Lots of stuff going on lately!
We had a nice father's day at home. Johnny got his present on Saturday...which was a ceiling fan for the garage. I helped him install it on Sunday. It's really nice and definitely cools it off in there a bit. So that'll be nice when we're working in the garage and definitely whenever we decide to have a garage sale!
Nova is doing well after her Cytopoint shot earlier this month. Her skin is no longer red and inflamed and her scabs from the worst spots are clearing up. And her hair is growing back from where it was shaved to apply the medicine. She definitely seems to be feeling a lot better.
And then Bozley was finally neutered last Friday. Poor guy was NOT happy about the fact that I left the vet after dropping him off at 7am instead of taking him home with me. But the surgery went well. She said that he had a little bit of bruising which isn't uncommon when mature dogs are neutered. I picked him up around 4pm and he was very happy to see me. He spent the evening mostly just lounging around. He's usually pretty high strung, so I'm glad he was more laid back and sleeping instead of getting wound up. He was so relaxed that he wasn't even closing his eyes all the way while he was sleeping. :P But he seems to be all back to normal now.
We were woken up by severe storms about 4:30am or so on Tuesday. The severe alerts went off on our phones...and then we heard the crazy wind and rain. There was a whole lot of lightning and some really big crashes of thunder. It was loud for quite awhile and Nova was NOT happy about it. She hates storms. We lost a branch from one of the two trees on the west side of the house. And then Tuesday night, we had another round of strong storms with crazy wind come through. We lost more branches from both trees...several large branches. In the backyard...the patio table with the umbrella was blown over, as was a heavy concrete bird bath. Johnny had to go get our trashcans from down the street. Everything is just kind of a mess. We did find someone who is coming out tomorrow to haul off the branches., so I'm glad about that.
Work is going well for me. I've had at least three orders and even up to nine orders in a day, except for two days where I only had one order. I've also had several people reach out about some custom orders and bulk orders, so hopefully those will pan out as well. I have been adjusting my workflow. My processing time has always been 1-3 business days...but I used to send every order out the next day. Now...if I only have 1 or 2 orders, then I'll wait a day or two longer to get some more orders to all go out at the same time. That way there are less trips to the post office.
It also gives me more time for other work-related activities. On the slower days, I work on new projects or designs. Like a couple weeks ago, I went through my sticker sheets and revamped them for my Romeo cutter. I set up new listings and took new pictures. I haven't finished putting up *all* the sticker sheets I had on there, but the most popular ones are so far. One thing I'm really glad I changed about my listings for sticker sheets...is combining similar designs into one listing with each sheet as a different variation. That way it's evident that there are matching designs that can also be purchased. And today...I got an order that had three different variations of one of the listings. So I was really glad to see that turning out like I hoped.
I finished an annual holiday sticker sheet design that I listed on the 7th and I've already had three sales...two of them were purchased the day after I listed it. So I'm pretty happy about that too. There are still a lot of sticker sheets that I need to finish redoing with the Romeo and relisting them...plus other designs I want to make. Right now I'm busy working on a 12-sheet set of stickers that have a "wacky holiday" for each day of the year. I'm really having a lot of fun with it. There are several "holidays" everyday, and it took me awhile to go through all of them and decide which ones to use. I had to pick ones that are on the same date each year (and not, like, on the 2nd Saturday of the month where the dates would change each year). I also wanted to pick the ones that I'd be able to illustrate what the day is with a graphic. So that part alone took quite a bit of time. Now I'm putting it all together on individual sheets. It takes me at least a day to finish an entire sheet if I don't have a lot of interruptions. So I've been working on them the days that I'm not sending out orders. I want to have them all finished by the end of this month, though.
My "No Soliciting" door stickers and magnets are selling really well right now in my sticker shop. It seems like everything goes in cycles...I'll sell a lot of one design and then a different design starts selling...and then there's the completely random sales of an item that I'd never sold before just as I am thinking about retiring that design. That's why I have a hard time removing any designs...because you never know when it'll suddenly start picking up. But I also don't want to keep paying $.20 for listing fees over and over if it's not selling. Some designs that haven't sold, I'll rework the design and see if it does any better. Recently I've also been reworking to meet some of Etsy's updated policies. I started with two designs that have been popular in my shop, and then I'll work on more as I have time. I always have so much I want to do and never enough time!
And on that note...I have some more stuff I want to get done before I go to bed. :)