That Time Again

I'm very happy to have reached Sunday.

Even though I LOVE LOVE LOVE The Happy Abode and love spending time there, in the last thirty days, I've only had two complete days away from Happy Abode business. I've even spent my Sundays either at the shop for a period of time or working on my photography course at home or going to The Bay to get things for the shop.

Yes, I had four days in Sydney, but it was all about Happy Abode business and was exhausting! I have to add that it was fun and worth the exhaustion, but I need to practice some rest, relaxation and self care, because I've used almost all of my happy energy and I need to generate some more.

This Sunday, I have to go to the shop with Adoring Husband to drill a hole in the wall to hang a mirror, measure up for some shelving for storage and then vacuum the floor. So it won't be my day to fill my cup, as I'd planned, but I can rest in the morning.

It's exciting that the football season has begun for this year. I'm already doing poorly in the footy tipping competition at the club and only have one correct out of five so far!

It's only 9.30pm but it feels like midnight! I'm soooooo tired.

For anybody who cares, The Blonde Bombshell is doing well. Her recovery will take 2 - 3 months at this stage. She has a broken bones in her neck and back, as well as a broken rib, but the doctors are happy with her progress and happy with the surgery that she underwent a couple of days ago. She is, apparently, in good spirits and her husband will be able to join her in Sydney by Wednesday. So that is good news.

We spent most of today pricing and displaying the 'Intrinsic' range of products on the main table in the shop and rearranging some other stock. We've added a small 'sale' table to the mix as well.

Our new line of watches will arrive next week, along with the Waterlyn journals and then the following week will see the delivery of the Serenade range of bags and purses, and hopefully the new Ivys range will arrive too.

The fun part will be figuring out where to put it all in the shop.

For now though, I'm off to bed.

Nite all. 

Happy Outcome

My mind was on another planet this morning.

I wanted everything to be perfect for my very first course.

I have trained people before. In the Public Service, I trained classrooms of staff in new work processes and new programs. I ran seminars three times a week for up to 20 people at a time educating people about their rights and obligations, about privacy and confidentiality practices and more.

But I have never designed, created and delivered a course myself.

So today was a pretty big deal!

Even more so because we are a small community and if my course sucks, the town will know about it pretty quickly, and nobody will sign up in the future and the grapevine would make my name mud in two shakes of a lamb's tail.

So this morning, I was running around like a chook with its head cut off, trying to set it all up perfectly, providing folders and pens for the participants, a plate of grapes in lieu of lollies, a jug of cold water and clean glasses.

I plugged in my laptop for emergency googling, set up some props for practicing photography, put my handouts in the right order and gathered the photographic examples.

I rushed through the supermarket to get milk for coffee and some sweet biscuits for morning tea and decided on two types, both of them gluten, egg, dairy and nut free - which in the end turned to be the perfect choice!

Fifteen minutes before the start I realised that the cold water bottle was almost empty and so was the box of filtered water, so I rushed back to the supermarket to buy a bottle of water. As I was returning to the shop, I patted myself to find the keys and suddenly realised that I had left the shop unlocked and the keys were sitting on my desk!

My head was somewhere far, far away.

This course is for three hours every Friday morning for 3 weeks, and initially I was wondering how the heck I was going to fill three hours, let alone nine! But surprisingly, the three hours went very quickly and I had the perfect amount of theory and practice to easily fill the time.

I love my class of students because they were engrossed and intrigued and happy with the information I shared today and they enthusiastically practiced their shots with my props and wandered through the shop finding other examples to practice on.

I gave them homework to complete this week, which they were very keen to do.

It was a great morning and we learned a lot about each other at the introduction part of the course and then at morning tea.

Afterwards I was incapable of doing much at all - my mental energy had run very low!

It was exciting to see our 'Intrinsic' stock arrive today (from the lady who I cried on at the fair). We unpacked it and checked it off. Tomorrow, we'll price it and creatively display it. It's just beautiful!

Now it's after 11pm and I need to rest my weary bones.

Nite all.

Time's Up!

I have the first part of my course complete and ready to present tomorrow morning.

I'm not feeling very confident but I'm also not feeling too disturbed by the prospect because it's a very small class of two.

With so many people originally on the list, there was not one date or set of days that suited every single person. They all wanted different combinations so I had to make the decision to set dates and then if people really wanted to participate, they would find a way.

I had three people lined up for tomorrow, but one has withdrawn. I'm very happy with the two ladies who will join me and I think it will be an enjoyable course and a great way for me to present my first ever Beginners Photography Course.

Anyway, it's almost 11pm and I need to be up early to get morning tea for the course ladies on the way to The Happy Abode, so I'm off to bed now.

Nite all.

Rearranged

We had a shop full of people this morning, six of us at one stage, rearranging the cabinets,  furniture and stock. Now we look as good as new and the shop even looks bigger!

I didn't think to take photos, but I will tomorrow and share them in tomorrow's post.

This week has been one full of sad and shocking news for me.

I was disappointed that nobody told me about my friend The Publican, who passed away while we were in Sydney, and I only learned about it on Thursday afternoon, which was the day of her funeral so I had missed it.

She is in a better place now and no longer in pain and I have paid my respects in my own way. May she rest in peace.

Today, I received a phone call about my good friend, The Blonde Bombshell (aka yip yip), who was involved in a bad car accident while towing a caravan near Cobar yesterday. She is currently in Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney where she had surgery on her spine today, while her husband is in Orange Hospital having surgery on his left hand.

We all feel so helpless up here and I know that we all wish we were closer to be able to help them in any way possible. Luckily their much loved dog Molly survived the accident too and is waiting to be picked up by family members.

If you get to catch up on this blog and you read this Yip Yip - get well soon, heal quickly and hurry home.  We missed you at trivia tonight and at coffee on Tuesday and at the club on Friday night. Do everything right and take good care of you xo.

It's getting close to midnight, so I'm off to bed.

I have approximately 24 hours to finish creating my photography course so tomorrow is going to be a big day!

Nite all.

Just Ask Me!

It has been five months since the first storm that caused water damage in The Happy Abode. 

2nd October 2017 was our first experience, but apparently there has been an issue with leaks ever since day one of this building's existence.

So it's now five months later, the problem has not been fixed and we have experienced our third rain event with water damage.

One of the annoying things about this situation is that today, they found where the main leak was ... and it was exactly where I said it was the first time.

This man doesn't like to take advice from females and he doesn't listen, choosing instead, to speak over the top of us.

I noticed today, that he also doesn't like to listen to the professionals, because the roofing guy wanted to do a couple of things today, and he spoke over the top of him and said "don't worry about that, it'll be right."

All I can say, is that it had better be right, because my patience is wearing very thin.

This is how we left the shop this afternoon - just in case of more heavy rain - it was looking very ominous all around us this evening, but so far we've only had light rain.

We met the owners of the other shops today and we told them that we were very interested in the shop JATOE. We had long discussions about nothing in particular but brought up the fact that we would like to be in a better position on the street.

You never know what might develop from those discussions.

We had more stock arrive today and there should be even more by the end of the week, so now we are rearranging the shop to accommodate more cabinets and we're ready to order a couple of tall glass cabinets to go with the three that we already have.

We're struggling to figure out where to put all the stock that will arrive in the coming weeks.

My photography course commences this Friday and I still haven't finished creating/designing it!

I've got 48 hours lol.

Don't worry. I do my best work under pressure!

Happy Hump Day.

Nite all. 

Pyjama Party

I have enjoyed a 24 hour pyjama party all on my lonesome.

I remained in bed until 4.30pm working on my business training stuff.

*As I write this, I have just received a phone call from The Motivator telling me that the shop is flooding! I can't even get there to help because Adoring Husband is at the Sandy Straits attending an SES meeting! Ugh! I feel so helpless and the rain is relentless and loud and so heavy!*

As I was saying ...

I got through two weeks of the training in one day and that included printing out some money mindset affirmations and sticking them all over the house where Adoring Husband and I will see them every day.

This will help me remain positive and motivated in my head while we build up the business and will hopefully stop me from slowing down or putting on the brakes ... as is known to happen.

It also included a lot of journalling/writing.

I am STILL in my pyjamas and am now on the couch ready to watch MKR before climbing back into bed ready for a big day at work tomorrow, which will obviously include some cleaning up from tonight's rain.

The landlord is going to cop it from us after this. The repairers came into our shop without permission, cut a hole in our ceiling leaving a mess all over the floor of the training room which we need to use and they STILL have not fixed the problem!

It's been 45 minutes since I heard from The Motivator and she hasn't responded to my text, so I'm hoping that things are ok. At least the rain has stopped ... for now.

I need to leave and wallow in my stress.

Nite all.

A Bit of Happy Work

I'm a bit tired.

I was awake at 4am and dozed on and off for a couple of hours until Adoring Husband delivered my coffee just after 6am. I got out of bed at 8.30am, showered and prepared myself for a trip into The Bay.

I was on a mission!

I had an idea to cover some of the less attractive parts of our new-old cabinets with washi tape, so we went in search of some teal coloured tape.

Our first stop was Spotlight. I found some teal tape, but it was in a pack with six other colours and each pack cost almost $20. I would need four packs to do the job because each roll was only two metres long. A total of $80 was much more than I planned on spending.

Our second stop was K-Mart. They too had washi tape which was MUCH cheaper, but none of the colours fit my brief.

Our third stop was Office Works (my favourite shop). The problem with Office Works, was that I found washi tape ALL OVER THE PLACE. There was no designated area for washi tape! We wandered all over the shop looking for it and found it in four different spots.

I selected a pack of five. Each roll was ten metres long and each colour was a different shade of teal. It only cost $4.97.

Adoring Husband found what looked like a big fat Texta of black ink, but was in fact, a container of water based black paint that seeps through a thick Texta type nib. So I bought that to paint the legs of the cabinets which were looking a bit the worst for wear.

I also bought some throw rugs, which I though might look ok laid over the base of the cabinets, but they turned out to be too narrow, so I'll take them back.

I think it took about 90 minutes to do the washi tape and the leg painting. I hope that The Motivator likes it! I believe that they look a whole lot better now, than when we brought them to the shop on Friday.

Tomorrow is my day off and I can't wait to spend the majority of the day in bed with my training stuff  and maybe doing some more of my photography course (which, incidentally, begins this coming Friday!)

We stopped off at Dan Murphys before we came home and stocked up on some alcoholic beverages.

We ate duck breast with salad for dinner and I whipped up a quick pineapple whip ice cream, of which AH ate two servings ... ok I admit it ... I ate two servings as well.

It's after 11pm and it's time for me to sleep and rest this weary body.

Nite all.