For the past few months I’ve been working on getting my online shop ready for all my prints. I’d kind of had it with etsy and big cartel so I started looking for alternatives. These marketplaces are great at what they do and I’ve been a seller on etsy for a good number of years.

However, now I want my shop to sit well within my current website rather than being taken off to a different website. Call me a control freak but I wanted to be more, well, in control.

The other benefit of having my own site is that there are no listing fees and no transaction fees. Any other etsians or ex-etsians out there will know that this is a bit of a pain. I found a little wp plugin called Ecwid which has worked out fantastically well for me and isn’t all that tricky to get started with it either. I’d highly recommend it if you’re considering getting your own online shop up and running.

You may already have tried to click on the shop links within the site and found that there was an “under maintenance” notice there. Well that will be gone soon and a fully fledged shop will be in it’s place.

To begin with I will have a range of wall art for sale and in the future I plan to include some fabrics (which I’m working on) and maybe more! Initially I will be shipping to Australia, New Zealand, USA, Canada & EU countries and I can accept paypal payments.

I’m pretty excited about it. And nervous too.

More info on the opening coming soon.

It’s the beginning of day two of being at home with Poppy and her nasty cough, husky voice and big tonsils. Mark is coming down with something and I’m not feeling too hot either. This could be due to lack of sleep or maybe the start of a cold. Either way, I feel a bit bleurgh. Amazingly, Lexie seems to have escaped this round of bugs unscathed. Mind you, she never ever seems ill even if she is ill.

Maybe it’s because she can go really high on a swing.

So, an easy, restful day is in order and this shall continue into the weekend. I might stretch myself and make a key lime pie with some of the many limes growing in the garden.

This one looks yum. I think this is the recipe I used when I made it the last time.

I thought I’d leave you with a little progress report image of how well the herbs in the garden are doing. Oregano is taking it’s time after popping up first from the soil. It is growing but very slowly. The others are just growing and growing.

Coriander is doing really well.

Oregano not doing so well.

And sage & parsley coming along nicely.

Oh, and on the subject of bugs, I found a little one in my Coles quick porridge oats packet the other morning. Nice and crunchy!

Can you see it? No? Ok, here’s a close up.

Courtesy of Uncle Jamie & Auntie Karen. Thank you!!! She ♥’s her i ♥ cake t shirt.

Our new work website has been launched people! It’s been a while in the making (I think it began towards the end of 2010) and I think it’s fair to say that everyone at work had some kind of input into this baby. I think it looks great.

Check it out… www.alltraders.com

Did you know you could do that? I did but only just recently. Cohen was trying to find out how to do it on one of our websites here at alltraders and came across how to do it. It’s very easy. Here’s how to do it… I used my website as an example.

Before

All you need to do is insert this into your css for you anchor link

a {
outline: 0;
}

If you don’t want to have it on hovers etc you need to make sure to add this in. These follow the styling from the a link so if you want it to be different you need to specify that here.

a:hover, a:active, a:focus {

}

After

Two new websites that I’ve been working on in my spare time are nearly ready to launch. Here’s a sneak preview of them.

Taking a photo a day is harder than I thought. I’m going to stick at it though even though it may not actually turn out to be a photo a day. I know I will not have 365 photos after a year. It’s not that I’m not dedicated or committed to trying it, it’s just that sometimes I have situations like these to deal with.

Yes, daughter number 2 has a fascination with drawing all over herself. This time with felt tip pen. She looked very pleased with herself too.

I’ve also been bloomin’ busy designing & building two new websites. It’s eating up all my spare time at the moment. But it’s all good

Coming in second and quickly over taking the Oregano is Coriander!

I seem to be gravitating towards taking photos of plants and flowers recently. Must do something about that. Not that there’s anything wrong with plants and flowers. In fact they’re quite beautiful. But a wee change would be nice.