Apologies to my RSS readers, I was working hard behind the scenes yesterday and today, and I inadvertently published some new pages as blog posts. I noticed my snafu quickly and fixed it, but I know that a few of you may have gotten odd, no text posts in your readers! Why was I working so hard behind the scenes, you ask? Well, I’ve learned how to sell things right here from my own website! WooHoo! Although Etsy makes things really easy, it also makes things really hard for someone like me. Even though I did some research before opening up an Etsy shop, I didn’t truly realize how difficult it would be for me to show my wares the way I’d like them to be shown! I’m very excited to be joining Art Wall Online next month, and used this deadline as an opportunity to figure out how to make PayPal “Add to Cart” buttons! Ooh, look, I even figured out how to make buttons with dropdown options!

Although I try to keep this blog about my process, not about selling, I just wanted to share a  little “yeehah” with y’all, because that was more work than I though it was going to be (big surprise…) And if you take a look around the shop an see something confusing or odd, please feel free to drop me a line and let me know, I’d appreciate it!

While I was at it, I also added another video of my free motion machine quilting, and added to my description of what free motion machine quilting is and how it differs from free motion machine sketching.

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Free Motion Machine Quilting	Free Motion Machine Sketching

I now deserve some time in the hot tub!

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So, I LOVE Christmas, and I USUALLY totally over commit myself, and set myself up for failure and exhaustion (is anyone surprised at this?) This year, I’m hoping to keep it fun and my plans realistic. (For example, in years past, I would have a gingerbread house party, making parts for 8-10 gingerbread houses and having friends over to decorate them. This year, I’m keeping it real and just making one or two with my boys).

I’m going to make a list of the stuff I really like to do with the kids, but it’s looking a little bare…do you have any fun family activities you’d like to share so I can make the list longer?

1. Trim the tree
2. Make new wreath
3. Make new garland
4. Make Christmas cookies
5. Make gingerbread houses
6. Watch The Grinch (original, none of this Jim Carrey stuff)
7. Liam’s holiday concert
8. Watch Rudolph
9. Trombone Christmas Carols
10. Christmas eve tradition: watch A Christmas Story

I’m learning how to import and add widgets to my blog…the 1st thing I’m tweaking is the category clouds. I love the 3-d one (that says “I’m Babbling About” at the top), but it requires flash to work – did you have any problems with it? Do you find it annoying?

image via Flickr, Alper Tunc Photography

Yep – launching a new website is like riding a roller coaster! There is something very magical to the whole process for me. Although some things about it don’t phase me too much (HTML for example, even if I don’t remember many tags off the top of my head, I get the general gist of what it is) but the whole moving things from one server to another, DNS propagating, mapping my wordpress.com blog to the new site, AH! It was enough to make my head explode. Then there the bandwidth issues. Tara had no idea just HOW MANY images I’d managed to accumulate here in the 15 months I’ve been blogging! <<Insert evil laugh here>> She had to keep upping my quota over the weekend as my blog was moving over to her server.

I don’t teach on Monday, so I was able to spend the day happily emailing, tweeting and facebooking with folks about my new site, and check to make sure everything was fine. But then Tuesday, I get into work and check the site from there and EEKK! my bandwidth limit had been exceeded and there was no site to see! A panicky shout out to my capable web guru got me fixed up lickety split, but is sure was nerve wracking!

The entire weekend, way into the wee hours was spent editing and compiling photos for all the differnt pages, as well as getting some of those pages written and properly placed. Oh, and then redoing my scarf listings on Etsy! The neat thing about this process is that I entered a zone I haven’t been to in a long time. That zone where if you stay on task, you begin to hold more and more of a large project in your head so you can actually navigate it. It was very similar to my process of writing most of my Master’s Thesis in a week. Although I’d rather not do this particular task again, it was great to be reminded how powerful one can be when truly focused!

I’ve got more work to do here, but I’m happy with the overall structure, and I haven’t heard of people getting lost on the site, so I’ve gotta assume it’s not too confusing. One thing that was important to me was to have the images be the focus of the site, and Tara did a great job of finding a theme and tweaking it so we could put the images front and center. Yay! Of course, this only drives me to make better and better images! I posted a couple of videos of my free motion quilting in the process section, and plan to add more. One of my goals with this site is to share my processes, I’m happy I have a whole section devoted to this.

Today is my birthday…I’m 44 years old! How could that have happened? I really don’t know. If I weren’t already hosting a wicked awesome giveaway, I probably would have celebrated by having one, because the feedback I get and friendships I’ve developed because of the blog have made my life a richer one, and for this I thank you!