Trees, Cards and the Hop

The trees will be expensive! I knew they would be - we have two trees needing major trims and six additional trees that need to be taken down. Yeah ... they'll be expensive. The guy who looked the job over yesterday was rather floored by how much work the job will be. I have two more companies scheduled for estimates coming up, one on each of the next two Wednesdays, so I'll have a decision made by the end of the month. We could take them down ourselves, but I'm NOT letting my 60+ year-old hubby climb tall trees with saws, ropes and ... well, you get the idea. No, just NO. We'll just end up writing a very large check.

Although DH knows what he's doing when he's cutting down a tree
(unlike this man here), I'm still not allowing him to climb that high
at his age. No - we'll just write a large check and live to see another day. 

I tried out my ideas for this year's holiday card and I'm quite happy with how it might come together. I'm going for simplicity, but simple can be wonderful. Last year's card was a little over the top, but I really wanted to use a particular image and made the card to work with it. This year I'm rushed, but that doesn't mean I'm going to put something sub-standard out there. They'll be really cute but, hopefully, much less time intensive to pull together.

Here's another really cute holiday card that is simple and
effective. I love the interleaved holiday tree motif lending
a three-dimensional feel to the final product. 

I only have three days of this year's "Bead Shop Hop" remaining and I can't wait for my life to return to normal (if my life can EVER be called normal). It's been a lot of fun and we've seen a lot of people, both returning customers and new beaders. We've given away a lot of charms and put our sticker on a lot of game boards. We'll have a customer pull a door prize winner early next week and wrap the whole thing up.

We usually put our door prize entries into a large box and have a
customer reach in blindly to pull the winning entry. We're giving
away a really nice prize this year featuring books and magazines,
tools and supplies. I want to wrap this up, though. Enough "Hop" is enough. 

One thing that comes out of the "Hop" is gossip from one place to another as customers go through the stores. Apparently one of the stores closest to me will be closing by the end of the year, quite unexpectedly. I'll be sorry to see them go - they are a wonderful resource for sheet glass used in stained glass as well as glass rods used in lampwork beads. I have bought sheet glass from them in years past and they have a wonderful selection. They moved to their current location about ten years ago and started adding beads into their stock. It's not the major focus of their business. But their sheet glass suppliers have changed and they've lost two of their major sources. Thus - another business will bite the dust. If I was younger, I might consider moving into their space. It's a lovely, well lit and large space with private classrooms and an upstairs office. I could do a lot with a space like that.

It's a really nice building that extends all the way through the loading dock
doorway at the far left. Moving here is a temptation, but I have great
rent where I'm at now, with a landlord I've known since the early 1990's.
I'd be a total fool to move, although it is very tempting. 

But no - I'm not going to move. We wouldn't get a space like that for anywhere close to the rent we currently pay, and we're closer to retirement than to those heady days when we first started our business. Moving always sucks, and I usually seem to do it on the coldest days of the year and right in the middle of winter. No. I'll stay put, keep to my usual schedule, stay right on the bus line where I am with a landlord I know well, and be happy. Have a great Thursday all - I plan on having a great one!