A New Computer Makes Hallie A Very Happy Girl

So about a month ago my old laptop decided that it didn't want to work anymore so for several weeks Shane searched for a new computer to buy me while I did all of my internet needs on his little Touchpad. Now the touchpad is nice and all but in no way does it compare to using an actual computer. A week ago Shane FINALLY found a good deal on a really nice computer and ordered it up for me... And that is what I'm using right now! It's like the most amazing laptop I've ever seen and Shane (my personal tech guy) says that it's like the Cadillac of computers! Now I really want to start blogging a lot and putting things on etsy. 

The only downside to this new computer is that it doesn't have any of my pictures or documents on it but that is going to change tomorrow! Shane managed to get my computer turned on and plugged in and as long as we don't touch it it will stayed on long enough for me to transfer all of my goodies onto a flash drive. Cool beans (:

This was the first webcam picture I took with the new computer (:

My new laptop is a ThinkPad by Lenovo. And I'm typing in the dark with my back lit keyboard... it's pretty cool (: 

The other thing that I was going to post today was pictures from our Duluth trip last week but I don't really feel like downloading all of those pictures tonight. =P So another day!

Just Plain Rude and My Cute Yellow Shoes (:

So this past weekend I work Friday, Saturday and Sunday but the only blog worthy thing that happened was on Friday...

A lady came in and bought a pair of shoes. As I was ringing her up I gave her back her change and that was when everything started to go downhill. First she was complaining about the price ($31.58 which isn't bad at all) being too high. I handed her her change and then she started going off about how no one counts back change like they used to. I never learned to count back change like they did back in her day so to have her yell at me for something I didn't know how to do was kind of upsetting. 
Fifteen minutes later she comes back in to return the shoes because she found shoes for WAAYY cheaper (not sure how that works). So I start returning the shoes and ask for her ID because that's protocol for the company. She starts complaining about how she's ran three businesses and never done things like that. My manager thankfully step in and said that I was just doing my job and doing what I was told.
My rant here was just complaining about customers getting upset with employees for just doing their job. I saw another occasion at a movie theater just a few nights ago.
Shane and I went to see the Expendables 2 movie but one of the speakers in the theater was blown out giving everyone a headache and made it impossible to hear the movie. So the entire audience when back to the ticket window to get our money back and the guys infront of us yelled at the guy behind the counter. It made me feel bad because I knew that it wasn't his fault. When we stepped up to get our money back I made sure that I was very polite and gracious, I wanted to make sure he knew that there were still good people in the world.

Okay now my rant is over and onto something else that I love... SHOES! So in my second post I showed everyone a picture of my lovely yellow shoes. At that time I had two pairs of Kaylees. Since then I have purchases another pair! I couldn't pass up the good deal because the shoes are sooooo comfortable and adorable. I bought a pair of tan ones that can go with everything.
I'm having a slight issue though... I'm not sure how to go about cleaning them. The yellow ones have gotten quite dirty since that picture and could use a good washing but I don't know what to use to wash my shoes! Any ideas? Please post them in the comments if you do (:

PS I'm getting a new computer tomorrow! My old laptop broke a few weeks ago and since then I've been using random computers and a touchpad to try to do all of my internet needs. It's the cadillac of laptops and I'm super excited!

Mall Madness Monday

Okay, so I know it's technically Tuesday right now but I've been busy all day so I didn't have time to post my stories.

Mondays are my official "Crazy Customer Stories" day but this past weekend I didn't work much and there wasn't any crazy customers. (Saturday Shane and I went to Duluth! I'll post the pictures and stories with that tomorrow maybe). 

I have two stories though that I can share from when I worked on Friday. The first one isn't really a story... it's more of a... complaint I guess would be the word. Friday afternoon the shoe store I work at received a HUGE shipment of shoe boxes. The stacks of boxes were literally taller than me! It was just cruel for the company to send us that huge amount of shipment late on a Friday afternoon. The store was fairly busy too! So it wasn't like we could just focus all of our time into unpacking and putting away the shipment, no we had to first focus on all of the customers AND try to get rid of the towering stackS of boxes. 

Okay now onto the actual customer story... The mall that I work at get a lot of foreign customers, and sometimes those customers don't speak very good English. On Friday two men (which was strange enough because I work at a women's shoe store) came into the store looking for shoes. They were looking for a size 36 but they didn't know if it was a Mexican size or a European size. Different countries use different methods for sizing clothing and accessories. I guess the US just likes making our feet seem smaller by using little numbers (: Anyway, Kate and I spent like 10 minutes trying to help these two guys decide which size to get. After they left Kate and I just looked at each other and started to laugh, it was a really funny situation. (:

This weekend was a busy weekend. Saturday Shane and I went to Duluth and Sunday and today I've been working on bracelets. Shane's aunt and uncle are going to a fallen firemen fundraiser that has a silent auction. Last Thursday they saw me working on a bracelet for my best friend, Emily, and asked how I would feel about making some bracelets for the silent auction. I of course accepted and now am working my little tail off to make three or four bracelets before Sunday. Right now I have an American flag bracelet finished and am almost done with one that has fire colors in it. I'll post some pictures tomorrow of the ones I have done. I figured that the silent auction will at least be some good publicity for my etsy shop, HallieAnneOriginals. (:

What did you do this weekend? And what do you think about making creative things to help fallen firefighters, or just any type of fundraiser? Please leave me some comments below and have a good night (:

Working as a Shoe Sales Associate

As I said (I think) in my introduction post, I am an assitant manager at a shoe store in the outlet mall near town. The mall is literally a seven minute drive from my house. It's a really big outdoor outlet mall and has over 100 stores. The entire mall gets customers from across the country and some even from other countries (mainly Canada). The mall hours are 10 am to 9 pm Monday through Saturday and 10 am to 7 pm on Sunday. This goes for the ENTIRE mall. Every store closes at the same time. Last night I had to close the store and I only have half an hour to do so. But for some reason I guess people don't pay attention to when the place their shopping at closes. There were customers in the store until 7:05. Now that may not seem like a long time but when you only have a mere 30 minutes to close the store five minutes is a big deal. After those customers left (they purchased over $200 of shoes by the way) I locked the doors and began closing the registers. There were 3 other people that came and yanked on the door after 7:00. People were trying to open the door at 7:20! What the heck! I just don't get people. 

I think because I work most weekends I'm going to make Mondays my offical "Crazy Customer Stories" day. I'll keep track throughout the week and weekend of any weird, annoying, or crazy customer incidents and post them each Monday.

Anyone else work retail and have any crazy customer stories from this past weekend? If you do please share them in the comments! I'd love to hear how you deal with the insane life of retail. (:

Bug Bites... Again

Okay, so I know I already posted about bug bites once already but this time it's about my own bug bites and not someone elses. 

A few days ago I was standing outside for only about 20 minutes and I got 15 bug bites on one foot. The next day after going for a walk, and not receiving any bites at all, we stopped to help my neighbor for 5 minutes and I got 9 bug bites on one leg... The leg opposite of the one with the bug bites on my foot. And now last night I got some more bug bites on my lower back. 

As I think I mentioned in previous posts, Shane and I are health nuts and we don't like any kind of chemicals to go in or around our body. So as you can imagine I have been looking for different remedies for the constant itching the bug bites are causing. So far I have tried and had mild success with bentonite clay, lemon juice and aloe vera. Nothing so far has actually made the itching stop completely but I'm not going to give up on my search. 

Any one have any suggestions for a natural relief to bug bites? Please leave them in the comments below if you do (:

 

This is what my foot looked like the morning after the mosquito attack. I guess that's what you get when you're healthy and live in the state where the mosquito is the state bird!

Craft Wars and My Take on "Crafters"

I like CRAFT Magazine on Facebook and yesterday they posted an article that got me thinking. It was entitled, "Are We All Crafters?" In their article they had links to two different articles with very different opinions on the definition of craft. And they both really got me thinking. 

To me crafting can mean just about anything, whether it be re purposing old materials and making something adorable or useful, OR making something you already have into something a little better, OR just letting kids run wild with glue, paper, and anything else you have on hand. Crafting is a form of expression and creating. It's an art really. 

One of the articles did bring up a good point though. They talked about how on Craft Wars Torey says the words craft, crafters, and crafting a LOT. The author pointed out that the writers weren't using the word just because it was in the title of the show but because the word craft really doesn't have any synonyms. 

That article also argued that the word has lost all meaning and that crafting before used to mean being a person of one trade that they were exceptionally good at. But I don't agree with that point at all. I think crafting is what I said before... Creating something as a form of expression. 

Now on to my other topic for today... Craft Wars itself! I thought last night's episode was great! I especially loved their use of music and re purposing in the challenges, although it broke my heart to see musical instruments being smashed, cut and painted. I personally loved the bracelet and necklace combo that the woman who was eliminated made. But instead of just having chains I would have woven the headphone cords into a sailors knot bracelet and then added chain to that with ribbon woven in through the links. 

And I'm very happy that the guy won. His idea was really about the music while the woman's idea was just cluttered and weird. Anyone have any opinions? Who do YOU think should have won?

I would like to add too that on the episode a couple weeks ago I LOVED Cheryl's idea for a chalkboard Christmas tree. I think that is so brilliant! And it would be great for family's that can't have real trees or can't afford to buy those pricey fake ones.

Been Gone For... Well A Long Time...

So I haven't posted anything on my blog for like 2 months. This is turning out to be a lot harder than I thought it would. 

Let me skim over quickly what has happened in my life since the last time that I posted... which was June 20th. 

I had my graduation party, which turned out to be a bust because hardly anyone came. I didn't really care all that much because I didn't really know all the people that were invited anyway, but the rest of my family was pretty disappointed. 
But I did get an awesome craft out of all of the cards that I received. I found an awesome tutorial at unusuallylovely.com/. This is how it turned out... 

I'm also a hoarder of cards. (: I love keeping all birthday/ Christmas/ Thank you etc. cards that I get over the years and looking at them randomly. (:

My best friend and I started up an etsy shop called Craft Apothecary. We're also on facebook. (: We make craft things to help the mind, body and spirit. 
The last two weeks we've been working on T-shirt pillows and dream catchers. Yesterday we finished making the pillows and now I'm working on drafting listing for each of the 12 pillows we made. We also picked up more T-shirts while we were out and about looking for stuffing. Here's how the pillows turned out... 


And unfortunately we don't have any pictures of dream catchers yet. 

I also found this awesome idea called "30 Challenges for 30 Days of Growth" on www.marcandangel.com/. I had picked out several challenges that I wanted to try to do for all 30 days but I found out that I definitely can't handle 6 challenges at a time. 
I decided to "Dedicate a hour everyday to something you're passionate about" and "Define one long-term goal and work on it for an hour every day." Both are intertwined with Craft Apothecary. I'm very passionate about crafting so I'm going to craft for at least an hour every day. My one long term goal is to fill the etsy shop and have at least 5 sales by the end of the 30 days. The crafting I do will be items to sell in the shop. 

All right so I'm all caught up now. (: That's what my life was like for the past few weeks. 

Make every day an adventure and work towards your paradise!

Bug Bites Are the Worst

Today's adventure included including working a lot and fretting just a little.

Shane has 6 brothers and sisters. One of his little brothers is one that they adopted from Ukraine in January 2010. This morning when Toma came downstairs his right arm was severely swollen from the elbow up. His mother brought him to the doctor who said it was a bug bite and gave poor Toma antibiotic injections that left him unable to walk for several hours. And to make it all just a little worse, Toma is autistic and non verbal so he couldn't tell us how his arm felt or anything. Poor little boy ):

Today we also tried veal. It was pre-seasoned and tasted exactly like taco meat! Which since neither Shane or I are big Mexican food fans, we had a slightly hard time with the spice. Veal, for anyone who doesn't know, is calf meat. Over the last few weeks we decided to try lots of new things. We've had lamb, liver and onions, and different types of fish.

Here's a picture of the veal that we ate. It was accompanied with apples and plums for an appetizer, onions cooked in butter as a side and peaches and cream for desert! 

 Today I also had to work. Selling shoes isn't really a difficult job but because I just became a manager I'm still learning a few things. But aren't our shoes cute? These yellow shoes below are my new favorites! I also have a pair in black.

These are my new favorite shoes! They're called Kaylee and they come in red, yellow, blue, tan and black. Please ignore the mark, I was sitting on my foot for a little while before I decided to take a picture. =P

Alright and because I figured that I should post a picture of myself to put a face with the name/ words, here is a quick little snap shot I took using my fancy dancy camera that Shane bought for me (: I edited the pictures in Picasa.

Introduction

Everyone dreams of making it to paradise, their own beautiful serenity. But how often do people actually find their paradise, actually truly make it there or even know what their paradise is? Everyday is a journey and everyday I'm making it one step closer to paradise: destination unknown.

Hello! My name is Hallie and I've decided to create this blog to inspire and encourage myself, and others, to live each day to the fullest to find true paradise. I just graduated from high school two weeks ago and already I'm looking ahead to the future, towards a place where I will be undeniably happy. This blog will, hopefully, be a daily, or weekly, record of my journey to paradise.

Let me say a little about myself before I begin the journey... Like I said, I just graduated from high school about two weeks ago. I live in a city in Minnesota (I do not enjoy the cold and snow so obviously this is no where near my paradise) and have lived here for ten years. I am enrolled at St. Catherine University for this fall and will be studying art and social work, probably. I have a wonderful boyfriend, Shane, that I've been with for two and a half years. He has his own little online business, it's pretty cool. Let's see... I love crafting, peace signs, nature, photography, music, helping and listening to people... I feel like I'm filling out a bio for an online dating site... Alright, that's enough about me.
Let the journey begin!