Week Four: Essential Oils & Herbs VS. Antidepressants

This week has had a lot of highs and lows.  My withdrawal symptoms have subsided for the most part.  I don't feel particularly depressed, but I have been crying a lot, mainly at television shows... I haven't been taking welbutrin daily this week, just whenever I realize I haven't taken it in a few days, which also means I haven't been taking my vitamins.  There are just SO MANY of them.  I've been doing so well with my oils though.  Yesterday I put in an order for 4 new oils to add to my routine.  

I got featured on a Richmond located shop treasury list on Etsy this week.  Looking through my fellow vendors, I discovered one of the shops made diffuser necklaces for essential oil aromatherapy.  Check out the shop here.  Although I'm an etsy vendor and should support other local shops, I'm also a DIYer to the extreme, so I found a cute little locket type thing that would fit a little pom pom and put it on a necklace with a little flower charm I already had.  It's cute and I'm loving having the scents around my neck all day.  If you aren't into DIY and would like a diffuser necklace, you should totally buy it from this RVA etsy vendor though.  

In other news, ETSY ETSY ETSY ETSY ETSY.  My bouquet is trending y'all.  I've been getting emails and emails from people telling me that they love my work and that they wish I would have been around 15 years ago.  It's been so flattering.  I have a difficult time accepting praise, so this is strange, but very exciting.  And the fact that it is MY wedding bouquet that is getting all this attention just makes me feel very special. 

In the entire month of February, I got 191 total favorites on etsy.  In this first 15 days of March, I have gotten 1,585 favorites.  

Oh and Kevin and I have been totally up in the air about what we're doing in life.  We decided not to renew our lease because our apartment is so expensive, but now we have less than 60 days to find a new place to live, whether that be in an apartment or a house we buy, or in Richmond or anywhere else in this world.  We're so very confused.  It's harder now that I'm not on my meds, but we'll figure it all out and hopefully we'll get to have a baby in the next year or so.  

Much love to you, blog world.  

my beautiful craft room

I'm trying to use this blog more often, so I'm transferring some of my posts from my crafting blog over to dirty, ripped dresses.

Crafting by Knight opened on the world wide web two years and three apartments ago.  I am finally in my ideal apartment and have built my dream office!  Seriously though, isn't it drool-worthy?  It's taken me a couple months to get everything exactly how I want it, but I'm totally in love.  I spend about 8 hours a day in that chair and am so thrilled for it to be complete.  Every item has a place and I have a wonderful inventory of materials and products.  

My gallery wall is my favorite part of the room.  As you can see, there are some pictures of Kevin and I, my bestie Grace, and some past bouquets.  I've printed several free printables I found on Pinterest and others that I purchased.  The "I craft therefore I have no thumbprints" is actually a cross-stitch that I did myself.  

Look for great printables here, here, and here.

I have a cute little dry erase list where I put my clients names and when their order has to be shipped by.  It's a great feeling to cross names off the list, but an even better feeling to add them! 

Michaels has really helped me get my act together when it comes to storage and organization. Pretty much all of my shelves have come from Michaels. 

It comes in handy to reuse wedding decorations to decorate your office when you own a wedding bouquet business.  

My cube shelving system has made my life so much better!  I now have bins for each of the weddings that I'm working on at the moment.  As you can see, I also have tons of boxes that have various purposes, such as dies, comic books, excess burlap, etc.

Right in my reach, I always keep multiple pairs of scissors, wires, hole punches, and other tools.  Hot glue sticks are hidden away in that adorable little rose tin.

Thanks for touring my office!  I hope you like it as much as I do!  :)

new

For the last week or so, I've been working on this plan to really start blogging for Crafting by Knight.  I bought a domain/website and spent a long time making it beautiful with the plan of not only having it to help my brides figure out the flowers they want and be able to look at bouquets easier than on Etsy, but also to have a blog.  Yesterday I listened to 4 hours of podcasts about blogging, specifically blogging for makers who have etsy shops and want to get more traffic through the blog.  The podcast made it clear that you have to be passionate about what you're blogging about if you want to have a successful blog.  I'm passionate about crafting and about my bouquets, but I can't just blog about my products. And I have several tutorials of crafts that Kevin and I made for christmas that I've been dying to blog about...  But I realized the people I sell bouquets to are generally not people who want to learn DIY stuff.  And I don't want to encourage them to DIY their wedding and not buy my bouquets.  All that to say, I've decided that I'm going to hang here with dirty, ripped dresses.  My new www.craftingbyknight.com is an amazing site and may one day have some sort of blog, but for now, I'm jumping back into this blog.  

Two-thousand and fourteen was a very odd year for us.  Kevin got promoted.  We made a move to a new city.  We got out of debt.  We went practically a year with no local friends.  I cooked a big thanksgiving dinner pretty much all by myself.  Crafting by Knight grew a significant amount more than the previous year.  We learned a lot about grace.  

I couldn't be more excited about two-thousand and fifteen.