6 Hours

All these pictures were taken on my iphone and processed with instagram. You can follow me if you want too! My user name is redherringjeff.

I love my kids, and I love being home with them. As any stay at home parent can tell you though, the hardest part of that job is that you never get a day off. For me, nap time is spent working or cleaning and there is very little time left for personal projects. I talked to Mrs Handmade about this the other day, and we hatched a plan for some time set aside for those things that I don't have time for, and also time to just be alone. On the Design Mom blog last week, Gabrielle Blair talked about being alone and included this wonderful little video about it.





So I've managed to get out to Bread Co, or the library and get some work done on the blogs, or in my sketch book. and it's been really great. My wife is pretty rad.
Speaking of rad, this past weekend Mrs Handmade had another idea...trade a day of babysitting each week with one of our friends. My head exploded. What a perfect, simple idea that would be great for everybody. Why hadn't we thought about it sooner? Six hours home alone. Six hours to get some work done...during the day. This week was my first "day off" and while it felt a little indulgent at times, I made an actual dent in my work load. And then we went to see "Brave" after picking up the girls. And it was great.
Here's a little peek at my six hours...

 

9:30. After dropping Amy off at work, and the kids off at the sitters I sat down to frame some calendar prints for the shop and watch the "new" Conan movie. The movie had just the right amount of fluff to make actually paying attention to what I was doing possible. Also, in case the R rating didn't warn you, this is not like the older Conan movies, and I wouldn't watch it with kids. There's a lot of boobs and blood.

11:00.  I spent 20 minutes in my super messy studio looking for picture hanging hardware that I'm sure I have. I briefly considered both cleaning up the studio and going out to buy the hardware. Ultimately I decided to just let it go and work on sketches for the fairy tale book and calendar...

 Eating lunch while listening to Neil Gaiman read "Stardust" and sketching ideas for "The Emperors New Clothes".  I'm thinking that instead of going with the traditional Rococo inspired designs that I'll do Napoleonic empire clothes with 20th century Arts and Crafts sets.

1:30. After lunch, back down to the studio to rework some drawings for a barbecue competition team shirt I'm working on. One of my instagram followers said I need to post more of this type of stuff. What do you all think? More artwork? Is there anyghing in particular you'd like to see here on the blog?

 3:00. I caved and went to buy hardware on my way to pick up the girls. I just know that in the next couple of days I'll find the stuff I already had...it's not like I wont use it all or anything, just frustrating that I wasted so much time looking for it. Ha-ha-ha!

 

4:00. I picked up the girls at the sitter. They were glad to see me, but sad that they had to leave their friends. Ha-ha-ha! Life's so hard when you're a kid. We went and picked up Mom, and then went and saw Brave. The movie was great, and I think it's unfortunate that Disney did such a terrible job marketing it, because it wasn't the movie they made it out to be. 

And that was my "day off". Over all, a pretty good and productive day, and I hope you enjoyed spending it with me. Is this something you'd like to see as a regular feature? Are there things that you'd like to read about that I'm just not thinking of? Would you like to see more tutorials, reviews and shows? Let us know in the comments. We'd love to hear from you!

Until next time, take care and be good!

Your friend,

Jeffrey

Things I'm into right now:

Thundercats. I finally got to see some of the new Thundercats cartoon, and it's pretty cool. One thing that's interesting to me is that this is the second cartoon that I've seen recently that borrows a lot of it's themes from the A-team. 

Neil Gaiman Books on tape:
I'm listening to "Stardust" right now, and have "Coraline" to listen to while I work next. One of the cool things is that Neil reads his own books, and he has such a wonderful, English voice.

Handmade Family: Past, Present and Future. Part 3.

Hi all! Mr Handmade here with Part 3 of Handmade Family's Past, Present and Future. Amy and I have been talking lately about our goals for the coming year. It's important to pay attention to what we're doing now of course, but having something to look forward to and something to work towards is how we will grow. Both as partners and as a business and family.
One of the big goals is to get our website, www.handmadefamily.com in working order. Late last year, we started making headway on this front. Deciding what kind of content we were after, and what features we would like to include. The things that ended up being most important were to have an integrated blog, an online storefront, and galleries to show our work. It still needs a lot of work. Mainly, I need to take a ton of pictures and get the galleries set up...speaking of pictures, that leads me to my second goal. Keeping this blog updated with content regularly.

I think I promise myself this every year, but this year I swear it's going to stick! My plan is about trying to keep it simpler and to commit to certain concepts. The first thing is that I am officially letting go of my other blogs, "Penny Candy and Shady Characters", and "Take Care and Be Good". I'm consolidating them into this one so that I won't fall back into the "I feel bad about not updating there, so I won't update here either" trap. Second, on Mondays I will update with a weekly photo roundup of 5 photos from the previous week. I am committing to this, but not to writing anything about the photos. :) On Fridays I will post artwork, either something that I drew during the week or something the kids did. I also plan on reviving the Daily Life Comic Diary. I miss doing it, so will add it to the Friday posts as I can. These two posts will be constant, and both Amy and I will post real articles about projects, events, the community and the handmade lifestyle as we can...hopefully pretty regularly :)

Amy's major goals are to get our inventory tracking under control and to organize what items we have where. Selling in three shops, plus our website, etsy and shows has made keeping track of inventory kind of tricky, but she's been logging everything and it has already become soooo much easier to find where things are, and to know what needs to be made. It's also really helping us to see what our big sellers are. That'll really help us to get ahead of things for the holidays this year.
Finally, we are doing more shows this year. I'm already getting an ear full about the number of shows I have us booked for. We're going to be busy! Related to this is my goal of having new products to offer at shows every quarter. This is probably the most unrealistic of them, because of juggling freelance work and family, not to mention working the shop and shows. We have several ideas for things I'd like to make, and put more inspiration on my pinterest board every day, so we'll see how it goes.

It doesn't look like a whole lot as I look up and scroll through this post, but I have a feeling that I've committed my self to a lot of changes and a lot of work. You know what though? I'm looking forward to it, and that's one of the greatest things about being in this business. I know it's the end of March, but we'd still love to hear some of your goals for the upcoming year! Let us know in the comments, and as always thanks for stopping by!

Until next time, take care and be good.
Your friend,
Jeffrey