I’ve been keeping my accounts with an excel spreadsheet for years (details blogged here). It worked for me because until these last few months, most of my sales were done in cash or with checks at shows, so I could just include a single line with a total from a show and be done. But I’ve been having more and more PayPal interactions, and it was getting harder and harder to keep track of  how much of a sale was for shipping, sales tax, and PayPal fee that I finally bit the bullet and fired up an Outright account.

Once I entered the info for my PayPal account and my business bank account, Outright imported all those transactions. Of course, I then had a heck of a lot of reconciling to do, but I bit the bullet on Sunday and JUST DID IT! And now it should be easy to keep up with, fingers crossed. State sales and use tax is due really soon and it was much easier to calculate the 6 months in Outright then the previous 6 months in my spreadsheet, so fingers crossed this solution is a keeper! I just wish I’d started sooner, but I guess I needed the motivation of an increasing number of monthly paypal payments for premium web hosting to get me off my duff!

Enough about bookeeping though – I’m much rather gaze at bookshelf p0rn! Take a look at this gorgeous library that my twitter pal Nyla Free designed:

You can read (and see lots more pix) about this incredible library transformation on her blog post. As I tweeted to her earlier,  I think what I love most is that the books aren’t rows of matching books, or have that rainbow spine thing. It looks like a place where READERS live. I, along with my hubby and boys, absolutely love reading, and yearn for the day when all my books are out and arranged so that I can easily find what I’m looking for. A room like this is in my dream house…sigh…

I’m on a computer roll, and I spent the day working on my messenger bag pattern. I think I actually see the light at the end of the tunnel on this – woot! (knocking on wood, etc…)

It should not be a surprise, but as my business grows, my storage shrinks! I’ve done a series of de-cluttering and clearing out of unneeded supplies, and through the years I’ve narrowed in on how I like to work in my studio, storing items and supplies most often needed in the easy to reach places, and placing less needed items in less convenient places. Well, some of that less convenient storage is spread throughout the house and into the garage! Hubby decided to get the garage under control so he could perhaps use it for his hobbies once in awhile, and we had a garage sale a couple of weeks ago to get that process started.

Well, phase 2 happened this weekend. This particular project was brought about because one too many times I’ve gone into the closet in my laundry room that holds all my PFD fabric, blanks AND all my shipping supplies and almost lost my mind because everything was jammed in there! I’m sorry I have no before picture, but just imagine a jumbled mess! Anyway, we bought a couple of cheap melamine storage cabinets from Home Depot and put them in the garage so that we could combine all the less frequently used but still necessary for the business items in one place. So now the closet in my laundry is devoted to undyed fabric and blanks:

And when you open the door from the laundry room to the garage, this is what you see! (cue choirs of angels singing!)

The refrigerator that holds my dyestock, my beloved diet coke, and then 2 cabinets with all sorts of storage!

Behind door #1:

And behind door #2:

I love that I can get free shipping supplies from the USPS for use with Priority Mail shipping, but everything comes in bundles of 10 or 25, so it’s been a pain to store! Now, with one shelf devoted to shipping, everything I need is in one place (except for shopping bags of peanuts that are hung from nails in the rafters).

Here’s a peek from the other direction, showing all my stretcher bars on a shelf above the cupboards (an example of how buying in bulk saves soooo much money, but emphasizes the problem of then having to find a place to store stuff!)

Would you think me strange if you knew how many times I’ve gone to gaze at this magnificence? All this stuff, that I occasionally need, out of my way, but easy to get to and find when I need it!!

I blogged last week about the need for new slipcovers for the Ikea stools my boys use. The light green I’d originally dyed them was no match for boys eating on them constantly!

One big surprise I got – the new slipcovers I got from Ikea are way too big. Although the name of the stool is the same…sigh…at least I don’t have to worry about shrinking these!

The teal should do a much better job of hiding stains – that was a big motivation there. I love how it plays against the light, kind of dull blue of the other stools (bigger and cushier, for me and the hubby):

It also plays very well with chartreuse - because you know, chartreuse is the new neutral! I painted the legs of that coffee table chartreuse a couple of years ago. Andrew built that coffee table like…15 years ago. I can’t tell you how many colors those legs have been, but the top is maple, hard as a rock. You know, when the kitchen’s clean…it doesn’t look half bad. It get’s cluttered and dirty so fast though! 

Maree! I’ve sent you a message! Woot!

Thank you all for entering, and “friending” me on the Google connect widget! A couple of you commented that you much prefer staying connected that way, so I’m glad I figured it out!

I spent the weekend dyeing a bunch of going green tote bags and I’m also experimenting with dyeing white! How does one dye the color white? Very carefully! My experiments are in the washer, so we’ll have to wait and see if they worked out!

On top of that, I also had to get together another tutorial for my monthly home dec post over at Lillyella, so I spent most of Sunday making a mini-pocketin board and tutorializing it (is that a word?). I’ve been meaning to do this for awhile, and this deadline was the push I needed!

Now – it’s off to the day job!

Hello All! First, I need to thank you all for the incredibly awesome energy you sent me in the comments yesterday….seriously, my heart is stronger because of them!

I wanted to pop in and tell you that my next tutorial over at Lillyella’s is up: I detail how we install bamboo/hardwood floor. Go take a look, and then grab your tape measure and start dreaming/planning – because you could do your own!

Have a great weekend!