Snow!

Alright, not really.

Monday night, we had some freezing mist, and the little fluffy balls of ice piled up on the ground. I didn't notice it sticking all that well, but Tuesday, around noon, I went to check the mail and saw this!
I love snow, and the South has totally cramped my winter style. Seeing this made my day...well, that and a handful of sales! I guess holiday shoppers are hitting etsy, finally, and the past couple of days have kept me busy. I've had to set up two custom listings and my Erlenmeyer Terrarium Kit sold. I was kinda sad to see it go, but I'll fix another up sometime this week, I think.

Of course, I've conveniently run out of bubble mailers and bubble wrap to make more mailers, so I'm waiting for both of those to come up. If I get any orders between now and when I get my supplies, I'll have to break down and see what I can find locally. Can't complain too much! :)

New things!

I decided to change my avatar. I may change it back to the one I've had since I joined (over a year now!), but I figured I'd give this one a try for a little while and see if I adjust. Talk about living on the wild side, eh?

I've decided to do a fluffnflowers sale from 28 Nov.-1 Dec. in honor of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. If you haven't already checked out my shop, you might want to take advantage of this sale before the spring rush!

Buy 3 packs of seeds or $9 equivalent (not including S&H) and get a free pack of seeds! AND 15% off of any CUT GLASS growing kit.

But they're PLASTIC!

I got my latest order of seed bags in, and my SO asked me a very interesting question while I was working on putting together little promo packs.

Why do you use plastic bags rather than paper seed packs like you used to?

The switch to using the plastic zippy baggies came easily, for me, after a couple of seasons using the paper envies. I could never find a way to seal the paper envies well enough so that I could open and close them whenever I wanted and not lose any seeds. I'm not a person who normally uses an entire pack of seeds at once, so I found myself using three, sometimes four, paper envelopes over a couple of weeks for the same pack of seeds.

I got a trade in the little plastic baggies and I've been a convert ever since. For my personal use, I'll even reuse ones from other seed varieties. I also think it makes people feel more confident with buying seeds, because they can SEE them before they buy. I can open and close them whenever I want and have fewer lost seeds because of it.

I do miss the breathability of the paper envelopes, and it's now absolutely imperative that seeds are completely dried before packaging, but I've come to terms with that and think the benefits more than outweigh the extra day in the vent chamber of doom.

Instead of spending weeks making seed envelopes or buying 5000 a year (plus smaller emergency orders occasionally), I'm down to ordering 3000 a year and still having some leftover. Good thing all around.

Some hard decisions and some good things.

Fabulous! My toad lily has been blooming for the past two days, and here's a pic of one of the blooms. What I think is absolutely wonderful about it is that it's got blue on it. Not the wannabe blues that you see on most flowers, but true blue, dyed in the wool BLUE. I'm lovin' it lots. This is now my favorite flower, I think.

Besides that, I made the difficult decision today to cut back on the amount of recycled packing materials I use. A guy on freecycle asked if anyone had any spares, so I bit the bullet and put two large boxes out for him. He shreds them and uses them for other packing needs, so they're not just getting thrown away.

Most of them were too old and fragile to be reliable. His request came at a great time, because I'd already decided to stop using the ones in good shape. Why? you ask. Because, after three months of charting postage costs for private trades, I've found that reused bubble mailers increase the postage cost somewhere in the area of .16-.55 a mailer.

While it hurt, it seems like a good business decision and a good healthy home decision. I eliminated a large, ugly clutter that made me avoid my sewing room, and I'll now be able to reduce my shipping costs.

And the sugar on top is that I don't have to be concerned whether people are put off an old mailer, even if it was safe to ship in, and I don't have to worry about throwing away mailers I receive -- cuz I got the hookup, now. He gave me another box and told me that, as soon as I fill it up, he'd be happy to come and pick it up again.

As soon as I use up the stock of new mailers that I've been hoarding, I'll invest in some new bubble wrap and start making my own mailers to send my seeds. Using salvage plastics and saving money is even better than saving money! :)

The fun never ends.

Sometimes, I think there are little elves in my home set to torture me.

I had two orders to get out Tuesday, or they would have had to wait until next week. I pulled out my roll of tape...and it had two feet left! That's not enough when you need to reassemble boxes, tape plants in, seal, and attach labels. I knew I'd seen a roll lurking around somewhere, so I frantically searched the house for three hours before deciding that I was going to have to tell the people who ordered that I was going to have to delay the shipments. If I could legally drive, it wouldn't be a problem, but I can't.

I was lamenting this to the dog when she suddenly took off up the stairs...which got me thinking. Lo and behold, there was a partially masticated roll underneath the dog's blanket. Hurrah! The packages went out (with tape lacking chew marks) and life was good.

I wasn't feeling well, so I spent most of the day sorting seeds. I had about four cups of Rose of Sharon seeds on my lap and reached over to grab something off of the table. That yanked the blanket that the tray was on and all of the seeds dumped onto the floor. Yay. I'm just very glad that I have an indefinite supply of these and that they aren't the rolly kind of seeds.

So much fun I can barely stand it.

I took a bit of blogrest, as you might be able to tell. The dog had another bloat experience and we ended up having to do surgery. Then, two days after we got her back (Saturday), I got to make a trip to the ER in an ambulance with my SO. Everything is alright, but there is such a thing as having too much fun! Phew.

I've been involved in the beginning stages of the EtsyOrganicTeam, and that's actually been a lot of fun. We're still working on criteria, membership, etc., but I think it has the potential to be a really great thing! Check out the flickr group that's been set up, if you're interested in organic products or are interested in joining the team. The more the merrier!

Hopefully, it'll be a calm week. I've got 30 items in my shop, which is a constant surprise. I opened my etsy shop on kind of a whim. I listed a few things and forgot about it until I got a notice in my inbox. It seems funny to think that I've made over 50 sales and now have two pages of listings.