Deliberately Artful

It was a lovely morning to welcome Beauty home after her extended time away. She has dealt with some trying times of late and was in need of some hugs of love and friendship. An impromptu morning tea was just what the doctor ordered.

I had a busy 90 minutes with customers in the shop, and during the quiet time I ordered more stock and printed out some of my second lesson for the journaling group, so I was quite productive until 30 minutes before the art class was due to begin.

Oh and it was an excellent sales day 👍

I got changed into my casual gear and my apron, prepared the fruit 🍉 for afternoon tea and was ready to welcome everyone as they arrived, taking their payments and getting them all settled for the class.

The class was full on!

The technique that I selected for this week (thanks Krocca! 🥴) took a lot less time to complete than I expected. It was something new for me and I didn’t get a chance to attempt it before the class so it was a surprise to realise at 2.20pm that we had all finished the three planned pieces and there was still an hour left to play with!

Some, but not all, of today’s creations:

Everyone seemed happy with their efforts and all left with a smile on their face. That’s always a good thing.

I wanted to share something not likely to be reported by mainstream media ...

Letter from Victorian doctors 

Adoring Husband and I enjoyed butter chicken for dinner tonight - prepared in the 30 minutes between football games this afternoon.

I am looking forward to a good sleep and a lazy Sunday in bed - although I have quite a bit planned in my bedroom/study/office. 

Have an amazing Sunday.

Nite all.

I’m in Heaven

My suppliers are sending me catalogue after catalogue after catalogue.

I’m in shopper’s heaven!

This is a true test of my self control, which has been teetering between “solid as a rock” and “non-existent” for the last three months.

A customer walked in today and exclaimed “jeez, I wouldn’t want to be the one doing stocktake in here!” so I gave him directions to Van Cootens and told him to come back and tell me which out of the two shops he’d prefer to do stocktake for.

No contest really 😳

Every hour on the hour I tallied up my sales and thanked the universe for ‘providing’.

It was an unusual day of sales because the pattern is normally no sales until 11am, good sales from then until 12.30pm and then dribs and drabs or next to nothing until 3pm.

Today I had equal sales every hour on the hour from 10am until closing time.

I took it pretty easy for the day, mostly going through catalogues and making wish lists in my book.

I had a quick visit from The Motivator and we exchanged big squishy hugs. Short but sweet.

There is a special birthday for a local lady on Saturday so I assisted in a few gift selections. She is well respected and well loved, so there was much thought going into her gifts.

One of my regular ladies came by especially to show me her car, with which she assures me, she is deeply in love 😍 and I could understand why.

After closing time, I rushed home to make an important phone call which lasted for over an hour and I soaked up every minute of it! More later on that!

We had the usual easy Friday night dinner cooked with love by Adoring Husband, who informs me that the pool temperature has climbed to 24°C. Another 4° and I’ll be in for the first swim of the season. Another 8° before AH dives in! I can’t wait!

We’ve watched two games of footy - still watching the bunnies play a good game against Melbourne Storm and there are 25 minutes remaining.

It’s a nice early night for me.

Nite all.

Getting My Art On

Adoring Husband helped me set up the tables for the art workshop on Saturday and then it took me three hours to put together each place setting.

That’s much less time than usual!

I had to mix up some more white paint, but other than that, it was an easy set up.

It was a slow day for sales. Lots of customers who all spent a little which didn’t add up to much, but each of them were friendly and chatty and brought good energy into the shop.

I got to say hello to quite a few doggies who waited outside for their owners. One tiny little black poodle didn’t like me though and warned me with a long low growl! So I left her in peace.

AH had put lamb shanks in the slow cooker so dinner required no effort from me tonight.

I’ve watched my current favourite show, The Bachelor, and I’m now watching my footy team put up a reasonable fight so far against the Panthers. I predict their ‘good fight’ will run out of puff shortly and they will eventually lose by a big margin. It’s definitely not their year.

On that note, I’m off to watch the rest of the game in bed. I had a solid 7.5 hours sleep last night and I’d like a repeat performance tonight if possible.

I expect a nice easy day tomorrow. I’ve found someone to clean at the shop starting next Tuesday, so I might just leave it for her and take it easy tomorrow.

That’s it. Short and sweet tonight.

Nite all.

Two Extremes

What a crazy morning!

It was almost a full house for meditation and the class was powerfully affirming in so many ways as we discussed our powers in relation to our virtues.

I have been practicing my powers diligently and I feel like I’m in a good place, making sure I have a good balance between self care and work while not being affected by outside dramas, knowing when to mind my own business and leaving others to mind their business.

At the three month mark of working the shop on my own, I still feel energised, enthusiastic and motivated. I’m ensuring a good sleep pattern, keeping my nutrition levels high (which helps with energy levels), drinking lots of water, meditating daily, practicing my deep breathing, doing a little self-kinergetics (as taught to me by The Motivator) and drinking my lemon water and broth daily.

The one thing that’s lacking is my movement/activity/fitness practices. Non-existent at this point. Unless you count being on my feet a LOT at work! Now that it’s warming up in the mornings, I’ll soon begin riding my trike to work again.

Anyway! As I was saying about this morning ...

After meditation, the usual ladies stayed behind for coffee in the training room. I had too much to do, so I stayed at my desk, head down, bum up!

At 9.30am the shop filled up with customers and for the next hour, I was SO busy and so focused just trying to be efficient and fast and keeping everyone happy, I had no time to write down sales between customers.

In that one hour, I almost broke my daily sales record and I was certain it was going to be a blinder of a day!

It was 10.20am when the last customer from that hectic hour left.

Even though I had MANY more customers through the doors for the remainder of the day, I did not make one more sale!

Can you believe it!?

I had a very productive day anyway, ordering the new range of Sassy Duck bags, catching up on paperwork, annotating the first journaling class, creating new folders for suppliers, paid a bill, talked to a couple of people about the cleaning job I’ve got available and more.

At 2pm, which is my new closing time, I pulled in the flags, chairs and signs and went through the closing routine by myself because I forgot to tell AH that I’d changed the time! He turned up at 2.30pm wondering what was going on!

I must say, after the early start and all that productivity, I was ready to sit back and put my feet up so I didn’t bring any work home with me and I have been a couch potato all afternoon. AH had leftover curried chicken for dinner and I heated up some broth with a mixture of fresh wild mushrooms for mine.

I can’t believe it’s heading towards 11pm already. Bed time for me.

Nite all.

Be Nice

Even though I was woken early by the sound of psychotic dog Colli howling at the garage door, I had a great start to the day and arrived at work early to set up for morning tea with my girls.

There was snorting laughter, inappropriate insults, some gentle venting, holiday planning, medical discussions and other general silliness that filled two hours!

That’s always my favourite way to start Tuesdays.

As is always the case 11:00am marked the beginning of a 90 minute influx of customers so I was kept on my toes.

Luckily Adoring Husband phoned me so I asked him to come help me set up the training room for the new workshop/class/gathering which was set to begin in an hour.

This means that I need to be especially nice in this post because there could possibly be four new readers watching!

The first gathering for ‘Journaling Your Life’ happened today.

I, for one, really enjoyed it and I was especially inspired by the enthusiasm and motivation of the four fabulous women who sat at the table with me. All very different and all with remarkable stories to tell. I hope I get to hear more of them over the weeks to come.

I’m not just saying that 🤪

After the ladies left, Adoring Husband folded away the tables and I set the room up for meditation in the morning.

It didn’t feel like it but at the end of the day, when I added up the sales, it was a good day!

Once again, no rest for the wicked and as soon as we arrived home, I changed out of my work clothes to act as AH’s trades assistant and helped instal a new toilet cistern!

Talk about a Jill of all Trades.

I was sure to wash my hands thoroughly before preparing curried chicken for dinner!

I’ve just about dislocated my jaw from excessive yawning this evening so I feel that early sleep is on the cards. It will be another early start tomorrow.

Oh and as promised yesterday, here are the new purchases from Tinkerbells ...

Nite all.

Shopping Spree

After a lazy couple of hours in bed this morning, Adoring Husband and I drove into The Bay for some essentials and some ‘not so’ essentials!

First stop Tinkerbells.

I could EASILY have spent $20,000 in there ... if only I had that sort of money spare for jewellery and crystals! They have so many beautiful new jewellery pieces, amazing carved, polished and natural large crystals and remarkable geode caves, artistic pieces with three different styles of crystals put together.

*sigh*

I had to make difficult choices.

I haven’t taken photos yet so I will describe them and put photos up tomorrow.

I got a large silver and turquoise ring to go with the turquoise pendant I bought last week.

I selected a multi-stone bracelet with aquamarine crystal, blue topaz and pearl.

Because I’d already spent more than I’d planned, and I didn’t want to miss out on it, I put on lay buy another bracelet with green crystals including prehnite and peridot.

I had selected the most amazing natural fluorite crystal the size of a rockmelon, the colours of which were the deepest hues of ocean green - I was immediately drawn to it - but I practiced self control and returned it to it’s place on the shelf.

Adoring Husband sat in the car for 45 minutes while I talked business with the owners and admired all the beautiful ‘stuff’ that they excitedly gathered for my viewing.

Thank goodness I don’t own that shop! I’d be keeping everything for myself!

We left there to go in search of mini squeeze bottles for the art class, stock up on new paints - some premixed and some not - small canvases and some new mini torch blowers.

Of course we had to make a detour to the Su Jus Cafe to stock up on slices, muffins and green juice.

We dropped my purchases off at the shop, bought some meat for tea from the butcher, grabbed a coffee for AH and we were both exhausted when we arrived home at 3.30pm.

Little Colli was very excited to see us! That’s the longest she’s been left at home alone since we lost Ruby and Jack. She seemed to survive ok.

No rest for the wicked. I had to phone a rep and make an order as soon as I arrived home.

I emailed the September newsletter to my members.

I finished the first lesson for the journaling course.

Cooked a chicken, mushroom, onion, spinach, broccoli and garlic dish for dinner.

Printed out some sheets for the class.

It has been a productive day with retail therapy so I shall sleep feeling very satisfied with myself!

Nite all

Mainstream Witholding

This is what’s happening all around the world ...

800,000 people protesting in Berlin.

20,000 protesting in Warsaw.

Belgium, Romania, Germany, Netherlands, Nepal, India, Ghana, England, Poland, New Zealand, Ireland and many others protesting against the lockdown laws.

I don’t know the numbers but the photos give an indication ...

Protests are planned Australia wide on 5th September.

Mainstream media are not telling these stories.

You can see that it’s not just a couple of hundred conspiracy theorists dressed in tie dye. People are waking up ... a little late ... but better late than never.

I think it’s been well proven that the people we need to protect are the elderly and the immune compromised. There are better ways to do that than shutting down whole cities, economies, social systems and disconnecting families from each other.

As I said at the beginning of the year, it’s a social experiment that we, as a world community, have now failed for six months. We’ve proven that we are easily controlled and manipulated and that instilling fear makes us willing to give up our jobs, our freedoms, our lifestyles and our social connections.

Anyway, enough of that.

I’ve had a lovely Sunday in bed writing up my newsletter, planning my first journaling lesson and working on the next art workshop.

Adoring Husband brought me my lemon water, my broth, my coffee and my avocado on toast for breakfast. No more bread for me (just quietly).

We enjoyed lamb rump and salad for dinner, followed by some vegan vanilla ice cream. Yum. I’m going to get some right now and eat it in bed!

What a lovely lazy Sunday.

Nite all.