Did you know that today is Small Business Saturday? I figured that would be the perfect time to finally get around to updating my Etsy shop with all those pottery pieces I’ve been meaning to list for ages, starting with the funky square dottery dish up there.

Most of the rest of these are from the Geek Dottery collection, starting with a Princess Bride quote mug. I painted this on a day when I needed to remind myself that sometimes, life is pain, and anyone who says differently is selling something.

“Castle” quote dottery mug. Painted with one of my favorite quotes from the TV show Castle, starring Nathan Fillion and Stana Katic: “If you don’t believe in even the possibility of magic, you’ll never ever find it.”

Jayne Cobb—the sarcastic, uncouth, thuggish mercenary—is, against all reason, probably my favorite character from Firefly and Serenity. I think that’s mostly because of the fantastic job Adam Baldwin does of creating a character who’s loveable and possibly treacherous all at the same time. Some of my favorite Jayne quotes are on this Jayne Cobb Firefly/Serenity mug: “Time for some thrilling heroics,” “Shiny. Let’s be bad guys,” and “Pretty cunning, don’tcha think?”

Any Browncoat’d be proud to own this Firefly/Serenity mug painted with two of the ‘Verse’s best lines: Mal’s “I aim to misbehave,” and Jayne’s “Shiny. Let’s be bad guys.”

One of my favorite blog posts of Brenda’s is about how you should always “do what you love.” I love that, so I painted it on a mug.

Happy shopping, in my Etsy shop or any other small business of your choice!

Oh, I also wanted to mention that I recently created a Facebook page for my blog. If you’re into that kind of thing, feel free to like it! (There’s actually a Like Box over there in the sidebar for you to click.)

Have a great weekend, y’all.

By 9:30 this morning, I had done more than I usually do in an entire day. I’m not sure why. I didn’t even have coffee first. It’s probably because we were working this weekend to get Elliora moved into her own room, which involved setting up the new crib, moving furniture around, dragging the changing table down from the attic and assembling it, and going to IKEA for curtains and a rug because without them every little sound echoed doubly loud in there. We did a lot of it yesterday and Sunday, but there were still a few things to finish up this morning.

I dragged the lovely but annoyingly-uncomfortable rocking chair out to the minivan so we can donate it to Goodwill and lugged the ugly, awesome video chair up from the basement. I moved the changing table from the living room (where Troy assembled it) to Elliora’s room. I found the baskets we originally used for changing-table storage, found new places for the yarn and craft supplies they were holding, and arranged them on the shelves below the changing pad filled with diapers, lotion, and wipes.

All of this rearranging has activated my Must Get Rid of Excess Crap mode. I’ve been regularly donating bags of Elliora’s outgrown clothes to friends and charity in recent months, but now I’m feeling the itch to get rid of more. Books, toys, clothes, furniture, give it all away, MWAHAHAHA! Ahem.

So anyway, while I was busy this morning I had the sudden need to clear out my gift stash. I put a bunch of it into the giveaway bag, but some of the things in there I thought I might give away to you guys. These are all items I bought to give as gifts a couple of years ago but then didn’t, for one reason or another. They’re all new and unused.

Two white, 100% cotton baby t-shirts screenprinted in red with a little cardinal saying, “Cheer.” Although one is tagged 3-6 months and the other tagged 6-9 months, they look exactly the same size to me, and they’re both too small for Elliora. These were purchased from paperbluebird’s Etsy shop, but the shop is no longer open. Know any babies who’ll be about those sizes this holiday season? (Note that the ink on the one on the right, the 6-9 months shirt, is very slightly blurred.)

Two pink and green striped fabric wallets, purchased from bluejaye crafts on Etsy, which also seems to be on hiatus. I own one of these little pouches and have been using it constantly for the past three or four years. It’s a little faded, but has held up beautifully.

Mom’s Birthday Calendar, designed by Sandra Boynton. It’s a perpetual calendar, so you can write birthdays or other important anniversaries on it and use it year after year. On the right is a photo of a similar calendar (the design is slightly different; my calendar is taller and narrower) that I’ve had for years, hanging on my fridge.

Last, a set of square magnets with little nature-y sketches or motifs on them.

Would you like any of these things? Comment and let me know which item(s) you’re interested in. If you only want one or two, that’s fine. If you are interested in all of them, that’s okay too. If more than one person is interested in anything, I’ll just do a drawing. If you win an item and you’d like to PayPal me a couple bucks to cover postage that would be nice, but you don’t have to. Call this a random-act-of-kindness giveaway, I guess. I’ll leave the comments open for a day or two, and once I do any drawings I’ll post the winners’ names. If you don’t email me your address within a day or so, I’ll draw another name. Sound good? Okay then. Comment away!

Updated 13 Oct 2011: Comments are closed. I’ll post the winners tomorrow.

My friend Bonnie decided on her birthday this year that she would take a picture every day of something that made her happy, to remind herself in the midst of a difficult time to Find the Happy. She decided to create a Flickr group so her friends could share the happy too.

Finding a bit of Happy each day.

The rules:

1. Find some Happy and photograph it each day. You could choose to do it less often if that works better for your life but my theory is that the more often you look for the Happy, the more the Happy helps.
2. Do it for a year. Or less. Or more. Or as needed.
3. No Unhappy allowed. That also includes self-abuse if you miss a day or lots of days. Hippie voice: Go with the flow, man. Everything is as it should be.
4. Rules are for breaking. Except Number 3, it’s best not to upset Hippie Voice.

My heart has been heavy lately, thinking about Samantha. So I’m reminding myself of some happy things.

I don’t know about you, but homemade black-and-white cookies make me very happy.

So does the cool way the sun was reflecting off this dotty coffee mug. Like little bubbles of sunlight!

I happened to glance at Annalie’s calendar a day or two before Troy’s birthday and was tickled to realize that she had drawn a miniature portrait of our family on that date, complete with him in a party hat.

I love it when I get a teeny painting of a harried-looking coffee-drinking cat in the mail. Thanks, Brenda!

French toast with powdered sugar on a sunshiny dottery plate.

Keeping a baby alive and homeschooling a 7-year-old are both time-consuming pursuits (duh), but while I barely have time to shower and I don’t seem to have time for housework, I manage to cook dinner almost every night and write emails and blog posts (sort of) and I’ve been crocheting a lot. So I guess it’s true that you do make time for what you love. And crocheting makes me happy.

I’m sure that in a year or so I’ll be hearing many cries of “Mo-ooom, make her stop touching my stuff!” So I try extra hard to enjoy the sweet moments like this, when it’s clear how much Annalie loves her little sister.

On one of Troy’s Navy deployments years ago, he happened to go to a wine festival in Cyprus, and he brought back two of these little glasses. They’re the perfect size for a shot of juice or taking a packet of Emergen-C, and it makes me smile each time I use one. It’s such a random thing to have in my cupboard, small wineglasses from a Cypriot wine festival, yet there they are.

I went to high school and college with Rainbow Rowell. (I know, awesome name!) She wasn’t someone I hung out with, but we knew each other. We had mutual friends, and when we went to the same university we occasionally ate lunch together. I’ve been reading Rainbow’s writing for two decades now, mostly in newspaper-column or blog-post form, but now I’ve read something way more exciting: Rainbow’s very first novel, a romantic comedy called Attachments. The night I started reading it, I actually got out of bed at 3:30am, feeling compelled to send Rainbow a message to let her know I was loving her book and was genuninely happy for and proud of her. (I’ll be interviewing Rainbow soon and doing a giveaway of her book in a blog post, so stay tuned for that!)

The sun was shining into Annalie’s room just right one afternoon so that her bright fuchsia sheets were reflecting a pink glow onto everything else in the room. A few days later, Annalie picked this bouquet of wildflowers, leaves of grass, and a wild strawberry from our yard for me and arranged them in an old vanilla bottle.

The first Saturday that Sonja was here, Karyl & her girls came up to spend the day with us, which was super fun. We started with brunch—aebleskiver and home-fried potatoes and bacon and fruit—which made me very happy because I love brunch. Also, I made the aebleskiver with almond milk and coconut oil and maple syrup (in place of cow’s milk and butter and granulated sugar) so Sonja could eat them, and they were totally as delicious as usual. It was a Very Happy Thing indeed: brunch everyone could eat!

Sonja-safe brownies, made with coconut oil instead of butter and honey instead of sugar. And they tasted good! Yay! I had fun meeting the challenge of cooking without ingredients I usually rely on while Sonja was here.

I love it when naps end like this, with Elliora waking up in the Ergo and smiling when she sees me.

If I have to put up with hot and humid summer weather, at least I get to eat perfectly summery meals like this: grilled mini burgers, strawberries, and marinated cucumber salad. Yum.

After seeing Lauren’s Doctor Who necklace on Flickr, I stalked this Etsy shop until she listed more so I could buy one for myself. I like how the high-top sneaker is a reference to the Chucks habitually worn by both the Tenth Doctor and Chuck Bartowski.

We often make popcorn with the very air-popper that I used when I was a kid, and eat it out of the exact stainless-steel bowl I used to eat popcorn from. (My mom was getting rid of the air popper and asked if I wanted it; I basically swiped the bowl because I loved it so much. Both these things are 30+ years old.)

Trader Joe’s dark chocolate bar with caramel bar and black sea salt. Enough said.

We live near a good bakery and stop there on a regular basis for treats. Every time, Annalie carefully surveys the variety of lovely, fancy cookies and pastries…and then requests a plain butter cookie. I love that.

I believe we’ve mentioned before that our neighbors across the street actually own a bounce house? They put it up for birthdays and parties and random weekends just for fun. And they are happy to share it with the neighborhood kids.

Rain always makes me happy.

Neon aquamarine polish, and bare feet outside, and green grass, and bits of sidewalk chalk. Basically, summer’s here!