Birthday Princess!

Sunday! - Coffee and Cake
Mish mash mosh, children everywhere, actual cakes and bubbles...




My baby is now 1 entire year old! And wow what an exciting day we had last Saturday. The sun was shining, my food didnt turn into a complete mess (hurrah!) and despite madam's protests at all of her grown up birthday guests (she's still very clingy bless her) I believe that she had a very lovely day :)

I would have pictures of the party by the way! But my SD card has a corrupt image on it and I can't copy ANYTHING onto my PC. I have a reader on its way to see if I can transfer them direct (as opposed to through the camera), and hopefully i can show you some pics next weekend!

Anyway, onto the day! I myself was pretty pooped throughout the afternoon having been up in the wee hours baking cakes dancing to Outkast to keep me awake, whilst my other half was doing a big clean up around the house. It was one of those things where it hadn't exactly been planned that way but kind of happened regardless of the plans, as you know with kids it NEVER works out how you hope it will. We just make plans to make ourselves feel better and efficient don't we? LOL! So night owls we were!

My concerns were that I had possibly sabotaged the cakes as my tired and flappy arms began to flag as time progressed, yet luckily for the party guests they ended up looking and tasting pretty good! Phew! I decided to leave decorating them until the morning which was a good idea as the birthday girl decided at 2am to wake up just in time to celebrate the time of her birth, and inadvertantly spoiling the surprise of the amazingly flowery handmade decorations and balloons (the little monkey). A few hours were spent entertaining her with a present (the coolest wind up caterpiller EVER), watching her plough into balloons galore, and touching up on the last of my photo montage of her first year. It was all good, it worked out well in the end! I had fun decorating the cakes in the morning using lots of edible glitter, strawberries and wafer flowers! I haven't been so girly in years it was great!

Im really chuffed with how they turned out. I'm not into a lot of the things you see in the shops that they have for baby partys and was secretly horrified by just how much Disney stuff there was in my local card shop for party decorations, so ours were about 95% handmade by me, and were reused or recycled. I have this awesome flower circle punch that i used to use for labels for my hats but i had this amazing idea the day before as i rifled through a ton of old gift bags that were in the paper recycling, and made great use of them by making patchwork style paper flowers. They were a great hit with the guests and the kids, I was ever so chuffed!

In our garden i figured as a time saving mechanism, rather than decorate the trees, fences etc I got out a bubble machine and had that running for most of the day, along with the sand pit and pop up play house the children were really happy and seemed to enjoy themselves :)

My little man was a bit jealous so was frequently telling me that his sister still had presents to open (as he wanted to play with them lol!) but I was proud of him for being a good boy for the day. He has lately been a bit grumpy, probably to do with all the party planning goings on. But he made a great host for all of his friends and did a great job of leading and entertaining everyone, including us grown ups! My little girl had spent most of the day chasing bubbles or being held as she finds anyone but me or my partner an excuse to be a bit dramatic so that was an interesting dynamic to the day! It was rather silly but bless her she was giving everyone smiles in the end. :) It was a great day, I'm really pleased it all worked out.


Anyway! Until next time, have a fab Sunday!

BOO! ... I'm Back :)

Boo! - I see You :)
crikey where's this one been?...


Well... When was the last time I posted? (Checking) Like, March? Wow that's quite unbelievable for me after managing to post weekly for so long! But there has been so many reasons behind it. You'll remember me being slightly overwhelmed at the time with work? Well... it got worse (better)!

I can't complain because it was such a great thing at the time to think YES! My business is successful! But man, I had really been plundered in at the deep end. I had to pretty much stop everything I was doing in every aspect of my life, apart from caring for my kids so I could work. Literally... including meals and sleep. It was shockingly busy. After the first busy day it became apparent that there was more for me to do so I had pretty much given up bed to work on hats, to hopefully ensure I wouldn't let anyone down. I worked throughout most of the nights in that period that I could keep my eyes open for, for about 5 weeks on the trot. It wasn't pretty, I looked like something out of a horror movie each day through fatigue and had on a few occassions collapsed because of it. But there is a reason behind it and it was due to the fact that Etsy had popped one of my hats into one of their Etsy Finds emails and my gosh the response was phenominal. I only found out like 30 mins after it happened when wondering if all the emails from Etsy in my inbox were a glitch LOL! I had a few hundred orders to contend with plus hundreds of emails to deal with in that first week, which just kept coming (but not as severely) in the time to follow. I was overwhelmed and overjoyed to begin with as it was such a positive thing to have happened but looking back I wish I was better prepared as I certainly won't be doing all nighters for a month again lol!

My mistake was not making stricter policies, or being clear enough in my listings about what buyers can do to buy/get in touch/etc, and as the vast majority of my query emails were actually answered in my shop announcement, I found myself getting highly frustrated by the fact that people were quick to email me before checking elsewhere, which after few tens of dozens of emails did start to get frustrating as I wasn't working on the orders. It's surprising to think about how much time I spend on my emails but I had always envisioned my business being personable, but I lost so much work time to emails which really could have saved my butt on the whole polava if I had made my shop more newbie friendly.

So I have had multiple shop/listing/appearence overhauls to try and not only make it all "make sense" and easier to work out how to find information, but I figured it needed a facelift too. Hence the new banner :)


Ah it's nice to be back though, and it's nice to have learnt something big about my business that I think will help me greatly in the future! Although I have to say something odd has been happening with Etsy recently that seems to have slowed loads of shops sales down. Has anyone noticed it with theirs? I scoured the forums and someone said that one of their Etsy friends who's one of the top Etsy shops selling like hundreds of things a week is down to single figures which just isn't right at all, and I had honestly thought that maybe it was just that time of the year :s

I hear on the grapevine that Google has been making it more awkward for internet users by introducing more keywords for their "don't you dare use these on your webpage" list. For Etsy users, if you're lucky to be syndicated it will effect you most definitely. Words like adult were an issue before, in or out of their obvious context. But now words like shipping are a problem! Which for me meant changing ALL of my listings to make sure I don't disappear off the internet. It's a good thing I'd been planning on it anyway as part of my overall big shop changes. But yeah some people in the forums believe that's a large part of this low views, low sales problem of the past month. Who knows but I do hope it changes soon. These are livelihoods we're talking about for a lot of established sellers (new ones too) and I think Etsy needs to talk about it as they are aware of it! In the mean time I'm looking into advertising, making new hats etc so it's time I can make use of still, although I would like to start earning more consistently again.

It's leaving me with lots of time to enjoy my daughters babyhood as on Saturday she'll be 1 entire year old! My baby! I can't believe I'm at this point already and she has done so well bless her in her first year. She's walking now, enjoying baby signing to the point of using it to communicate and not just to make us smile :) and she's playing lots with her big brother too. I can't wait for the day, I'm hoping it'll be sunny so we can have a little party in the garden.

So until the weekend, as I'm unsure I'll be blogging again until then have a great week!

moonangelnay x

Late again!

VERY Belated - Coffee and Cake
weekly mommy babble and handmade goings on...


ahem... argggghhh! Crikey what a mad couple of weeks! and it's still mad! I should have expected it really... making bunny hats... changing my shop tags (getting used to this SEO thing now)... the addition of a NEW HAT and picture courtesy of the amazing jsbfrechin on Etsy from www.m-mphoto.com and EASTER is but a month away. It's lovely to be so busy but my poor garden hasn't been sown and I am experiencing waaaaaaaaay too many late nights to compensate for the times I'm unable to work when I have the "kiddie shift". I am ploughing through the next few days with my partner finally having a few days off work, but yes some things are being sacrificed like my features for the blog, planting my potatoes ( :( ) and other foods, and anything I think could wait a little bit longer... but ohhhh... when the backlog of hats is out of the way I am SO going on a spa day. I think it's necessary :)


One thing I managed to do in the last few weeks is design new business cards for Babamoon and a postcard with details of my out of house business in baby portraiture that I think may actually manifest sometime this year, and I had the first lot of 100 come through the other day which almost brought a tear to my eye. They're AMAZING! I thought I'd show you the current look for my packaging which I've been using for a while now, using the pink envelopes (yep... the post office people know who I am LOL), my cards and the labelled hat inside a protective sleeve. I had used the free cards from Vistaprint for a while and figured I needed something more personal... and my goodness these are just perfect! Please excuse the quality... I've been using my phone for images recently as my poor DSLR's charger is missing somewhere in the many boxes that still need to be emptied :( But still! :D


So until next time, hopefully things will be less sporadic on here soon but for now I'll be writing when I can at least once or twice a week.

Recent Altered Photography And Baby Accessories
Posted to moonangelnay.etsy.com and babamoon.etsy.com

moonangelnay x

Strange

Sunday - Coffee and Cake
weekly mommy babble and handmade goings on...


Weird Week... yes... It has certainly been different! This morning for instance has been the 2nd night in a row that my son (not the baby) has decided to keep me up all night, then when coupled with my daughters desire to do the same things can be pretty tiring for me as you can imagine! It normally happens when I have been up late working too. Go figure! So I've been awake each night imagining all the snoozing bodies in my timezone whilst the kids are jumping around all over the bed. At least it's given me time to reflect a lot on plans for the future which has been the positive!

I won't go into everything but I'll share what occured at the start of the week. It was probably the weirdest day, with my new sofa having arrived to the house, and the darned thing just refused to fit through any of the doors! We got it in, in the end without the rip off suggestion from the company we purchased from (upholsterers to take apart my NEW sofa for a quarter of it's value??? I know they didn't even try to go there... nooooooooo!), by getting it in through our front window which had to be removed... ho! Oh the fun of that day...

But yes. I do wonder why sometimes in life you tend to get these very bizarre stages where loads of strange things occur. And believing in the law of attraction I do get a bit confused by it. As these events are generally neither positive or negative for me. Just weird... like you've hit some sort of ink smudge in the story of your life.
I always expect with negative events, that they will be followed by 3 times more positive results (they always do) and that positive events are always progressive in the same way. Things are constant and always moving with a directive known as intention. But something in between that is far from normal? I don't often experience things that for some could be extremely frustrating for some that leave me feeling quite neutral. It's exciting to say the least, I do wonder what will come of such things as I think sometimes that in a way maybe it means I'm quite comfortable with the occurances in life and open to new experiences without judgement or fear. Then I can completely contradict that and poop my pants about things which I guess is human nature, having an emotional body as we all do. It's fascinating though. The kind of things that move people to joy, or tears, or just don't really do anything. I love experiencing emotions as they tell me so much about me, where I've been and where I'm going and especially since having my children I find that all of my experiences whatever they are, good or bad seem to be worth it in the end.

Happy Valentines day for tomorrow everyone! May cupids arrows work overtime :)

Recent Altered Photography And Baby Accessories
Posted to moonangelnay.etsy.com and babamoon.etsy.com

moonangelnay x

Storm Before The Calm

Sunday - Coffee and Cake
weekly mommy babble and handmade goings on...


In, Out And Shake It All About... Warning... a bit of a rant here as I need to vent! It's nice to know that after an entire month of delays both unforseen and out of our control and the masses of stress involved with it all, we are finally in our new house and can worry about normal things associated with moving.

Like unpacking... urgh. I didn't realise just how much stuff we had to be honest as a lot of our knick-knacks were cleverly hidden away in the side passage at our old place which we rarely ventured into. It was so much of a surprise that we totally misjudged how long we'd need the removal van for and ended up having to hire it AGAIN for a few more days over the following weekend to try and get the bulk of it out. Not nice on our finances but with little help it was all we could do, as with the short notice of the move (that we couldn't help) there wasn't any reasonable advance we could give to any friends or family willing to help. Luckily though some of my closest friends offered a hand despite how tight everything was and did their bit either helping to pack, organise, move or take care of my son (as my daughter wasn't having any of it lol), as did my dad who drove all the way from Wales to do his bit for us. It didn't entirely go to plan, but at least the worst of it all has been done and like I say, the normal worrisome parts of moving can be worried about.

It was a very hard time for us as can be expected, but without any more help with the kids progress is slow and both myself and Elric have been struggling. Luckily with my son being at nursery, their are some days in the week where things are easier, but despite my daughters baby protests at the mo we really could do with help with her, but unfortunately the only offers of help we ever get for her are from people who happen to be hundreds of miles away and to us it's just not practical expecting them to drop everything and spend so much money to travel to us when we know that it would cause problems for them to be able to do that anyway, plus the addition of their own personal difficulties to deal with which I really don't want to contribute to! So I have been watching her whilst trying to work, keep the house maintained where I can and unpack where I can, my normal duties of cooking, grocery shops, nursery runs, post office runs, plus watching my son when he's home, working on my PC, editing pictures for my photography shop, working on new hats, managing my babamoon business, generally dealing with the repercussions caused by the bad weather in the USA and homeland security delays that have devestated my business in the past month (I'll get to that), paperwork... oh my the list goes on and the fact I'm not sleeping kind of tops it all off.

Elric having his full time job has also had an equally painful amount of stuff to do at home including helping with the kids so I can work, and we are both just so lucky that at least we can support eachother through it all and try and come out smiling! A lot of our friends try and be optimisitc for us, but I don't think they realise just how problematic things have been and that our lack of time is now pretty much eating into eating and sleeping time. But we have to work, we have to care for our children, and we have to sort out the new house. We're driving ourselves 10 times harder than usual, so at least in about a month or two we can probably get the opportunity to relax! Lol! It'll get sorted, I know it will.

But despite this stress the thing that's hit me hardest recently has been the problems with postal delays and Babamoon. My hat shop is very close to my heart as I started it having being inspired by both of my children, and since January I have received floods of messages from concerned customers not having received their orders when they should have. It was only two thirds of the way through January where my postal provider AND Etsy decided to tell everyone why it was happening as thank goodness it wasn't isolated to my shop (I honestly thought I'd messed up packaging or something). It turns out that a combination of atrocious weather from the East coast stopped post moving full stop, coupled with homeland security in the USA having experienced a bomb threat on a plane in November upped their security to 100% which means any packages travelling on planes are either being held for weeks on end before being released in small batches or are being sent by boat or smaller planes which take a million years to travel. Most of my customers are in the USA so from the 8th of December my orders got hit BADLY by this, so far the latest package arriving in 5 weeks when it should have taken 5 days! I am SOOOO grateful that most customers have been really patient and understanding through it all. I can't tell you how amazed I am at how lovely they have all been. But there is a small portion that are blaming me even though this post problem is a global issue out of my control and effecting everyone worldwide posting internationally, two of whom threatened me out of the blue with action with their credit card company without having asked me before about what was going on. They have really made me feel down about it all. And even down about myself. There was one day with a particularly difficult message where I had considered giving up everything. It took a few hours before I became rational about it and realised that this won't be forever, I am reliable and I am doing my best to help everyone involved. I tell you what though it's been tough, having a barrage of daily negative messages (not necessarily against me I need to add) arriving for over a month and having to deal with it all by myself. It's just sad as I really do feel for this people, I know how it must feel as I am a mother and I make my hats as a loving mother and pour a lot of energy into making them perfect for the new little owners. So besides their money being effected it's my time and efforts too. It's been very hard. I can't control what the post is doing but it has still effected my self esteem as I do work tremendously hard to make everything right before they leave me. I have to keep reminding myself that there are always going to be angry customers and that I shouldn't take it personally if I know I've done what I'm supposed to. All we can all do is wait.

Post has been normal since mid January but now with all the bad weather going on in the USA I'm not sure if it'll slow things down again. I have had packages arrive in time over the last few days despite the snow so it's very confusing to know what to expect.

For me, a large portion of my time is continually being taken up by researching progress and emailing everyone to reassure them and I'm looking forward to the end despite knowing that in a week I'll probably lose a weeks wage in refunds to the angrier customers. I just want the end to come so I can stop dreading all Etsy conversations from coming in. That has to be the worst part. Assuming that all Convo's are negative and that sinking feeling I get when opening up my emails. I am positive at least that things are going well, so here's to good times to come!

Recent Altered Photography And Baby Accessories
Posted to moonangelnay.etsy.com and babamoon.etsy.com

moonangelnay x

Now, It's On!

Sunday - Coffee and Cake
weekly mommy babble and handmade goings on...


NOW, It's on... Oh crikey, the panic we were in on Friday. For half a day we were convinced our purchased house completion had fallen through because after a positive and hopeful morning, we had a phone call that changed everything and left us pretty much unable to do anything but chew our hands and wait patiently for a resolution for the entire day.

It was the first time in all the trouble we've had buying this house that it seemed like we were set to lose it and all invested into it too, since all the trouble began before Christmas with the vendors of the property. We were supposed to have moved before Christmas! So it really has been an ordeal, and totally down to their own disorganised nature and personal issues between themselves as a couple. We just got dragged along for the ride!

Luckily though, in the last 15 minutes of the working day, our Solicitors gave us a phone call to celebrate and we are now able to get a move on!

So for a few days I'll only really be able to mobile blog, but I'm looking forward to doing that, it's a chance to make myself familiar with blogging on the move! LOL! Don't know how it'll work but we'll see! So I can confirm at least that my features this week will most definitely be postponed until the weekend, but I will be around if I am able to update on progress :) In all this I am still working too so it's going to be a busy one that's for sure!

Oh, I thought I would post a picture of a new rainbow bunny pic for the rainbow hat in my shop. I had word from a buyer about an order which got me thinking about the images I use for that particular color, as the rainbow yarn can vary in intensity with each dye lot I thought it'd be an idea to have a few images that show the different intensities I had encountered in the past. So here is one of them! I hope to get better images sometime as I'm not that happy with the one's I have in this color. We'll see how it goes! Ok I'm off to follow blogs whilst I have my coffee and then get going! Speak soon!

Recent Altered Photography And Baby Accessories
Posted to moonangelnay.etsy.com and babamoon.etsy.com

moonangelnay x

An Early Coffee and Cake...

It's Friday...


It is on!... Our house move is underway so of course I've had to have lots of limitations this week with certain features, and this of course is one that I've had to postpone until next week too. There are some issues going on which I cannot believe are happening regarding the fact that we hoped to be moving this weekend, which is down to the sellers of the property we are buying. It's come today at the last minute so we're chewing our hands off waiting news on what's going on. the situation with the blog may remain the same as we still need to sort out loads whether we move when we'd hoped or not. I'll still be working over the days on my orders but I doubt my time can be stretched further than that really. I have had the chance to ready a few of the more recent things I've made and haven't shared on my blog so I thought I'd paste those into this quick post today, but I need to scramble really being as we have a tonne to do for this weekend! There's a possibility of course that posts for early next week will be postponed, but we'll see how things go with that! I'll be in touch soon everyone :)

Recent Altered Photography And Baby Accessories
Posted to moonangelnay.etsy.com and babamoon.etsy.com

moonangelnay x

Musing

Sunday - Coffee and Cake
weekly mommy babble and handmade goings on...


Musing... I seem to have hat ideas coming from all angles currently. It's very exciting and motivating to always be thinking about creating things, and even better when I get a moment to execute the new ideas and expand on others! My inspiration this week has mostly been for Babamoon, and so far I have had three new hats come out of it. One I am still picking and choosing images for so I'll probably launch that one next week, but I have the other two here to show today :) One is the familiar Flopsy Bunny Hat in Pink! Nothing spectacularly new, but I don't have any images of my other colors for the single colored hat, other than the Rainbow spray color available in my shop. I thought it'd be nice to have something in there for Valentines Day so baby pink was the choice :)

My other new hat as you can guess is a little smart number for boys! My newest newsboy cap! I've been meaning to do more boys hats and newsboy caps so I figured that I'd better get on with it. Ages ago I went a bit mad at my local yarn store buying loads of sale yarns and chose the one picured above out of my stash to make this one with. The only problem is the yarn is a discontinued line so even though I am able to obtain the yarn for the hat still, some time soon I won't be able to so it has become my first limted edition hat! Very excited about it. It's brought a whole new dynamic to my yarn hunting lol! So far it looks like I can make a fair few of them, but due to the limitations I am only making sizes up to 2T as i think with the yarn now being so rare it's best this way. Best grab one whilst I have the yarn!

Recent Altered Photography And Baby Accessories
Posted to moonangelnay.etsy.com and babamoon.etsy.com

moonangelnay x

New Stuff!

Sunday - Coffee and Cake
weekly mommy babble and handmade goings on...


New Stuff!... I am trying to adjust to a quiet few days after a long busy couple of months, and obviously what happened at Christmas with our dog, and really enjoying the free time to think, read, bake and conjure up new ideas and nurture my shops a little. It's been lovely outside of work too being able to get out of the house a bit to enjoy lots of 1 on 1 time with my children.


I have tried hard over the months to give determinned attention to my photography store, and I'll be honest I had been experiencing times of wondering whether I should have closed up as my other shop Babamoon has dominated so much of my time, I have up until now been completely unable to get out and take new photos. Maintaining it was never a problem but I'm always seeking the fresh and new, and with the seasons changing I have been so desperate to get out and enjoy capturing some of the interesting things going on in nature. And then there's my digital painting, the signature of my style in Moonangelnay Photography. That's been at a standstill lately and the most useful thing my pen tablet had been doing in my absence was to collect dust. I felt pretty guilty that I was only able to print orders and renew listings. It felt very much like a production line, and there was nothing new being put in so I really did think that I should have shut shop for a little while until I have my studio set up in my new house when we move. Thankfully though the break has come along without me needing to close either of them even just for a vacation so I have some new things coming along in both stores that I wanted to share which I had been meaning to do for months :) It's nice having the urge to take photos but I have a growing backlog of images with tonnes of notes on to edit from the summer and autumn so I'm currently completing those as well as thinking of new ideas for images this year.


My daughter has started to crawl this week which has been the highlight for our little family. It's so far been a bum shuffling effort from her to get from A to B, but she has finally begun to coordinate her legs with the movements from her arms. She's still a bit clumsy with it but it's early days. I'm very proud of her for being so mobile for so long without the ability to crawl! She looks like she's ready to pull herself up to her feet too as she's giving clambering up furniture a good go. It'll be lovely to see her running around, I can't wait :) My son has also had some nice things going on for him lately like growing confidence in his independance, which has come in good time for him beginning nursery. He's been ever so good intergrating into the whole nursery scenario which for a lot of children can be a bit daunting, yet his teachers tell me he settled in without any real sort of need for their support, and has already been making friends after just his trial session! Very proud of him for that. I'm sure when I was his age, I clung on to my mom's ankles for dear life when I realised she was going to leave me at nursery LOL!


I think I might bake some bread today so I'm off to do that after checking out the hoppers from Thursdays Blog Hop. Stop by on Thursday if you'd like to join in the next one, I do try to follow back everyone I havent followed before! Hope you all have a great weekend and take care x

Recent Altered Photography And Baby Accessories
Posted to moonangelnay.etsy.com and babamoon.etsy.com

moonangelnay x

A Quick One

A quick one... I'm sure everyone is going mental this weekend preparing for Christmas... 6 days away... sheesh! I am quite certain the last time I looked which i swear was yesterday (ahem) there was at least another 10 days added to that number. Anyhoo, I cannot ramble much today for I have orders to fulfill, presents to knit, and food to prepare for the big day. I instead thought I'd leave a recent new image that I hope to add to the collection in my hat shop after Christmas, and give ya'll a sneak preview :) I have made bajillions of these rainbow bunny hats so I thought it deserved some new images. And this one is one of my faves! :)
If I don't randomly post in the week (which is likely as I have too much to do to focus much on features), I'll wish you all a Merry Christmas now! Speak soon!

Recent Altered Photography And Baby Accessories
Posted to moonangelnay.etsy.com and babamoon.etsy.com

moonangelnay x

Frozen Over

Sunday - Coffee and Cake
weekly mommy babble and handmade goings on...

Frozen Over... Phew I have had a busy couple of weeks. Now that my last shipping days are coming and going things have quietened down a bit so I have had the chance to chill the last few days, which funnily enough has felt totally weird. I'm used to being busy anyway but I had been uber busy with orders which with the bulk having been completed, I am now left with just a few local orders and a bit of spare time to do what I want with. And I haven't known what to do! LOL. My daughter has taken advantage and has gone from clingy to being glued to me so we've had loads of time together. My partner has suggested I go out for the day sometime in the next week to have a bit of me time which I can now comfortably enjoy since the weather in the country has become milder the last few days. Boy did it get cold here lately.
It's unusual for the UK to get as cold as -25 celcius or something like that, but in places it plunged to that and may have been lower I'm not sure. I know what the weather suggeted for me locally and it always turned out to be colder on our thermometer! My coldest day was -12 celcius and there was the most amazing frost everywhere. It looked like it had snowed in our garden. For my family it was a great spectacle as like I say it's not a temperature we experience often in the UK so I was really happy to capture some new images of the bizarre happenings in my garden. The best find was the frozen spiders web. That was a stunning sight! I have lots of new images to play around with for my photography store... that's something I have wanted to do for ages so I was really glad for mother nature to provide something different for me and my camera to enjoy. I'm not sure when I'll get to work on it as Babamoon has kind of taken over things but I hope to have it sorted by early January. We'll see how that goes!

so for the remainder of my weekend I am going to get on with orders, and hopefully have a nice night playing chess with my other half. Looking forward to that!

Recent Altered Photography And Baby Accessories
Posted to moonangelnay.etsy.com and babamoon.etsy.com

moonangelnay x

Short and Sweet!

Sunday - Coffee and Cake
weekly mommy babble and handmade goings on...



Just for today... I am gonna have to have that love ya and leave ya mentality relating to this post. I have LOADS of hat orders to get through for Christmas which is a really nice feeling as I don't think I've been this busy before with either of my stores. Since Black Friday things have just continued to pick up and it's bloomin' marvelous! Besides a bit of sleep deprivation I feel really good about what's happening and praying that it's not just because of the holidays, but because i spent over a day last week changing every single listing and tag in my shop to improve it's internet SEO. And by golly if double my usual shop views have anything to do with it then I need to continue nurturing what's currently going on! So until next Sunday my dears!

Recent Altered Photography And Baby Accessories
Posted to moonangelnay.etsy.com and babamoon.etsy.com

moonangelnay x

Trip to Santa

Sunday - Coffee and Cake
weekly mommy babble and handmade goings on...

Blog's 'Fourth Giveaway' winner! Congratulations to "BananasAreGross". You have won yourself a custom made adorable mouse headband! I have contacted you via email :)

Trip to Santa! ... I was in a bit of a stressful polava yesterday trying to navigate my way through stationary human traffic in my City Centre through what is quite possibly the busiest shopping day I have ever dared set foot in... ever! And boy did I wish I didn't after a few hours lol! We were there from 11am to 5pm and I really couldn't believe how much shopping time we had in those hours. It was so bad we actually spent more time squashed between people at the Frankfurt Market trying to go from the museum to the Bullring then we did actually browsing any market stalls (of which we only managed to glance at about 4) and shopping down the high street. It was absolute chaos! My poor kids were freezing as it had plummetted to -7 degrees celcius in the day which is highly unusual for Birmingham at the best of times, and everyone had that 'ploughing mentality' where they just look at the floor and bowl themselves through the crowds. My son who was being a very good boy despite everything was being knocked all over the place, and trying hard not to loose the Christmas spirit I was feeling pretty crappy about why we hadn't forseen such a thing coming. We decided to cut the shopping short in the end and I'm going to go back, armoured and ready for the crowds to do a bit of people ploughing myself and finish my Christmas shopping when I get my last orders out of the way. I wouldn't put my kids through that again, it's disheartening to think that people can be so rude, ignorant and cruel knocking a 3 year old to the floor many times without apologising, or half the time even noticing when all we did was courteously make way for people trying to set a good example to the children. *Sigh*

At least the best part of the day was spent when we had initially arrived into town and made our way to the Museum and Art Gallery to have cultured morning looking at the exhibits and to visit our favourite Santa that always sets up his grotto at the Museum every year. It was so wonderful. Because he had only planned to be there for 2 days, we expected to be queuing for ages upon arrival but we were actually pretty much first in there!

We were greeted by a Christmas Fairy who was very sweet to my son who at that point had melted away all of his brave Santa list chatter and gone very shy, and managed to coax us into the lovely little grotto that we could hear Santa Ho Ho Ho-ing in to himself. This being my daughters first Christmas was an extra special occassion and Santa was very sweet picking up on that and having a discussion with my son about it. My son at the best of times when he is in shy mode tends to just stand glued to the spot but was very quickly warmed to this lovely man's kindness and way with words which made the whole experience very exciting for him, and gave him that bit of independance and confidence that we crave for him when it comes to talking to other people. He can sometimes be heavily reliant on us for being as shy as he is, so was a revelation for him in his ability to be a big boy and talk about his little sister and wishes with confidence. It was the perfect trip! And after we had a wander around the museum and let my son direct us to all of his favourite exhibitions like "the Cry" bronze sculpture and Ancient Egyptian area. I guess things always work out that way just to balance things out. Well... despite the hullaballoo in town, my kids are in fab spirits today, so I think seeing Santa was enough to keep everything positive for them this weekend :)

Regarding work I am super busy with hat making this weekend as Black Friday has been and gone and my Babamoon sale is going on until the 13th of December anyway so people have started getting their Christmas orders in. If you are interested in purchasing a hat from Babamoon this weekend then there's 25% off everything! If you want a further 10% off, join my Facebook Page and look out for my FB Fans Coupon Code on the page :) Note that I am not running this sale in my photography store.

Recent Altered Photography And Baby Accessories
Posted to moonangelnay.etsy.com and babamoon.etsy.com

That's it for now. Have a great weekend all!


moonangelnay x

Balloon Head

New Listing on Etsy - Click image to visit the listing

hello! Yes I know it has been a few days... man it's been a knackering two days but I have quite a bit to talk about. Next Monday and Friday as you know I am introducing my new features for Etsy sellers that are at around 20 sales or under, and had a fantastic response to requests on the Etsy forum about it! Already I have slots filled up for Monday Magic and I'm compiling an interview for a fab seller for Friday Finds! It's going to be great, I'm really excited about the introduction and hope that it does well to drive traffic into their stores. I know how hard it is to do that whether time is your enemy or lack of marketing knowledge. But next week I'll be blasting both posts around my individual communities on the web, including the likes of Twitter, Indie Public and Facebook, which should most definitely help a bit if not a lot! I have a lot of faith in Twitter for marketing and I intend to expand on the reason on my upcoming Coffee and Cake article this Sunday. So keep an eye out for that post as it's part two of my marketing series!

So yeah all in all I have achieved something for once! Lol!

Now, my fatigue... would you believe is completely about paper? LOL I have spent the ENTIRE week fussing over paper, i swear until 2am each night. As you may know already I am introducing my own line of ACEO, 5x7 and 8x12 prints to my Etsy store, in a choice of Archival Matte, 100% Cotton Rag, Satin Lustre or Premium Glossy paper. And I have my beautiful new printer to thank for that. I'm just so excited that I have not been satisfied with any old paper, as the last thing I want is for people to have my art adorning their walls or desktops, and for something bad like fade or moisture runs to damage them! So yeah... archival paper... weeeeeee!

Now another thing i want to introduce in a short while are greeting cards, note cards, calenders and gift tags. I'm quite excited about this, and doing my research today has made me even more enthusiastic at the prospect. it's going to be a fab way (as will my ACEO prints) to offer bundles of my work at lower prices, and value for money is something I think we all think about in times like the present! So this is something I think will be great for customers that want to purchase my work but would like to spend less. And despite being stationary I won't compromise on the paper! Nope, it'll still be archival and of the highest quality coupled with the pigment inks I use. BUT... As I'm still updating items in my store with new descriptions, and have a long list of ACEO's to list, plus new prints to make... it'll be a little while before I can devote time to it. But DEFINTELY in time for christmas, you can expect my high quality and stationary for yourselves or as gifts to hit my store :D

Work aside, I've also been trying to devote more time to the family. The other half is recovering from his cataract operation for the next few weeks so my son has been in his element squealing the house down with joyful noise (although I don't know if the neighbours would think that LOL). It's been none stop since mummy explained last week about daddy's trip to the hospital! He's "doctor" Yukio this week. So far he's been more of an entertainer, like getting his hairy troll puppet to do the can-can, and putting cups on his feet... oh I can't forget him prancing about in my hat and shoes the other day... I don't think we've really been able to contain the laughter since! Particularly as he dressed himself... seriously! I HAD to take photos LOL! But yes It's been hard not to want to get involved in the fun so part of me has been very easily distracted for the past week, even though I have had the opportunity to work. I have been mind you! Just with the odd distraction. But yeah... work and fun leads to a sleepy mum! So I'd better crack on! I may not get a chance to blog again until Sunday but hopefully I should do! Until then :D

moonangelnay x x x

Zzzzzzzz Ramble

If I could sum up my state of mind today I'd probably end up swearing a lot so I won't bother, but I have had a frustrating couple of days... Made worse just now by a flippin robot calling my house again! ARGH! Does anybody actually fall for these calls??? Is that why after years that they are still going on tormenting people in their homes? That's just not right! Anyway! ... Sorry I've had a record number of calls of that variety today... need to VENT!

Anyways... yeah, I've been super busy which isn't any different from the usual but unfortunately it hasn't been because I have been the diligent worker on my Etsy store. Man I wish it was, but it's pretty much swallowed up days where I had motivation and now I suddenly don't. Anyhoo, I can continue getting bits done again and I will, sore back and fatigue aside, hopefully get somewhere with it all!

A few things I have managed to do that's been fabby doody the past few days is become a team member of POE (Photographers on Etsy) which put me in the best mood ever, and signed up to Indie Public too... I'm everywhere suddenly. Trick is now to keep on top of it all! I also made a treasury on Etsy full of wonderful artists that have wonderful floral work on sale in their stores. This is inspired from my own store of flowers in my garden, but I'll go on about that in a bit!

Also I have literally just been informed by CanadianRockies on Etsy that I have been featured in their blog treasury which is amazing, the piece photography that has been used is one that I adore from a small collection I managed to take at Ryton Garden Organics a few months back! I think this is the first blog feature that I've been made aware of so check it out!


Those familiar with my etsy store will know of my photo retouching services, well I have updated my listings with 4 types of service for those that are interested!

Enhance Airbrush	Rainbow Art Airbrush
Spotlight Airbrush	Softening Airbrush

Back to reality, for a few days I have been overjoyed at the progress of my first blooming sunflower! Absolutely EVERYTHING that I've planted in my garden has been grown from seed, and wow I'm amazed at the result now that the best weather of the year is beaming down on us here! It's one thing that I must make time for as I do have a tray with lettuce seedlings that need a patch to grow in, alongside my cabbages, broccolli and pumpkins. I was more faithful to my plants in the earlier portion of the year, but my lifestyle, particularly finding more time for computer work has made time generally seem non existant in my life. To be honest I don't think it exists anyway it's just an imposed concept of reliance to me, but presently that notion isn't going to tend to my garden! Lol! It's pretty easy once I'm out there, as it's the one thing that doesn't interfere with looking after my little boy. On the contrary, for him any excuse to get filthy and run around carefree without the need to climb furniture! Brilliant! I let him get on with it lol! He does love the outdoors, and I'm relieved and greatful really, what with society turning severely into nature fearers. I wouldn't be surprised if one day it's fashionable to don your child in bubble wrap for an outing! I'm old fashioned for my age I guess, and falling for fear mongering just isn't part of my persona. It's a blessing to know Yukio loves being outside and I can work on things out there knowing that he's happy, engaged and genuinely in awe of what surrounds him. I can't wait until he can consciously start tending to the garden with me ^_^


Phew! Right I'd better figure out what I should do next. I am seriously frazzled, I know I could get on with a lot, but I must be burnt out or something because the will just isn't there... Probably will be in an hour or so. My mind works pretty fast so that wouldn't suprise me lol!!!

My Ramblings... Plus An Etsy Update :D

Apart from today, I've been pretty busy tip tapping away on my computer. Today I was busy elsewhere so I didn't exactly break away from things but nevertheless, I have been doing a lot to help my mini empire along! (I wish... lol). Some people must think I'm mad, looking after my son full time AND trying to work from home, which takes up all of my other time and currently for zip whilst I'm still getting started. But I want to make it work because I believe I can do it and I have my son to think about. Nothing else to it. The other half was seriously saying to me today "oooh in the short term if all goes well, you can treat yourself to luxuries and go out etc...". This is assuming I'd be earning consistantly! But I just CANT imagine really giving a damn about going out when the opportunity arises. I don't know if it's the same across the waters, but in the UK (or at least with a lot of people in this country) it's so disturbingly vital to most to go out, get paraletically hammered, suffer the consequences the next day, then do it all over again on a regular basis! Is it weird for me to want to spend my money on enjoying myself without looking like a buffoon, with narcotic or booze fuelled confidence, and a monster hangover the next day? I don't see why it's "the thing" to do. I'm 24 and people seem to just expect it of me but I really do think that I can enjoy myself much more, remember what I've done in the process, and more than likely feel pretty good in the morning just by doing something random like I did a few weeks back as an example, and get myself my provisional motorbike license! LOL! There's a thrill for ya ;-) I have my son to think about like i say! and my life... even my dignity... man there are some horror stories about! I mean I'm not tee total, nor a saint, and to contradict myself slightly I do think that it's ok to have a drink now and again, but I'm just not a party animal anymore and definitely cannot do the things I used to do! I'm old already lol!


Anyway... a few days ago I updated on Etsy... so check out the new photography! :D

Blue 8x12 Inch Print - Creative Fine Art Photography By Moonangelnay $25

Peace Garden 24x36 Inch Gallery Wrapped Canvas Print - Creative Fine Art Photography By Moonangelnay $345

Twilight Rose 8x12 Inch Print - Creative Fine Art Photography By Moonangelnay $25


Romance 8x12 Inch Print - Creative Fine Art Photography By Moonangelnay $20

That's it for tonight I think... Knackered, and another busy day tomorrow awaits! Hope everyone had a happy 4th of July over t'world like :-)

xxx

Back On Track!

It's taken a while but I'm back at the relisting shizzle on etsy... and boy do I have loads of expired listings! Not only that but a month or so back I decided to change the watermark on ALL photography listed in my store as I started to think that it was detracting from the actual print image itself, due to it's boldness! So as time has so cruelly passed me by in the grand flash that it has, I have had to find moments here and there to correct my watermark on each and every photograph. But it has slowly been coming together and I think I am almost there. The thing that has driven me nutso the most has been the "expired listings" because unlike the normal listings that you can edit in your account, the expired ones can't be edited until you have relisted them which is TERRIBLE because as soon as you relist something, it becomes as fresh as a daisy for the world of Etsy to see and the last thing I want them to see is a dirty great big watermark that blinds them with it's monotoned presence on my work! Yes, I can edit it as fast as my hands can whizz across my desk, but the downside (other than my shite internet connection) is that once I edit it, it is no longer "viewable" on Etsy, and that also means the tiny timeframe that it would have the most exposure being a 'recent' item would be snuffed out by me needing to remove it for editing.... ARGGGHHH!!! lol! So in summary, I have given up on caring about frikkin exposure (which really stopped me in my days worrying over how to combat the issue), and I'm just relisting and editing immediately. In anycase my current work is slowly reaching a satisfactory presentable standard on Etsy. Here are the 3 most recent ones.

Branching Out 8x12 Inch Print - Creative Fine Art Photography By Moonangelnay $25

Off Color 8x12 Inch Print - Creative Fine Art Photography By Moonangelnay $25

Cluster Of Stars 8x12 Inch Print - Creative Fine Art Photography By Moonangelnay $20

So those are my recent relists! I have also relisted all of the crocheted baby ties that I'm sure you'll remember from a previous blog. You can check those out too if you wish. Happy shopping!

xxx

A Terrible Two! In The Nicest Possible Way :)

Whilst I'm waiting for my camera to hurry it up uploading 444 files onto my PC, I thought it was about time I caught up with the world of blogging. Or I guess it's the case of the world catching up with me lol! In any case, those of you that have been keeping an eye on my last posts will know why there would have been a delay this weekend just gone. My little boy Yukio turned two years old, and I can honestly say if there's anything terrible about it, he's been doing it for a long while already! Lmao! Hopefully we've been getting the tantrums in early, so shortly we'll have an easy ride of this apparently temperamental milestone lol!!!

We had a lovely weekend. I wish I could say that my weeks of planning and overspending (by at least £60 I reckon) were worth it for his Tiger party, but the last thing any of us expected was to be let down at the last minute by a lot of invited guests. Despite the month advancement, despite messages all through last week, and even a last minute check on saturday before buying an extraordinary amount of food to keep everyone fed. I couldn't believe my eyes when the texts started coming in, and felt worse when I couldn't express how I felt over it (Lately I just don't feel like there's any point to me doing that anymore...It's frustrating how it's ok for everyone else to). I can only say one message made absolute sense to me, with her lil baby being unwell and I've already chatted with my friend about that, but everyone else has pretty much let me down for pretty pathetic and annoying reasons.

I've not slept for about 2 weeks through trying to fit planning around work (and this is with knowing who was coming... the lot was based on the headcount). 2am-ers all the way for such a long time including the night before cooking for the confirmed guests, coupled with the usual full time mum thang, a friend of mine passing away, the most busy schedule I've had to cope with alone (other half was working) since I was in the best and most active job of my life, multiple family members being extremely ill ranging from angina to cancer including one surgery that was yesterday (better check on my brother actually), and still I managed to make it all happen as I don't see the point in halting movement in life because of circumstances. I can't really do that because I have my son to think about and when you're a full time mum to an energetic toddler, the last thing you could do is let them down by letting life get you down. That doesn't make me a strong or more capable person, but I can't afford to let my emotions or fatigue take over when I have things to do. But considering so many people let me down at the last minute, loads of excess food is going off with the heatwave, loadsa party games i bought (including the coolest tiger pinata) didnt get played, I'm feeling pretty much like a mug for believing that people would think the same way I would do. Co-dependancy creeping back into my life probably, but on a practical level I really don't see how hard it is to get on with life when you flippin have to. And believe me I've been through enough and going through enough to know what it's like to suffer inwardly, yet I don't let it stop me. Otherwise I'd be letting people around me down by expecting them to pat me on the back and try and understand it all. I don't want people to understand my problems, it's not fair to expect that, it's the reason I don't bother going on about them anymore! You just get on with it don't you? Personally, regardless of how I may feel I do try and do what I can when I say I will. I haven't always been like that mind you, but nowadays I'm a little more thorough than I was before I had my son. I wouldn't say I push myself to the limit, but I do think that when things need to be done, they need to get done unless something awful occurs. Moan moan moan. Well it doesn't matter, regardless of how I feel Yukio still had his little girlfriend over and enjoyed his day mowing the lawn... all day... lol. It's a shame that the party games are all still in packages and the one's I prepared are sitting staring at me across the room, but I'm chuffed my dad's generous donation of a bouncy castle went down well with Yukio and his little friend.

The best part of the weekend though was taking him to meet Thomas The Tank Engine in Thomas Land yesterday at Drayton Manor Theme Park. Wow... I don't know what much else I can say about that! I managed to take what feels like a million pictures, and despite the stoney look on Yukio's face he had the best time ever I reckon. He LOVED it when he could see Thomas coming to pick us up to transfer our behinds to another part of the park. But everything about it was incredible. The staff were brilliant with the kids, waving at them and being all smiley (which is hard to come by in this country I swear), the rides were spot on in terms of entertainment for the family and being gentle enough for the little ones, and the Thomas Themed shop just has to be the biggest load of commercialised madness I've ever come across... whatever you can think of... with a Thomas theme... man I shoulda taken some pictures of that! Doh.

Anyways! That really cheered me up! I was close to tears a few times watching Yukio's little face throughout the day. He's going to be a little adrenaline junkie like his mummy ^_^ LOL!

So all in all... great coupla days. Like I say depite the let downs, I'm pleased one of my friends and her kids could make it and my friends without kids could do, as well as my mum and Elric's too. It was a lovely sunny day in the end, and the BBQ was great! At least we don't have to buy party stuff for next year with the overspend!

Right. Time to catch up with my Etsy Shop. Until next time x