I don't know how many of you loved Mother Goose nursery rhymes and stories when you were a child, but I loved my Mother Goose book.  It was given to me when I was seven years old by the doctor who removed my appentics.  He gave me two books: a Mother Goose and 'Twas The Night Before Christmas".  Another of my doctors gave me a yellow clown stuffed with frangrant sawdust.  I named him GOOMPY.

My brother and sisters spent many hours reading and memorizing the nursery rhymes and even made up some of our own, since we believed that "someone" had made up these rhymes from things that were happening in their lives. 

Somewhere along the way, I lost the clown and the Mother Goose book, but still have the night before Christmas book.  Several years ago, I   began looking for MY Mother Goose book in antique stores in all the many towns where I traveled.  I found many different versions of vintage Mother Goose books, but MINE eluded me.  I racked my brain trying to remember what the cover looked like.  I did remember that it had a dust jacket and once that was lost, the cover was blue.  But for the life of me, I couldn't remember the picture on the front or what the dust jacket looked like.

After I discovered eBay, I began searching for it here, but didn't find it for a couple of years.  I put "Mother Goose 194*" in the saved search option and every day new listings would come up for me to explore.  Now you would think with all the Mother Goose books on eBay, I would have been able to find it right away.  But, you see, I hadn't seen that book since I was a child and I couldn't remember what the cover looked like.  I had in my mind what some of the pictures looked like, such as;  the picture on the Humpty Dumpty page and the Little Boy Blue page and others. 

Then, one day.... There it was!  I knew it the minute I saw it!  I paid whatever the price was and waited anxiously for it to come in the mail!  When I opened it, the memories flooded back. NOW I remember what it looked like and all the hours of pleasure it gave me!

The most ironic thing then happened.  The next weekend I was browsing through some books on a table at a Garage Sale and There it was AGAIN!!! for TWENTY FIVE CENTS!!!  I couldn't believe my eyes!!  So now I had TWO of them.  Not too long after that, I found another one in the local Goodwill store.  SO now I have THREE.  I am still looking for a couple more, so I can send one each to my brother and sisters.  I know they will enjoy reading these stories to their grandchildren and great-grandchildren.  (one of my sisters is already a great-grandmother).  My mother lives nearby so we have FIVE generations of book lovers who will enjoy this memory with me!

So, while searching for just the right book, I bought several that ended up not being the right one.  So I have a few of them on my shelf and listed in my eBay store.  Feel free to go look at them and see if maybe you can make a memory for a child in your life. 

I'm DONE!. I made 17 pair of doll jeans and pants today!!  
Whew!!  Thought I'd never finish!
I kept stopping to Blog. LOL

Sewing!!!  That's what I'm doing this weekend!

I had a wonderful repeat customer order a BUNCH of Crissy doll jeans this week.  Needless to say, I am busy sewing up a storm!!  But decided to take a break and blog for a bit.

 First I cut out all the jeans in the color of fabric she has chosen.  Then I line up the colors of thread she wants for the double side seams. 

Next I serge the back seams of how ever many jeans I have to make.  This prevents the seams from unraveling. 

I sew the back seam on the sewing machine.  The next step is to serge and sew all the side seams. 

Then I iron everything before moving on to making the double seam down the side seams with a double needle threaded with the colors selected. 

I serge along the waist and the bottom of the legs while everything is still flat. 

To finish, I sew the front seam and the inside leg seams, sew in the elastic at the waistline and hem the legs..... 

My customer uses my jeans to dress her "girls" for auction.  (Crissy dolls)

Turbo Lister Can Help

 

So you need to remove some listings from your store, but you spent HOURS creating the listings.  Use Turbo Lister to help you save these listings to upload at a later date when your store inventory gets low. 

Or maybe you spent alot of time putting things in your store getting ready for the holidays and planned to let them set in the store until you were ready to send them to auction.

Turbo Lister can be the answer.  Here's how:

1.  Move your current eBay listings to Turbo Lister
• Open Turbo Lister
• Click on the word 'File' in the very upper left of the window
• Click on Import Items
• Click on "From Ebay Listings"
• You can import Active or Ended listings.  You have choices on this Pop up. 
• I like to have it Show Preview - Then I can choose which listings I want to import.
• One thing you could do is go on ebay and end your listings first, then import the ended listings ( I have not tried this, but seems that it would work) 
2. Save them until you are ready to upload them to eBay
• Since you now have the listings on your own computer, you are now able to edit them, file them into catagories by creating folders to store them in, change listing format, price, etc.
• You need to be sure to move them to a separate folder once you have uploaded them to ebay, so you can keep track of which listings are already on ebay.
3. Create new items to be uploaded to eBay at a later date
• You can create templates for those items that are similar.
• You can create your policies and not have to retype them unless you want to change something

Download TurboLister and give it a try.

How to insert a picture into your blog

 

1. Go to your picture manger website and copy the html TAG code for your picture.
2. Return to your blog NEW ENTRY
3. In some way, mark the spot where you want to insert the picture... ( I usually put a number of X's or a Capitolized word)  This will help you identify the insertion spot when you are in the HTML editor.
4. Click on the little check box beside VIEW HTML in the upper left corner of the Entry editor.  (this turns on the HTML editor)
5. Replace your MARKER mentioned in #3 with the TAG code from your picture manager.
6. Click the HTML editor off by unchecking the checkbox beside VEIW HTML
7. Continue writing your entry

PHOTOBUCKET EXAMPLE:

http://www.photobucket.com    - sign into your account 
click on your album and choose which picture you want to insert into your web page or blog  - it will give you three html codes  
1 for the URL, 1 for Tag, 1 for IMG - here's what happens with each one:

URL:
http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h236/BookBuffs/P1010002.jpg

Tag:

IMG:
[IMG]http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h236/BookBuffs/P1010032.jpg[/IMG]

EBAY PICTURE MANAGER EXAMPLE

I clicked on the picture that I wanted to copy the code for, used CTRL C to copy the code, then returned to this blog entry, clicked on the checkbox beside VIEW HTML and inserted the code where I wanted the picture to appear.

I actually resized the picture after inserting it here in the blog by grabbing the corners and adjusting the size, but some photo managers have an option to allow you to resize your photo.

I picked up some old playing cards today, and two sets have 4 suits with only the AKQJ10 cards.  Can anyone tell me what games uses only these cards? (guess you can tell I'm not a card player)  I've never seen a set of playing cards like these.  Thanks for your help.

 

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Mouseover is not allowed in ebay blogs.  I spent over an hour figuring out how to do "mouseovers" and when I went to post my SUCCESS, the code for the mouseover was removed by ebay.  I am sure this is because you could hide links under the mouseover and redirect people to another site.  Guess that makes sense, but I'm disappointed.  I made the words in my banner change colors when the mouse moved over the words...  Oh well, I'll use the knowledge somewhere else.

 

This one took me a while to figure out. I wanted to use my own picture with words in the foreground.
Next attempt will be to create different colors and transparancy on the words.
(I really should be listing, or doing laundry, or SOMETHING besides having this much fun!!) LOL

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Thanks to ussearch, I have been playing with the
wonderful blog design tools offered on  Mandarin Design website.  WONDERFUL!!

 

This website has alot of FREE stuff to help dress up our blogs.
Be sure to click on the little box beside "View HTML" to paste your html code that
you copy from Mandarin Design tips and tricks pages.

Then you can come back to the regular view to finish typing and make your entry look
the way you want.

Ialso like the big first letter
for a new paragraph.
It makes what you have to say
more interesting and catches the eye.

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After reading some of the blogs about listing woahs (sp?), I decided to test Auctiva.  I noticed that a lot of listings had multiple pictures and wondered how the seller could afford to display so many when eBay charges for each picture after the first one.  So, yesterday I went on a campaign to learn about picture storage and listing options "offsite".

I know, you are saying... What took you so long?  All I have to say is that I learn a way to do something and seem to keep doing it over and over again, because it seems to be working and it takes me some real concentration catch on to something new.

So, here's my observations on the difference between Turbo Lister and Auctiva: (Remember that Turbo Lister has the same options and limitations as listing from the SELL link, it just allows you to prepare items offline and send them all at once to ebay.

1. With Turbo Lister, you can work OFFLINE and then upload - With Auctiva, you have to be online and if you have a slow connection, this may slow things down a bit.  ( I have Cable, so it worked fine for me).
2. With Turbo Lister, you can enter your store catagories on those items you are listing in your store -- With Auctiva, you have to wait until items are uploaded, then go in and revise each listing in order for your store catagories to be listed.
3. With Turbo Lister, you can include as many pictures as you want, but you will pay for each one after the first - With Auctiva, you can put as many pictures in your listing as you want.  (There may be a limit, but haven't found that yet).
4. If you own just the basic ebay store, with Turbo Lister you can't SCHEDULE your listings to be uploaded at a later time - With Auctiva, you can schedule your listing to be uploaded at the time you specify, making it possible to determine when you want your auctions to end.
5. With Turbo Lister, you can choose customized backgrounds and templates, but they cost extra - With Auctive there are DOZENS of templates to choose from for free.

Some additional things that Auctiva offers: 

• Unlimited picture storage with folder options to sort your pictures into catagories
• The ability to offer Giant pictures so people can see the detail of your item.
• Creation of your listing, using a ONE page listing tool
• Profiles for Payment, Shipping, Checkout, so you only have to type it once.  You can create as many profiles as you need
• A Free Store Window that displays items in your store.
• A new feature they will be offering soon Free reports.
• Gives you an option to use their checkout system

I'm sure there are more things I haven't discovered yet, but I find that it is an exciting different way to create listings and it is free!  (Of course they must have things they charge for, just haven't found them yet.)  At least they aren't obnoxious about trying to sell you something!!

Let me know if there are more things that I didn't see in my first day of using Auctiva