'tis the season

to:

• write christmas cards that you forget to get around to sending
• start buying a lot of cheap bubbly
• feel guilty at all times because you're spending money on gifts for yourself rather than everyone else
• feel quite popular and busy for a few weeks because 12 months worth of events seem to be crammed into 3 weeks
• buy a bucket of Cookie Time cookies
• feel sick for 3 weeks solid until the bucket is finished
• get a vague sense of optimism that the weather will improve
• look at the rusted heap of a bbq guiltily
• start drinking at 4pm
  

Mr Rudd

So Australia has a new PM. As it happens my grandmother's maiden name is Rudd, and I'm guessing that old Kevin there in Canberra is some kind of relation.

I think it is time for a holiday, finally a chance to stay at Government House and boss staff around. Cousins are given these privileges, surely?

An obsession with pennithes

Malo to Finn: I'm gonna touch your penis
Martha (yelling): Oi! No!
Finn (in superior voice of a 5 year old who knows better): Don't talk about penises, Malo.

Pause

Malo: Knock knock
Finn: Who's there?
Malo: A penis

All: much chortling

Cheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeese

Great day. I had the busiest day yet in the shop, which was pretty bloody awesome.

Then, when I came home, we ploughed into Glen's birthday gourmet food stash, courtesy of my parents. Man, the minute the first olive hit my palate I thought "what the hell have I been eating before now?", because I haven't enjoyed such amazing flavour for eons. Now I'm sitting here on the couch with some gorgeous waxed paper packages of Delice de Bourgnone, unpasteurised gruyere and unpasteurised roquefort. I have no idea if the thrill of eating things unpasteurised that makes them so tasty, but I'm never touching the Mainland again. We'll have to start selling off blood and organs to accommodate this new gourmet desire.

Vote for Wellington(ista)

I've been remiss in promoting the fabulous Annual Wellingtonista Awards. Go here now, and if you felt inclined you could vote for a certain brand spanking new shop in Petone...

Le cold, say "au revoir"!

I still have snot, but pretty much all the other non-visible aspects of my diabolical cold (lets just call it "flu") have left the building, and I feel freaking marvellous as a consequence. In fact, I'm about to have a glass of wine. Sweet nectar of the gods.

Tomorrow the old man turns a year older. In fact, tomorrow there are 10 years between us (which only lasts a few weeks, but I make the most of it).

And I'll be in the shop all weekend, so come and say hi and buy a kazoo (they're our number #1 seller! - on a quantity basis, they'd have to cost a lot more than $6.50 to be our financial winner).

Slightly less bleurghh

I wrote a misery-guts post this morning, and promptly deleted it. I don't want to dump my stress and busy-ness on other people, plus I'm feeling much better now.

The wholesale side of my business(es) is going a bit ballistic, which makes good sense, it is Christmas after all. And I'm managing it alright, but I think I need a breather, which I more or less took today. Rather than shop duties or printing I did some parenting and pretending to be a tiger. Of course, I didn't manage to entirely stay away from the shop, and had a visit from a fab blogger who would probably prefer not to be named, given the covert nature of the business at hand.

And now I'm much relaxed, and preparing myself for another stint tonight getting out another huge order.

On Justin Timberlake and the important matter of world peace

I watched some of the Justin Timberlake concert thing on C4 last night, and realised that the only song by him I know is Dick in a Box, and he probably wasn't going to play it. And I'd always thought he was kind of sexy, and he is when he dances, but when he sings he looks a bit funny.

And I have nothing to say about World Peace, I just didn't want to come across as completely shallow from the outset.

That girl needs gin!

I have a booze resolution. I must get more. I have all these intentions of drinking more, and I've been thwarted at every turn, it is almost like the universe is out to get me - sober.

The sun is begging for me to consume a nice cool martini, but the universe has gone and sent me a huge Christmas order to get together tonight for one of my stockists in Auckland, and then, since I was making great progress, it sent me another. The universe has also arranged that Thorndon Fair be held in the middle of party season, and before I get too relaxed, Craft 2.0 is 2 weeks later - on my birthday. Perhaps that is a sign. A huge final fair for the year, on my birthday... sounds like an excuse to get lagered if ever there was one.

If you do decide to come see me at it on 16th December, please ensure you have a nice ice cold on you.

Sunshine!

So, yesterday I mentioned that I have a day off today.

Well, today I have a day off, and LOOK OUTSIDE! I'm going to go for a blat in the Mini with the sunroof open JUST 'COS.

Blues Clues

Le chien, elle est bleu. She mangered the stamp pad, and now she is bleu and substantial parts of our floor are bleu aussi. At least it gave me a chance to go to Warehouse Stationery, one of life's pleasures is a good stationery top up. I got some envelopes too, ritzy ones, so the shop opening party becomes slightly more real. Not that I'll actually post anything, it is usually a case of last minute emails for me.

I enjoyed a visit in the store from the lovely Marsha. Marsha experienced a dose of the "new to business can't get the eftpos machine to work Martha". Marsha, my apologies, it was slightly unplugged. Marsha has a new cafe in town near the strip clubs (which I'm afraid is all I can remember of the directions). Marsha, put a comment here with the address and we'll send some of the noble bloggers of Wellington your way...

Shop closed tomorrow! A day off. Lordy, how exciting.

At the coalface

I had a tremendous day at Pataka, selling stuff at the Crafting fair. There were many people, and they were buying up a storm. I nearly sold out, which I was very happy about.

A few people commented that they were surprised to see me there, now I have the shop and all. There are a few reasons I was there. Firstly, I committed to it before I committed to the shop, secondly, I had much stock suitable for selling off at a bargain, thricely, I love fairs, they're a little exhausting and a lot of fun, fourthly, we have only been open a few weeks, and we're now down from one income to half an income (I suppose half an income + what I earn, but since I seem to be very excellent at spending every penny I earn on stock for the shop and website, lets settle back on half an income) and fifthly and finally, I loves people. Loves them. They're so nice, and you meet so many on busy days like today.

Now I'm having a serious relax. Mmmm, lying in bed mooching around Apartment Therapy, I have found the thing that I need that I had no idea I needed.

Bullet point life update

• I had my session with the photographer last night. She was amazing. A very clever woman indeed. The true test of her skillz will be seeing how good she is at photoshopping me into perfection.
• My horse lamp arrived today at the shop, now I can die happy.
• I'm sick, and sick of being sick, and probably making everyone sick of me by talking about it.
• The signwriters are going to have our name on the window by the end of the week. Yippeeeeee.
• And (not to go on about the shop too much) BUT (see how I used "and" and "but" both together at the beginning of a sentence, because I'm a grammar gangsta, and dontcha forget it) my shop rulz, and you should come say hi.

Here is a beautiful song to get you bouncing, coming to you from the good folk at Minisnap.


Over and out, amigos.

Curve watching

I have a bit of an overwhelming bleak feeling today. It is because I watched the extremely brilliant Out of the Blue last night (a film about the massacre in Aramoana in 1990). It was amazing. It had an incredible New Zealand feel about it, which I can't think of in another film. I've been out to Aramoana, and it is a really still place. Not spooky, because really it is just a sleepy place that can live without being thought of as spooky, but it is very quiet. Lots of little towns are, and Aramoana is the end of the road, so there isn't any through traffic. I thought the film was breathtaking. It was like The Road, in that it was a terrible story and will probably leave me depressed for days, but so well constructed. I have no idea how the people in Aramoana coped, but if I were them I'd stay well away from the film, it would bring up some horrible memories. If I remember rightly they were pretty keen the film not be made.

And my ipod on random is feeding me bleak music. Bloody psychic ipod. I did cheer up noticeably when Mahna Mahna came on, so perhaps I should load up my cd from Peter (which is brilliant, brilliant! - thanks Peter). Jo sent a brilliant cd too, thanks Jo!

I'm slightly cheered by doing my accounts, believe it or not. The beauty of a new business is that you start at zero, and the graph curve can only head upwards. Yay!

Now I need to put my mind to a photo session I'm having on Tuesday. The super talented Louise Clifton is in Welly for a week or so taking pics, and I thought I may as well go for it before I get even older. But what to wear! Lord, the decisions I have to make in this life...

See how I went to really deep Aramoana stuff to what to wear? COMPLEX man.

Ignoring washing

Two kids in bed, one shop being minded, 1000 items of washing on our bed to be folded... and here I am.

Sitting at the computer ignoring the inevitable.

And showing off my fillings to the world.

Bullet time

• I am full of Whittaker's Cashew Nut chocolate, it isn't as good as the almond flavour.
• The books arrived in the shop today. It is all I can do to resist rolling around in them. There is one about Helvetica. Mmmmm. Me wanty the books.
• I have been weeding the garden. It is almost ready for mulch. I know that is almost as exciting as talking about boobs.
• I ordered some grog today for our shop opening, which I guess means we're going to have a shop opening.
• Now I am going to do some invoicing.
• I intend to resume martini-ing and drunken blogging soon.

Another successful weekend of successfully succeeding at um success (if you imagine Jon Stewart reading that, it becomes all sexy)

Le weekend, c'est still going. The shop isn't open on Mondays, and while I only have 2 weeks experience in these matters, I feel very much like I'm having a long weekend. In fact, after having Finn at home all last week with the ole slapped cheek, things have been quite hectic. Malo has his first Monday morning at kindy tomorrow, and you know what that means? First time to myself in frickin ages. I intend to fill it with all the excitement that couriering and ordering and posting and possibly a little washing-hanging brings.

I'm looking forward to being inundated this week with music selections for the shop. I don't want people to be deterred because I said "easy listening" - I don't mean The Eagles. I just mean that when Dinosaur Jnr was playing in the shop when some customers were there, I couldn't talk straight, and they probably thought I was a little insane. Although I think it happened when Mary was there, and she reads my blog, so probably wasn't surprised at all by me being a little, um, like someone-that-says-inappropriate-things-about-TV-hosts-in-the-subject-line-on-blog-postings.
Brenda and Sandy visited too, which was very great in its own right, but when Sandy pulled out the iphone, well GOOD GOD, I almost wept. It is soo foxy, and the fact that Sandy was so in love with it, and is its owner, well... now I really need to make my fortune, so that I may buy one and be happy like Sandy. Tom took covert pictures of me with it, and I imagine he will be setting up a rival store 3 shops down with the information.

Today I had a great time with the chiddlers. I took them to Te Papa and tried to think of the correct answer for questions about dinosaurs and if they were on Gondwanaland with giant squidlike things that turn into fossils while giant eagles circle and where are the shark bones and monkey skulls and why rocks are lighter near the surface of the earth. Luckily looking vague and intelligent seems to get me a long way. I'm hot-housing both boys to be architects, and found a really excellent set of stamps that are parts of buildings, and you put together combinations and colour them in. I also got them a batman/spiderman reversible costume. I have no idea where this shopping bug has come from...

Nor this crazy writing every detail of my weekend bug. I think it is called procrastination, because there are 13 orders awaiting my urgent attention, and the bed with a laptop on my knees is much more appealing.

Mixed tape time

In this shop o' mine I have a need for constant music. Phoenix Foundation, Sam Scott and Luke Buda have been on high rotation, but after 2 weeks I need something else...

Here is your chance to prove how good you are at making mixed tapes (well, cds, although we do actually have a tape deck in the shop, so you if you're feeling old skool go for that).

It needs to be eaaaaaaaaaaaaaaasy listening, because anything challenging makes my brain explode a little when I have customers in the shop and they talk to me.

And I'll send you chocolate and k bars.

What a plan eh!! And you thought you had nothing to do for the weekend...

The address is:

Wanda Harland
148 Jackson St
Petone