Saturday, December 20, 2008

You are cordially invited ...

You are cordially invited to ...
stop into our new shops. Yep, that's right, I did indeed say shops. :-)
Several months ago it became apparent that I needed to do something with my personalized pinwheels. They had begun taking over almost every facet of my Crossroads Cottage site which in turn created a huge organizational challenge. So, after many months of debating and postponing I made the decision to run two separate, but related, sister shops. Actually the decision was mostly made for me - I accidentally deleted party of my old shop, couldn't recover it and instead of crying my eyes out I took it as a sign that this was indeed the time to move forward with the change.

My Crossroads Cottage shop will continue to sell our home accessories (until they run out) and eventually, if my plans progress as hoped, evolve into a shop selling party accessories only. That is, when I find the time to actually create some unique and fun products.

My new pinwhirls site will sell my personalized party pinwheels only. Anything pinwheel related, including our newly created pinwheel party hats and pinwheel party invites, will also be sold from this site.

Feel free to pop into both shops. They do have the same feel - not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing and I may need to look at changing at least their color schemes in the future. Also, there are a few things that are annoying me at the moment. First off, I'm not sure that I totally love the header - I like the pinwheel and I do agree that a divider is needed but I'm not sure that I love the stick/leaf divider below the header text. And visually on the footer, the stick on the pinwheel is too long - either that or the actual pinwheel is too small. These are both things that I may need to work on. I also plan to make the home page photos rotate/change so my shops are more animated and capturing upon visiting. I think that will be my Holiday project. Anyhoo - I'd appreciate any honest opinions as I don't know if I'm just being too picky at this point. (Roger says that both look just great but he's my husband after all and I think he may just be saying that so I don't drive myself crazy with any more work/changes.) Thoughts, suggestions ....

Friday, December 19, 2008

Blog Browsing ...

While blog browsing last night, I stopped into my favorite event planning blog, Lemiga Events. My frequent followers have heard me mention Michelle's site and blog before as I am a huge fan of her work - her attention to detail is amazing. Because of the aforementioned, I wasn't surprised to learn that she was included not once but twice in the Atlantan Brides 1st Anniversary issue. I was however a bit surprised and excited to see that the blurp about her August Open House Soiree featured a photo of her wheatgrass cupcake display - and not because this display wasn't just darling but because some of my items also made an appearance.

As you can see from the photo above, my cupcake topper pinwheels were actually featured in the right photo. Although my business name was not mentioned this did not curtail my excitement; after all, someone out there must have thought the display, and quite possibly the pinwheels, were cute enough to be featured in this magazine. And how could they not considering the darling way Michelle propped the cupcakes into wheatgrass and integrated cupcake towers - she deserves all of the credit, as usual her details can make something ordinary look extrordinary.
So, that's been my excitement for the week. Now it's almost time for the weekend. Yippee!