Mission statement

Okay, so for the first post, Tara asks me to think about what the Mission of my blog is. I have to admit that I struggled with this - but then it came to me:

• My Blog is about my journey from stay at home mom making things to (hopefully!) successful small buisness owner. Along the way I will share with you stories, tips and tricks and probably all the things that go wrong in this challenge.

I love my dolls and my stars and everything I make would be very welcome to stay in my house (in fact, I have a copy of almost every window star I made up on my windows), and I want to keep it that way. My seams may not be totally strait and I'm still perfecting my processes, but each doll I sell takes a lot of my love with it. What do you think? Is this love reflected in my products? Can you tell - or what do you see instead? I'm very interested in your answers!

Keep your head up,
Vee

52 weeks of blogging - want to join me in this challenge?

Hey there,

I decided to take a new aproach to blogging - I have been looking over my blog posts last year and while I have been getting better with the frequency, I'm less than thrilled about the content.

When I go through my past posts, I keep having the feeling that I do this just to tell you whats new in my store. This is not what I want. I want to keep you all updated on my working process, I want to share stories with you and of course I want to tell you about my new products. I decided that I need to learn how to become a better blogger!

I have very recently joined the creative empire, a great new community of fellow crafters/indie shops that want to be more successfull - and one of the "Thank you"s for joining are some amazing freebies, among them Tara Gentile's "52 Weeks of Blogging".

I intend to do the whole program - but I will not limit myself to one post per week, I really want to continue with some of the other things I did. So, do you want to join me? You can either pick up her book, join the creative empire or simply challenge yourself to blog regularly - but let me know so I can come visit your blog and give you some much needed encouragement!

Keep Bloggin'
Vee

Time for a change - and new dolls have arrived!

Hey there,

there is still so much I wanted to blog about from our vacation - well, so much for planning :-) Anyway, I still wanted to show you my new haircut! My hair has been growing for a couple of years now without any scissors getting anywhere near it and it took great pride in it - but once TWO kids can sleep an your braid at night at the same time, it's time to change something...

So, here's me before and after - my Mom cut my hair when we were on vacation!

The perfect spot for a vacation with small children - I found it!

Hey there,

Getting back into the habit of blogging - or at least trying to...
I promised to share pics from my last vacation, but I didn't want to turn this post into some kind of pic spam, so I'll share some of the details :-)

Anyway - if you're a family with small kid, you know my trouble. Where shall you go for vacation? Here are some of the things you want to avoid:
1). Long air travel. I don't know about you, but most people seam to hate long plane rides with screaming toddlers. Our kids are great travel companions, so long rides in the car/on a plane are fine, but they might not work for everyone
2). Very hot climate. I like sun (don't we all?) but only in moderation. I can't stand it when the temperature gets over 30°C in summer (for all you Americans that would be the high 80s/low 90s) and we get that here in Vienna. My kids don't like the heat either - and I hate having to worry about puting on sunscreen for just 10 minutes outside.
3). Exotic immunisations. Big No-No for me - my kids always react to immunisations, even all the normal ones. I don't want to test them on some of the more exotic stuff.
4). Nothing to do for kids. Not a big worry, to be honest - we're good at finding things for our kids to enjoy, but it doesn't hurt to figure that one in...

And here are the things you'll probably want for a vacation with kids:
1). low cost. I don't care how much money you're making, but I'd much rather be able to add a week of vacation time than live expensively...
2). room to roam. My kids need it to be happy
3). safety. I'm not safety crazy (as some americans seem to be :-D), but I still don't want my kids to drown, fall from great heights or suffer any kind of serious injury
4). cooking my own meals once in a while. My kids are picky eaters (or at least, my son is) and I know what they'll eat. I love going out for dinner, but not HAVING to go out is great - especially if it starts raining..

After going to a farm last year (absolutely awesome!), we wanted to see the sea again. We live in Austria, so we know we would have to leave the country, but where? there are a couple of options here: the mediteranean (italy, turkey or greece), the altantic ocean (france, spain or england) or the north sea. italy is pretty close (good) but hot and crowded with tourists - as are greece, turkey and spain. France would be cool, but none of us speek french and getting along in france with english or german - good luck! England is very expensive, so we decided to go to germany. We picked Cuxhaven as our destination. We've been there before and loved it. Renting a vacation apartment allowed us to stay there longer, have guests and cook our own meals. I highly recomend it!

So, what makes Cuxhaven so special?The sea is very shallow there. At low tide, the water goes wayyy back - about 20km (16 miles) and you get to play and walk around on the ocean floor. Our kids where allowed to roam freely - and they enjoyed it! There were not that many people around, and that was quite a big bonus for us! Twice a day the sea is acually there - way too shallow to swim, but perfect to sit there and soak while the kids play with mud and water. There is a great public pool - its a seawater pool with waves - great! with a childrens play area, and we went there frequently :-)

Weatherwise, we've been unlucky. It should be 20°C-24°C at that time of year, but we happened to get there in the middle of a heatwave and had a couple of days with more than 30°C. Better than almost anywhere else in europe, though...

So for us, I've found a perfect vacation spot. This will not hinder us from going other places (disneyworld for example...) but hey, if you're somewhere close, try it! Also, buying fish is insanely cheap there!

What do You want from a great vacation? Where did you spend yours? I'd love to hear from you, and if you blog about it, leave me a comment so I can come read about it!

In other news - sadly, I STILL have not opened my HC shop yet. But I'm getting there! Promise!

Hugs
Vee

Just a very quick hello

I just wanted to say that I still exist :-D I'm busy working on a big bunch of dolls - and now both my kids are sick :-(

Hugs
Vee

Hallo und herzlich wilkommen

*this is my german welcome post - if you don't speak german, feel free to ignore it :-)*
Hallo und herzlich wilkommen auf meinem blog!
Eigendlich ist meine Muttersprache ja deutsch und ich lebe in wien - aber mein blog ist im Großen und Ganzen englisch, weil doch mehr meiner Leser englisch sprechen als Deutsch. Auf dieser seite findet Ihr LINKS zu meinen deutschen posts in diesem blog, HIER ist eine deutsche "über mich" seite und die kommentare sind der beste platz um fragen zu stellen, wenn Ihr welche habt.
Liebe Grüße
Vee

EDIT:
Da mein Blog jetzt im Großen und Ganzen zweisprachig ist, ist diese Seite überflüssig geworden. Wenn es etwas gibt, das Ihr nur auf englisch gefunden habt, lasst es mich bitte wissen - ich helfe gern!

Back from vacation...

...and really, really busy :-)

current to do list:

-finish the blog makeover (make all links work)
- open my hc store
- make my HC grand opening stars
- re-size my product pictures so they will work on hc
- finish the big bunch of dolls that are sitting here
- etc

Anyway, our vacation was great - photos comming soon!

Vee

...under construction!

There will be some design changes coming soon - if links don't work, don't worry, I'm fixing them :-)

...and that's who I am!

Hello there,

I thought I'd introduce myself properlyto all the new readers I hope to get and re-introduce myself to my regular readers. My real name is Sarah, but I have been going by the name Veelana for so long, it feels weird to type Sarah - I very rarely use it online at all. I live in Vienna, Austria (nope, we don't have kangaroos here - its the small country next to germany) in an appartment, that has beesn lovingly filled with lots of geeky clutter and stuff, with my husband and our adorable two kids Lilith and Dorian.

I am a SAHM (stay at home mom) right now - Dorian has started Kindergarden last september and I'm glad I have the chance tostay home with and for them at the moment. The state of austria currently pays me for staying with my daughter (austrians have wayyy too little babies - and the government is trying to change that by throwing money our way), and I will continue to receive that money until she is 2 1/2 years old. I have decided that I want to make enough money by selling my dolls by that time so I can continue to stay with them.

What else can I tell you? I'm a total nerd when it comes to entertainment - I love reading Science Fiction (all time favourite author: Robert Heinlein) and Fantasy books (current favourites are Dave Duncan, Patrick Rothfuss and George R. R. Martin), I'll read whatever comes my way... My husband and son are big Star Wars fans, we play Pen and Paper Roleplaying games and a LOT of board games.

I went to a waldorf school for the first eight years of my school career, and while Ididn't like
most of the underlying philosophy (Anthroposophy) and some of the teaching methods didn't really work for me, I absolutely loved the arts and craft education I got there. I have been making window stars or suncatchers since I was about 7 years old - my first doll I made at 12. I never stopped with the paper crafts, but I only re-discovered dollmaking recently, when I decided that my little daughter just needed zu have a handmade doll.

I met my husband almost 15 years ago - on a Star Wars/Trek convention. We lived 560 km apart, I was a Trekkie and he was (and still is) a die hard Star Wars fan. It could never work...
...well, it did - and I moved to vienna as soon as I was finished with school and started university there. And now I've been here for over 10 years...

If you have any questions, feel free to ask!

Hello there,

its so hot here that the computers are turned off all day - I'll try to blog tonight when the kids are asleep. I'm going to talk about my personal experience with waldorf schools sometime soon.

Vee