My Dog Ate My...

brown shoe; kitchen sponge; pink shoe; sweater button; flip flop; spatula; son's clarinet stand; door trim; paint brush; telephone headset; remote; son's baseball cap (he hasn't discovered it yet); emergency brake handle; garden hose; practice golf ball; ivy; Japanese maple tree; brother's CD (uh oh); Mastercard bill (had to pay it anyway); crossword puzzle; pens; pencils; leather coat button; shampoo bottle; doorstop (which I bought to keep her in the kitchen so she wouldn't prospect for stuff to chew); chair; daughter's shoe; Palm charger; winter coat; daughter's car seat strap; Girl Scout cookies (Thin Mints, which I had to make her throw up); mouse connection (promoted myself to a wireless mouse); breakfast, lunch and dinner

sigh

She's lucky she's so cute

Visit my web site, FeeFiFoto.com, for personalized photo gifts. We will put your photos on almost anything. Put your dog's or cat's picture on a calendar, mug or handbag.

Running a website is the only exercise I get

In 2006 my father referred me to me a personalized gift web site called PhotoGiftPlace.com that puts your photos on almost anything, like mugs, purses, plates, clothing, mouse pads, balloons. The site was created by a group of web designers to show off software that displayed a mockup of the finished item in three dimensions, but since these guys are technical engineering dudes, the site looked like it was put together by a bunch of twelve-year-old boys in somebody's basement. The web designers wanted to sell PhotoGiftPlace so they could focus on their core business, so my dad suggested he and I buy it and whip it into shape.

I thought: "Yeeha! I get to play online without having to make up some lame and transparent excuse, I can use my valuable shopping background for good instead of evil, and I get to redecorate something!" Write a few customer service emails, add some new products, send marketing email campaigns once in a while, lounge on the couch and snack on bon bons, rake in a few mil by 2009, sell to Google, buy a racehorse, a Porsche and a big honkin' sapphire, and everybody's happy.

Uh huh.

So I learned about Google advertising on the fly (Want to know what I learned? That Google cost more than it generated because there is so much competition.) I researched new products and worked with designers to bring the site a new look and feel. I created marketing and mass email campaigns; what I know about marketing I really don't know, but I guess I'm as qualified as anybody since I do most of my shopping and research online these days. I hired Cleopatra-Queen-Of-The-Nile and Robespierre as subcontractors to help choose graphics, clip art and color schemes. I issued coupons, rewrote product descriptions, flogged the site to all my friends and blogged the site to everyone else. I also learned (as if I hadn't known already) that the laptop has some distinct and not-so-pleasant similarities to a slot machine, as it entices me to press those buttons just one more time because I'm certain to hit the jackpot.

What was supposed to be a no-brainer turned into a very-much-of-a-brainer, and while I'm not exactly complaining (okay, I am complaining), what I thought would be a joyride on the superhighway to riches and stardom has turned into more of a wagon train trip up the Oregon Trail, and I'm still in Independence, Missouri.

Still, I love it and my kids love having a family business, especially since I pay them for their consultations.

Visit my web site, FeeFiFoto.com, for personalized photo gifts. We will put your photos on almost anything. Design personalized photo calendars and holiday cards.

Under the Spell of the HEX Codes

I've been redesigning and promoting my web site, (all the livelong day...) issuing occasional marketing blasts to my ever-inert mailing list. I wrestle with mailings (could that be referred to as "Wrestlemailia"?) reworking grammar, word choice, tone, grammar, look, color scheme, grammar, atmosphere and grammar. Did I mention grammar? As an inbred nitpicker I shift words and punctuation, change font sizes and colors, rotate graphics, take everything back to square one, then tiptoe through the HTML to eliminate all the extraneous WYSIWYG notations so the font doesn't mutate three times in the same section because the code's not sure which I prefer so it throws a bunch of choices at me and hopes something sticks, or that I simply won't notice that it's using Arial, Verdana and Wingdings all in the same paragraph.

As someone who doesn't know when to quit, I putter and add details until I've crossed the line into mucking things up, then I delete some stuff, then I add more stuff, then I change all the stuff around until I can't tell any more what's stuff's just enough or what's too much stuff.

Funny -- I often dress that way too. Add a scarf, a pin, a barrette, take it all off and replace it with a necklace, a headband and a belt, hair up, hair down, look in the mirror, shrug in despair and switch to blue jeans and a tee shirt.

Anyway, as I'm tweaking and freaking, I've been fiddling with color choices for the site and the marketing emails, because I got bored with the gentle blue and yellow color scheme developed for me by a group of expensive and knowledgeable web designers. So I began experimenting with accent colors, which I overdid, and ended up changing and altering and updating until I couldn't tell what I was looking at any more, and usually gave up and reverted to the yellow and blue by default.

Then, a miracle occurred (cue angels singing).

I discovered the color scheme site.

I can enter in the HEX code I'm using and it will provide a set of complementary and contrasting colors. And it works! And it looks good! And with the authority of an outside source, I now can add a little color accent here and a little more there in confidence that it won't blast anyone's artistic sensibilities to kingdom come and repel them from my site forever.

Okay. Stop laughing. Really, cut it out. So what if everyone else has known of this type of resource for years, maybe decades for all I know? Oblivion keeps me behind the times.

Visit my web site, FeeFiFoto.com, for personalized photo gifts. We will put your photos on almost anything. Put favorite photos on tee shirts, sweat shirts and baseball caps.

My Daughter is Such a Girl, Chapter Deux

I'd promised Cleo I'd take her to the American Girl Store in Chicago and buy her one of the real dolls, not the miniatures, for her birthday. Even though her birthday came and went in January we never managed the trip because we got snowed in, and then we couldn't find an agreeable date with the friends who were planning on going with us. Then last week, while we were in San Diego for spring break, we drove to LA to sightsee for a couple days. As I was planning our visit it dawned on me that: THERE'S AN AMERICAN GIRL STORE IN LOS ANGELES!! Yay!! I could get our visit out of the way and stop feeling guilty that my precious, oppressed child would not be deprived of her seventh birthday present one moment longer. So while Robey did guy stuff with a friend we'd met for lunch (they cruised the Apple store), Cleo and I made our pilgrimage to AG, pondering the most important decision she'll have to make until it's time to select a college, and then anxiously supervising her new doll's new hairstyle. When Nicky, the Doll of the Year, was ready to go we visited the ladies' room, where each stall sports a custom-made doll rack so you don't have to part with your doll for a moment, even while using the potty, and then we carefully cradled the doll for the rest of the day, except when we locked her in the trunk so nobody would break into the car and steal her.

A few days later as we packed to return home, Cleo inquired approximately every seven minutes of anyone who'd listen how Nicky would travel, whether it was time to pack Nicky, where Nicky would be stored, how to zip Nicky into the tote, how many tee shirts ought to be stuffed in with Nicky so she wouldn't be bumped or bruised, and whether Nicky should be buckled in with her on the plane. Before packing Nicky Cleo adorned her with a shower cap from the hotel, so Nicky's coif, which was already showing significant signs of wear, would remain orderly.

And that's how Nicky remains today -- sleeping in a doll bed beside Cleo's bed, wearing a plastic shower cap that reminds me of the hairnets my grandmother used to make us wear when we grated apples for Passover charoses even though she probably should have been more concerned with the bits of skin and finger we regularly scraped off into the bowl.

Visit my web site, FeeFiFoto.com, for personalized photo gifts. We will put your photos on almost anything. Create personalized photo mugs, steins, calendars, cookie tins, clocks and lots more.

Jokes And Puns Some People Don't Get

1. When I see an adult wheeling around an infant in a grocery cart I can hardly resist asking: "Did you find that in the baby aisle?" I've tried it a few times. Nothing.
2. At the pediatrician's office I once advised obviously first-time parents (the car seat was spotless) of a week-old baby that if their baby needed some help getting to sleep, I'd always had success giving my kids a bop on the head. I got stares of disbelief. Guess they weren't ready for levity.
3. When my son fumbled a carton of eggs in the dairy aisle I warned the checker that we'd had an "eggcident." I thought it was hilarious. Robespierre got it. The checker -- not so much.
   

Visit my web site, FeeFiFoto.com, for personalized photo gifts. We will put your photos on almost anything.