“The RoseBouquet”

This is definitely an argument in favour of running a small business from home. I was glad to be able to do that last week Tuesday and Thursday afternoon. In the midst of all this I’ve managed to get most of my cookbooks printed, and nearly all bound. I stayed at the office later on Friday and managed to get my Christmas letter and my little gift booklet printed.

My goal this week is to use whatever snatches of time are not soundly committed to others, to addressing my outgoing Christmas mail and getting that posted. I carried a bag full to the post office yesterday, and hope to have another bag full at the end of today.

You, dear Reader, are one of my roses in my Big Bouquet of Friends. So I want you to have a copy too, of my letter, and my story booklet. This has been my tradition for over 12 years now I believe, where instead of making a card which will be tossed shortly, I write an original short story and make it into a booklet. This is my gift to my friends.

This year that booklet is not so much an inspirational story that I’ve made up, but a true to life, photo story of my lovely white cat, Snowflake. Some of my subscribers write to hint sometimes that they wish I would include more photos of Snowflake in my blog and ezine. Well, that seems a bit narscistic to focus on my cat so much, and I know some subscribers don’t care for cats and would as soon I stuck to more serious topics. So I’ve been trying to be discrete and spread out the mentions of Snowflake. However, I’ve promised several people that sooner or later I would give them a good dose of cat pictures. This Christmas I am fullfilling that promise.

My little photo story is called “Beggin’ for Hugs” and it has 24 pictures with a bit of descriptive text on each page. A real story with a plot may not be noticed by all.

I’ve prepared it in two formats to give you a choice, and will let you download the one(s) you want. If you just want to see and read or skim through it, you will want to click on this link; Beggin’ for Hugs

If you’d like to download it, and print out the pages on your own printer and turn it into a booklet, then you’ll need this second link;
Beggin’ for Hugs (to print)

To produce the booklet you’ll need to print sheet 2 on the back of sheet 1 and sheet 4 on the back of sheet 3 and sheet 6 on the back of sheet 5. Then you will cut the pages across half-way down the length of each letter-sized sheet. Fold the half sheets you get and place them in the right sequence with the cover on the outside and pages 12 and 13 as the centerfold, as the top or inner sheetlet. When you fold the stack of 12 half-sheets, you’ll end up with a 24 page booklet.

If you get confused with those long links, just head to the index page of the Cards Section on my site. That page repeats the above information and provides the links to click on.

Incidentally, I hope to produce another issue next week, but I believe I’ll take a holiday the week after Christmas so I can wrap up a lot of other smaller projects that I didn’t get finished this year. Maybe I’ll even spend a few hours with my feet up in my recliner. Aside from the one weekend in May at a Friesen Cousins reunion in Alberta I have not taken any holidays this year. Relaxing my grip on my schedules the last week of the year might be a good alternative.

That’s exactly what you were planning to do, right?