So...it's tax time. And this past week I updated all of my shop records. And, unfortunately, I found that my dear little shop isn't quite making the profit I hoped it would. I'll be doing some price adjustments to most of my items. And, unfortunately, that means prices are going to go up a bit.
But...I won't be changing anything until Saturday, March 1st. That means that now is the best time to buy!
And...between today and the end of February, to further encourage you to buy, I'm offering a special discount to everyone who reads my blog! Get 10% off my current prices through Friday, February 29th! Simply enter in the code blog10 in the "note to seller" section during checkout and then wait for me to send you a revised invoice before paying.
But...guess what? I've got a lot of new items ready to go up in the shop! But they won't be listed until March 1st!
So, go shop now! And come back on March 1st for some new, great items!!
Monday, February 18, 2008
shop announcement: now is the time to buy!
Friday, February 15, 2008
favorite shop friday: maizie jane
Juliette Ober has an adorable daughter with an adorable name, Maizie Jane, after whom she named her wonderful shop!
Juliette creates what she called Buttermint Tiles...original oil paintings on tiles inspired by her childhood memories...and I love them!
There are a few reasons why I love them. I love the images themselves. They have a retro style and I like the kind of images she chooses. The kind of details you remember from your childhood--the appliances on the kitchen counter, mom's bottle of cold cream--as well as the things we miss like cooking with mom and spending your day at games.
I also love the colors of the tiles: soft pastels with yummy names like "teaberry" and "mint", "butter", "frost" and snowflake".
I also like that they are ceramic tiles. They may be cold and hard but there is still something so home-y about tiles. They line the rooms in our homes we use daily like our bathrooms and especially our kitchens from which good things come every day.
But Juliette has more than tiles in her shop...she shows off her amazing talent with some wonderful original paintings with similar themes.
You can find more wonderful Maizie Jane art at http://maiziejane.etsy.com or keep up with Juliette's studio at http://www.julietteober.com.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
signs 2
This is such a lovely Valentine's Day because guess what I'm doing?!
Posting on my blog on my very own computer in my very own home with my very own internet connection!! Yes, Karl and I have stepped out of the Stone Age and can now take part in the cyber world with everyone else in the 21st century!! We finally have a phone again and our internet is up and running!
To celebrate, I'm going to share another European sign with you!
This one we saw in the parking garage we parked at in Basel, Switzerland Monday morning. It's a no-smoking sign...but I liked how they got all their bases covered:
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
morgestraich
Yesterday, my husband and I participated in my very favorite Fasnacht parade. Every year, on the Monday after Ash Wedsnestdy, the city of Basel, Switzerland (just an hour and a half away from us) opens their 3-day Fasnacht celebration with a very unique parade: the Morgestraich.
This parade begins Monday morning at 4:00 AM. Yes, you read that right: four o'clock in the AM! And the darkness of the early morning is very important for this parade becaue it's a parade of lanterns! There are many local societies called cliques who each create a large lantern for this parade. These large lanterns were hand painted with different satirical messages, mostly based on different local or world political, contraversial and other events of the past year. They are amazing! Following the large lanterns are costumed people along with a group of costumed piccolo players (a small, high-pitched flute) and they are followed by a group of costumed drum players. They are all wearing small lanterns on the tops of their heads. And some are even carrying lanterns on the ends of tall sticks. And that's it. No bands, no candy, no confetti, no waving or any kind of interaction with the crowd. Just pipes, drums and lanterns and all in the dark.
As I mentioned, darkness is very important for this parade. As the large crowd gathers throughout the streets of Basel's old city center in the middle of the night, we are all waiting for one thing: for the old city hall's clock to strike four...and at the fourth ring, the lights go out! And then the music starts...drums and piccolos playing the same, strange tunes over and over marching through the streets with their lanterns. Not only are all the street lights out, but all the homes and business in the area are asked to turn out their lights, too, so that the only light is coming from the colorful lanterns. So as these cliques slowly march past, you can just see their strange masks coming out of the darkness and all you can hear is the pipe and drum music which sounds almost creepy in the darkness.
After about 30 or 45 minutes...it starts to get really fun! The different cliques start to break off the parade route turning up and down different streets. Suddenly there is no parade route! The crowds start to break apart, too, as people start to follow behind the cliques that are turning down bare alleyways or down crowded streets, or else people will stand along the streets watching the lanterns and costumed musicians go by. Once in a while a clique will pull over to the side of a street to take a break. Then you can get a closer look at the amazing lanterns and read the commentary written on it in the local Basel dialect.
Karl and I wandered through some incredibly crowded streets getting up to close to the lanterns for a while, then will found the fairly empty church square where we decided to follow a clique made up of costumed school children for a few blocks. It was so amazing! You've never seen anything like it!
It was, however, very cold! So after wandering with the crowds and the cliques through the streets of Basel for a couple of hours, we decided to head back to the car before everything started to break apart at sunrise.
I find it amazing how this society had created a way that, for hundreds of years, they had been able to harmlessly shrug off the burden of rules and criticize what they felt was wrong in their society without repercussions, before going back to daily life, feeling better after having a little fun and getting some things off their collective chest.
Waiting for 4 am in front of the city hall:
The parade begins!
A look at some of the costumes:
Just a few of the amazing lanterns:
Friday, February 8, 2008
favorite shop friday: just mad books
It's so nice to be able to feature a favorite shop again. I know I only skipped last week, due to German phone company incompetence, but my internet-ing has been so irregular that it feels nice to be able to do something regular!
Justin is a cartoonist and illustrator who creates, what he calls, "beautifully rendered tales of detachment, wonder and hope" and what I would also call beautiful, ethereal and comfortably and intrigingly strange.
This is a page from one of his comic books, Happy Town Book 2:
I love his images of detached figures...they tend to seem a searching for somthing in a strange, yet eerily familiar world -- almost like a parallel universe or an alternate reality, a bizzaro world, or a not-too-distant future.
Monday, February 4, 2008
german phone companies are maybe not so smart
(hello linocut from Skookum HandMade.)
Ok. So. Remember how we were going to be moving back to Ohio at the end of January? And then we decided to stay here permanently just a few weeks ago? Well. About a month ago Karl contacted our phone and internet and mobile phone companies to let them know we would be leaving and to disconnect our service February 1st. And after we decided to stay, Karl and I decided that of course we needed to keep our land-line phone and internet but that we would go ahead and still cancel our mobile phones. Save us a couple of bucks.
So....that's what we did. Karl called the phone company to let them know not to cancel and they said, "No problem!" and he didn't call the mobile company so they would still cancel.
But apparently there was a problem. Or just incompentence. Because last Friday, February 1st, I couldn't get online. And then I tried to call my husband at work and the phone wouldn't work. But then guess what? I tried the mobile phone...and it still works!!
Although the phone company said they could get us hooked back up within 2-3 days, we decided to switch to a different phone and internet company that would be a lot cheaper (saving even more bucks) but that's going to take 2-3 weeks.
So that means my blogging is going to be very spotty for the next 2-3 weeks. (I'm typing this at a friend's house.) But we've got a lot of fun stuff going on in the next few weeks that I'm looking forward to blogging about so please be patient! I'm trying to be!
fasching
It's one of the funnest times of year for this region of Germany: Fasching! Or Fasnacht as it's also called here...or Carnival as it's called in some countries...or Mardi Gras as it's called in New Orleans. You can click here to read all about the holiday and how it's celebrated in many different countries...but basically, it's a Catholic holiday. It begins here in Germany on November 11th at 11:11 am and lasts until Ash Wednesday. Most of the festivities, however, happen in the month before Ash Wednesday. It's a way for people to let loose, ignore the rules, become a fool, and criticize bureaucracy in a fun and harmless way.
Today, Karl and I met up with some friends in a nearby Black Forest town to see their annual Fasching parade. The parade is basically one society after another going down the street in their traditional Fasching costumes with wood-carved masks inspired by fruits, vegatables, animals, and witches. They act as the Fool, throwing confetti, "kidnapping" young pretty girls and hats and handing out candy to all the kids who dress up in costumes. It is really a lot of fun! And the costumes can really be amazing!
