I haven’t had a chance to blog much as of late. Things have been insanely busy around here, wrapping up taxes, getting orders processed, and starting new projects around the house. I will be documenting the new projects so that you can see what we are doing, weather we mess it up royally or we are successful, I’ll be posting it. There has to be a few laughs in there somewhere!
For my local readers, I will be getting back to restaurant reviews again and tonight we are going to the new “Cantina Loco” , a new restaurant here in the city of Buffalo. It been hyped a lot prior to its opening, so I’m interested to see if it lives up to it. I’ll have some stuff on that experience sometime this weekend.
What was I saying about a winterless winter?
Last night it was raining and after we went to bed the wind started to blow furiously. Our house is old and when the wind gets really strong, it feels like our house is going to blow down. Everything creaks, the windows make rattling sounds, and combined with the sounds from outside, it was tough to sleep. When I awoke this morning, it was snowing and blowing pretty hard. I stepped out onto the porch on my way to the backyard to let the dog do his business. I noticed the blowing snow, the covered cars, the drifts, our shiny new stainless grill……wait a second…where is the grill cover I bought? It must have blown away like a giant parachute. I walked up and down the street this morning in pajamas hoping to find it and praying that I didn’t have to spend 30 bucks on another one. No luck. Defeated, I walked into the backyard with the dog and there it was! Lesson learned. Grill cover needs to be bungee’d down. Remember two days ago when I wrote about a winterless winter?
A winterless winter.
This winter has been sort of a bummer for me. I love the snow. The majority of the people that i know find my viewpoint obnoxious because I work from home and don’t actually have to drive in it, braving the elements like most people. With all of that being true, I still love the snow. It’s January 11th and its sunny and gorgeous out, cold, but pleasant. Last night, for the first time this winter, I was glad it was nice out. We acquired a new grill from my parents for the holiday, and I was able to fire it up yesterday for the first time. Besides making pizza’s, grilling is my favorite thing. I pour myself a Firestone Walker IPA, bundle up, and stand outside like a man grilling meat…and it was fantastic and peaceful. We just cooked a few boneless chicken breasts, but they turned out great. As we close in on mid January, I think I’m OK with no more winter, its late enough where if it arrives it will be somewhat annoying. Who am I kidding, we live in Buffalo. We will get hit with something nasty before the winter is finished, I’d bet on it.
 |
| Brutal Buffalo Winters |
Slowly starting rehab again…
We took a break starting late November on all house rehab. It was getting to be a little much but now Nicole and I are starting to get the itch again. We slowly started working in the living room. Nicole got the idea to turn the bay window area in the living room into a little bistro area. Hanging from the ceiling in that area was this disgusting glass light that needed to go immediately. She found the perfect light on etsy:
 |
| (This isn’t a picture from inside our house, it’s from sellers etsy store) |
We then wanted to get a pedestal table for underneath it. It seemed like everywhere we looked they were between $150.00 ( for a mediocre one) and up to $500.00+ (for better quality ones). We tried looking on craigslist but had no luck. Finally on Sunday we found one for $60.00 but at the last minute the lady called us and said that her husband had sold it without telling her. Lame. So we were back to square one. We found one at the local AMVETS (thrift store) for only $45.00 and it was super heavy duty. Old furniture is the best if you can restore it because everything was made so well back then. We took the table home and sanded it down. Nicole is in the process of painting it and I should have some pictures later on in the week.
Having the light purchased and the table only left us with one more thing to get. Chairs. Nicole found 2 chairs on Target’s website. I think they will look pretty awesome once everything is in place.
These are supposed to be delivered by the end of the week. Fingers crossed!
Bring on the New Year!
We hope everyone had a great Holiday this year. We are eager to get started on some new designs for next year including, finally, black shirt designs!
This Holiday was a busy one. In case you are not familiar with the two most famous babies on baby products, there is:
 |
|
| The “Gerber” Baby |
And..
 |
|
| The “Super Sweet Shirt Co.” Baby, Jacob Lee Green. |
This year was pretty fun because our Nephew Jake was able to understand the joy of opening presents. It was really funny to watch because I’m not sure if he actually understood that inside of each present, is a new toy or something for him. To him, each present was a new and exciting opportunity to tear off wrapping paper. Who cares whats in it?!
I went home for Christmas eve and Christmas day to be with my parents and my sister who was home from California. I was able to see a lot of family that I hadn’t seen in a while which was really nice. Our Christmas morning has been the same since we were kids, the only difference is that instead of being a little kid wearing goofy pajamas and getting up really early to open gifts, my sister and I are in our early 30’s waking up early in goofy pajamas to open gifts. It’s pretty awesome.
 |
| My sister getting more amazing pajamas for next Christmas morning. |
 |
| Step-dad Henry with a new ornament to make the tree more manly. |
 |
| All of the animals flock to my mother making it impossible to move or open gifts. |
 |
| Christmas dinner with some cousins, aunts, and uncles. |
 |
| Cousin Andy and his lady. |
Niagara Market
Saturday evening we went down to the Niagara Market. This was the first year of the event which lasts 30 days. It was described as being a “European Market” so we were interested in seeing something like this, especially because it might be something for Super Sweet Shirts to think about doing in the future. If you have never been to Niagara Falls, the American side is an armpit. Its terrible. Its nothing but a gigantic casino, and nothing else. This market was a good idea to get people to come visit the area in the winter. It didn’t end up being as big as I thought it was going to be, but for being the first year, it has the potential to be something really cool. Each vendor has its own little wooden hut that you could go into and shop from. Bigger vendors had larger huts that were like big heated tents. We talked the the owner of Sample Restaurant for a few minutes while getting some hot cider and he said that the turnout had been great this season and that he would totally do it again next year. Something to think about for us next year or the following year.
Our First Tree!
I’m a week late posting these but the shirt orders have been pretty intense and I haven’t had much time for anything. I was all excited this year to go buy a saw, venture out into the woods like Clark Griswold, and get myself a tree. Unfortunately its December and there’s no snow. This winter sucks. I was not in the mood to go get a tree in gorgeous sunny weather. Nicole and I decided to just go down to Home Depot and get a tree. I will never get a fake tree, it needed to at least be real. This was my first time picking out a tree by myself. I had done some reading in my last issue of “This Old House” and it had an article about bringing home your tree hassle free. I was definitely prepared for this. People are so picky when they are looking for their tree. They pull them out one and spin them around to make sure they are all perfect. I just grabbed one that was all tied up. I had no ideas what it was going to look like. It’s a tree. Charlie Brown didn’t care, why should I. Here are some pictures below of our first tree. Now we are going to have to gradually collect ornaments that have meaning.
 |
| Nicole getting the tree stand ready. |
 |
| My mom got us these little gems! |
 |
| My Harry Potter Ornament. |
Dieting…
Nicole and I started dieting. I hate dieting. I love food, but I’m about 10 pounds overweight. We decided to try SparkPeople.com. It’s a free dieting site that has pretty cool Apps for recipes and calorie counting. I’m on day 2 and it hasn’t really been all that bad. I went running yesterday which was sort of brutal but I made it out alive. If I can get back down below 200 I’ll be happy and celebrate with huge bag of candy.
 |
| This will be my reward if I reach under 200 pounds. The prize at the end of the rainbow. |
Great weekend! Fantastic Show!
This weekend was the Mayday Underground Arts and Crafts Show. We did this show last year and this year it was just as good, if not better! I love getting to see the faces of people that look at our stuff. Being an online business, you never get that experience. It’s also a great way to test new items to see if they are worth carrying. The moss green woman’s Poe shirt caught a lot of eyes and eventually sold. I will have a picture of it this week because I ordered more and decided to carry it. I took the Poe design that I already had and added a twist. I love the way it turned out.
During the show Nicole and I met another vendor at the show who was interested in how I screened the onesies. He was a screen printer also but was at the show selling handmade fairy doors. They were these amazing handmade doors that go in garden’s, etc. Very cool and very original. We eventually started talking about our experiences as screen printers and I mentioned how I was in need of a flash dryer. For those of you that don’t know what this is, it’s an expensive piece of equipment that makes drying/curing inks on shirts a breeze. He mentioned he had one that he had fixed up, that he wasn’t using. He bought it broken from a guy for dirt cheap and fixed it, but has since gotten a new one. I could have sold nothing at this show and could have been happy. We got a flash dryer from this guy and it works great! Christmas will be so much easier to deal with this year. Its been almost two days and I’m STILL totally excited about acquiring this tool! Thanks Again Chris!
We Guessed Wrong.
Last night was the first Halloween for us living in the new house. We had no idea what to expect, in fact if I had to guess, I would have guessed that there were going to be few trick or treaters. We had gotten three bags of candy and 45 minutes later I was out the door scurrying to get more. We couldn’t believe it. The first Wilson Farms was out of candy, so I tried another that was about a mile away. Luckily there were bags of candy left at inflated prices. I figured three more bags should work and they did. Barely.
I realized one thing after this experience. I pretty much hate Halloween. The occasional little kid walking with their parents in a ridiculous costume sometimes made it all seem worth it, but not quite. I wonder if this is what it was like when I was little? Then I wonder how annoying it was for people when I reached that awkward age and was still trick or treating. I know that I was annoyed when the occasional 15 year old, 18 year old, and 40 year old (?) stopped by for a treat. Did I miss something? That’s right, a 40 year old women (she could have been mid 30’s) actually came to our house with her plastic bag asking for candy…and you have no choice really. I mean, you do…and then you risk becoming a target for later issues. The lack of costumes was also pretty amazing. It’s not worth it. Halloween is pretty terrible.
supersweetshirtblog.com 