Closing Thoughts

This post is about nothing in particular. This post is about everything. This post will probably be my farewell to 2007.

1 - I need a laptop and almost was on my way to claiming one in February - this one in yellow, unless purple comes out soon - until my business partner and I talked about our finances and plans. Any bonus I get needs to go to us this time around, with a few hundred going to credit cards so I can get that mess back down again. Guess my laptop will have to wait a little longer but as long as I get my computer operating at full capacity and buy more memory to boot for the sake of all of us using it, then I suppose I can last a little longer without it.

2 - I want a green bookcase. Actually I realized if I take all the crap out of my office that can't live there anyway, I'll have room for two. The challenge in getting my office as it should be is that I have to think about what I have that needs storage and then consider what kind of storage will do so I won't end up buying something I can't really use. I went on the hunt again and I am giving up after about a year of searching for the right color green and the right look. And no, I don't want to paint a darn thing, Kerri! That's ok. Black is beautiful and Ikea is still the only place that has the right thing so I think black it is. The baskets can be green. Ikea has that too along with orange and yellow which I wanted to use in the room. They may be a tad too low but it's an option. Black will create grounding in the room anyway since the floor is a light wood and so is my desk and my beloved 2-drawer chest with the wonderful green and orange stripes, which is the cause of all this case confusion in the first place. And when I get that sweet lamp I saw at the gallery earlier this month, I am going to get it a black table to light upon because it too is a semi-light wood. (Ahhh, dreaming of that lamp.) I drew myself a floorplan of my room, hearkening back to my interior design days in college. I need a worktable because my partner and I realized we're going to have to take on some of the manufacturing of our puzzles ourselves - the packaging more than anything - but as we thought about what we'd need, I realized my office is truly going to be all about Village Works, which is good news tax wise. You can't claim a home office if the whole space isn't used that way and you can't claim more than one office either. (Now, I'm sure there is SOME way around all that if you try hard enough but we're going to just follow the advice of our accountant. Yay baby! We got one of those. So professional of us!) So you see, my office has been greatly on my mind lately again. Because of the new addition I'm going to need in there, I can finally envision the whole space when I couldn't before. Time to get cracking.

3 - One of the things I have to do is get my blog posts organized. When I started this blogging nonsense, the labels weren't an option. Now they are and I have to go back and add them to about a year's worth of posts now so I can find stuff when I want to link to it again. Plus I feel out of sorts when stuff is half organized so it simply must be done.

4 - Speaking of the business 2 items ago, my partner and I met with a new marketing person. We're keeping the old one for the fundraising projects and maybe she can help us find some local opportunities. However, the man we met with recently was a volcano of ideas and two hours flew by as we told him our thoughts and plans. I love to watch people develop a love for our product. It's truly lovable but it needs to be able to sell itself without us around and that is the issue we are tackling next year. We've got Chris, our new guy, working on a sales kit plan - and cost - and hopefully with his help, we'll land a few more stores next year. We're very excited and this is part of why my laptop now has to wait a little longer. He has a plethora of experience and has worked with oh so many people with oh so many talents and of varying business sizes. This man was there when the local edible fruit bouquet business was a baby. It's a booming enterprise now. 2008 is looking great! We've got one more vending event to do tonight and we can finally focus on next year. Oh, the plans for the website. The plans for the stores. The plans for selling. I'm itching to get going!

5 - Let's see. Anything else? I have to work on Monday so I don't even have another 4-day weekend to look forward to, but that's OK too. It'll be quiet and the highway will be a lovely span of gray concrete that I can navigate all by my lonesome at 80 mph. (Just kidding, mommy! Sorta) Both kids will be home and I will be looking forward to reading my latest Sophie Kinsella. (Hmm. Better update my booklist while I'm here.) I'll probably ring in the new year at church since my choir is recording a CD that night and I haven't been to church on New Year's Eve in about 3 or 4 years now. Also, I need my hair done before birds set up residence but we've been busy vending these past few weekends I just haven't had time. (That was just a little something extra for you.)

6 - I was contemplating calendars today with a coworker and I asked her if it meant something that picking a calendar is really a serious undertaking. If I am going to look at the same picture for a whole month, I need it to be visually invigorating for me. It takes a while to find that but I think I found something interesting for this coming year. Clean lines, lots of colors, exaggerations. This has me thinking back to the conversation I had with that gallery manager and The Artist's Way. I need to do that little exercise just to see what comes of it. If you know not of what I speak, the exercise is to go through magazines and the like and cut out pictures of anything and everything that draws you. Apparently when you put them all together, you get this visual representation of yourself and you find cohesion in all the odd things that attract you. When I think of my beautiful dresser and the lamp I am pining for and even this calendar, I can imagine there is something to it all. I told the woman I had a thing for balance and geometric shapes and bold colors but never in an overwhelming way. The shapes and colors are always offset by neutral tones or set against some kind of quiet background. And now that I think of that, I think a little of my marriage and how we balance each other in that same way. We each have boldness to our style in different ways but for every bold trait I have, Mr. T's is the understated opposite and vice versa. There is probably some personality epiphany I should be having here but it's eluding me at the moment because my bladder is calling.

Later gators!