Bye for now Casey

Before I tell you who Casey is, I just thought I'd do a "catch up" of what I was up to last week and why I was AWOL from my beloved Blog more often than usual for me!

Monday was my first day at my new job and I've had a thoroughly enjoyable first week. Not only are all the people really warm and helpful but the whole environment is very rewarding. My department are speech therapists so they help those with communication challenges and we also have Service Users helping out in the office 3 days of the week and its so lovely to see them enjoying carrying out whatever tasks they can in the office and getting such fulfillment from it - well done and thank you Oliver, Suzanne and Johnny!

Tuesday evening saw a great turnout for our Valley at Work special event with our guest speaker (see my Enterprise Island post)

Wednesday I dived into helping out with the phones at work. One of our girls was away ill and it was the busiest phone day and actually quite fun for me just learning who on earth everyone was. That might make me sound like a bit of a saddo but, for someone who'd been at her old day job for 17 years and knew the world and his wife, it was quite refreshing to be the new girl learning everything from scratch! If the chance arises to learn something new, try to take it...

Thursday evening was absolutely brilliant! I was chuffed to be invited by http://www.startup-lancashire.com/index.html to a Kickstart Your Marketing seminar from http://www.mercurymarketing.co.uk/ and I cant praise it enough. Geoff is a wonderful public speaker bringing a wealth of marketing experience and tips in a fun and informative way. I even chatted with Geoff about my business and Blog during the interval and that speaks volumes for how approachable he is, I very rarely do that with public speakers! I hope you'll visit his site and try to catch him if he's ever in your area, I can highly recommend his events

and Friday evening I went to a great 2nd Birthday gathering for our local online community forum http://www.rossendaleonline.co.uk/index.php Lee organised a brilliant night in Rawtenstall with food laid on for us and we got the unique chance to put faces to forum names. We ate chilli and garlic bread together and some of us even exchanged tattoo viewings!

Sadly yesterday I heard that my brother and sister in law had said goodbye to their beloved dog Casey who passed away on Friday after going downhill for some time (but well enough for the vets to allow her to stay with them during her final weeks). So bye bye for now Casey and everyone will take care of your daughter Maddy until you run with her again in Doggy Heaven. This is for you sweetie...

...until next time, take time to say "I love you" to those you love, human or animal

Enterprise Island

Where have I been? Off on a little entrepreneurial (is there such a word?) holiday to Enterprise Island!


We had our first special Valley at Work event last night, something a bit different to our regular monthly meetings. We were enlightened and entertained by Iain Scott, the man behind Enterprise Island.


Iain's most definitely a man worth listening to - and meeting - in the flesh. Being a "corporate escapee" myself I could not fail to be instantly enamoured with a man sporting a kilt and the most unique non-corporate hairdo I've seen in, well, ever!


And anyone who dispels the myth that entrepreneurs must be "born" goes on the good guy list in my book


As regular readers will know, I've been a member of the Valley at Work business group since its inception in September 2007 and we're going from strength to strength in Rossendale with members now totalling the 100 mark and aims to double in size.


You can visit the Valley at Work site here http://valleyatwork.co.uk/default.aspx

And I can highly recommend you visit Iain here http://www.enterpriseisland.com/


...until next time, you may well be an entrepreneur too and just not know it yet!

Busy busy busy

Oh I've got some lovely orders that are just waiting to be started! Thought I'd give you a preview:

A large navy veterans framed piece - I'm very excited as my customer has now chosen 3 war medals, a bosun's whistle and 2 B&W photos ready to go into her piece! And I've bought the frame so all systems go!

A Christmas themed Memory Box (yes, you heard right, christmas!) - I'm chuffed to bits cos this is my first order for the new Memory Boxes - the main element will be a 3D multi layered photo of 2 little tots sat on santa's knee, bless em!

And as a gift for one of my UK Crafts Forum buddies http://www.craftsforum.co.uk/index.php?referrerid=9261 , I'm very keen to start her "Pins & Needles" group card!

Sam from http://www.incywincytogs.co.uk/ makes gorgeous baby, toddler & nursery items and also runs a Flickr special interest group here http://www.flickr.com/groups/pinsandneedles/ and has sent me a selection of beautiful photographs of her colleagues' handcrafted items. As a thank you for letting me (a non-sewer!) join their group, I'm making a special card featuring their work and we've done a deal - Sam gets the electronic card and I get the original to display at my Craft Fairs!

...but I cant start work on any of them until Wednesday as I have the honour of doing a 20 minute presentation tomorrow evening to my http://valleyatwork.co.uk/default.aspx business network group and I havent got a thing set down on paper yet! It's on Neuro Linguistic Programming so not exactly the simplest of subjects to decide what to include in my agenda! I'm really looking forward to it though

So...until next time...its LOVELY to be so busy!

Day Two

Well here we are again!
Just to keep you posted, all my samples are currently "on loan" to a customer who's asked me to produce a framed memory piece for her hubby's Birthday in August. We'll be incorporating his war medals alongside some carefully selected photos so I'm looking forward to designing something really special for him! Once all my samples are back at Focus HQ, I'll start getting some photos on here for you to have a look at.
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Last thing for today, I want to thank the Valley at Work network group at http://valleyatwork.co.uk/ who're working hard to bring as many Rossendale business folk together as possible. Co-ordinated by PEER (People Encouraging Enterprise in Rossendale) we meet monthly to share knowledge, experience and a few laughs along the way. Special thank you to Diane & Sheila who invited me to participate in my first ever craft fair and have asked me to join the Easter Fair on 22 March. More news on that in future posts.
...until next time, laugh long & loud
Shaz x