993, at the age of 15, I was scrounging around garage sales for junk to paint. Had I known 15 or 16 years later, that would be all the rage, I could've capitalized on that and dropped out of high school. Ha ha. But anyway. So I have this cool wooden shelf. But, it being 1993, I painted it COUNTRY BLUE with little sunflowers all over. Gag! I really want to paint over it, a nice creamy linen color, but I can't. It's history. I was really into that country thing in the early '90s. The country blue, the mauve, the ducks, the eucalyptus. Oh man. I went to a flea market this morning, and it was like stepping back into my teenage world. The scent of the dusty eucalyptus wreaths blew across the duck planters and the Welcome Friends painted wooden cut-outs. I thought that stuff was super cool back then. It's horrifying to me now. So when I'm 45, am I going to look back on the Frenchy-Parisian-rose-cottagey-vintage looks with the same horror? I can't imagine that, it certainly seems more classy and timeless than a big wooden pig holding a mauve-colored sign that says "Country Friends Gather Here". Please, Decor Gods, don't ever let the stuff I like now look dated. It can't possibly ever look like that.
The great thing is, I'm doing it just for ME. No family tragedies to deal with. No disasters. Got a little envious seeing all the businesses closed this week, and wondered why I was sweating in there moving furniture and fretting about fall. It's JULY. It's summertime, and the living is easy, right? I know I am famous (infamous!) for my haphazard schedule for 2009. But it hasn't been relaxing time. Now I just want to relax a little bit. I realized that I am probably working a little too hard. I am a workaholic, but why am I having dinner at 10 or 11 every night? That sort of stuff should be saved for the 4th quarter, not now. The shops are running me, not the other way around, and that needs to change! So today I had a three hour nap, went out for Chinese, and ice cream, and am now puttering about the Whatever shop listening to the guitar across the street at Northpoint, and working in a RELAXING manner. Just enjoying the inventory and (calmly) getting ready for Dexter Daze (in a month). I know I probably shouldn't even be doing this much, it still qualifies as work, I should be sitting out in the sun reading a fluffy novel. Maybe tomorrow.
I am tired of living with a sunroom that has tiled floors but no grout! I am going to grout it! It's been two years since it was built, and I put down the tile, and it got too cold to do the grout out there, so I put it off. Time to fix that up. My sunroom is gorgeous, it just needs to be finished!
I am tired of this huge stockpile of ghetto furniture I have been saving up to paint! I am going to paint it! It's me and a can of primer this weekend, baby.
I am tired of living with my late 1990's decor in my boudoir. I haven't changed a thing on the walls since I started the shop. My tastes have changed, and I want to update that. But it's funny, in seeing how much some things have changed, I see how much they have really stayed the same. (How trite.) I was looking at this rose decoupaged vintagey plate I made with a flea market glass plate...back in 1994. That is totally the sort of thing I still love. But I'm a little less keen on taping photos to the wall, so that's gotta go.
It is so much easier to decorate a shop than it is to decorate your own home sometimes. At home, there are things that are Tacky with a capital T, but how can you get rid of them? They are part of your life and part of history. For example, I was soooo ahead of the curve, back in 1993, at the age of 15, I was scrounging around garage sales for junk to paint. Had I known 15 or 16 years later, that would be all the rage, I could've capitalized on that and dropped out of high school. Ha ha. But anyway. So I have this cool wooden shelf. But, it being 1993, I painted it COUNTRY BLUE with little sunflowers all over. Gag! I really want to paint over it, a nice creamy linen color, but I can't. It's history. I was really into that country thing in the early '90s. The country blue, the mauve, the ducks, the eucalyptus. Oh man. I went to a flea market this morning, and it was like stepping back into my teenage world. The scent of the dusty eucalyptus wreaths blew across the duck planters and the Welcome Friends painted wooden cut-outs. I thought that stuff was super cool back then. It's horrifying to me now. So when I'm 45, am I going to look back on the Frenchy-Parisian-rose-cottagey-vintage looks with the same horror? I can't imagine that, it certainly seems more classy and timeless than a big wooden pig holding a mauve-colored sign that says "Country Friends Gather Here". Please, Decor Gods, don't ever let the stuff I like now look dated. It can't possibly ever look like that.
Tuesday, July 07, 2009
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.
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