Amanda’s Musings

I haven’t been tagged in a long time but Emma from Emmaroseart tagged me yesterday with the following meme. Emma is a new seller on Wahmania who has a gorgeous collection of hand sewn items including children’s clothing, quilts and bags (and more). So, here goes:

Four jobs I’ve had:
Secretary
Art Teacher
Fruit picker
Missionary

Four places I have lived:
Armadale WA
Debenham, UK
Niamey, Niger (Africa)
Sydney

Four places I have been on holiday:
Dunsborough WA
Scotland
Benin (Africa)
Europe (heaps of countries)

Four of my favourite dishes:
Spaghetti Bolognaise
Apricot Chicken
Fried Rice
Roast Dinner

Four websites I visit daily:
Wahmania
Etsy
Flickr
Bloglines

I’m not too good at tagging so if you want to play along do so and let me know.

Last Saturday 12th April was our 12th wedding anniversary. Funnily enough that was the day that Duncan and Sarah got married so we spent much of that day celebrating with them. I do have some photos of the wedding but I’ll give them the chance to be the first to post photos of their big day.

However, that was not the ‘interesting’ way to celebrate our anniversary. On Friday I FINALLY finished shredding all our documents. 12 years worth of every document imaginable are now either inbetween our breakables or in the picture below. How appropriate that we are about to start the next 12 years of married life and we completed this one by starting afresh!

This is what is left after I finished those breakables, four and a half rubbish bags full (which we’ll be using for the ‘can’t pack them yet’ breakables!).

If you have a look at the top of this page you will see an updated photo of us. The last one was from around a year and a half ago and Keziah was only 1 and a half. Amazing how much time changes a little one!! Anyway, I wanted to point it out seeing as I’d finally worked out how to change it again!

As my sales for Camp La Joya continue I have listed some new items in my Etsy and Wahmania stores and also in my MadeIt store. At the moment the stats for each store are:

Etsy 145 Items
Wahmania 50 Items
MadeIt 15 Items

Etsy US Dollars - Price range - $2.50 - $50.00
Wahmania AU Dollars - Price range - $4.00 - $35.00
MadeIt AU Dollars - Price range - $4.99 - $16.00

Many of these items in the second and third shop are found in my Etsy store also.

Recently listed items include:

And a few more! The felt items above are what I call Art-stitch gift tags. They have a little pocket on the reverse side where you can put a little message. They work well as luggage tags too! Many other colours and styles in store.

This!!

and this!!

I think I have FINALLY finished packing our breakables. Its been a bit of a slow process due to the fact that I’ve been shredding a lot of paper along the way to pack them with. As I’ve mentioned before, the paper is actually 12 years of documents such as bills and bank statements which I find ironic really. Today I discovered that we even had bank statements as far back as 1994 which is two years before we got married!

Whilst going through the files today to separate the ‘to be shredded’ from the ‘keep’ documents I came across one file which brought a little lump to my throat. There are files marked ‘Optus’ and files marked ‘Alinta Gas’ and files marked ‘Tax’ and there was this file. It was marked ‘Shana’.

Shana was our sausage dog. When we finally had to put her to sleep she was close to 15 years old and this particular file had 15 years worth of dog licences, vet bills and vaccination records in it. I couldn’t believe that we had nearly a whole ream of the poor ol’ vet’s letterhead paper in there with bills from the last two years when she was quite sick. It was a bit of a goodbye as I shredded those bills. So, a final goodbye Shans, we still miss you. xx

How appropriate is this pic, Shana shredding paper herself!

I’ve had a few occasions where I was able to sit and sketch lately (few being one or two!) and here are some of the results. I have a lot of ideas for what I want to do with the designs but I’ll tuck them away for future use.

I was very encouraged this morning to wake up and find that I had been featured on the above mentioned website. How exciting!! The link leads back here so if you arrived here via there, welcome!

The feature is about the money from my shops going to the work of SIM in Peru. Here’s the mention:

Last year I mentioned that Suki from tamptation.etsy.com has kindly made me a stamp using one of the designs from my moleskine sketches. I had then explained that I stamped the design onto felt and that there would be pincushions for sale in my stores soon. My aim was to put them in the shops over January but seeing as I had the creative energy of a toothpick at the time, it didn’t happen.

They say that things pick up as far as energy goes in the second and third trimesters and for me its turned out to be true. If anything, its more a sense that once we move house and then the baby arrives, I probably won’t have any time for creativity or listing things in shops for a while.

In light of that, I have FINALLY gotten around to photographing and listing my hand stitched (not machine) and designed pincushions for sale in my Etsy and Wahmania stores.

So, here are some of the finished products. I have 8 listed and am also gradually adding some art-stitch gift tags that I still have left over.

The same thing still applies, ALL profits from my stores go to the work of SIM and for March and April it’s been Camp La Joya in Peru.

Here’s the pincushions:

On Etsy people can mark your shop as a favourite and this is commonly known as ‘hearting’ someone’s shop. I am pleased to say that on the same day that I made sale #50, I have hit #600 as far as being marked as a favourite goes!! These are little milestones and always encouraging.