:: :: a fish in the sea :: ::

feelgood things are starting to accidentally slip off my list. for one thing, i lost my journal in the move (i know... i lost my blog, i lost my journal... should i take the hint??) and hadn't started a new one in hopes that i might find it soon (i'm sure it's in a box in my mom's basement somewhere). and i haven't been taking walks much because it's been c-o-l-d and because evan is so over strollers. i mean come on.

then there's a little thing called my shop. many hours, my friends. many, many hours.

the truth is, i simply cannot revamp my life right now. i'm staying relatively content (the depression's been at bay for months now) and so don't see the need for an overhaul when things are going well. but i don't want to let go of too many of the good things, like reading and snuggling and taking baths and sitting around doing nothing.

so i made myself a deal: i would do little things. i've started writing one-sentence journal entries. i actually highly recommend this practice. it forces me to take a moment to think about the one thing i wish to memorialize for the day. the one important thought. it's very 2009. very twitter (which i love, by the way -- come follow me by clicking on the bird at top right).

i've also resolved to only use my laptop for as many hours as i have battery life each day. my battery lasts about 2.5 hours so that's all i get throughout the day. i use my desktop for design work and stuff like that, but i use the laptop throughout the day to check in with email, surf mindlessly, etc. limiting myself to the battery time forces me to think more carefully about where i point my browser and when.

i've also started doing a 15-minute yoga practice. it's a nice breather and i can do it during naptime without feeling like i'm giving up those precious, productive nap hours.

what about you? how do you make the most of the time you have?

* * * * *

p.s. i couldn't resist the seemingly unrelated post title... a girl i work with once misheard our manager at a staff meeting when he was talking about efficiency. she raised her hand and asked, "what were you saying about a fish in the sea?"

i almost died. in fact, i think i did die briefly and then was resuscitated by the sound of everyone in the room laughing.

:: :: they should have named the machine heroin :: ::

hand-drawn, hand-screenprinted.
i was experimenting with alignment and placement
here -- i like the peacock-off-the-edge thing more than
i expected i would. now i just need some colored inks
and i can go REALLY crazy!

throwing all caution to the wind (and all financial thoughts to the dogs), i tried out my yudu last night. it's a bit boring of me, i guess, but i ended up not really going for any specific design and instead making my first screen a true test: i tried out different-sized text to see how clear it would come out; i included something i'd drawn by hand and imported into adobe illustrator.

it was so awesome. clean, easy, and quick. and although it took me three prints to get the printing part just right, my screen was awesome and the print came out crisp and clear.

my mom, who used to run a screenprinting business out of our basement and who taught me (and my whole class) to print when i was in 5th grade, was super jealous. "that used to be a two-day process" she said when two hours after i started i had a screen ready for printing. i think she's going to get one for herself now.

the cool part is, it's still screenprinting. you're still pulling the prints by hand. it's still your art (or your design or whatever) but all the messy imprecise stuff that comes with screenprinting is eliminated.

this is going to be so addictive.

:: :: so me :: ::

that picture i posted last night? the night before? (i can't trouble myself to go look. i'm a busy, important person with much obsessing to do...) the "so evan" one? well if there were a picture that could capture me perfectly, it would be a picture of me sitting here at the computer studying up for my next art project as if said art project were actually brain surgery to remove four lifethreatening tumors.

i bought a yudu for the business (for those of you familiar with the gocco, a yudu is a new version of the gocco, made by a different company) and it's all set up downstairs and i wanted to make something during evan's nap this afternoon and then i wanted to make something tonight but i am paralyzed.

par-a-lyzed.

by all the possibilities. i can make anything i want but that makes it so i don't know what i want to make. i feel trapped in a box with no walls and no ceiling.

so what do i do? i spend an hour (okay. an hour is a total lie. let's just leave it at i spend more than an hour) carefully studying gocco- and screenprints by other people so that i can figure out more precisely what i like and what i do not like. do i want to use negative space? do i want to do something modern? something hand-drawn? do i want to go the typography route?

my inner ph.d. student has melted and refrozen and is expanding outward in an attempt to analyze and then crack this new creative process.

the reason i feel so encumbered?

because supplies for the yudu cost money. and i don't want to waste money. i want to get it right. the first. time. i want to create the most perfect print i can. something that i can put on a t-shirt i bought myself and make into a print for the wall. something i can give and something i can sell. something i can slather peanut butter on and call breakfast.

i need help. someone please unclench my fist.

:: :: i like fancy words like exhibit :: ::

when i was considering starting this little business of mine i told my therapist (i was being seen at the time for postpartum depression) that i had no doubt that if i could find the time to work at it, i could be successful. i meant it, but i'm not sure i totally believed it.

but man oh man have things been going my way lately. i was featured on two major design blogs (decor8 and paper crave -- see links at right) last week and now this week (beginning today and lasting until march 22nd) my work is part of a curated exhibit at papernstitch.com. go check it out (and leave me a heart or a comment, yes? the shop with the most hearts at the end of our month (mar 22nd) gets a prize).

the very best part is that i am totally loving this. i work a lot of hours each week (brian called me a workaholic the other night) but i find myself smiling at random times throughout each day and realizing i was thinking about shop stuff.

it's really fun.

:: :: so evan :: ::

february 09 043, originally uploaded by brianjulieandbaby.

there could not possibly be a more perfect image of evan these days. here he is: playing with his two favorite toys (two trucks), refusing to wear any clothes except a diaper, and running away from me. it's like someone asked him to play himself in a movie ad he went all in hoping for an oscar nod.

and oh my god. i think the oscars are on right now. i am so glad i just tried to come up with that metaphor because i would have forgotten entirely.

not that i have seen any of the movies this year. i had one of my biggest panic attacks ever at a movie theater last summer (i had to grip my mom's hand tightly throughout almost all of wall-e because i was freaking out so badly -- this had nothing to do with the movie) and i haven't been back since. partly this is related to the panic attack, partly it is related to our obsession with tv shows on DVD and the resulting 42-to-60-minute attention span we've developed. movies just seem so long now...

ugh.

and to think i used to teach film to undergrads. oh how i've changed.

:: :: ill advised :: ::

things i probably should have considered before i took evan to play outside at the playground on thursday:

(1) the parking lots of all the local parks are closed (this is their way of saying "hey, we wanted to close entirely but we can't really keep you from walking into the park so we're just not going to make it easy" and also "there's no way in hell we're going to plow all winter") so we would have to walk a significant distance to the playground and then back to the car (cutting down on our play time because omg it was cold out on thursday)

(2) the park near our house is on a big hill...

(3) ...that is exposed to the nastiest of chilling cold winter winds (scolding winds... winds that kept whipping across my face with all the "this was a bad idea" they had)

(4) despite there being no real snow on the ground, the slides are covered in a thin layer of ice, beneath which lies an icy, icy layer of water that, my not having thought to bring a towel, i must wipe off the slide with my mittens

(5) telling evan that we can only play for a few minutes on a playground is like someone telling me that i can only have one tiny bite of the warmest, gooey-est, most barely cooked chocolate chip cookie in the world -- it's one of those things you'd probably consent to but you almost want to say "why bother?"

(6) and it makes you cry

lucky (or perhaps not so lucky) for evan, i did not think of any of these things when we went to the playground on our way home on thursday morning. this week had just gotten so very, very long and we were both getting bored and i just wanted to spend some time out in the crisp air and make evan happy.

i'd probably skip it next time, though. or else i'd be more prepared.

:: :: in the beginning :: ::

most of my designs, before they end up on the computer, start here, in my sketch book.

i'm particularly excited about these two little peacocks. i had been going for something completely different and suddenly i saw a peacock and the rest went from there. not sure what i'll be doing with these guys yet, but just know... they're in the works.

:: :: no idea :: ::

saw this on design sponge. not sure what the deal is but damn it's cool. all those letters. i'm here on the other side of your computer screen swooning.

:: :: molasses slow :: ::

i will never be able to wrap my head around this: all of the preschool-aged things we do on a regular basis are canceled this week because of school break. the barnes and noble story hour for ones and twos is canceled. drop-in gym play for kids ages one to five is closed. baby swim class (10-22 months, i think) is canceled.

um. these children are not in school. or to put it another way, it's always school break for them. furthermore, school break's not really on my radar, folks, so when i get my kid wrangled into sneaks and a jacket at the same time and then convince him to actually get into the car and not simply brush the snow off of it or look at it from the porch, i can't help being just slightly rude when you tell me that there's no whatever because of whatever please let us play in your gym please please please.

this week is going by s-o s-l-o-w-l-y, and it didn't even start until yesterday. oh dear. my kid's not even in school yet and already i am counting the minutes until school is back in session.

(the highlight of my super slow day was when evan got excited to see snow falling outside (see images above) and then tried to climb out the window so he could play in it. see how he's even using that stuffed bear to try to get a little bit higher? thank god i had the camera for that one.)

:: :: brand new :: ::

yes, i've been busy. and there's more to come before february's over.

hopefully i'll also be homeless by the end of february. we're just NINE days from our closing in ohio... then the condo will be someone else's and i'll be real-estate-less until we close (fingers crossed) on the new house in march.

:: :: strategies :: ::

in school (high school, college, grad school) i was known for my evenness of temperament (seldom stressed out or running late), my memory (i have a freaky ability to tell you what page something was on and where on the page it was), and my elaborately doodled notebook pages. i was always near the top of my class no matter where my class was, and yet it often appeared to others that i paid little attention in class.

thing is, i always needed to have the right side of my brain occupied. i needed that distraction, oddly enough, to really take in whatever lecture I was hearing. those drawings of houses and tree leaves and page upon page of fancy swirls acted like a net, filtering out the 150 irrelevant words that surrounded the 10 good things my teachers were saying.

the common perception is that running a small etsy business -- or perhaps any small handmade-related business -- doesn't require much strategizing. in fact, i see comments on the etsy forums all the time from sellers who seem to think that success is going to find them. but i'm finding that because my business is small and my income still threadier than a weak pulse, i have to think that much more strategically.

i'm not talking corporate-takeover strategy or anything. i'm talking about thinking how to best use my time and resources. i don't have a lot of money, so i have to spend a lot of time thinking how best to stretch it. and i don't have a lot of time (even less so because i'm spending all that time thinking about stretching my money and oh yeah i have a toddler who needs constant attention) so i have to think strategically about how to get the most out of each hour i do have.

it's hard inventing all of this stuff as i go. every idea i have brings with it a hundred questions: is this feasible? is it worth it? will i be stretching my self too thin? will i be stretching the boundaries of my shop identity too far? will i be able to target my marketing efforts appropriately? to whom does this appeal?

but the funny thing is, i enjoy all this strategizing. i think what i like so much about running my little shop is that it engages both sides of my brain: the right side in all its creative splendor and the left side in all its analytical glory.

as we look forward to buying this house (even though we're getting closer and closer to removing all the hurdles and contingencies, i'm still calling it our maybe house), my left brain is going insane. numbers are crunching, possibilities are being weighed. my shop income -- small as it is -- suddenly seems awfully important. the strategizing part of running a business, too, seems like it could take over the creative part if i'm not careful.

except it really can't. because without any products to sell, there's really no strategizing to do. it's like our cellular membranes and how they just know, somehow, how to keep the levels inside the cells and the levels outside the cells more or less equal (tell me you don't remember learning about the sodium potassium pump... come on now).

it's a pretty cool thing.

:: :: number trees :: ::

trees1.1, originally uploaded by brianjulieandbaby.

now in the shop: a little bit of spring tied up with birthday bows. now that's good stuff.

:: :: bumbo redux :: ::

Giving Turtle a Horsey Ride, originally uploaded by brianjulieandbaby.

it's been a while since the big bumbo recall of 2007 (if you don't know what i'm talking about, you should read this old post), but tonight we got ours out of storage to lend to a friend of my mom's and one thing (singing to evan while changing his diaper) led to another (bumbo-related verses) led to this: our new bumbo song.

(to be sung to the tune of rock-a-bye baby)

bum-bo-bye baby
on the counter top,
when the parents leave,
the bumbo will drop

when the baby falls,
the lawyers will bicker
and all will be settled by
a stupid little sticker.

ta-da!

:: :: oddities :: ::

i just hit publish on twenty or so of the lost-by-me-and-wordpress-and-then-found-by-my-friend-anne-and-google-reader posts from the old blog. they're mostly from around the time i sometimes inappropriately refer to as the time i went crazy or the time i had a mental breakdown. they're from last summer when i was diagnosed with postpartum depression and honestly feared i was going crazy and/or having a mental breakdown.

i wasn't doing either, of course.

anyway, i don't know when i'll get around to adding all of the lost posts but i hope to add a few here and there as time goes by and eventually i hope they will all be restored. i hope they don't show up all weird and out of order in your blog readers. if they do, well, enjoy the recap of my life. it's been a doozy so far.

:: :: uplift :: ::

it's been pretty gray around here, lately, despite the green grass finally peeping through the snow for just the second time since we moved home to NY in december, and i have to admit i've been feeling a bit dull. a bit flat. but then i saw this little print (available at atwhim.etsy.com) and it picked me right up.

:: :: jump :: ::

photo taken by me, edited in picnik (go gorth and play -- picnik is really fun)

my mom's neighborhood is all new and well-planned and hilly so we had to resort to a few spots in the gutters where some debris blocked the rain's flow enough to make some okay puddles.

and then we spent an hour jumping in them.

:: :: this could soon be yours :: ::

ok. mine. not yours. but "this could soon be mine" didn't sounds as catchy as a post title.


we put in an offer on a house yesterday and as of tomorrow we will be in contract (contingent, of course, on a successful transfer of title on the condo in ohio). they countered our offer at more than their asking price so i was ready to write it off as a loss (even though we totally *love* this house) but then came back tonight with a counter of exactly what we offered but with a few little strange (and likely inconsequential) contingencies of their own.

we have to sign on it tomorrow.

because i had spent all day convincing myself i didn't care that we weren't going to get the house and blah blah blah i have yet to get properly excited about the fact that this house -- far bigger and cooler than i ever imagined we could afford -- will be ours.

it has all these cool built-ins throughout the house. and a one-car AND a two-car garage. and it's within walking distance of two parks, the community pool and ice rink, and a spray area for kids. it's in a walking school district (no buses! i think that's so cool!). it's seven miles from brian's parents' house, six from my mom's house, four from my dad's, and just under nine from my sister's house.

and just zero-point-four miles from wegmans. yes. less than half a mile from my favorite grocery store.

alleleuia.

:: :: ache :: ::

we went house hunting today.

do you remember that feeling when you were a kid and you snooped in your parents' christmas closet and you saw something in there you *really* wanted and you weren't sure if it was for you or your sister and you were so excited but so tentative that it actually made you ache?

we found the house we want. and i think it will go fast. and i want it. now. i want to make an offer and i want the seller to respond within 15 minutes. i can't bear thinking that i might have to wait hours, days, weeks!!! to see if i will be able to have this house for my very own.

there were two others that we also liked and would be considering if this one perfect house didn't exist, but now of course those look about as attractive to me as spam. not the email kind. the "meat" kind.

i don't want to live in a spam house. i want to live in the perfect house. and i want to move in tomorrow.

:: :: shameless :: ::

one part of julie's brain: you should do a post featuring your valentines cards so that people can see what you've got and get their orders in before it's too late.

the other part of julie's brain: no. that's dumb. that's like saying, "hey. buy something from me."

the first part of julie's brain again: yeah. that's what you'd be saying.

the second part again: yeah. that's dumb.

the first part: you've done it before.



the second part: that's why i shouldn't do it now.

the first part: but not everyone stalks etsy like you do. they stalk you instead. how will they know how many funny valentines you have?
the second part: or the cute downloadable ones. for school or work or whatever.
the first part of my brain: yeah. see?

the second part: oh. okay. let's write a post, then.

the first part: dude. finally.

:: : this is a test :: ::

it's not that i haven't had to discipline evan before, or that he's never misbehaved before or tested my limits or anything. but tonight was the first time i laid down the *big* ultimatum and had him fail to meet my standards.

meaning we had to leave dinner tonight while we were out with my mom and sister. we had to get our jackets on and say bye bye and i love you and then march outside to the car.

because evan (a.k.a. my very happy and mostly pleasant but extremely wired to the point that i wondered if he had somehow gotten ahold of a 2-liter of coke classic son) stood up on the seat (we were in a booth at a restaurant) after i had given him a few warnings and finally a very serious i'm holding your arm and looking right into your eyes and using my very serious mad mommy voice and you're getting uncomfortable and well you should be ultimatum that went something like "if you stand up one more time we are leaving. do you understand?"

then on our way out i held the door open for him and he said "dee doo" (thank you) without any prompting. and i just wanted to hug him and squeeze him and tell him what a delightful, wonderful, and good boy he is, the little maniac.

:: :: omg :: ::

bookshelf spectrum, revisited, originally uploaded by chotda.

i wonder how long this took to arrange.

i wonder if the owner of this amazing library buys books purely for their color properties.

i wonder if i have enough books to do this.

:: :: now in the shop :: ::

i have a few new designs to debut this week. here are two that are available now:

:: :: pop the cork :: ::

we are officially in contract on the condo back in columbus. we got an offer on friday, we countered on saturday, and we finally got the word tonight that it's official (pending a home inspection).

we will close on the 26th!

this is very good news. it means i've made our last mortgage payment already. and it means we can start looking for a house around here. our budget is a lot smaller here than it was back in columbus, but we're really excited anyway.

:: :: for love of earflap hats :: ::

i swore i wasn't going to do it, but i finally did. i joined facebook. (had i known that facebook had really addictive word games, i would have joined years ago.) i decided that living back here at home and building a new business and missing my friends in columbus and all, it was finally time.

it makes me feel like i'm in college again. i would have spent so much time on facebook when i was in college. chatting with my boyfriend. trash talking with friends down the hall. keeping in touch.

i made my profile picture the same one i posted on the blog recently -- the one of evan and me in the snow. i chose this pic for a very specific reason: because of the earflap hat. i realized the other day in traffic that earflaps say a lot about a person.

there i was in my little green civic with my carseat in the center of the backseat and i was wearing my blue earflap hat (because i always wear it) and i looked over next to me and there was a girl in a little gray nissan with a carseat in the center of the backseat and she was wearing an earflap hat too (hers was off-white) and i honestly considered rolling down my window and asking her if we could be friends.

because of her hat.

i know we would be great friends. i just know it.

:: :: today we're learning about opposites :: ::

my mom calls the days when evan is just crankier than -- i don't know, what is really cranky? -- a bike shop that has just received its latest shipment of pedal arms (called crank arms for the uninitiated) growth days.

today, friends, was definitely a growth day. today, also, i figured out why my mom calls days like this growth days. because on growth days, your kid drives you so batshit insane that you need a shrink.

heh heh. get it? growing. shrinking.

i'll go back to making stuff now and you can just forget you ever visited today. : )