“The RoseBouquet”

This is a busy week, as some families have some gatherings before Christmas and some right on the 25th and some in the days that follow. Those that I ask all seem to have either plans to have others over for a holiday feast,or are invited to another home. That’s good.

I keep asking though, in case I come across some lonely soul that has no invitation at all. I’m planning to make a turkey meal on Sunday and take it over to my brother Tom’s apartment, but I think he’d let me invite someone else to join us – he has in the past.

My own printed Christmas mail (reading materials) is making progress. I finally had all the pieces designed and the first batch printed on Friday. By late Sunday evening I had added P.S. notes, and addressed 50, so yesterday I printed another 50 and got more addressed last night, but I’m not done yet.

I always save the digital version for last as I know they won’t have to deal with postal jams. But since this is my last issue of the RoseBouquet before Christmas – (and remember, my break/retreat week next week when there will be no issue) – so I have just taken time to get my digital mail up on my site, and a link ready for you to help yourself to as much of it as you want.

So please head over to this page, and read as much as you want of my CHRISTMAS MAIL.

There’s a Christmas card, two letters, and a short story/brochure, and some of them come in more than one format.

I trust you will have a very Blessed Christmas and a wonderfully Happy New Year.

And listen, if all those good things don’t drop into your hands or lap over this holiday period, that doesn’t mean it’s the end of the world, or that nobody loves you. Some of it is up to you to create by taking the right attitude, and a lot of it is up to your relationship with God. He is the source of all good things. Zero in on obtaining His gifts, and everything else will change accordingly.

Are you one of those super-organized people who have all your Christmas mail sent out already? Now you are able to sit back and enjoy all that comes your way in mail or otherwise, right? Hmm! I admire you.

I managed to finish designing my Christmas card on Sunday night. Now I just need to print them, and stop trying to improve it more and more. There’s always room for improvement, but with time sensitive stuff you sometimes have to declare it good enough.

Then I realized that my Christmas letter is mostly about myself and my business, and my plans for 2012. I need to write another letter or page with more about my Christmas thoughts. I hope to squeeze that in somewhere today yet.

Next there is still a Christmas CD to polish off, and to make copies. After that I’m ready to start bundling up my parcels and addressing my snail mail.

You may recall that I usually save my digital edition for my online friends for after I get the snail mail out, because I know those emails will get to you immediately. So watch for my Christmas mail in another week or so.

On Saturday I baked a big batch of Mom’s favourite yeast Peppernuts to take some to the Potluck and some for the office party next week. These are like small buns or rolls, spiced with cinnamon and black pepper and sprinkled on top with coloured sugar. There’s still the hard peppernuts to finish baking… but I’ll get to them when I get to them.

(Oh dear, I should have prepared the recipes to share. Well, if you are interested you can ask. No point in bothering everyone with them. )

Say, maybe you are way ahead of me in that area too, and have completed all your Christmas baking?

I will really try to be all caught up by next week. That reminds me to announce that the RoseBouquet will take a holiday the week after that. So no issue on the 27th of December. You’ll be busy anyway with your family events or just recovering from all the celebrations.

P.S. Did you find my Christmas Trees page last week?
Table-Top-Christmas-Trees

I got some great feedback to last week’s issue of the RoseBouquet, particularly about the free fur coat. It feels a bit like bragging or breaking confidences to dwell on them too much here in this public way, but hey, sometimes I think it’s good to mention these things and share the fun.

Maria wrote: “Delightful piece and pic on gift fur coat – you are a riot!”

When I wrote to thank her for what I took as a compliment, Maria replied, “Absolutely!!! I am still laughing – and waiting to visit with my daughter to share. This is a ‘woman thing’ I think!!”

I told her that someone else in church had offered to give me a fur coat too, but that hasn’t happened. Yet.

Judy M. was kind enough to subscribe to one of the ezines I mentioned last week.

Carol O wrote too, but touched on many things, and we just began to get better acquainted. Maybe the central bit to quote is where she said, “I really admire your gifting, creativity; energy and tenacity to provide your readership with such informative information. How and when did you recognize that this was your destiny/calling in life? What kind of vitamins do you take?

Thanks for permitting me to share with you. I’m exhausted from hearing all that you do!”

Well, as I gave her my long, wordy answer (and I see now that I overlooked parts of her questions), I had a moment of Epiphany myself, seeing how God has brought me from where and who I was to where and who I am now. Perhaps I’ll have to turn that all into an article sometime.

Though, as you’ll recall, at the beginning of 2011 I decided to drop the weekly article because of my time crunchers. Hmm? So how will I get that done then? …I don’t really know right now.

I was explaining to someone on Sunday, that the best way to cope with an overwhelming schedule is to live in the present moment and only deal with the issues of this project at hand, not the ones further down, as that will just frustrate, discombobulate and waste time.

But I will have to review all my scheduling the last week of December when I believe I’ll take the week off to think and pray things through and tie off loose ends, and see if I can give myself more breathing room in my pace for 2012.

That reminds me to announce that the RoseBouquet will take a holiday that one week too. So no issue on the 27th of December. You’ll be busy anyway with your family events or just recovering from all the bustle.

I’m still working on who to give my Thursday evenings to (client-wise).

Meantime, I’m happy to report that two long-term projects reached a milestone in the last few days.

Back in June I decided to work at revamping the site, Generosity-Alive.org with a new template and look and to theme it around more profitable keywords. However, this scheduling matter was a problem. I solved it by saying that I’d use whatever was left over after I did my bookkeeping on Friday nights, and it would just take as long as it would take. Some Friday nights there was no time left over, and as I reported last week, sometimes I might just fall asleep.

This past Friday however, I just managed to finish converting over the last six pages. It was too late to tackle the upload of all the pages, and I knew there might be some trouble-shooting to do if I found problems. Saturday morning I decided to sacrifice the half hour I usually spent on a devotional article page. I hoped the upload would only take half and hour. Unfortunately, I took more like two hours, but I just crowded other things further into the day. And the regular pages are now up! Hallelujah!

I still need to tackle the redesign of the blog to match, and checking out other things like a forum, etc. Oh, and I need to go through all the pages and add some affiliate banners too.

It has not been as many months that I’ve worked on a new template design for the aloe vera site, but that was a Monday morning project. I had just enough time to finish the last page before lunch yesterday. (A potential Thurs. night client had dropped by and delayed me). So I decided to give up half of my lunch hour and do the upload so that it wouldn’t have to wait another week.

The only error I see so far is that the new ezine subscribe box does not show up via the includes line. I need to either paste that code in manually on EACH page, or find out why the includes is not working in that instance. But I’ll deal with that next week. I’m just happy to say that this site is now done over and though it too, needs more affiliate banners, I’m hoping that the AdSense will start paying off quickly. To have a look you need this link; www.aloe-vera-and-handy-herbs.com

My Thursday night client has backed out for financial reasons, except when a new book comes out that needs to be put on his site. I was going to keep quite about this for a while as I have some personal projects I’d like to sneak into that slot. I’ve already been telling people who ask for my services that they need to stand in line and take a number. That is – wait until I have an opening.

Well, this morning I had a phone call from a long-time friend who had not emailed me for quite some time. He said that he’d been trying to reach me at the old email had for me, to ask if I’d help with their ministry website. (They have since found someone). I gave up that ISP address a couple of years ago because of all the spam coming through on it.

Now, at the end of that old email address of mine was a business man who wrote back to my friend and said in essence, “Hey, I need a web designer too. How do I reach that Ruth?”

There are two ministries for whom I built websites, and I sort of look after them, but they need more work. Now I feel like I better contact them and see if they really want me to advance, or shall I take on a new client.

In fact, another friend from way back said some weeks ago when we were on the phone that he needs a website. I gave him my standard answer, “take a number!”

Today I’m asking myself whether he’s got # 3 in the waiting line. I should check with him too, before I take on anyone else.

Hmm.. And I was hoping for a few quiet Thursdays to take on a learning curve regarding designing my own WordPress themes. Dare I hope that I can do that yet while we sort out who next gets to reserve my Thursday nights?

What do you think are my chances?

I hope you had a great Remembrance Day or Veterans Day weekend too! If you can top mine, do let me know.

I think I just told you my biggest news.

Winter weather has set in here, but you don’t want to hear about that, eh?

I am NOT doing well on my Christmas projects yet. But now my Saturdays should be clear, so assuming good health and strength, I hope to make good progress soon. The days and weeks are clicking by so fast.

Last week one evening I was glancing through some ad flyers when I saw a very simple but elegant Christmas decoration. A stylized (read modern) Christmas tree out of gold filigree paper. Hey, I could do that with some of my embossed wallpaper samples! So I took a few minutes to try that out, and have since done several others.

There’s still more work that can be done on the idea, but I’ve brought my efforts and that wallpaper sample book to the office so that tomorrow when Judy my volunteer in training is here, we can take photos of the steps to make these, and I’ll write it up as a craft page on the Kids Korner section of the WTM website. Meantime, the samples we make may well turn out to be handy little gifts to give to friends here at the office.

See how once I have an idea it snowballs and sprouts many other to-do projects? That is WHY I need to start earlier on my Christmas projects. There is no telling how much extra work my ideas will make for me.

My Thursday night client has bowed out leaving me with a gap in my very full schedule. However, I’m careful not to spread that news very widely yet. There are some things I want to fix on his site yet before we let it go on hold.

Then, I’ve been reading how vital it is to use the new social media for marketing websites, but this is something I need to study and learn about before I can use, and I simply had no time to devote to it, so I’m hoping to do that over the next few Thursday evenings. In a sense I feel I must hurry because it won’t take too long before someone else asks for that block of my time. Naturally, a paying client gets priority.

Did you hear me say here last week that I was going to start on my Christmas projects? Well, I made a list and took a look at one on Saturday. Mostly I spent time defrosting and cleaning and restocking my upright freezer, and winterizing the kitchen window.

Sunday afternoon I was going to design my Christmas card – but I had a nice restful nap instead. Afraid that’s off to a slow start.

This Friday is Remembrance Day. How do you honour your nation’s war heroes that day?

It doesn’t take me all that long, so I’m planning a work day at the office, to install a new operating system on that computer. There’s some serious cleaning and re-arranging needed here too, that just doesn’t happen on a regular work day.

On Saturday Western Tract Mission is having a Day of Prayer here. That is an annual event when we gather in a meeting room and review answered prayers, and lift up new prayer requests. I always find it special.

May your days be filled with special work and people as well.

So heavy physical work is not for me. I’m grateful that it is still possible for me to sit or slouch at the computer and manage to get work done. My head is clear. I can carry on.

Have you started writing November 1 this morning,, or are you still on October’s page?

I have been updating several sites, and trying to monetize them more. Last week I finished a run through on http://www.online-shopping-guides.com. I still have a couple of weeks worth of work on the aloe vera site, but then when I upload all the pages, it will have a new look n’ feel and be better monetized too.

Another site, generosity-alive.org is getting a total face-lift too. I’m hoping by this weekend, – well, it may go on to next weekend, – then I can upload it too, with a brand new face and hopefully a friendly, out-going theme.

Besides that, I’ve promised myself that in November, with the garden and yard ready for winter, I want to start working on Christmas projects. I meant to make a list and objective schedule on Sunday afternoon, but snoozed through that, so I’m not quite sure how many projects I will tackle, but perhaps I need to remain flexible for a while, right?

This is odd. In the last few weeks or so I have given away or sold several laptops. Remember, I said several people had given me their cast off laptops, and I’ve done what I could to fix them.

Three weeks ago tomorrow, I gave a working but rather old one to a new volunteer who is to learn to help me with the website for the mission, but really needed to polish her typing skills. It had Windows 98 on it, but was so old it had no CD drive, no USB port, and could only accept floppy drives. But for typing practice that would do fine.

Then my friend came to see what I had, and she decided she would like to buy the biggest and best. I winced a bit at letting it go, but she was willing to pay me for it, and she is a very dear friend. However, its battery was dying, so I’ve ordered a new one for her. Her purchase price covers all my expenses in upgrading it.

But then she called again, and said that a handicapped young man that she cares for one day a week wanted to know if I had another laptop with Windows 98 on it. He would like to play some old games on it.

Hmm… well, I did have another one, and although I couldn’t get a bigger hard drive in it, it does work, and it has Windows 98, and it comes with a nice case and some extras in the case. I had put my genealogy database on it, but – okay, if he’d pay for my expenses in upgrading the RAM, then I’d let him have this one.

Very often when I give up some things that I thought of as treasures, the Lord brings me newer and better things to replace them. I wonder what He is going to bring in to my life next.

A friend called last night to ask my advice about buying a laptop. She’s recently begun to live alone again, and felt she needed something to check her emails, Facebook, and maybe save some photos. I know her well enough to realize that is the extent of her computer use, so I advised her to go look for the smaller Notebooks or Netbooks. The price of them has come down quite a bit lately, to around $200 and so there is no need to spend $600-800 for a full-sized laptop.

A lot of people buy more computer than they really need, so they spend more than they would have to for their purposes.

In fact, if you can hold off until closer to the Christmas season, or after, you’ll find even better prices and specials as you watch the flyers and ads for the stores you have in your area. Or you could go shopping online too.

The fact is that as the iPads, and similar devices grow more popular, even laptops will come down in price. Desktops are already slipping into the background in some places. It’s all a matter of supply and demand.

For a while people were giving me their cast off desktops. Now I have received a few laptops. They are a bit harder to fix, but it can be possible.

This next weekend I will be trying to attend two different missions’ conferences. I am to set up a display at my former church in Neuanlage village, and I also want to attend some sessions of the C&MA Missions conference in the city.

At my display is where I should have a laptop ready with a powerpoint looping over and over. I must try to set that up by Friday night.