Birthdays are so weird for me. My grandpa likes to ask if I feel older...my body has felt "older" pretty much all my life. :P When you live with chronic pain and health issues, it wears you down pretty fast. I was born with Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (even though I wasn't diagnosed until I was almost 42 years old) and dealt with the symptoms ever since I was a baby. And it seems the older I get, the more quickly things fall apart. It starts to feel like my body is aging in dog years or something. :P
I'm actually going to go get my hair done this year for my birthday! The last time I had a professional haircut was in 2022 before we had family pictures done, but I didn't color my hair that year. The last time I colored my hair was in 2017 when I went with an auburn color and just cut some length with long layers. I think this year I'll probably do something similar to what I did in November 2017:
Then we'll have my birthday dinner with the kids, my mom, and my grandparents. I picked Village Inn again this year. Now I'll have to decide if I want chicken fried steak or the French toast dinner with scrambled eggs and country potatoes. Mmmmm! And tomorrow night, Johnny and I are going to have Chinese for dinner...because I've been on a Chinese kick lately. :P
Oh...I forgot to mention that there was a development from Milo's outdoor adventure. He was hiding out downstairs and in our closet...which I initially thought was just him trying to decompress and adjust back to normal. But then I noticed he was limping just a little bit...favoring his back left leg. So I took him to the vet on Friday (October 9th) and found that he'd torn one of his nails completely out and there was a bit of bone showing. The vet cleaned it up but thought it would heal on its own without glue or anything. She didn't want to glue it and there end up being an infection brewing. So she gave him an injection of both a 14-day antibiotic and a 24-hour pain med (thank goodness...because giving a cat medicine is a pain in the ass!) and then we just had to watch him to make sure he doesn't have any other problems. After we got home, I realized he'd torn off a nail on his front right paw as well. But...he's been acting fine ever since his vet appointment, so that's good!
Work has been going well. I've had less orders so far in October 2026 compared to October 2025, but I've already passed my revenue from last October. Part of that is from a large wholesale order I got earlier in the month for 100 magnetic bookmarks...which have started selling pretty well. I've actually sold more magnets and magnetic bookmarks lately than stickers. But this week I did work on some new sticker designs. I've focused a lot lately on new products, but it's been awhile since I created new designs. So I got those done and photographed today.
And as I was doing that...Etsy posted a new policy which requires every listing to have one photo that hasn't been edited AT ALL. At the very least, all my photos have been cropped, I correct the perspective on my size comparison photos, and sometimes I have to adjust the exposure, contrast, and brightness depending on the lighting situation. So...I have over 300 listings that I need to add a completely unedited photo to. I decided I wanted something completely different than the photos I already have...which all have the product laying down flat and photographed from above. One of the backgrounds I printed that I was originally going to use for flat-lay photographs...I ended up hanging that up in the armoire cabinet. Then I have a cutting mat that is white on the back...I am laying it upside down in front of the printed background and then using a small wooden easel (a little less than 5 inches tall) to set the stickers on with my wooden logo laying on the white mat. And then I just set my phone in the phone holder that I bought a few months ago and just have to click the picture. The LED light strip that I have at the top of the cabinet provides enough light...and since it's in the cabinet, there isn't varying sunlight to fight with. So I'm hoping it'll provide more stable photos since I can't edit them at all. And then when I'm done taking the photos, I can just put away the mat and the easel away so I can go back to laminating again.
So far it seems to be working out well. I decided I'm just going to use the 3" sticker size for each of the unedited photos...since I already have a picture that shows all three sizes and another picture that shows examples of the stickers cut and assembled as magnets. Once I got everything set up, it didn't take long to take the photos. So far I've only photographed my regular sticker designs...I still need to do the custom name stickers, magnetic bookmarks, sticker sheets, notepads, and my sticker books. I'll probably work on that and finish listing my new designs this weekend if I have time in between birthday stuff and taking the dogs to the groomer.
And...I think that's about all I have to update about. :)