My favorite photo

I had to get my passport renewed just in case I plan to do any international travel - which I don't have any plans to do. Even with my grandkids on living in Holland, I don't have any plans to visit. But just in case there's an emergency I should have a current one ready. It was advice given to me when my son Chad was in the military. As parents you never knew if you would have to fly over to wherever he was stationed. 

So for me my wander lust for traveling is over.  I've been to a lot of interesting places and to all my bucket list places. I would rather be at the beach house.  

It took awhile to get my passport photo taken, not sure why but I never made it a priority to get it done. I was shocked on how high the fees for renewing a passport are now! $130 plus $10 to ship.  

Anyways, my daughter asked that I send a photo of myself for the kids bulletin board so they can learn to call me Grammy in English. I don't have many photos of myself, as I'm the one that takes the pictures. This is my favorite photo taken several years ago. I had always wanted a good photo of me and Annie for our Christmas card.  It took a lot of wrestling to get this one shot as Annie just wanted to play and wasn't interested in sitting still. The out takes are so funny too! 

Glowing - Up coming WN show

I'm having a whole lot of the fun with my new UV light! I went to the DGW preview auction this weekend and found a whole bunch of things that glowed!

It was a busy weekend of auctions and because of that, I missed most of the good stuff I wanted at DGW. 

I had to pick up my MaxSold winnings at 12:15 (yes, there are very specific times to pick up things) so I got to the DGW late. At the last auction they didn't get to the high numbers (things I bid on) until 2:00pm so I wasn't too concerned. The more experienced auctioneer (owner) was calling and there wasn't a whole lot of online bids so things were going fast. There was one thing I was a little sad I missed but I'm  budget limit for this month so I guess it was a good thing. :(

Did manage to get a junk lot (auction term for a large group of stuff sold as one lot) of clear glass. Most of the time clear glass doesn't sell well unless it glows! Almost everything in this lot glowed so I can now do a WhatNot show. It was very time consuming to take photos showing the glow but I'm still babysitting the labs, so I had plenty of time to get it done. I have enough space the spread out here, which was nice. Part of my babysitting duties is to hang out with the dogs as they're use to having their people around so I was in major multi-tasking mode. 

My next auction is this Tuesday (1/31/22) at 8:00 pm. Stop by and say hi! I'm LouLouBell.

UV flashlight is paying off!

One of my best WhatNot shows this month was my "Glow" show. Another seller on WN convinced me to to invest in a good UV light. Now you know I hate paying full retail to anything but I went on Amazon and ordered it. 

It has been a game changer! Things that I couldn't sell at any price finally sold once people found out that it glowed. I can't imagined the things I sold off that actually glowed and I could have charged more for! So now when I go thrifting, I have my flashlight handy. The DGW auction is today so during the preview, I was checking everything out. I was amazed at the things I found that glowed.  I'm planning on doing another glow show as soon as I can get enough items to sell. 

I'm also thrilled now that I have sold over 1,000 things that my  WN payments are automatically deposited in my account as soon as I print out the shipping label. This just means I can transfer the WN money into my bank account at the end of the month instead of waiting for everything to clear which could take up to 2 weeks. 

In case to want to catch one of my  WhatNot shows, I'm LouLouBell.

Finally Made This Bird!

I've had this pattern on my Pinterest board for a long time and I finally got around to getting it made. I still have to add the eyes but for the most part it's done! I'm now on the looking out for the Waffle Flower piercing die that helps punch out all those little holes. It does make a hot mess while you're stitching. 

After getting rid of most of my crafting stuff, it's a wonder I have anything left to work with! Going to turn it into a card at some point and get it to my card rack at Cottage Crafts. 

I'm currently babysitting some very old but sweet labs who live in a very  big but comfortable house. I try and spend as much time outside with them as I can. They have a very large wide open backyard (more like a park) so we don't have to get in the car to go any where. They also feed the birds (part of my morning routine here is to fill the bird feeders) so it's nice to  see all the birds waiting for me in the morning and hearing all the chattering.  In the evenings everyone is on the sofas watching TV, really I'm watching TV and the boys are sleeping.  Part of my babysitting duties is to be with the boys since they are use to having their family around. I still do my errands but I try not to leave them for too long. This is almost as good as having Annie around again :(  

Artichokes 2023

I'm trying to be better in posting on my blog for the few of you who check in. :)

It's artichoke season and around here they are super big! Always reminds me of my Dad. When he was driving through Monterey, he would stop and pick up artichokes straight from the farm. 

This week I'm babysitting the boys, Woody and Buzz, two very old labs. They have a huge backyard, so we spend most of the time out back. I work on cleaning up the vegetable garden area and the boys just follow me around. It's a low impact way of keeping the boys moving and getting a little exercise. Woody would really like me to throw the ball all day but his limit is 15 minutes - per his mom's orders. He would be way too sore if I did it any longer. Woody also has the habit of jumping into the pool to get a drink of water as he prefers standing up when he drinks. There is always a stack of towels ready to dry him off before he comes inside. 

Made it to my first Whatnot goal for 2023

I had a goal for my Whatnot auctions this year, to make 1K sold items. The reason for this is once you make to that number, all the sales you make get directly deposited directly into you WN account. There's no waiting for the delivery confirmation to happen. I'm a small seller so it took time to get to this point but I did it!

As a rule I don't cash out my WN account until the end of the month so it's really not about having access to the money ASAP but that I made it this far!

Winter weather meal!

Still dealing with the wet and stormy weather here. So far been lucky no loss of power or flooding but a lot of the stores I would normally go to today were closed. 

The front garden is getting a little wet now but the soil is so packed down, the water is just running off. 

When the wether is like this, I really like to make a pot roast but it's not a one person type of dish. I decided to make baby back ribs with sriracha BBQ sauce.  I do plan to get a BBQ as I do miss grilling a steak and eggplant. That was something I did a lot when I live up in the hills. Annie could be outside doing her guard dog thing and I could get dinner ready without heating up the house. Made roasted veggies to go with my ribs. Everything turned out super!

I'm 25 sales away from hitting the 1,000 goal on my WhatNot auction site.Hope to get to it by next week! 

Dreamy beach house

Yesterday I drove over hwy 17 to pick up auction win in Santa Cruz. It was suppose to be raining so I was hoping to get back before the storm hit. 

You're picking up at people's home so you have to schedule a pick up time since parking can be an issue, which was the case at this house. 

 This house is way off the beaten path with huge crop fields along the road to the house.  All I can say is WOW when I drove up! This had to have been this man's dream house. It's on the cliff over looking the pacific ocean. Yes, it's a 6 million dollar house but it has a very warm and comfortable feeling. Very much a family home, not built for show. It's a big with, 5 bedrooms and 5 bathrooms with every room having an ocean view. If I could design and build a house over looking the ocean, it would be this house. Even the furniture is exactly what I would have picked. I wish I could have taken more photos but that's not allowed when your picking up. I'm glad that I made the decision storm or no storm to go and pick up my auction win. 

There is a challenge to pick a word for 2023. I seriously can't think of one that would guide me through this year. Do you have a special word for 2023? 

Whatnot auctions

Check out my WhatNot auctions!

I'm working on trying to get a set schedule to do my WhatNot auction but being an everything sellers, it's a little hard to do. I never know what I'll have from week to week to sell! My goal is to get to 1,000 sales on WN so my payments are automatically added to my account. Right now  I'm paid as soon a delivery confirmation is posted which is usually within a week. 

Huge storm is passing through this week. Dumped a lot of rain, which we really need here in the valley. I would really like to get out into the garden and dig some holes to catch the water. The garden area is very packed down so the water is just running off, not really getting down to the tree roots. 

I stayed home yesterday (the rain was very intense) but today I have to do some errands that can't wait. Hopefully the freeways aren't flooded!

My booths at Cottage Crafts did really well last month. Everyone at the store did well which is super. I think it was my best month ever at CCB!  People were there to shop and support local artists. 

Working on restocking my card rack so while being stuck at home, I prepped a lot of card kits.  I spent over 20 hours on Sunday getting my craft supplies in order. I got rid of a lot but it still took that much time to get things in the right boxes and labeled. Hopefully when I'm sitting down instead of surfing the internet, I put some cards together since I have the kits together. 

Goals for 2023

I was telling my daughter that Henkie's followers were wondering what the little guy was up to so I needed some more updated photos. They do send a bunch but most aren't story worth, at least for my limited creative writing brain. :)

On Sunday I spent all day (and I mean all day) trying to get my auction studio set up to run a little more organized and be kept neat. The organized part was easy, the neat part not so much.

I really wanted to find some of my favorite dies so thought if I went through all my crafting stuff I would find them, but so far I haven't. I was even going purchase them again after hours of looking for them but their old dies that have been discontinued. So the search continues!

My business goals for 2023 is to have a consist auction days scheduled. Being an everything seller, that's not the easiest thing to do as I don't always know what I'll have to sell. 

I'm pretty good at being able to take my auction on the road so that isn't an issue or should I say not an excuse. :) 

Do you have any goals for 2023?

Brown Spotted Cow to start the new year off right.

24X24 signed art work

I went to DGW auction house in Sunnyvale on Saturday for the first time in maybe 4 years?  It's been awhile for sure! It was so nice that they remembered me and I still had my same bidder number on file. It was a very raining day (flooded roads etc...) and it wasn't really smart to be out driving but I went anyways. :) 

During the lock down, DGW did online auctions of only their high end items, so there was nothing I could even think of bidding on. I wanted to see if their in person format had changed and how many resellers would be there. The place was packed and the starting bids were still a little too high for me. The gold coins were going to 10k+, which was a little shocking to someone who doesn't deal in gold or silver. 

I did like this signed painting, as brown spotted cows was my mom's lucky charm.  I decided to stayed until it came up for auction. It was funny that another reseller was in the same row as I was bidding on it. I had seen what he was bidding on so I had an idea where his price range was. I decided to psych him out and keep my bidder card up, which means I wanted it and I would out bid him every time. I got it for $45 so after all the auction fees, it costed me $54. If I was going to do a fast flip on it I wouldn't have paid that much for it. 

It's now hanging up in my auction studio and I  hope some of my mom's good luck rubs off! 

Since I now know how fast the new auctioneer goes and how many people are there, I know when to show up and not have to sit there for hours.  Hopefully this month, I'll be able to score some good stuff.