Fried, Scrambled, and Ready to Crack, lol!

Yup, I'm talking about me, not my breakfast, hehe. Not that I eat eggs for breakfast. I kind of hate eggs. In fact, when we used to have to write those poems in school, where you wrote your name vertically, and had to make up a sentence about yourself starting with each letter (You guys know what I'm talking about, right?) my "E" would usually be "Eggs, I hate." Yeah, I know. So sue me.  "E" is hard.

So, I've been meaning to blog, really I have, and I've been blogging in my head, so that sort of counts, right? Then, when I actually did sit down to blog one day, Blogger was doing updates or some crap. I've been here for like 2 years, and I've never had that happen before! Maybe I've just always been super lucky, but I didn't even know blogger shut down to do updating! huh. Learn something new every day, I guess! Oh well. Here I am now!

It's 2:45am, and I'm on my third all nighter in the last week. Been a while since I did this. I'm not really even tired-- running on adrenaline at this point, I think. I caught a couple of hours this afternoon, and I'll catch a few more tomorrow, so whatever. It's all good. :) I'll admit, I was a little panicked when I made the shop closing announcement public.Ii thought, is this the right thing to do? The right time? Well, trying to balance all this work the last week and a half or so has made me realize without a doubt, hell yeah it was. It's just more work than one person can handle, lol!

Of course, to be fair, the shop's been busier in the last week than it has in the last year. Not entirely sure how to feel about that, but you can believe I certainly appreciate the business! Thank you so much to all of you reading who have stopped by, made some purchases, sent me some kind words, and just pretty much reminded me how many great people are out there. It thrills me to no end that you would take the time out of your day to wish me well, or spend your hard earned bucks on the goodies in my shop. So, thanks again. :)

(Of course, there always have to be a few nutjobs who crawl out of the woodwork and share their two cents, but, I guess that comes with the territory. It you're a lunatic who is reading this, you're most likely not going to think you're a lunatic, so there's really no point in my telling you to suck it, is there? Oh well!)

So, today, I finally (talk about procrastinating!) got all the remaining goodies listed in the shop. Wow. Have I mentioned it's an insane amount of work to run an etsy shop? I'm pretty sure I have. But holy crap, people that make this your full time business, hats off to you, because between photographing, editing, resizing, uploading, writing descriptions, tagging, doing the whole packaging/tissue wrap/bubble wrap/pick the right box thing, weighing & doing the paypal thing, answering convos, following up with shipping info, promoting on a zillion sites, without trying to be too obnoxious, posting pics on flickr, answering emails... I don't know how people do it when they have a lot of sales steadily.

Thank goodness my sweetie is more than happy to take the actual packages to the post office for me! (It doesn't hurt that it's right across the street, lol.) And it's not like I had to make anything, this was all stuff that had been waiting to be listed for months, and I just haven't had the time to do it! Honestly, I don't know how I found time to do it this week, but I'm so glad I did!

So, if you haven't been to the shop in the last couple of days, go on over for one last stroll, I've got lots of new stuff for the final 3 days.


Accent tables in all different styles and colors:







Corkboards for your 1/6 office:





Many styles of throw pillows:







And the very last 2 Smidge House Ornament Boxes:






Kind of nostalgic looking at those. :)
This box of ornaments, The Funky, Funky Christmas Collection, was the first thing I ever sold:



(Hard core NKOTB fans might know the name refers to a song on the New Kids Christmas album, lol. I never expected the new kids on the Block to have such a strong presence on the blog, lmao!)

I still remember getting that email telling me I'd made my first sale! Wow, was I thrilled! I couldn't believe I'd actually sold something on my first day! I'd introduced myself on the doll boards, with a link to my (one post) blog, but was too afraid to even post about my etsy shop, lol. Didn't want to seem too pushy! (I still have trouble with that. promoting is one thing I definitely will not miss!) I totally freaked out because the person who bought it lived in Canada, and I'd never shipped anything internationally before, lol. Turns out it was pretty simple.

Thank goodness I made the decision to ship internationally! (Lots of peeps don't.) Half of my customers have been outside the US. It's pretty awesome to think that there are Smidge House goodies the the US, Canada, the UK, Brazil, Australia, Poland, France, Sweden, and the Netherlands! (Yeah, I'm a dork who keeps track of that stuff. I dunno, I get a kick out of it. Someone's speaking French around my furniture, lol. It's just cool.)

Hey, so also, I just wanted to say, that I've had several people (who maybe don't so much read the blog, lol-- but hey, that's cool) ask if I'm closing up shop because etsy sucks. I want to say straight up that I think etsy is an awesome place to sell. Yeah, they tinker with the site, and the little changes can be annoying and piss people off, but get a life, really, if that's enough to make you say this place sucks.

This is all my opinion of course, but in my opinion, there is not another selling site that can hold a candle to etsy as far as bang for your buck, traffic, and just simple user friendliness. Yeah, it's a hell of a lot of work to maintain a shop, but that stuff really has nothing to do with where you actually host the shop. That work is all on you, in your creativity, your ability to make a good product, your photography, your marketing skills, etc. I've never had a single bad thing to say about etsy, so I wanted to clear that up for anyone who might have wondered.

(Obviously, if you're reading this a year from now, I'm not going to be a relevant judge anymore, so do your own research, ya know? And of course, do you own research anyway. On everything! Don't take other people's opinion's as the absolute truth, no matter who they are! Not even me, lol. Different things work for different people.)

Okay, I'm not sure why this is starting to veer into a high school graduation speech, lol, but I think that's I sign I've done enough blabbing. I have a ton of work to do tonight, and then a quick nap and a ton more, so, I'm outta here.

Don't forget, Smidge House is closing for good on Friday, May 20. that's this Friday. The lights go off when I go to bed, so it'll be late, but please don't wait until the last minute if you want something, okay? I'd feel really bad if you forgot and came to the shop after it closed. :)

Hope everyone is having a good week, and hugs to those of you who aren't. Hell, hugs all around, who can't use a hug? :)

smidge girl