Hi everyone! Very very excited to share our new home with you, over at sharethemess.com!!
All future blog posts and activity will be through there. Blogger will always be our first home, but it was getting a bit squishy and we'd like to keep it for memories' sake.
Please head on over to our new online home for today's Tuesday Treasures featuring a lovely, fresh green treasury by tigstogs and for future Gloriousmess! activity!
Showing posts with label close to the heart. Show all posts
Showing posts with label close to the heart. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
Sunday, June 02, 2013
A little recap & some housekeeping
Hope everyone's having a good weekend!
It's been an eventful week, and it was great to finish our first month with a bit of a bang! I had a lot of fun (and lots of painted, glittery fingers) creating custom stickers for a research project involving pre-schoolers.. how fun does that sound, to work with such little ones!
Someone is also enjoying their little jar of hearts out there and I hope her eyes will twinkle just as much as mine when she got it in the mail!
Also, we made it to the Etsy front page several times this week as part of a lovely treasury and once as a curator with our Flowery Dreams treasury!! Below is a screenshot of the Etsy front page with one of the hand-picked treasuries that featured us (thank you Sylwia!!).. you can see our D'Vines sitting there in the top row :D Our Pegged! Summer Fruits were also on Etsy Australia & New Zealand Finds newsletter!! I couldn't believe it when my wonderful Australian Wandarrah team mates told me about it at first!
We were lucky to have perfect weather for viewing all the awesome exhibits at Vivid Sydney and I was quite happy with my haul of pictures during our little jaunt. My feet were less happy the day after, when they finally realized that they had been traipsing around Sydney the previous day.
And of course, our first ever giveaway celebrating our soft launch concluded yesterday with 3 lucky duckies being randomly drawn to win some limited edition mini wooden pegs and lots of shiny, shimmery stickers. My favorite part was the anticipation of finding out who would be drawn when I clicked the "pick the winner" buttons, followed by wrapping and packing their prizes!! I absolutely adore wrapping up presents to make them pretty! So much so.. I sometimes forget I'm supposed to get excited about what's inside! Here are the prizes, ready to be shipped with their hand-lettered, handmade name tags.. Brown paper packages tied up with string, these are a few of my favorite things! ♫ ♪
And now.. some general housekeeping for Gloriousmess!
Shipping policy update
We've had a month to settle in and I'm finding and ironing out the kinks. The one that's been a thorn in my side is international shipping! GNNAARGH! The prices are atrocious! Seriously.. AUD$19 to mail a pack of straws? I did what I had to do, because there was no other option but my initial reaction was the same as the lovely Kim's when she got her floral straws earlier this month. Her reaction made everything worth it and made my entire day though!!
*Giggles*
Radiant Gradient collection launch
You probably have seen the sneak peeks already..
In preparation for all the upcoming fun that Summer usually brings, we've concocted an oh-so-sweet collection of ombre rainbow goodness! Even though it's going to be Winter here in Sydney, we figure that's all the more reason to inject some happy rainbows into the gloomy, grey season.
We've got our SLURP eco-friendly wooden cutlery, as well as a Hearts version. These can be matched to our ice cream shovels (oh, they're so cute.. I want to eat everything with them!!) and our ombre heart stickers. All Radiant Gradient goodies can be found in-store from Monday, June 3rd onwards!
Have a happy weekend!!
It's been an eventful week, and it was great to finish our first month with a bit of a bang! I had a lot of fun (and lots of painted, glittery fingers) creating custom stickers for a research project involving pre-schoolers.. how fun does that sound, to work with such little ones!
As a result of this project, we're now stocking some glittery pearl star stickers and am pretty excited about these!
Someone is also enjoying their little jar of hearts out there and I hope her eyes will twinkle just as much as mine when she got it in the mail!
Also, we made it to the Etsy front page several times this week as part of a lovely treasury and once as a curator with our Flowery Dreams treasury!! Below is a screenshot of the Etsy front page with one of the hand-picked treasuries that featured us (thank you Sylwia!!).. you can see our D'Vines sitting there in the top row :D Our Pegged! Summer Fruits were also on Etsy Australia & New Zealand Finds newsletter!! I couldn't believe it when my wonderful Australian Wandarrah team mates told me about it at first!
We were lucky to have perfect weather for viewing all the awesome exhibits at Vivid Sydney and I was quite happy with my haul of pictures during our little jaunt. My feet were less happy the day after, when they finally realized that they had been traipsing around Sydney the previous day.
And of course, our first ever giveaway celebrating our soft launch concluded yesterday with 3 lucky duckies being randomly drawn to win some limited edition mini wooden pegs and lots of shiny, shimmery stickers. My favorite part was the anticipation of finding out who would be drawn when I clicked the "pick the winner" buttons, followed by wrapping and packing their prizes!! I absolutely adore wrapping up presents to make them pretty! So much so.. I sometimes forget I'm supposed to get excited about what's inside! Here are the prizes, ready to be shipped with their hand-lettered, handmade name tags.. Brown paper packages tied up with string, these are a few of my favorite things! ♫ ♪
And now.. some general housekeeping for Gloriousmess!
Shipping policy update
We've had a month to settle in and I'm finding and ironing out the kinks. The one that's been a thorn in my side is international shipping! GNNAARGH! The prices are atrocious! Seriously.. AUD$19 to mail a pack of straws? I did what I had to do, because there was no other option but my initial reaction was the same as the lovely Kim's when she got her floral straws earlier this month. Her reaction made everything worth it and made my entire day though!!
"When I saw the price of that I about died!"
*Giggles*
I tried to offer a flat shipping rate so people would know how much shipping fees were right off the bat and not worry about them anymore, regardless of how many things were added to the shopping cart. It seemed like the best option available until Mr Pancakes honed in on it and suggested lower shipping rates. Unfortunately, this is quite impossible because the private courier companies charge even more than Australia Post. A lot of teeth gnashing ensued.
After a lot of thought and consulting, I've decided to get rid of the flat rate shipping starting Monday, June 3rd. We're going to try and mail as many of our goodies as possible in envelopes/mailers so they get classified as letters instead of parcels. There's a huge price jump between the two..
If you've got your eye set on a particular one that is too chubby to pass as letters (such as our wooden cutlery sets, burlap bags or Hospital Helpers stickers), we're encouraging everyone to buy a lot of different (or same, if you like!) goodies all at once. Might as well make full use of the shipping costs because they're valid for parcels up to 2kg!
Radiant Gradient collection launch
You probably have seen the sneak peeks already..
In preparation for all the upcoming fun that Summer usually brings, we've concocted an oh-so-sweet collection of ombre rainbow goodness! Even though it's going to be Winter here in Sydney, we figure that's all the more reason to inject some happy rainbows into the gloomy, grey season.
We've got our SLURP eco-friendly wooden cutlery, as well as a Hearts version. These can be matched to our ice cream shovels (oh, they're so cute.. I want to eat everything with them!!) and our ombre heart stickers. All Radiant Gradient goodies can be found in-store from Monday, June 3rd onwards!
Online homes update
We have an open subscription to our newsletter and you can sign up using the link located on the right side of this page near the top. The main purpose is to keep you informed of sales and new products coming to Gloriousmess! and we envision emailing a newsletter quarterly at most.
Gloriousmess! is now also on Instagram as @sharethemess and we post random snippets of our daily adventures along with a peek at the Tamago's antics every day. We invite you to also tag any of your pictures (especially "action shots") involving our goodies with #sharethemess or #ohwhatagloriousmess so we can find them and give send out some shout-outs!
If you have any requests for Tamago antics, email us your ideas and the Tamagos might enact it!
If you have any requests for Tamago antics, email us your ideas and the Tamagos might enact it!
We continue to also live on Facebook and Google+.
Our Twitter page is more for you to ask us any questions.. like an online chat so come and say hello! You can find us as @ShareTheMess.
Have a happy weekend!!
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Community Spirit, Please Come Back!
For those of you that live in apartments or dorms, you will know how utterly annoying it is to have the fire alarm go off. Especially when there's no fire.
The first happened 2 weeks ago and everyone took it rather well. False alarm, ok, move on. And then the next week, the alarm went off again three more times. Two of which were back to back on Saturday and Sunday morning.
Our building managers showed up to only one of these alarms, and the firemen showed up to 3 of them. Each time, it was because of a faulty fire sensor. That's as much as we got told.. and it was because someone approached the firemen to ask.
I try and see a "glass-half-full" perspective as many things possible, and despite how utterly ridiculous and unnecessary those false alarms were, some good came out of having the whole building gather downstairs so many times over the past weeks.
We got to see people we never knew existed!!
I was so excited to see all the idiots that rudely clog up our visitors' parking (or my designated parking spot) with their cars because they have too many, the ones that don't know how to recycle and dump bag of food in the recycling bin, those that vandalized our elevator panel with scratches and those that pretend not to see you even though you're smack bang in their path.
The problem was, I didn't know who was who. I just knew that all these rude people were in the mix. On the other hand, I got to meet some really nice people from different floors and we chatted longer and longer with each false fire alarm raised! And that's when we got to talking about the lack of community spirit around here.
The process started to become a bit addictive after the first one was done and dusted, and two more designs were concocted the rest of that evening :)
I was spurred on by memories of lovely neighbors, ones that I never would have met if my parents hadn't shown some initiative to go introduce themselves as the new neighbors whenever we moved. Ours in California always included us as another of their family. They were the ones that came knocking on our door in the middle of the night to check that we were ok after the huge SoCal earthquake a while back. We helped and supported each other and our whole street kept an old tradition of putting up themed Christmas decorations every year. Our whole block was quite a popular after-dinner destination for families to view Christmas lights. Streets were magically transformed to special names used only in December - Candy Cane Lane.. Bell Avenue..
I miss that warmth and camaderie :(
The first happened 2 weeks ago and everyone took it rather well. False alarm, ok, move on. And then the next week, the alarm went off again three more times. Two of which were back to back on Saturday and Sunday morning.
Our building managers showed up to only one of these alarms, and the firemen showed up to 3 of them. Each time, it was because of a faulty fire sensor. That's as much as we got told.. and it was because someone approached the firemen to ask.
I try and see a "glass-half-full" perspective as many things possible, and despite how utterly ridiculous and unnecessary those false alarms were, some good came out of having the whole building gather downstairs so many times over the past weeks.
We got to see people we never knew existed!!
I was so excited to see all the idiots that rudely clog up our visitors' parking (or my designated parking spot) with their cars because they have too many, the ones that don't know how to recycle and dump bag of food in the recycling bin, those that vandalized our elevator panel with scratches and those that pretend not to see you even though you're smack bang in their path.
The problem was, I didn't know who was who. I just knew that all these rude people were in the mix. On the other hand, I got to meet some really nice people from different floors and we chatted longer and longer with each false fire alarm raised! And that's when we got to talking about the lack of community spirit around here.
On my floor,I've got a particular neighbor (well, a family actually with 3 generations living in the apartment) that is such an embarrassment to humankind. They shirk common civilities by leaving their garbage on the garbage room floor and they pretend nobody's home when they clearly saw me being locked out of my apartment not five minutes before I knocked on their door, wanting to ask for help. (They're better now, after a collective note was written. To be fair, I don't think they speak English and they shy away because of that. But still!! They could at least nod, or make eye contact, or smile a bit! It's not that hard be polite for goodness sakes!)
What are these apartment cubicles doing to people? What came first... the death of community spirit or the construction of concrete human cages?
How it's sad that people seem so self-absorbed and uncaring, or un-seeing. There's no way you'd be yelling at some strange kid to stop playing so close to the street nowadays, or bend to pick up some stray piece of trash that's ended up at the border of your neighbor's yard. You'll likely get sued or something in this current day and age! The language barrier doesn't help either, and I've always wondered how on earth someone can survive for decades in an English-speaking country not knowing any English! There are plenty of these mythical people around and it's quite sad that they don't get out much.
How it's sad that people seem so self-absorbed and uncaring, or un-seeing. There's no way you'd be yelling at some strange kid to stop playing so close to the street nowadays, or bend to pick up some stray piece of trash that's ended up at the border of your neighbor's yard. You'll likely get sued or something in this current day and age! The language barrier doesn't help either, and I've always wondered how on earth someone can survive for decades in an English-speaking country not knowing any English! There are plenty of these mythical people around and it's quite sad that they don't get out much.
With all this in mind, and some inspiring words from my Hubbs, I went to work to scribble down some ideas before they dissipated into thin air. Why didn't I think of this sooner and why haven't I done it already?! I was quite excited and a few coherent doodles started to emerge...
It was a lot harder trying to figure the best wording. I didn't want them to offer too much information, especially personal information, but I needed some form of contact details and name so everyone can actually get to know each other. There are a lot of non-English speaking residents in our building too, so I just had to hope that they have someone to translate the cards for them. The alternative was just not possible.. to have translated cards custom made because I don't even know who speaks what language in what apartment! So after lots of hours of squinting at pixels, the Welcome to the Neighborhood cards were born!
The process started to become a bit addictive after the first one was done and dusted, and two more designs were concocted the rest of that evening :)
I was spurred on by memories of lovely neighbors, ones that I never would have met if my parents hadn't shown some initiative to go introduce themselves as the new neighbors whenever we moved. Ours in California always included us as another of their family. They were the ones that came knocking on our door in the middle of the night to check that we were ok after the huge SoCal earthquake a while back. We helped and supported each other and our whole street kept an old tradition of putting up themed Christmas decorations every year. Our whole block was quite a popular after-dinner destination for families to view Christmas lights. Streets were magically transformed to special names used only in December - Candy Cane Lane.. Bell Avenue..
I miss that warmth and camaderie :(
We will be counting all the mailboxes in our building tomorrow and printing out enough cards for everyone as our contribution to our community spirit. It will be interesting to see how many people automatically chuck their card into the trash, and how many return their section to us! How exciting!
Have you taken a moment to foster some community spirit this month?
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