Monkey Face/When life goes bananas...Contest

I have found myself in the midst of a very frustrating technical problem with our vinyl cutter. The cutter went out last Thurs. while cutting a wholesale order. Two overnight shipments, a motherboard, a power supply, and a power switch later, we now find ourselves awaiting yet another motherboard overnight shipment! I have seen parts to our cutter and learned things about the cutter I really never cared to know. Needless to say, frustrating! And all I can do is wait yet another day while orders sit and accumulate. So, feeling the need to distract myself, I was thinking through good frustration outlets. Eliminating several unproductive options and noting another cold, rainy day, I decided to put in some music and bake cookies. It's called chocolate-chip-cookie therapy!

Tell us your healthy-frustration-outlet suggestion and we will put your name in a drawing to receive a cute little monkey face graphic in honor of the inevitable times that we find things in life sometimes go bananas. (Please include your e-mail address, so we can e-mail you if you are the winner!)

This 9x9" monkey face will come in our brown matte finish vinyl with installation instructions. We will draw names for the giveaway on Mon., Nov. 9th (because we will be up and running by then, or have a brand new cutter!)

I love fall!

I love color, therefore, I love fall! The color combinations outside my window right now are phenomenal and inspiring. So... I find myself creating with color in mind. -Jan

Fun to create again!

It seems like we took most of the summer off from creating with Adonna's move and kids being home -- so I have truly enjoyed the past few weeks rediscovering all the vintage materials we have stored up in my basement.

I found this little clear flower-shaped "dish" we had collected somewhere and knew I could find a great use for it! And you can never go wrong with a vintage glass door knob! It is so much fun to recycle and reuse!
-Jan

Every Child is an Artist

I definitely have a little artist in our family and always want to encourage her amazing creativity. I love the idea of framing artwork, however, we have plaster walls and I can never narrow down which artwork to frame. So we began creating these versatile artwork hangers for people like me. So fun to create, reusing old molding and fun old fuses! -Jan

Winter is in the air

Okay, where did fall go. I know it is supposed to fall between summer and winter but it didn't show up here. It is positively freezing outside. I'm trying to bbq tri tip and I can't feel my hands. I've seen the pictures of winter in Spokane and frankly, I'm a bit scared. Already bought our snow tires and our snow thrower and thought we were all ready but now we heard about a thing called a snow rake. It's used to take the snow off your roof so it doesn't collapse under the weight of all the snow. So, now I'm even more intimidated by the upcoming NW winter. I'll have to just stay inside and design away. I think our customers might just be really thrilled that snow is in our forecast!! I'll post a picture of my lastest before I go out and check on the meat! Adonna

Been a long time

Okay, we must admit that we do not possess the blogging skill gene. Going 4 and a half months between blogs is just one small example of our ineptitude. BUT, (and I know I'm not supposed to start a sentence with "but") we are going to try overcome all our feelings of inadequacy and jump back in. Part of our sporadic-ness comes from the fact that after living in St. Louis for 7 years and working side by side with my partner in crime, Jan, my family and I have moved out West to the Spokane area. We actually bought a piece of land with a really old red barn! Though we absolutely love it out here I miss Jan every day. We are, however, continuing our work with both the wall graphics on our etsy site (www.oldbarnrescuecompany.etsy.com) and all our fun "stuff" on reclaimed wood (www.oldbarnrescue.com). I'm actually flying out in November to work on inventory and join Jan at the John Burrough's Unique Boutique (the weekend before Thanksgiving). We will have a ton of new merchandise so be sure to come by our booth and say "Hi"! (our website lists the address, dates and times!) See you in November!