The Count Down is On

The biggest problem I have with having a home business is that I work best under pressure. Which is just another way of saying I procrastinate so much that unless I have a dead line its often hard for me to finish a project. Yes, you may laugh at me. That's why during my school days I often made deals with myself like, "I can't watch this show tonight unless I finish my math homework first."

Well now I'm facing that big and fun deadline that every artists faces when they do shows - the countdown to opening day!

If it seems like I've talked about the Saturday Market season starting a lot - that's because I have! It's my main focus right now. And considering I'm down to 10 days - it should be!

My original plan was to spend all month working on things for the season, and then my nephews were born on the 11th of this month instead of the 10th of next month! Needless to say the whole first part of my month was completely taken up and saturated with baby stuff! Now I'm still a little split with my focus (how can I not be? They are so cute!!!) but I think I'm just about ready.

The most important things are done. The canopy is on it's way in the mail from Amazon, I've bought most of the displays I need, and if I don't get the rest in time that's ok, I'll just improvise and have it for the next week!

The biggest thing left on my plate is changing over some of my tagging system. While I'm dreading the monotony of that, I have started a few pieces at time with the items I've been listing these last few days. I think I'll probably go down to the red box while my hubby is gone this weekend and rent a movie to watch while I do the rest of the tags.

Panic Averted

Right now I have a delicate balance I'm trying to maintain. I've actually been feeling pretty good, and so I've been trying to exercise whenever I can. Why? Well I'm over weight because of the medications and my health problems, and with all of my health problems the doctors say that exercise will help. Which is ironic because, while exercise may help my health problems, my health problems also tend to prevent me from exercising! It' a vicious cycle. So when I'm strong enough, I try to exercise. I have some stretches the doctor told me I needed to do for my back, and then I also try to go for short walks.

Exercising is great, but it takes a lot of energy ya know? I've been pushing and doing it anyway though! The only problem is that my energy is at a premium right now. I have a bazaar on Saturday that I'm trying to get ready for after all!

I haven't done a bazaar since the beginning of summer, and I've moved since then, so there's a lot of prep work that needs to be done! My stuff for the set up is no longer all in one place, I need to make sure every thing's marked right, and all that other fun stuff. There's a fine balance here too. I have x amount of things that need to get done by Saturday, but if I push myself too hard then I'll make myself too sick to do the bazaar!

So, trying to balance all of this (and other normal life stuff), left me ready to panic last night! Especially because I worked all day yesterday on various business things, and I was exhausted last night! Lying in bed my mind was racing with all the things I still had left to do. Then I realized a couple of important things.

1. It's ok if I don't get all my products photographed before the bazaar. All I have left unphotographed are earrings, and I KNOW I have more earrings than will fill my display, so I don't need to have those earrings for the show on Saturday.

2. I plain old have more stuff than I need for the show. I have at least 150 items (I don't have an exact count) and when I did my bazaar at the beginning of summer my displays were full. I've made quite a few things since then! So, I don't have to worry about getting all my untagged items tagged and ready. If I do, great, but if not? It's not like I don't have enough to sell! I do have a few untagged items that I would like to have out, but it's not a huge deal.

3. Yah, I'd like to do some work to get my displays a little nicer and all that, but until I know that I'm going to be doing more bazaars I really shouldn't spend the money anyway. I am going to go buy a few more velvet necklace displays for my high end items, but I'm going to get that done today, so nothing to stress about there! Those are cheap too :)

Figuring out all that means I'm no longer panicking! Yes, I still have stuff that needs to get done (making some signs, getting all my supplies in one place) but I have the next three days to do it :D And if any of that other stuff (photographs, labeling) gets done, fantastic, if not, no sweat.

My mantra for the week? *Breathe, don't panic, it's all going to work out!*

Insane!!!

Sane/Insane

Ok, seriously? I only need the Insane button right now... This week is turning out totally crazy! I promised myself I re-price my woven items this week (getting close to being able to do that), I found out Friday that I have a second shop I'm going to be selling consignment in and told her I'd have the stuff in this week, and then yesterday I found out that I'm doing my first craft fair of the season on Saturday!

Can you say running around like a chicken with my head cut off? 

Today was spent running and getting display supplies. I knew I needed to buy some tables and dsiplay things, but I thought I had a few more weeks! Plus I had some "real life" errands to run. My brother went with me since hubby had our car, and the two of us drove around for 5 hours! I kid you not! We literally made 15 different stops. Yes, it was sheer insanity.

Tonight I have one more trip to make (unbelievable no?) and my evil twin is coming over to go with me. I need some more feltboard and fabric for displays, so we're going to go pick that up, and then I'll put her to work assembling while I work on pricing or one of the other million things I need to do before the week is done. 

Don't worry, I'll get you more info about my consignment deal when it's set up! Then I'll have pictures :) 

Oh! I also got some awesome eye-candy in the mail yesterday and I'm going to try and take photos and show off tomorrow :) I'll be taking photos of other things anyway so it should work... *crosses fingers*