Today we are experiencing a snowstorm like we haven’t had in quite some time. It is reminiscent of storms in Illinois where I grew up. I went out and shoveled a bit in mid-day, just to make a dent in it. My MSAC meeting was canceled and resceduled on top of my next week Tony Laidig Tuesday webinar that will actually be held by Jay Boyer. Many marketers are on a cruise together. Dang it would have been a nice winter break.

Sort of all over the place today. Got all my emails written and sent out to Festival sponsors to check in with them for their interest in the 2015 Commonwheel Art Festival sponsorship. That was good. Always takes longer than I expect. Make them very individualized invitations.

My brother wanted to know if I could pay back the $400 I was holding onto from the loan. Really wasn’t wanting to do that until Marston got sold. And that sale is postponed until end of February, but does sound like it will happen then. I decided to pay him half. That may mess up my ability to pay half of my Property Tax at the end of February. But will see how other payments happen and how expensive my utility bills are next month. And I need to get $300 back to the car loan account before the end of February also. Really had counted on the sale of Marston happening sooner . . .

I created a dozen masks for Carnivale over the weekend. When I do early Spring Cleaning up there, I use mis-matched feathers to create masks I will sell for less than my regular masks for Carnivale. They actually take me longer to create, but use up feathers that have been cut up and not used because there is only a few of any color remaining. I will share some in the next post. I do need to crop and size them to post in Facebook and here. I have some ideas for having them with “talk bubbles” in posts for the Commonwheel.

Really cleared out lots of feathers that were mismatched. Cut some up from a couple of bags. Can’t really see that I did that much clearing, but I did. Making space to create masks in 2015 without so much clutter in the studio.

On Monday, when the sky was perfectly cloudy, I first tried photos of them with a normal background. But didn’t like how they turned out. Want to do some fun posts on the Commonwheel Facebook for the shop and Carnivale leading up to the 20% off sale all wrapped around Valentine’s Day.

I did play a bit with some miniatures to see how they photographed. Turning them a little bit at a time and snapping shots makes them look very different. Can understand how one might use characters that have no moveable parts to look different in various scenes. Will be interested in seeing what Tony teaches about taking photos of miniatures in a couple of weeks.

On Tuesday I brought down some different pieces of cloth and decided to use the brown one for a backdrop. Will see how that worked later and post images of what I discovered.

I had been having some flushing problems with just my toilet. No other drain was acting problematic. Earlier on Monday, I had tried putting drain cleaner down the shower drain that I don’t use to see if that would help. But no, a little later in the day,  my cottage tenant called to tell me water came up in his shower. I called Budget Rooter and he was able to come over right away before it got dark. Roots! at about the same place as when he came a little over 2 years ago. On unexpected $100 expense that didn’t make the call from my brother any easier to handle.

Yesterday I wrote up all the invoices for people I did work for in 2014 and I had not created. I need to send them out now. Haven’t heard from Zo since he ordered his books. Should probably send him an email and check in with him. This task might have been inspired by Tom’s call and the Rooter bill . . .

I also got the comparison done for our web site meeting coming up. I sent it off to SK to add to whatever other info she got from other people. I had done the research before the first meeting, so just needed to put it in a comparison mode rather than long paragraphs.

Tony’s webinar started with him talking about why presentations were important. Then he demo-ed a piece of software that makes creating them very easy. I had seen the end of a sale pitch about this last week and bought it from someone else with interesting bonuses offered. Tony rarely pitches anything on his free Tuesday Expert Media Shows. And he really did explain how to use it to its best advantage. So I enjoyed getting that training. And it is an amazing software that creates so much finished products from one answering just 43 questions. I need to play with it.

But right now, I am going to take a break and watch a bit of TV. Not something I do often, but want to see how the Mentalist is ending soon.