I Was A Busy Bee Yesterday - Housecleaning and Voting and Range Extenders

I had a really busy day yesterday, not just shopping at Whole Foods and my local grocery store (still ended up forgetting one item - oh well...), but then I dove into housecleaning. I straightened up Sharon's Room, moving a few boxes into the Library until she's returned home, and doing a general clean-up, ending with a thorough vacuum of the carpeting. I haven't pulled out and made the bed yet, that will come closer to when she arrives. Then I moved on to the hallway. 

I have a lot of nooks and crannies I need to go through, 
and a lot of corners that need to be cleaned out. For some 
reason, things seems to accumulate in corners. I have no 
idea why. Do you? 

The hallway held several boxes of outdated software that I also moved into the Library, and after it was all cleared, I vacuumed that as well. I didn't bother with the main bedroom - I'll catch that at a later date. 

I purchased four of these ExtendTech WiFi boosters 
and they arrived late last week. I took an hour off 
from housecleaning and other tasks to get them installed 
and set up. I couldn't put the one in Sharon's room quite 
where I wanted it. I judged it was too close to the heat 
vent and would be too hot in the winter months when the 
heat is almost always on. So I had to pick a secondary 
location. Hopefully it will be a good one. I also put 
one in the den and one in the kitchen. They seem to 
be up and operating, and I think I got DH's phone set 
to work with them after he got home last night. At 
least that's the hope. He has a Samsung phone, and that's 
set up totally differently than my Google phone. 

Moving down a level, I took a break and got my latest set of WiFi Extenders installed. I hope they are installed correctly - LOL. Although I got four of them, I really don't have a good place for the fourth at this time. I'll probably put it into the craft room at some point, but that particular device was also giving me some problems, so I left it with the three - Sharon's Room, the kitchen and the Den. All of them are merrily sporting four green lights now, so they seem to be properly installed. I have no idea, to be honest. I've always been a bit flummoxed by WiFi extenders over the years. 

Sharon arrives on the 1st of September, so I have all of 
August to get my house cleaned and ready. That's not 
bad, and I got a really good start on things yesterday. But 
I have some deep cleaning that I'd like to do, and really, 
I only have Wednesday and Friday to clean, so I'll end 
up needing every one of those days. It would be nice 
if I could keep it going after her visit, but that's 
usually when I shift over to designing and making my 
holiday cards. 

After my "break", I vacuumed the living room completely. My goal is to carpet clean it next week, although I might switch to carpet cleaning the Den instead - it needs it a lot more. I'll see what happens and what seems most important. I want to get to dusting and the finer points of cleaning next week - that always takes time. Also, I might be able to fix some of my dragons, now that I have the correct glue. That would make me very happy indeed. I've got the rest of August to achieve a clean house. It's far from impossible. 

One other thing I did was pick up my latest cleaned garment of my Mom's collection from the cleaners, and drop off the next one. The staff is totally loving these gowns - and they are exceptional. They're cleaning up very well. Each gown is unique and absolutely stunning in its' own way. So, all in all, it was a very busy but quite successful Friday off, and I feel like I might be on top of things for a change. I'm sure that will change, I still have to tackle the computer room, after all, and that room is a disaster! LOL 

Voting cuts off tonight, so please, if you haven't voted, 
do so. There are some rather amazing stories that I'm 
going up against this time. If you're looking for a great 
read, I highly recommend SwirlsofPurple's story this 
week. Take a look and think hard about what she's 
pointing out here. 
https://swirlsofpurple.dreamwidth.org/7324.html

Have an excellent weekend. If you haven't voted for my story, you have until 7:00 pm Eastern Daylight Time to get your vote in. I'm lagging, but I suspect a lot of that is because other people have more friends that are voting for their stories. Technically, mine is on par with most of them, so I'm holding my head high even though my vote count is low. Enjoy your weekend and I'll be back on Monday. Slava Ukraini. 

Revamping, Resizing, and Restoring - That's Been My Week

Today is the first day we're actually working with the Tarot cards in my course on Tarot. I'm relieved that today is a "day off" because I'll actually have a bit of down time to settle, relax, and work with them for a little while. Of course I'll have to fit that between various other errands and I also want to get some more work done on my Etsy pages. 

Right now I have photos similar to this for my Swarovski 
crystal cubes. It's good, but it can be better. I'm going to 
cut it down and do overall and in-depth photos for each 
one. I think that'll be a better direction to go in. 

After living with my Etsy 8mm Swarovski crystal cubes pages for a couple of weeks now, I want to change them. But I'll start out by revamping and rephotographing the 6mm cubes first, because I have those here and can work on them without having to pull from the shop bins. I'm not really looking forward to re-photographing them - it's actually a lot of work. But good pictures bring buyers in, and I think they're really important. 

We have a bunch of old Tandy Leathercraft 
kits similar to this that we need to sell. I think 
this type of product is better suited to Ebay than 
to Etsy, and DH was in charge of photographing 
and getting them up on that website. He took 
a lot of photos (not very good quality), but 
never got as far as getting them listed. I guess 
I'll have to take over, but not until after I've 
got the crystals completed, and that's going 
to be quite a long time. 

DH was supposed to be working on our Ebay stuff. I don't think he's done anything for at least two months. I'll have to be a bit more pushy. I can't do both - I'm quite filled up as it is. So, it's back to the drawing board on my computer and with my photos. I think I'll enjoy my working time with the Tarot cards much more than I'll enjoy going back to the beginning with a category of crystals. *sigh*

Treasured Garment Restoration has excellent 
reviews and a good reputation. Another plus 
is that I can drop the gowns off at any 
of the St Croix Cleaners locations and it'll 
get picked up and then dropped off again 
by Treasured Garment. My Mom's gowns 
are drop-dead gorgeous and need some 
tender loving care. We'll see how they do 
with this first one, but I have confidence. 

I got a phone call on Wednesday from Treasured Garment Restoration. I had brought one of my mother's cocktail dresses in to the cleaner associated with them on the 22nd. As I was leaving the shop, the clerk said she would just sit there and drool over the gown until they came to pick it up later in the day - LOL. So ... the owner of Treasured called me on the 27th, totally over the moon at the construction and condition of the gown. She said for a gown that was almost 80 years old, it was in phenomenal condition and the actual construction of the gown had floored her. So detailed, exact, and beautifully done. She had never seen anything like it before. 

I chose this gown for the test run. I knew it was 
in excellent condition and if there were any 
repairs, they were very minor. It's a side zip 
gown, and I actually can wear it. I just don't have 
any occasion to put something like this on. 
It's original velvet - long before the fake stuff, 
boned in the bodice, size zipper - metal of 
course - and absolutely stunning, one-of-a-kind. 

I said my mother had designed and sewn the gown, and it was unlikely she would ever see another one like it, but I had several more of her gowns, so if they did a good job on the one, they would eventually get all of them. I ended the conversation feeling very good about how they will care for my vintage gowns. I can't wait to see how they do with it. 

Looking at the full view, you can see the 
gown isn't draping properly. It was stored, 
along with the others, in a steamer trunk 
for decades, then in boxes in my attic. In 
a way that was hard on them, but they 
also didn't get handled, so they're actually 
almost all in excellent condition. 

Last week, I also decided to try on every skirt in my closet and cull. I ended up giving nine to Goodwill, taking four to a local tailor for resizing so that I could wear them without them falling around my ankles, and hanging 15 back into my closet. I'll pick up the resized skirts on Friday next week. I can't wait to have clothes that fit me again! 

So that's what's happening in my life right now - not drop down excitement, but at least not boring either - LOL. By the end of summer, I hope to have my whole wardrobe revamped and sized properly. It would be nice to be able to wear clothes without adding pins to keep the waistlines tight enough. Have a wonderful day and I'll be back tomorrow. Slava Ukraini.