The Buttercup Made Store

The store is live. I still wonder if I should have my head examined. This is not the path I envisioned taking when I quit working as a medical transcriptionist, but there it is. I might not sell anything, but this is kind of like buying a lottery ticket. You can’t win if you don’t play, and you can’t sell anything if you don’t have a way for people to give you money.

Frightfully optimistic, aren’t I?

I have even more stuff to add thanks to a plastic bin full of pillowcases that was stashed in the back of the closet, but I worked on this for five hours this morning and I can’t do any more. At least an hour was spent finding a good spot to take pictures of the aprons, then another half an hour to set up the lightbox for taking pictures of the pillowcases. The lightbox—this one, from Amazon—was an impulse purchase using reward points, but I think it may end up being a game changer. I prefer natural outdoor lighting when it’s available, which is not often in winter in Montana. This way, I get consistent staging. The lightbox is not small, but it does collapse to a slim profile for storage behind a door.

I also started using Adobe Lightroom, which is useful if you don’t need or want to learn Photoshop. Thankfully, setting up this store went quickly, as I learned much of what I needed to know about e-commerce in Squarespace when I did the Big Sky Knitting Designs store. The husband noted that I probably saved a bundle over having to pay someone to do all of this for me. I am glad I was able to host it myself instead of having an Etsy store.

If nothing else, we’ll see what kinds of items the organic food store would like to carry. Or what sells at the Monday Market.

I may be too brain dead for sewing this afternoon. I might just do laundry instead.

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Mice have been snacking on some of our chicken feed:

We keep one bag in the coop, securely stored inside a garbage can with a tight lid. Another 3-4 bags, including these, are on the porch. This is the first time I can remember that we’ve had mice chewing on the bags on the porch. I said to the husband that I don’t find this terribly distressing, because if the mice are eating the feed on the porch, it is less likely they will come inside to find things to snack on. Still, I think we may need to put some traps out there. We have half a dozen traps scattered throughout the basement and the first floor and we catch a mouse or two every couple of weeks.

The weather has been mild enough for people to be out hiking, and hikers on the state land across the road have been reporting sightings of fresh grizzly bear tracks. I would have thought they would be hibernating by now. Our neighbors have also caught pictures of one on their game camera.

The wildlife was here first. As far as they’re concerned, we’re in their space, not the other way around, although I do not feel as charitable toward the mice as I do toward the bears.