Rather Dull

What a rather dull week it has been. The weather has not been conducive to doing much of anything for any length of time outdoors. Indoors is getting old very quickly. In between periods of eating lots of soup on these miserable soup days, we've been trying to keep busy by working on my Eccentric Thrifter thrift store, and on the Cabana Threads dept. specifically.

Before Christmas we had been using the large department store clothes rack we bought last summer from a local thrift store, in the living room. It is now returned to the living room after being relegated to the back room over holidays. It's so much easier to see what we're doing now, so hopefully we'll finally get caught up. I guess we've added about 30 more shirts to the store in the last 10 days. This entails taking photos and cropping, editing, and making them stand out, as well as measuring each shirt and writing a dynamite ad. Dan is the photo guy, I'm the writer. This month has been a really good sales month so far. I hope the trend continues. We're ahead of where we were last year this time and with less items...meaning we're selling at higher prices. I"m good with it.

We did get to the thrift store this week...so nice to be out again. Were it not for needing groceries I wonder if we'd have made it. Say the word "GO" and Abby is ready. She now has 4 stores she can go into. She loves thrift store shopping and people are charmed by her soft demeanor, coming up to pet her. It's been very good for getting over shyness and mistrust.

I found a Wilton cake pan with cupid and a heart no less, which  I am pushing in my store between now and Feb. 14. I also found some really nice yarn just ahead of another lady. Had I been but a minute later I would not have the hat and scarf listed in my stores now. You can read about them at The Creative Side of LadieAnn blog.

Mom and Daddy continues to do their best to deal with the imposed confinement due of weather. I know Daddy wishes to be outdoors much more, but the cold makes his knees hurt after years of jumping on and off of tractors. Mom enjoys her cooking, fussing around the kitchen like a butterfly with nowhere to light. She also can spend hours at a time reading, her selfish pleasure, so she's not doing bad. But I know shopping and getting out is on the top of the list when the weather gets better. Do continue to pray for both of them to be safe and healthy!

The kids next door, I hear, may be expecting puppies at some point. This hasn't been confirmed, but I know it's part of the plan at some point. They both work so days are occupied with going back and forth to and from their home away from home spots.

I haven't heard from last week's birthday girl...I'm sure she's working practically 24/7 as usual. I know she's really starting to get burned out over the 2 year project they've just released to her company. She says everyone and his brother has learning curve issues and she's putting out fires left and right.

The Olivers of Florida are continuing their goals quests while enjoying the nice 70° weather we wish we had. Rob's book is making headway now and a book cover has been designed. He is thrilled as we all are for him. Melissa had a huge job test this week, designed to start a weeding down process for a potential position she says is one more step towards her goal of being a parole officer. She says remaining a secretary for her entire career is simply not going to happen! She said there were tons of people there. I told her they were wasting their time, while she, on the other hand, was the only one who was not. A mom always has faith.

Well, that's my update. Looking back it doesn' seem quite so dull as I thought. Let's see what God has in store for us this week! Enjoy!