Sometimes "Santa" drives a huge semi-truck & trades in his red bag of goodies for this....

So...my hubby says to me last night "You know, it's been two weeks since you did a blog post."

"NO WAY!" I reply...

Uh oh....

He was right.

Again. (rats!)

But in all fairness, look at what's been keeping me busy...

The long, long, long awaited Jeanne d'Arc Living shipment arrived Monday afternoon (not without it's share of glitches that I'm now able to laugh about...).

I will say one thing about laying eyes on the products as they were one-by-one revealed from the crate: This may be the best stuff I've ever purchased. No kidding. Without exception, every item we unboxed (and boy we couldn't wait to rip those boxes open!), was better than we'd even expected. And we had high hopes to begin with.

Do you know that in less than 24 hours we managed to get this beast of a container unpacked, divvy-ed up into piles assigned to our many pre-orders from the site, and then turned back around and shipped to our customers? In LESS THAN 24 HOURS!

This would NEVER have been possible with the extra help I had which included my FABULOUS nephew, David who came and stayed with us just for this event (and may I say, that young man WORKS HARD!), and of course my INCREDIBLE daughter Olivia.

I think we shocked our UPS & USPS drivers yesterday when they showed up here and saw the literal MOUNTAIN of boxes waiting for them in their respective areas... I'm going to owe them a VERY NICE gift this year at Christmas!

I'm tired...

and yet somehow exhilerated.

But tired, nonetheless. :)

For some, it may seem odd that we took pics of the details of this crate. But others of you might appreciate the cool "industrial" quality of the looks of this crate...

Others of you may also think I'm crazy for not wanting to just pitch this crate into the rubbish heap... just yet.

To my eyes, it looks somewhat like a work of art. (Partly because I've waited for it so long that a cardboard box would have looked like a work of art to me at this point.) I love those giant galvanized hinges and the raw wood.

I'm thinking of one store in particular that we all know and love (ends with 'pologie'....) that would take something like this and stick it in the middle of a display and within a few months we'd all be clammoring for shipping crates to decorate with!

:)

But seriously, is it me, or wouldn't this have great potential for some great, funky use?

We're already eyeing it thinking that the lower half would make a cool, urban-loft style coffee table...

Who knows. Just wanted to share what's been keeping me so "occupied" lately.

But, life hasn't been completely about Jeanne d'Arc Living -- in the meantime, while feverishly preparing to be poised and ready to blast through this shipment when it arrived, we were also FINALLY snapping pics of some more great new things for the shop -- which "should" be up on the site VERY soon -- and of course I'll blog about them.

UPDATE/GREAT NEWS!!!

WE MANAGED TO GET IN 20 COPIES OF THE JEANNE D'ARC LIVING

MAGAZINE ISSUE #2!

THIS IS HUGE!! WE GOT THE VERY LAST COPIES THAT THEY FOUND

IN THEIR WAREHOUSE AND I WILL BE PUTTING THEM UP ON THE

SITE TODAY....WHEN THEY ARE GONE. THEY ARE GONE FOREVER,

SO....

If you pre-ordered issue #4 of the magazine, I expect to get our shipment of it (hot off the press) in the next couple of weeks at the longest. Naturally, we'll ship them out either the same day or the next day (depending on the time of day we receive them here).

For now, though, I have a daughter heading off for China for two weeks that I plan to spend some quality time with.

I'm sure you understand.

I'll try to get back here and post about the new items in between Starbucks talks with my beautiful girl and errands to buy all the last-minute travel necessities (junk food, reading material for the plane trip (don't even ask how many hours!!)....

If you pre-ordered anything from Jeanne d'Arc Living, it is already winging its way to you now... Let me know what you think of your goodies!!

For now, I have China and Olivia on my mind....

Talk soon!

Ruth