Typical

Comparing this year to last year in June, The Happy Abode is doing ok 👌

I don’t know why I panic. It’s never as bad as my imagination makes it out to be and business has improved at every stage of our development. I must trust in the process!

I had a lovely day today which included some hugs with The Brains Trust, a delivery of new stock that is already priced and on display, another name taken for the next paint pouring workshop and a phone call with a sweet customer from The Bay who was in the shop at the beginning of the week and was waiting on today’s delivery.

There is so much love oozing from this woman, she makes me feel emotional just listening to her speak. Genuine, unconditional, spiritual love. I’m looking forward to seeing her smiling face tomorrow when she comes to pick up her order.

My Nutrimetics order arrived today too, which was exciting. I finally received my lipstick pallet and there were other goodies that I was keen to get my hands on.

Adoring Husband came with me to the club tonight. We didn’t win anything and it was a relatively quiet night as far as our usual group is concerned. Even the numbers of other patrons was down. Apparently James Blundell was playing in The Bay at the RSL Club, so perhaps some of the regulars decided on a big night out!

We came home to watch the footy and are both in bed now. AH is snoring softly beside me as I type this and I am yawning every couple of minutes.

Have an amazing weekend everyone.

Nite all.

Non-event

I got nothin’.

Absolutely nothing to report for the day.

I hardly slept all night so my energy levels were low before the day even began.

It was a grey day.

I wore grey.

I came home and sat on my grey(ish) couch and watched a movie called ‘The Wife’ (you thought I was going to say “50 Shades of Grey” didn’t you 😳)

Adoring Husband cooked lamb ribs and potato on the barbecue.

Now I’m in my pyjamas contemplating an early night to make up for the sleep I lost last night.

You can tell I need it huh?

😴

Let’s hope tomorrow brings more exciting news to report.

Have a lovely Friday 🤩

Nite all.

A Different Phwoar!

Well, today in the shop certainly made up for yesterday!

The Gypsy was too unwell to make it in for meditation this morning and while I had set up a series of healing meditations for the class, I decided at the last minute to set up a tea and coffee station in the room and let the group be social together instead.

It was like a henhouse with lots of loud chatter and laughter and I think it was a huge success.

The group got to know each other a little better and can now support each other more constructively.

I picked up a parcel containing kitchen utensils that I’d ordered to use as art tools and I used some of them to make this ...

I’m trying to hone my flower making techniques before the next workshop!

I know I can do better.

I have two pieces of news to mention.

With a sigh of relief, I can declare that the Garden Guru has been cleared of any serious medical conditions after his mishap last night. Whew!

With a tear in my eye I say farewell to fur baby Lucy Walker. It was her time to go and she lived a good life. Warm hugs to her sad and loving parents who are already missing her presence.

I spoke to The Motivator this afternoon and she has been very busy down south. All going well, she should be home next week, but there could be a slight question mark over that scenario. Fingers crossed that all goes well for all concerned.

Off to bed now. I was awake every hour on the hour last night and have been up since 5am, so I’m feeling a bit weary this evening.

I hope Lady Lynn is going well.

Nite all

Whoah!

Not a single customer today until ten minutes before closing! Then three came in and two walked out empty handed.

Thank goodness for the 'one'.

It felt very strange all day because Tuesdays, even taking my coffee girls out of the equation, usually see a few people at least walking through the doors.

Having said that, only one of the girls turned up for coffee too! There are a few out of town, a couple who are not well and a couple with visitors.

It was nice to spend the morning with The Brains Trust. Aggie and Beauty both popped in very briefly.

I spent the day listening to guided meditations because The Gypsy is not well and probably won't be able to come in to lead the meditation class in the morning.

Ugh.

You would think that with all the meditating that I do ... at least twice every day ... that I would feel comfortable about this situation, but I have to admit that I'm feeling a little out of my comfort zone because I haven't guided 'others' before.

I'm sure it'll be fine.

We came home and I spent a few minutes standing ankle deep in the pool, then sitting in my egg chair and Adoring Husband and the psychotic dogs joined me for five, until I decided to change into a paint shirt and try something new.

The 'something new' was a complete failure, so I took one of my other old failures, covered it with paint and did this ...

These are photos of each little section of the painting. I love how the cells appeared and the colours are very vibrant - it's much better than the painting underneath it!

I had soup for dinner while AH cooked steak on the barbecue for himself.

I'm off to bed for another early night ... gosh, I think I've created a new habit!

Get well soon Lady Lynn.

Nite all.

Monday Madness

The question was asked "You're a burglar, but when you break in, instead of stealing, you do things to mildly inconvenience your victims. What would you do?"

These were some of the responses:

• Spread biscuit crumbs in the beds.
• Peg ALL their socks on the line.
• Put bubble bath in the toilet.
• Swap the socks and undies drawer with the kitchen utensil drawer.
• Put all the pantry items in the linen cupboard and all the linen in the pantry.
• Remove all the batteries from the remote controls.
• Replace raw eggs with hard boiled eggs.
• Pop the corners of all the fitted sheets off every mattress.
• Wrap EVERYTHING in Christmas paper - food, books, knick knacks, remotes, pillows etc.
• Take all the toilet paper.
• Re-arrange all the wall art.
• Replace all the family pics with a different family.
• Toast all the bread and put it back in the bag.
• Put a blob of honey on all the door handles.
• Move all the furniture 6" to the left.
• Replace their cats with dogs or vice versa.
• Open all the cupboards and drawers.
• Turn all the chairs the wrong way round.
• Mix everyone's clothes up.
• Line up one of very shoe along the hallway.
• Put a mint on every pillow.
• Turn all the clothes hangers backwards.
• Put rice on the ceiling fan blades.
• Make a sandwich and leave it on the bench.

It's all very weird and some of the answers were much more sinister than that and are not worth repeating here, but I got a bit of a giggle out of the ones I listed.

It was a good day in the shop, though the afternoon was very quiet. We locked the doors ten minutes early so that we could drive into The Bay and get some stuff done.

Daniel, from Tinkerbells, one of my favourite shops, was holding a ring for me and their 'opening the new shop sale' ends this weekend, so I needed to get in to try it on. It was 3.40pm when we pulled up across the road from TBs.

The new shop looks SO AMAZING and I plan on taking a few hours to really wander around and soak it all in at a later date. 

Turns out, the ring that was being held didn't fit, but I looked at some others and found this one instead ...

It's my favourite stone, blue kyanite, and I love it so much! I intended to purchase it for myself but Adoring Husband bought it for me!

From there we rushed to Truckloads where I loaded up on canvasses and paint ... because I used my last canvas on Sunday afternoon!

I have used 23 tubes of paint so far in my artistic pursuits and I have 57 tubes of paint, most of them full but some partially used, in the tray waiting. I got one really big canvas and I'm going to save that for something really special!

We ducked into Coles to stock up on my coconut icy poles.

 

I wanted to price MDF at Bunnings because some of the artists that I watch on youtube use that as their canvas. Turns out that it would be cheaper to use than canvass, but it might be more difficult to hang on a wall if somebody bought it. I didn't buy any today, but I'll experiment with it some time in the future.

I did find some MORE tubes of paint in Bunnings - different colours to what I already have, so I think I bought another ten tubes there.

After all of that, it was right on 5pm when we drove out of The Bay and we were home before 5.30pm. That's pretty good going for 2.5 hours.

It was a quick dinner of meat on the barbecue and a salad thrown together so that we could sit down and put our feet up. We are definitely done for the day and it will definitely be an early night for us both.

Nite all. 

Because I Could

I tried to stay awake for the women’s French Open Tennis singles final because Australia’s Ash Barty was playing, but firstly they had to complete the men’s semi final that was rain delayed from the previous day. Problem was, ALL the tennis was delayed again, due to more rain!

At 11.30pm our time, the rain had stopped and the covers were off the court, but they still didn’t have a start time, so I gave up, turned the TV off and meditated myself to sleep.

At 3.45am, both Adoring Husband and I were awake, so I turned on the TV hoping to catch some of the match, but alas it was over and a doubles match was being played. I did a quick search on my phone to discover that Ash had won the French Open title quickly and easily.

With that knowledge, we happily fell back to sleep.

It was after 8am when I next woke, but I stayed in bed til about 1pm ... because I could!

AH brought my celery juice, followed by coffee, followed by tomato on toast to keep my energy levels up for watching art videos on YouTube!

I found a couple of ideas, and chose one to try today ...

This is one that I created yesterday, which AH loved, but I didn’t ...

And I pressed a clean canvas onto the wet paint that dripped off the edges of it to create this, which I love!

We spent the afternoon watching the football and I have to say that my tipping has been abysmal this week with only two correct so far! Thank goodness I didn't pay to be in the tipping comp this year!

I spent a long time in the kitchen ... actually it was only an hour, but it felt much longer!

I thought I had some curried chicken in the freezer and AH selected that for dinner to be accompanied by cauliflower rice. As I began the preparations, I discovered that all I had was frozen curried chicken sauce!

So I took Hainan chicken out of the freezer, as well as the curried sauce to create something delicious.

I'd planned cauliflower and mushroom soup for myself so I set aside the liquid from the Hainan chicken to use as the base of my soup and put the chicken aside to put into the curried sauce.

In gallons of grass fed butter (I exaggerate), I fried up a big batch of garlic, onion and mushrooms and put it in the blender with the Hainan chicken liquid and the steamed cauliflower, added lots of white pepper and dash of salt then blended it to creamy smithereens.

It was delicious.

I heated up the chicken curry sauce, added the Hainan chicken, made the cauliflower rice and then made some papadums.

There was enough soup for another three meals, so I froze it in meal sized containers. Adoring Husband seems to have an aversion to this soup and doesn't even want to taste it. He likes cauliflower, but was relieved when I told him he could have something different for dinner.

That's ok, all the more for me.

He loved his dinner and ate every last mouthful.

I'm off to bed now because, remember, it's going to be a record breaking amazing week at the shop! I need to be prepared!

Nite all.  

A Universe Thing

Ten minutes after opening the doors, I’d had enough sales to make my day worthwhile. It was already a better Saturday than the last three or four.

Even though the markets were on, the threat of bad weather kept most stall holders away and it was very quiet on that front, but there is a big lawn bowls tournament on in town this weekend, so I had the pleasure of meeting some visitors who are here for that.

Except for one strange man who felt the need to share his opinions on my apparent “sales tricks”, the day was filled with happy, engaging people who spent their money and their time happily in The Happy Abode.

By the end of the day, I was feeling very pleased because I’d made an order for new stock and enough money to cover most of the order!

Adoring Husband came to pick me up and we shopped for vegetables to go with our planned pork belly dinner. Between us, we created a delicious baked dinner and even though the crackle wasn’t perfect, we still got some good crunch on parts of it.

While it was cooking, I created some bad art. I’ll have another go tomorrow for hopefully a better result.

I’ve enjoyed my week at work and I’m looking forward to another lazy Sunday to rest, regenerate and rejuvenate in preparation for a fabulously successful week - it’s a Universe thing - the Universe has our back and I can feel the energy changing in town.

I know that there are some holiday rentals in town that are booked out until the new year. That’s gotta be good for business!

Meanwhile, I’m now ready for bed where I will watch some YouTube art videos before I sleep. Maybe I’ll dream of something wondrous to create on Sunday 😎😍🤩

Have a perfectly divine Sunday.

Nite all.

TGIF

It was a very pleasant day in the shop.

The morning was so quiet that I decided to clear out the glass cabinets, clean the glass and then rearrange the displays.

Of course, as soon as I emptied the first cabinet, four customers came through the door and that's when the steady stream began! Murphy's Law!

Aggie came for a visit and helped me make my first order online from the Nutrimetics website.

Some of the jewellery that I moved, sold almost immediately - it's an interesting sales phenomenon that we can have something in the same spot for a year and the day we move it to a different spot, it sells.

That was pretty much my day.

Adoring Husband was my right hand man at the beginning and end of the day.

I came home to get yesterday's washing off the line and wash some stuff that needed special attention and again, I considered doing some art, but chose to plant myself on the couch.

No clubbing tonight and AH cooked an early dinner of chicken wings, which we munched on while watching the first footy game for the night. I doubt that anyone would have picked Knights to beat the Bunnies but it was a great game by them.

We are now watching Tigers vs Raiders. I've tipped Tigers, while AH has tipped Raiders.

I will be in bed before the game finishes.

It's market day in town tomorrow morning and I hope that the people will come to The Happy Abode when they realise that the markets haven't much to offer.

To give you something extra to read before I sign off ...

 

Have a GREAT weekend everyone! I have absolutely nothing planned, which is just the way I like it!

Nite all.

Winning Ways

Queensland went back to their winning ways last night.

It was a joy to behold.

We’ve reached the end of another week and it’s been a good week at the shop. Today saw lots of visitors walk through the door, a few of them referred by ‘other’ visitors!

I even had another person ask today if my art was for sale! She asked if I had a website or Facebook page that she could buy from.

Too weird.

Other than that, the day was uneventful.

My neighbourhood green grocer, Lady Lynn, dropped by with lemons and chillies.

I got changed to create some art, but got distracted and no art was created.

I did two loads of washing.

I reheated leftovers for dinner.

I’m off to bed for an early night.

Nite all.

SOO Quickie

It’s State of Origin night and I have 15 minutes til the game starts.

QUEENSLANDER!!

So today was a good day.

The customer returned to buy my art and was not at all perturbed by the price I asked. Thank you Universe.

Meditation was great ... even though there was a male in the group who just didn’t ‘get’ the concept.

I got to have a long chat with The Gypsy.

I wore my State of Origin shirt and beanie 😎

I welcomed 2 customers back to town as they returned for their annual three month Winter holiday.

I paid the rent!

I made Hainan Chicken for dinner.

I’m doubting whether I will stay awake for the entire SOO footy game!

That’s it! Footy’s about to start!

Nite all.

Triffic

There were a lot more ladies at coffee this morning than I expected!

This meant the training room was full of furniture that was waiting for The Fisher King to pick up, some overflow of stock that won't go on display yet and a circle of chairs with the butts of eight ladies planted on them.

While I was serving a couple of customers, I loved the sound of loud happy chatter coming from the room. It gave the shop a really good energy.

It was a good day of sales but the final two hours of the day were very quiet.

The Fisher King picked up the furniture and Adoring Husband just happened to turn up at the same time, so they co-operated to pile it all onto the ute.

I found a spot to store the extra stock and then replaced all the chairs around the outer walls of the room in preparation for meditation on Wednesday morning.

I emptied the inside bins and put the sulo out for pick up.

We grocery shopped and got coffee and came home.

Adoring Husband had to fix the pump in the pool because it was making weird noises, so while he did that, I got changed and made some art.

This is how it started and where Adoring Husband wanted me to stop (his photo) ...

... and this is what I finished with ...

AH wishes I'd left it alone lol

I don't like either of them but it was good to get my hands dirty and as I've said before, I learn something new every time I do it, so the next one should be better.

This time I learned not to stir the paint so vigorously after I've added the oil - because the cells become tiny and distorted ... outta control!

For dinner, AH cooked lamb loin chops on the barbecue and I made a big salad.

Because of a nasty and persistent cough, AH visited the doctor today and discovered that he had gained enough weight to concern the doctor AND himself (more than 6kgs), so we've gotta go back to basics with our eating habits and cut out all the nasties that have snuck into our pantry and kitchen over that last year or so.

No more sugar, potatoes, bread, potato chips, corn chips or icy poles.

Even though people keep asking me if I've lost weight, I've actually gained 2kgs (which I can feel in my mid section) so it's a good opportunity for us to get back on track, regain our previous super health and hopefully AH will find the energy that he has been lacking lately.

Meanwhile, I'm off to bed for an early night.

For some reason, I struggle to fall asleep on Monday nights ... maybe it's the excitement of seeing the girls for coffee??? 🤪 ... so it was 1am the last time I looked at the clock. I need to make up for it tonight!

This is how cold the mornings feel ...

On that note, I'm outta here.

Nite all.  

Introducing the Rep

It was quite a busy day for a Monday.

It was early in the day when a large delivery arrived for me to sort through. It was mostly small knick knack type things, so there was a LOT of pricing to do. The next dilemma was finding a place to display everything!

In the midst of all that, I got a call from one of our Reps telling me that he was in the area and he asked if I would have time for a visit?

The last time he was here, it was my birthday and he & his wife had brought me a birthday gift but I wasn't at the shop to meet them or receive my gift.  His wife is not well at the moment so I missed out on meeting her today, but he popped in for about half an hour and we chatted until a customer interrupted us and he left.

I got a lot done and the end of the day arrived much sooner than I expected. I was surprised when Adoring Husband arrived to help close the shop.

We did some grocery shopping and headed home.

I cooked up some chicken Maryland so that I have chicken for lunch tomorrow and then baked some sweet potato and potato, some brussels sprouts, some onion and some tomato while AH barbecued some steak.

Now, we're ready for another early night. This weather is amazing for sleeping soundly so I'm waking with lots of energy and feeling fabulous every morning ... although I must admit that it's difficult to remove myself from under the warm doona in the mornings!

Nite all.

Rejuvenation

My Sunday has been a day of rejuvenation for my mind, body and soul.

I spent the morning in bed journaling and reminding myself how special I am by alphabetising my virtues (virtues that we ALL have, but mostly don’t acknowledge) so I had a nice easy positive start to the day.

Adoring Husband didn’t even enter the bedroom until I’d been awake for about 90 minutes. He made my celery juice and then bought my coffee.

I got out of bed at about 12.30pm and made hamburgers for AH’s lunch (with the rissoles that were in my winners meat tray 😊). I had half an apple and plan on using up my leftover soup for dinner.

After lunch, I watched some instructional videos on varnishing acrylic art pours and then put my newfound knowledge into practice. It was tricky and I hope by tomorrow, it will look as it should. It starts off milky and becomes clear as it dries.

It’s also very messy!

I also used a lot more varnish than I expected!

This is an early post because I’m watching the footy and so far I have a perfect round! Unusual I know.

I found this today and thought it very interesting - Prescription drugs - Harvard especially in light of the RoundUp saga at the moment.

I’ve been fighting the “RoundUp is completely harmless” argument for years! A couple in USA have been awarded US$2billion because it was proven that RoundUp caused their cancer.

Drug companies are researching their new drugs for shorter periods of time and instead of spending money on appropriate testing, we the patients/customers, are being used as guinea pigs.

It wasn’t that long ago that a painkiller called Voxx caused 40,000 deaths before it was taken off the market. Money is the bottom line, not our health and well being.

I'm off to bed for an early night. A good sleep will finish off the rejuvenation process nicely.

Nite all.