NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS...

Since you’re in the greeting card business, learn how to:

1. Put the stupid card stock in your printer so you don’t have cards that consist of just two pieces of paper folded together.

2. Learn how to resize images without totally disfiguring the person.

3. Learn how to use Photoshop instead of a greeting card program with a little dog who wags his tail when you get things right. (Just kidding…this is the program my partner uses and I’m actually one step above her in terms of graphic design.) :)

4. Quit being stubborn and get a “real” website instead of the dorky one you designed.

5. You’re smart! You know you need a business plan instead of just plodding along doing whatever you feel like doing that day. Develop one!!!!

6. Quit Tweeting. You are the most boring Tweeter around even though you have over 500 followers. They’re just too lazy to “unfollow” you.

7. Keep blogging. Even though you have only 12 followers (and probably half of these are family members and don’t read it anyway), it’s kind of fun.

8. Most people would come up with 10 resolutions, but then again, you're not most people so you should stop right here :)

MY HALLMARK CONTEST WINNER!!!!

http://hallmarkcontests.com/page/WINNERS/sub/Gallery/Contest/RememberWhen/do/detail/cardID/7

O.K...I'M JUST A TAD BIT DISAPPOINTED IN MY CHEERLEADING SECTION...

1. My 84-year-old mother just informed me that she’s sending me an e-card for my birthday. I replied “Mom! I’m in the greeting card business and you need to support us!” Then, when I asked her if she wanted to see my greeting card online (the only one that actually matters lately-the Hallmark winner with a picture of her on the front), she asked “What card?” (Note to Self: Cut her some slack because you are 29 years younger than she is and you thought today was Wednesday instead of Friday.)

2. Since Bro #1 doesn’t (and never will) own a computer and I have to email him via his boss, he told me not to send him any more cards because every time I send him a card, his boss calls him off a job to come look at it. (I think his boss is a better cheerleader than he is!)

3. Whenever I send a card to Only Sis, she just says the same thing each time... “very cute!” It’s like when I get “forwards,” I always respond “very cute!” which means I haven’t actually looked at it. Shhh…don't tell anyone :) I think I’ll test her next time and send something really awful and then I’ll know if she even looks!

4. Bro #2 doesn’t respond. If there isn’t a question involved (and sometimes even if there is), he doesn’t see a need. It’s kind of like talking to him on the phone…one time I told him that I wasn’t paying long distance just to hear him breathe :)

I think I'm just having a "bad hair day" because, in all honesty, my family has been extremely supportive of me in this endeavor...thanks Mom, Bro #1, Only Sis and Bro #2!

I'M A HALLMARK CONTEST WINNER!

Yep…after debating for days whether to enter the contest, 30 minutes before the deadline I decided to submit a card. I promptly forgot about it until a couple days later when, lo and behold, the phone rang and it was the Hallmark Creative Team notifying me that I was a winner! How cool is that for someone who always got a “C” in art no matter how hard I tried? (O.K., even though it’s one of my dad’s photographs and all I had to do was write the verse, it is considered artistic and, as anyone who knows me knows, I am NOT known for my artistic ability.) With all those “knows” and “knowns,” you might think I’m not known for my writing ability either, but that’s actually my forte :)

Thanks, Hallmark!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DAD!

Dear Dad,

Since today is your birthday, I thought I’d write you a letter to let you know that I’m thinking of you. I wanted to tell you how much I’ve loved working with all of our family images over the past year and have really realized what a truly talented and creative man you were. I find it kind of ironic that I am trying to break into the greeting card business because, unlike you, I am not artistic at all…remember, I’m the kid that no matter how hard she tried she always got a “C” in art? Well, I’m no better (and possibly, worse) now at the age of 55 than I was back then!

I was laughing with my friend, J, who is my “partner in crime” in this business, because we are so technically challenged with the greeting card design programs. I had to email some cards today to someone and for the life of me I couldn’t remember how to convert a PDF file into a jpeg…the end result being that the card has to be read upside down, which is easy to do if you’re about 5 years old (remember how great little kids can do this-like reading skywriting?) but not when you’re an adult and have a hard enough time reading right side up :) J had a card perfectly designed on her computer but couldn’t figure out how to email it, print it, publish it to the web or do anything with it…and she was using a kid’s program that has a little dog who wags his tail when you get it right :) Anyway, I was thinking about you and how you would have mastered Photoshop!

By the way, Bro #2 found an additional 2,000 slides in an old suitcase that he had forgotten he had! After an entire year of working on these I was talking to him a few weeks ago and, all of a sudden, he remembered that he had them. I shouldn’t have been surprised because, well, after all, he is Bro #2 :)

Anyway, Dad, I wanted to thank you for preserving all of our family memories. This project has allowed me to reconnect with my aunts, uncles, and cousins in ways that are immeasurable. Your images have brought a lot of joy to them as well as to total strangers who have contacted me telling me how much they can relate to your pictures and how they brought back some of their own childhood memories.

So, thanks again, Dad…I wish you were here.

Love always,

Tra

IT ALL HAS TO DO WITH FUN BUSSES...

I've sent out a lot of proposals lately and really had to "put myself out there" in terms of possibly making a fool of myself. So, to all those people who might think to themselves "Well, that's great, but what does it have to do with ME?," I wanted to repost an excerpt from an earlier post this year. Here goes:

In 1977 when I moved out to California and didn’t have a car, I hopped on a bus to go to a job interview at that huge corporation. After quite awhile of riding around, I realized that I had inadvertently hopped on a “fun bus,” one of those busses that only takes you to Disneyland, Knott’s Berry Farm, etc., instead of a public transportation bus. After realizing this, I got off the bus and walked, and walked, and walked and ended up at a large corporation but not the one I was supposed to interview with. By that time I was so tired of walking that I just asked them if there were any openings…and here I am 33 years later still doing some work for the people that I met there at that large corporation.So, to answer any questions about why I might have sent you a proposal, it goes way back to “fun busses”—you never know where something might lead you :)

A KIND STRANGER WHO MADE MY DAY...

As I was leaving the grocery store today a woman in her 50’s or 60’s gave me a really nice, but definitely untrue, compliment. She mentioned that I had the “perfect figure” and when I laughed and said that I had gained 10 pounds over the past couple of years due to my daily Starbucks fix of a mocha frappuccino (venti size, no less), she said she was just telling it like it was.

Well, the more I thought about it, I decided that she was probably just a very nice person who looked at me and thought “Mmm…that woman could use a compliment.” And since I was wearing my “grubs” as I call them (you know…those clothes you wear when you’re cleaning or gardening--shorts, T-shirt, tennis shoes) and my long hair was up in a ponytail, there wasn’t really anything left for her to compliment except my body. But here’s the thing…it really doesn’t matter what she complimented, it’s the fact that she went out of her way and made the effort to say something nice to someone. So I say thank you to that nice woman in Laguna Niguel, whoever you may be.