Income Tax Sucks

Suddenly, I am less excited, and more tired and despairing. This is an unfortunately common feeling. Myke and I don't often get a break and the past few months have been unexpectedly easy. While my classmates flutter around like headless chickens, panicking about every presentation, paper, and exam, I often feel like I'm cheating the system. For the first time since we've been together we're living in a place where mold, neighbours, and heating aren't issues.

It's really my fault, so here's my warning: never, ever make a budget with money you don't presently have clenched in a death-grip in your fist. I made that mistake. If all had gone according to plan, our income tax return would be ten times what we're expecting to receive now. What reduced it? I was in school for over thirteen weeks of the year, and therefore rendered ineligible for the tax return we had been expecting. Maybe I could argue that I haven't actually attended more than thirteen weeks of school, I'm sure my professors would corroborate, but I doubt that would work.

So now, all of my happy has fled. I found myself wanting to smother Myke with a pillow last night for snoring (Maybe if you didn't have your head at a ninety degree angle to your body you wouldn't snore!) and vainly wondering what I could sell to make up the over thousand dollar difference in our budget, about seven hundred of which is a currently existing electric bill that is staring me down like some kind of angry dog.

All my hopes rest on that giveaway now, which is kind of an extreme swing of the pendulum back in the other direction.

At least with all the crappy weather today, the crappy mood I'm in, and the crappy job I had to do (Seam ripping labels from old collars to replace them with new labels for new pictures, ouch!) there is still someone who doesn't care what kind of day I'm having, as long as she can cuddle with me. I wish I could live life like a dog.

Bits and Bobs and Business Jobs

I finished off my business cards (Again) mostly today. I still need to print the new labels, affix them to the photography collars (Why yes, I WAS retaking photos so often that I started making collars that would never be sold and only be used for photography reasons!) and take new pictures to use on the business cards. And product listings. Oh, and this amazing thing that happened.

In November I contacted Dogster/Catster to see if they might want to do a giveaway for my little shop, then panicked because I'm a small-timer and my shop was still a mess. It's slightly less of a mess now? Maybe? Enough so that when Dogster/Catster got back to me gushing about how cute my items were and how nice my price point was that they wanted to do a giveaway for me, my first thought wasn't actually, "But my photography is a mess!" it was, "I get to do a giveaway!" Then that first one happened.

So I've spent the past few days juggling sewing, cleaning up the branding, and college work (Death to the Group Project!) and tomorrow I'm hoping to send off a few pictures that they requested to use in their post for my giveaway. Mine! On Dogster and Catster!

I will need to purchase some extra materials, since I'm running dangerously low and I totally don't want to run out in the middle of a giveaway-induced rush.

I'm excited.

How To Make a Business Logo

I feel like I've done this a couple of times... Oh wait, I have! Branding is one of my favourite parts of a business, and I didn't even know it until after I'd start the business and slapped a half-hearted banner up on my Etsy shop. I didn't even consider that the brand I was making was going to decorate every item, every scrap of paper, associated with my business, until I realised that I wanted labels. Then, that my labels looked kind of boring.

So I made some labels and matching hang-tags. Then I needed business cards, so I squeezed them in. Then I needed various images, and I found I was at a need for more fonts, and more images, and more paper items, and before I knew it my brand was all ajumble again, in a matter of a few months. With the introduction of my large collar line, my labels now looked very small, and I had no way to up-size them for my large collars.

So today, after sewing a bunch of collars, I decided I was going to look through my branding, identify the weaknesses, and fix them. I laid out the basis of my old brand: the colours, the fonts, and the patterns I was using, as well as my old logo.

How very un-inspired. I'd picked Goudy Stout for its strength, and the Bergamot Ornament was cute at the time. DK Claire De Lune sort of matched the Bergamot Ornament, when it became evident I needed a simple font, and Clementine Sketch was super fun to use on large announcement banners for Facebook. But it all felt so boring and cluttered when put together. I still like Goudy Stout, but the other fonts felt too complicated and overwhelming, and the colours were just too much.

After tackling the colours, I decided to work on my logo first. I wanted to stop using the Bergamot Ornament, and my recent love of outlined font bubbled to the surface. I fiddled, and fiddled, and came up with a passable logo and miniature branding board. I decided that I had to add my pets to my branding, so I did. They're extremely tiny here, but you can still see the supreme cuteness.

20 Something and Veg

I realised last week that, for the past several years, I don't feel like I've grown. It's a bit silly to say, considering I know I've grown quite a lot. But since I turned 20, each subsequent birthday has been kind of meh. I get asked every year by at least one person, "So how does it feel to be 20-whatever?"

I keep replying, "Just like 20-ish."

I'm a veritable 20-something. A year goes by and I just don't care anymore. I've passed that adolescent/childhood phase of a year being a WHOLE year, an gargantuan THING that you overcame, have some cake, kid. Maybe when I'm turning 30-something it will matter. Maybe I'll be 32 forever, but for now? I'm happy to veg.

So I wanted to make a blog, to speak to people who are also 20-something and happy to veg. People who are trying to start careers, enter college and university, find love, have fun, start families, and other cool things 20-somethings do. Me?

I'm a 23 year old 20-something chick, living in chilly Canada in a super exciting rural city in Ontario, where I am attending the local college for a diploma in the social services. From a small 60-something house I rent from my dad, I live with my 25 year old 20-something fiancé, two cats, and a dog. I run a small business out of my small upstairs studio making small batches of small pet products. Awesome stuff like collars and bow-ties.

And I sit, and I veg, trying to figure out what to do in this 20-something time... Besides Instagramming, of course.