2013 Mother's Day Cards

Sorry about today's late post. Yesterday was my birthday so I was spending it completely unplugged from blogging, twitter, facebook, my shop, etc, and it was wonderful. As such, I'm a little behind for this week's posts. (Birthday recap to come!)

For today, I'm introducing you to some new additions to my shop... Mother's Day cards! I know they're a little early, but many of these cards can be used for birthdays or other special events that you want to send your mom a card for, so I don't feel bad about rolling these out in March. There are a couple funny ones and a couple sentimental... the funny ones crack me up, but maybe I'm the only one? Or is it just my mom who leaves long voicemails that may or may not involve her trying to get the cat to say hello? Oh, moms. We love you. :)

Click on any of the photos for more details in the shop!

Valentine Sales Recap

I've been designing some new cards for the shop lately. With Valentine's Day over, business has been much quieter, so I've had a chance to do more drawing in my free time. (Yay!)

January, while completely awesome and up-to-my-ears-busy-with-orders, didn't leave me much time to add anything new to the shop. I was spending all my time trying to figure out how to stream-line my shipping procedures to make life easier... I was going through 800-envelope boxes in a week! Next year I'm definitely going to have to order supplies in much larger quantities than expected.

With Easter, Mother's Day and wedding season on the way (apparently a lot of people get engaged on Valentine's Day, because I've been getting a lot of "bridesmaid card" hits in my shop) there are plenty of opportunities for new designs.

Here are the latest in the shop:

Speaking of Valentine's Day craziness, I've been keeping tabs on where my cards get shipped. For a while I had a map on my craft room cork board where I pinned order locations, but I haven't been keeping up with it lately. Instead, I keep a running tally in a spreadsheet that shows every state and country that I've shipped an order. For a long time I had every state except Arkansas, Delaware, Idaho, Montana, Rhode Island, and Vermont. Over January's rush, though, I managed to get even those stragglers and have now officially sent cards to all fifty states! (Woo!)

Just for fun (and because I like collecting stats), here are the Darkroom and Dearly shop stats for January 2013!

• I've mailed orders to all fifty states plus Puerto Rico! The highest number of orders goes to California (by a large margin), New York and Texas. The next highest in sales falls to Illinois, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Florida, North Carolina, Washington, and Massachusetts.
• The East and West coast make up a majority of shoppers. With the exception of Texas and Illinois, I get very few midwest orders.
• International order make up about 25% of my total sales.
• The most frequent international orders come from the UK (mostly England, but also Scotland and Wales) and Australia.
• I have counted over 67 different counties in the UK that my orders have been sent to (some more frequently than others!) My favorite county name thus far is: "Dumfries and Galloway" (in Scotland). The most common is probably Cheshire or Lancashire (in England).
• 23 of the 67 counties I have listed for the UK end in "shire." The longest being "West Dunbartonshire" and "Northamptonshire."
• I have shipped orders to all of the Australian states/territories, the most common being Victoria and New South Wales.
• Other countries I have shipped orders to include:
  • Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Italy, Malaysia, Malta, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, and Switzerland.
  • Highest day of sales on record was Wednesday, January 30, 2013, followed closely by Tuesday, February 5, 2013. (Sadly I closed my shop on Feb 6! I wonder if I would have beaten my highest record if I hadn't gone on vacation??)

A Surprise Camping Trip...

Ok, remember when I said I love planning trips, and it makes me slightly crazy when Tanner tries to plan one without my help? Well, a few weeks ago he tried to surprise me again.

Both of us had two days off at the end of January, so despite my desperate pleading, Tanner put together an overnight trip and wouldn't tell me a thing about it. But lucky for me, he's sort of a bad liar, so most of our conversations went like this:

Me: So where are we going?
Tanner: I'm not telling.
Me: Is it close or far away?
Tanner: Let's just say it's within 300 miles.
Me: We're going to the coast, aren't we?
Tanner: Uh, nooo.
Me: Yeah, we totally are! Are we staying in a yurt??
Tanner: ....No.
Me: ...Really? Because I think we need to pack lots of stuff to stay in a yurt. Don't they just have cots but not much else?
Tanner: I guess. But you have to book yurts months in advance, so we're not doing that.
Me: Uh-huh.
Tanner: Don't worry, I've got it all figured out. You just need to bring what I tell you to.
Me: But you haven't told me anything.
Tanner: Just bring some clothes, I got everything else.
Me: What kind of clothes? What kind of shoes? What kind of jacket?
Tanner: Well, I'm bringing some shirts, shorts and my flip-flops.

For the record, folks, it has been 30 degrees here for several weeks. Asking Tanner what kind of clothes he's going to bring doesn't actually help, because Tanner wears shorts, t-shirts and flip-flops 365 days of the year. (He even wore them to our snowy winter cabin...) And even though I had a pretty good idea that we were going to the coast, I believed him about the yurt and thought we were staying in a hotel.

So I packed a couple t-shirts, one long sleeved shirt, and some sneakers.

Well, as it turned out, we did go to the coast, and lo and behold, we did stay in a yurt. (I'm so clever.) It turned out to be pretty awesome, except for one thing. Ok, two things.

1. It was snowing.
2. Tanner forgot to bring blankets.

So it was 30 degrees and I had on a t-shirt and a jacket and nothing to sleep with except a sheet set. Fortunately, yurts have a heater, but we got started late in the day and then Tanner got sick halfway there, so we spent two hours in a Target parking lot while I tried to nurse him with Pepto Bismal and let him nap.

By the time we arrived at the coast, it was dark and cold and the heater at full blast wasn't warming up the room very quickly. Brrrrrrr.

Staying in a yurt is actually pretty cool. It's a small one-room circular hut with a skylight, a cot, a futon, and a table. We brought the iPad and went into town for pizza and enjoyed the evening watching a movie while layered in every single stitch of clothing I could find from our car emergency kit. (Yay foresight! I remembered to pack long underwear in there!) Then we fell asleep on the futon, beneath heaps of towels, jackets, and random pieces of clothing as a blanket.

In the morning the snow had turned to cold rain, so we drove out to the northern-most tip of Oregon and walked along the beach in the dark fog to admire the driftwood and the stormy ocean. It was a perfectly "Goonies" kind of day.

We found the most remote, Northern point of Oregon and sat watching the ocean for a while, and I turned to take photos of dark, gnarled driftwood in the black sand. When I turned around again, Tanner was kneeling in front of me with a ring.

A RING!

So I did what any girl does in this situation.

I slugged him.

And I started yelling, "what are you doing?! Get up! Stop kidding around!"
And he said, "wait, what? No... I'm not... I'm not... will you marry me?"
Long pause. "Wait... you're serious?"
"Uh... yes... why? Is this not a good time?"
"I mean, I am sort of busy this month.... can I pencil you in next week?"
"You're joking."
"I'm just.... surprised...."
"Uh, proposals are supposed to be surprises! Besides, I followed all your rules, so you can't argue with me there."

For those of you who don't know, long ago I gave Tanner a list of rules regarding how/when/where he was allowed to propose to me. I like to call these the "Rules of Engagement."

They are as follows:

- Thou shalt not propose in a crowded restaurant.
- Thou shalt not propose on the JumboTron at a baseball game.
- Thou shalt wait at least two years of dating before thou can propose.
- Thou shalt not have family, friends, photographer, or a flash mob at said proposal.
- Thou shalt propose romantically in some outdoor setting (preferably).
- Thou shalt not buy a fancy ring, but ideally get something simple or a family heirloom.

So I guess I can't fault him for being thorough.

"Are you going to say yes?" he finally prompted me.
"Uh.... hang on, I'm thinking."
Tanner groaned. "I totally had this going differently in my head..."

But I kid, I kid. Of course I said yes. Although I'm pretty sure Tanner was already on the phone with his parents announcing our engagement before I officially agreed.

Then there was a lot of excitement (from both of us) and running around on the beach (from me) and lots of girlish weeping (from him).

On our drive back home we discussed keeping the engagement a secret for a bit, since we were going home in early February and wanted to break the news to everyone then. Being that I was still a little floored by the proposal, I spent the next few days trying to internally process the big news while simultaneously trying not to freak the crap out. I think it worried Tanner a little. But one day, perhaps a week later, I came home from work and sat down next to him.

"Ok, I've thought it over, and I've decided that I'm pretty excited to get married to you."
"Oh you have, have you?"
"Yep."
"And what made you come to that conclusion?"
"Oh, I've always wanted to marry you, I just needed time to think about it."
"Why's that?"
"Because I'm an introvert. That's how I process things."

I said to him: "I'm sorry that proposal didn't go like the movies. I'm pretty sure there's never a scene where the girl hits her boyfriend and starts yelling at him to stop kidding around. My bad."
He said: "It's okay. You said yes; that's all that matters."

Inversion on the Mountain

A little while back Portland went through a weird weather system that the locals called an "inversion." Being from North Carolina, where it is 85 degrees and humid no matter where you are, I had never heard of an inversion. All I knew is that Portland got bitterly, bitterly cold for a while. Cold enough that I tucked my face into my winter jacket in the mornings and told myself it was much too cold to even go skiing on the mountain on my days off.

But there were promises of "warmer weather" on the mountain (which was almost laughable), so my friends Jason, Elizabeth and I packed up early one day to go skiing. We left around 7:00am; it was so cold in my house that as soon as I got out of bed I was dressed in every layer of ski clothing I owned: heavy long underwear, insulated pants, wool turtleneck, insulated jacket, and waterproof jacket on top. I wore gloves and boots in the house and stomped around to try and keep warm. There was frost on the cars outside and I could nearly see my breath in the air.

We threw everything quickly into the back of the jeep and turned on the heater as we drove up to the mountain. The temperature gauge in the car read 25 degrees at nearly sea level. As we climbed to Mt Hood, we watched in astonishment as the temperature climbed, too. The dark, overcast skies of Portland began to break away for a sunrise, and blue skies peered out behind. By the time we neared Mt Hood an hour later, the temperature was 32 degrees and still rising. At 5,000 feet at the base of Mt. Hood Meadows ski resort, the jeep told us it was 40 degrees outside, but we didn't believe it. After all, we were still bundled up inside with memories of a 25 degree morning.

But the view didn't lie: it was bright, sunny, and absolutely clear outside. The hard edges of the mountain were as crisp as I had ever seen them and as soon as we opened the jeep doors, a wave of warm air flowed over us.

What?

Immediately we stripped off half our layers, but I was still dubious about leaving everything in the car. After all, it was always colder on the snow, and the cold, biting wind on the chair lifts was enough to want an extra turtleneck sometimes.

But lo and behold... we got our first taste of inversion on the slopes. The snow was hard pack, but warming up slowly beneath the sun. The air on the chair lifts was still warm, feeling much more like a summer day than a January one. We didn't feel the chill in our toes or fingers.

When we stopped for lunch, we broke out a set of chairs and sat behind the jeep cooking grilled cheeses and tomato soup on a two-burner stove. We had a summer picnic. There wasn't any snow left in the parking lot, and we had long since abandoned our extra layers. I got a sunburned face sitting so long beneath the rays.

As the day crept on, the temperature rose closer to 45 degrees and we shed everything but t-shirts and pants. We wished for shorts. I left my gloves in my pack and wished my helmet wasn't so warm.

It was spring skiing at its best. In winter.

We stayed until late in the afternoon, and then reluctantly left the sunshine behind us. As we drove back to Portland we watched again as the temperature slowly dropped back down to 30 degrees, and the dark, overcast skies clouded in again. By the time I returned home it was dark and cold in my house, even though my face still felt pink from a day of sunshine.

(P.S. -This is my last post for a little bit! The shop will be open until Feb 5. I'll see you all in a few weeks with some fun new stories!)