Well, it seems I have 470 blog posts already and I really thought maybe there was only a dozen still up. I’ve had this blog for pretty much a decade, maybe longer, and I keep reinventing it and leaving the old stuff too. I don’t know how wise that is since I have changed a great deal and find some of my older post to be judgmental and hyper religious which I am not anymore, ha ha ha. So my intent now is to chronicle my time as a full-time vintage and antique dealer. It’s going to be a part journal, part informational.

Here’s where I am now: I quit my full-time day job to pursue dealing full-time. I am currently contracting a room at the Safety Harbor Galleria here in Florida. I also have three online Etsy shops and two eBay businesses. I sell from Instagram and Facebook as well. My goals, and what I will write about on here, is getting into a couple more local stores and listing and selling enough inventory to close down my storage unit and clear out the inventory I keep in my home. I would love to get to the place where I source and immediately list and don’t have “dead piles“. (Dead piles is a morbid term for inventory that is just sitting around waiting to be listed but that you never seem to get to.)

Today I have already been to the shop and set up a new jewelry display that I hope will encourage more sales. I’ve made jewelry for years and I also have a penchant for vintage pieces so I’m hoping this is a good way to display both.

This vintage style frame has a padded burlap background. I’m using golden pearl headed pins to keep the jewelry on the board.

Trying to get back into the swing of blogging. It's hard to come up with words when I've gotten Insta-lazy- that is, I post a few pictures a day on my Instagram, come up with a sentence or two, some hashtags and I'm finished. So maybe I start back small... I've been listing nautical things in my Etsy shop recently. Here's the last two listings, you can click on the caption to go to the listing.

Old Captain mug

Ceramic ship box

Just for fun, I put together a treasury of nautical goodies. I took a little more of a literal approach and was surprised how much I was able to find on Etsy. It would be fun to decorate a little beach-side cottage with this motif.

(To view individual items, click here.)

Hi... Hello... Yes, I still blog... occasionally. I'm just totally in love with Instagram at the moment so my attention has been over there more. If you want to follow me, I'm also TheRiCharmedLife on there. I have to warn you though, I break all the rules of what a good Instagram should be. I post pictures of my kids, my dog, selfies, my food, my art and stuff I'd like to sell. I should really tidy it up, but I don't really care to. Take me or leave me! The crazy thing is I'm almost to five hundred followers, even after the great spam account clean up of January. 

We celebrated our 12th anniversary earlier this month.

In other news- my baby brother is getting married!!! I leave at the crack of dawn (ugh...) Thursday morning to fly up to the big MO for the festivities. It's going to be a very small wedding, but I'm staying almost a whole week, so I'm hoping to see lots of family during that time. And get this, I'm going all by myself. I'm entrusting my darling babies to Jason and God. Hopefully all will go well. I'm not expecting much- alive and in good health works for me.

My bro & I back in the Y2K days...

Hope you all have a lovely spring break. Remember to protect your skin and hydrate! That is all.

I have got to get some consistency going with this blog... It's just life right now is nuts. Take this morning for example. I thought I was going to MOPS and had been planning to do so for the last month. Instead I ended up looking at duplexes for sale. (No, I'm not the buyer.) I've got a list of things to do today; blogging was not on it, but here I am! I think I need to establish what I want to make regular features and not be afraid to schedule stuff ahead. There are days where I get too busy to get on my computer and my phone isn't good for more than checking things. I think Fridays work best for weigh ins and reporting on my whole health revamping.

And it just so happens to be Friday!  I can't say I've done amazing this week, but I haven't blown it either. Of course, more exercise, less carbs, no late night snacking is always on the list of things to improve on. I am still tracking on Livestrong fairly consistently. I'm pleased to have reconnected with a couple people on there who were of great encouragement to me a few years ago and also to have made a couple new friends. 

I really have more I want to blog about, but I just don't think this is the forum for it. Despite so many wonderful things going on, I feel myself sinking into despair over other things. I feel very alone, which I suppose is good for the prayer life, but bad on the heart. And then I feel guilty over feeling anything but pure happiness that I get to spend my days with this little sweetie.

She was flapping her arms which doesn't ever translate well on the phone camera!

I cannot seem to get my book read for book club tomorrow night! It's a classic, which I tend to love, so it's not a content thing. I think it's just that I'm out of my reading time and space. Normally I read before I go to bed. I'm comfy, in bed, and I just read myself to sleep. Now that Miss Jane shares our bedroom, lights are off at 10 pm and I've been watching TV (or blogging  =p) until I fall into bed. Hopefully tomorrow I'll get it finished!

Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster

While I have your attention, let me give a little plug for the book club. We read young adult fiction- some old titles, some new releases. Forever Young Adult is the website that we're organized through. We meet once a month. Right now we're meeting at Grind House Bar & Grill in Clearwater, usually on a Monday night. If you are in the Tampa Bay area and enjoy reading young adult fiction, you should join us! We do all actually read the books and discuss them.

I don't mean to abandon this blog entirely. Things have just been incredibly busy. That's the obvious reason, but there's just an underlying I don't have a vision for this blog. Part of me wants it to just be about my life and just post whatever I want- Etsy stuff, spiritual thoughts, Julian & Jane updates, product reviews, etc. Everything I've read though seems to discourage mixing business and personal stuff on a blog. For example,  I'm the Captain of the Tampa Bay Etsy Crew and I do represent the group publicly, but I wouldn't want my blog to reflect on the group because it's not politically or religiously neutral at all! The group has to be both of those things. At the same time, I love having my blog on my business cards and letting my customers know I'm a person and artist and not a mass manufacturer. I just don't know what I'll end up doing.

   Sigh. I don't want to be a food blogger. I take horrid photos and my cooking isn't that great. But here I go again posting a food pic for my Photo of the Day. This is my cupcake shame. I was trying to make delicious Jersey-style cheesecake cupcakes with yummy strawberry preserves. They were for a little competition. I was dumb and didn't do a trial run the day before. So this afternoon I let the mixer go a little long and ended up with a more whipped cheesecake texture. Which means it didn't settle- it stayed whipped which ruined the marbled strawberry effect. They tasted decent but not as good as when they're more condensed and they just looked a hot mess. Ack. Yeah, I didn't place. =p

Cupcake fail