And Done

I finished Investment Cooking today, not without a hiccup though. I was making BBQ-glazed Mini Turkey Meatloaves and when I dumped the two pounds of ground turkey into the bowl one smelled a little off so I wasn't sure I wanted to use it. Then I cracked a rotten egg into the bowl. That did it. The whole mess went into the trash and I went to the grocery for more ground turkey and a new dozen eggs. I haven't had an egg go bad in ages but that one was seriously rotten. Ugh. So I washed the bowl and my hands and anything else I thought might have come in contact with the bad stuff and started over. It's a pretty quick and easy recipe. I mean, how hard is it to make meatloaf and portion it out into big muffin tins? I already had the rice made and portioned so baking the meatloaf pucks was the easy part. So now I have 61 suppers in the freezer. Hooray!

While the meatloaves baked I pulled out my new Things With Wings book and drew a few ladybugs. I was in a pretty good mood so I colored them too.

I spent some time staring at the list of my ad campaigns wondering how to know which ones are attracting impressions. (still no clicks) While scrolling and poking around on the ad dashboard I found a button that said Export so I pushed it. It makes an Excel spreadsheet listing each ad campaign and how many impressions it has garnered. Whoopee! This tells me that the 7th ad I made which is a category ad for The Seaview has been up most frequently. The Amazon algorithm likes that one. Last night late I printed off a list of book titles to use as keywords but neglected to write down what I'd put in as a search term to get the list. Arrgh. Back to the drawing board tomorrow to try to find that particular list again.

After supper and after the meatloaves were cooled, packaged, and in the freezer, I sat down to watch Call the Midwife and knitted a few more rounds on the Hayden Hawthorne Sock. It's a pretty simple slip stitch pattern so I can fairly easily watch TV and knit it. I've got a knitting date on Thursday so the sock will be good to knit on then too.

It was a chilly, drizzly day today, gray and dreary. No fun to have to go out in the drizz twice to get things I need for cooking but I was happy to see the Cardinal come into the fallen seed looking for something to eat. It's always nice to see one of those pretty red birds.

And that was it for me today. I realized yesterday that I'm going to The Clearing a week from today, not two weeks like I was thinking, so I've got to watch the long range weather reports and see if I can't strike a happy medium in packing for cool or warm, wet or dry for a week. All I have to do is gather up my art supplies but packing clothing promises to be a challenge.

--Barbara

What's Normal?

I was going to call this blog post "Not My Normal Day" but then it occurred to me to question what's my normal day? Is it days when I drive myself crazy making Amazon ads? Or is it days when I'm cooking up a storm? No, a normal day is having the leisure to draw for an hour if I want to, then pull out the paints to see if I can't keep from embarrassing myself on watercolor paper. Today was not a normal day. Today was the last indoor Market on Military. There wasn't really a good crowd but it was a chilly, rainy day which I'm sure kept people away. I did manage to sell three books--2 The Seaview and 1 Horizon--so in that regard it was a banner day. It was a little bittersweet to pack up my chair and all of the copies of the books and bookmarks, book stands, and my various "I accept this mode of payment" notices. I was very glad that I'd packed my little collapsible wagon so that I could load it all up in one trip and easily pull it out to the car. (I just counted my notes and I sold 28 books over the 8 markets. That's amazing!) We're definitely doing it again next fall.

My assistants and I did a little drawing this afternoon. He drew monsters, she drew fish, and I drew bleeding hearts flowers. Unfortunately it was too crummy out to go to a park so they romped and rowdy-ed around in the house. We did make a short trip to the birdseed store because I'm out of seed and they're not open tomorrow. It gave me a chance to show off my grandchildren to the store clerk who always remembers them as tiny people too.

We were all glad to see the Goldfinch that landed on the crook, but then they love seeing a rabbit or a Sparrow or a Mourning Dove although OJ objected that it wasn't morning when that bird was here. I had to explain that people think that the coo of a Mourning Dove sounds sad and that's how it got its name.

I was going to sit and knit after supper but my eyes felt too tired. I came back here meaning to make a few ads and ended up just doing some keyword and category research. Didn't make any ads. Maybe tomorrow. I checked and some of the category ads I made four days ago still aren't producing any data so I'm reluctant to pile more ads on just yet.

--Barbara

On Today's Menu

I only cooked up one recipe today--Sheet Pan Sausage and Veggies. It's a lot of chopping and cutting up, a little bit of stirring, and then  30 minutes of roasting in a 400 degree oven. Smells good, tastes good, freezes well. Can't go wrong. Only one recipe left but that'll have to wait until Sunday to get made because tomorrow's the market and then I'll have assistants in the afternoon.

Look at these Goldfinches! I was surprised to see all three of them sitting on the feeder and not squabbling. Usually molting makes birds irritable but these three seemed to be getting along just fine.

The big patch of day lilies along the west side of the backyard are sprouting up nice and green. I can't wait until their long stalks with bright orange flowers come along. They bloom for a long time because there's such a big patch of them.

I went back into the line drawing class I took on Creativebug and did the first couple of lessons again. I like the way this poppy turned out. I was drawing on smaller paper than the teacher had so I only drew one flower but I like it.

I'm not as thrilled with today's Daily Practice watercolor. I don't mind the ink drawing of the bicycle but I don't think I like the outsized flowers that are sprouting out of the bike's basket. I think I need to find a different watercolor class. This stuff isn't my style, but at least I tried.

In the afternoon this Downy Woodpecker male came flying over and landed on the suet for a snack and he positioned himself nicely so I could take his picture.

The brioche beanie wasn't what I wanted to knit on tonight so I went downstairs and found some good looking sock yarn and a new pattern for the leg and cast on the cuff at Friday Night Knitting. I got the cuff done and the first three rounds of the leg pattern. You can't see it yet but I think it'll look nice with this yarn. I know it's really thin yarn on really skinny needles but I'm okay with that. So far. Things might change when it comes to knitting the foot because I wear a size 10 shoe so the foot's a bit of a long slog but I'll manage.

I'm excited that there's one more Market on Military tomorrow morning. I've got my little collapsible wagon in the wayback of the car already so I can pack up all my books and my chair and get it out to the car with minimal hassle. Here's hoping that I sell at least one book!

--Barbara

What Did I Make Today?

Today I made two recipes. First thing I got the Chicken Tikka Masala into the slow cooker and let it simmer away most of the day. It's one of the recipes that makes 8 servings so I have to make sure that I have enough rice made and the right shape containers ready.

Then after lunch I whipped up a skillet of One Pot Mexican Beef & Rice. It has corn, black beans, and Rotel tomatoes with green chilies in it. I sprinkle a little low-fat cheddar on it when I reheat it. Yum.

While the food was simmering I pulled out my Things With Wings new drawing book and drew a few angels. I'm not a big fan of angels but they looked like fun to draw and they were. Tomorrow I promise to draw something different but I suspect it'll either be a flower or something else with wings. I'm kind of stuck on drawing with ink pens right now.

I took a little time to cruise around the backyard looking at what's coming up. The Bleeding Hearts are finally tall enough to stick out of the stubble from last year so that they show up in the picture.

And this little disk of sunshine is the first dandelion of the season in the yard. Not the last I am sure because I don't put any weed killer on the lawn. I'm certain that the neighbors are thrilled at the bumper crop of dandelions I usually have but I can't bring myself to kill the dandelions and therefore kill the bees.

The most exciting thing I found in the yard was that the lilac has buds. Little cones of flower buds are on just about every branch. Pretty soon I'll have to cut some to bring into the house. They smell so good. It just occurred to me that this is the same lilac bush that was in the backyard of the first house we moved into in Green Bay in 1962 which means that this bush is over 60 years old!

The forsythia is still blooming. I'm amazed that it's still full of flowers after almost two weeks of blooming.

I got to pick up LC and OJ from their afterschool spot and spend some time with them tonight. DS and DIL1 had some school booster event so I got to Meemaw for a while. I don't remember my kids having as much energy as those two have but I'm sure that they did

My number of ad impressions is slowly increasing but I still don't have any clicks or sales, although I sold a book yesterday and it didn't register on the ad dashboard so maybe. No clicks means that I haven't spent any money yet but then I haven't made any money either. Oh well, he kept saying that it was a long game so I'm waiting.

--Barbara

Cooking Up... Art

I got tangled up in cooking today and didn't manage to get one bird picture. I tried a couple times but as soon as I'd get the camera up and ready the birds would fly off. So there's no picture of three Brown-headed Cowbird males with one lonely female. *sigh*

The coolest thing that happened today was when I went up to get my right blinker light bulb replaced. I showed them the two of my novels that they hadn't seen and it just so happened that the cost of the light bulb was the same as the cost of one copy of each of Horizon and Better Than Mom's so we swapped. I got my car light fixed and they got books to share. (The mechanic is a woman and she and the owner's wife share books.)

The first recipe I cooked today was Hoisin-glazed Chicken Breasts. When I was weighing out the breasts I realized that I'd mistaken a bag of boneless chicken THIGHS for breasts in the freezer so I was a pound of meat short for my next recipe. I contemplated just using the thighs in place of the breasts but decided that was a bad idea. A quick trip to the market solved the problem.

 

While the Hoisin-glazed Breasts were simmering I pulled out the new things with wings book and paged to the flying pigs and gave those a try. They didn't turn out too badly, if I do say so myself.

Next on the cooking agenda was Chicken Breasts Pierre, which use the same flavors as Mom's Sloppy Joe recipe so it's one of my favorites with Worcestershire sauce, mustard, and brown sugar. Yum!

 

And while those chicken breasts were simmering I got out my paints and tried my hand at painting Bougainvillea. I like it. They don't look too much like the flowers but the colors are right so I'm taking that as a win.

 

Today was the last day of the 5-Day Author Ad Profit Challenge. Yesterday and today's videos were all about calculating your profits and other profit-y stuff. Since I don't have any clicks or sales yet, although I did sell a book today but it didn't show up on my Ad Dashboard, I have no numbers to figure with. All through this challenge he has been saying that it takes a few months for the ads to be effective so 5 days is too soon to expect results. I'm being patient, really I am. Just because I'm back here every couple hours to check to see how many impressions I have doesn't mean I'm anxious about it. Really. Okay, I just went over there to find that I have 715 impressions, still no clicks or sales. Ah well. It'll happen.

--Barbara

Who Are You Calling A Turkey?

I looked out this morning and was surprised to see that the hen Turkey was back. This time she leap/flew up to the top of the retaining wall and investigated the cob corn. Of course, today all that was left were cobs but she stayed long enough for a picture. I wonder where she comes from and where she goes because she comes from the front yard and then goes around the fence into the parking lot behind my house.

I was amazed to get this picture of a Goldfinch. You can see how much of his feathers have turned to the bright yellow of his breeding plumage. Even though there has been frost on the roofs and the birdbath has been icy the last few mornings the Goldfinches are telling me that spring must surely be here.

Today's slow cooker recipe was Chicken Cacciatore. It smelled so good cooking all day.

While that was crockpotting away I got the Curried Chickpeas cooked up and packaged up for the freezer. That smelled good too but the aromas together were a little confusing, not bad just odd.

I spent most of the afternoon head down at the laptop researching categories for Better Than Mom's and then making a category ad for each one. We're supposed to make 5-10 category ads for each book. I made 8, that's between 5 and 10 so I'm good. One book done, two to go. But next I want to try my hand at rewriting my book blurbs to make them more appealing. That's my task for tomorrow, I think. (In between cooking a couple recipes, that is. Having this ad challenge going on and Investment Cooking at the same time is making me a little crazy.)

I managed to pull out my sketchbook and drew a few butterflies from my new drawing book which is full of things with wings to draw. My brain is so befuddled with ad making and trying to understand what he's talking about half the time. I'm glad this challenge is free, I'd be a basket case if I'd have had to pay for this intensive week of learning. It's been too long since I've learned something new!

Last night when I turned on the bathroom light switch it sizzled and the light went on and then off. Not good. So I called my electrician friend TD today and he stopped over on his way home from work to put in a new light switch. What a relief! I had visions of little fires starting in the wall every time I touched the switch. Thanks, TD!

I have to get up early tomorrow because I have a 9 o'clock appointment to get my right turn signal fixed. It started fast blinking the other day and I know that means that one of the bulbs burned out. It's always something. But I guess it's an easy and quick fix. Whew.

--Barbara

Not Much

I didn't feel very inspired today. First thing I got the first recipe of this bout of Investment Cooking into the slow cooker. It was Chicken, Mushroom, Brown Rice Casserole and it's pretty simple to throw together (except for pulling the skin off the chicken drumsticks, that's a bit of a pain) and then let it cook for 7 hours. I let it cool down in the pot and then portioned it and got it into the freezer.

Once the food was cooking I got dressed and went down to Zambaldi Beer to see what DS was brewing. He was making a sour fruit beer like one that was very popular last summer. The brewery smelled like roasted grain and it was very humid in there but since it was about 40 degrees this morning it wasn't too hot in there.

Then I went to the grocery for more brown rice and another onion because I mistook 1# bags of rice for 2# bags and knew I didn't have enough, and the onion that I had on hand turned out to be rotten when I cut into it so I was one onion short. *sigh* Sure, I don't mind going to the grocery two days in a row.

I picked up OJ after school and we went on his birthday shop. We went to the Schoolhouse where there were things that he remembered seeing on a previous trip and to Target which no longer had what he remembered but he did manage to find a couple things. We came back here to do homework and play with his new toys, then it was off to Pizza Ranch again for supper and a couple games in the arcade. I got him home by about 6:30 where he couldn't wait to show off his booty. We had fun.

We did spend a few minutes drawing while we were here. I got a new drawing book in the mail so I wanted to try it out. I drew a couple flying fish and then OJ said to put in a monster so I drew a monster head with big teeth swimming out from behind some seaweed. I'm not as creative as he is but he tolerates my efforts.

Man, the Amazon Ads lesson/video today really took the wind out of my sails. He said to download some software in Chrome and then use it to mine keywords from Amazon listings and copy them to an Excel spreadsheet. I don't know if I want to download random software which means I'll have to download Chrome and then I'm not very familiar with Excel. That said I'm almost to 550 impressions. Still no clicks or sales. I feel like it's taking too long but I know that he said it takes 1-3 months to know if your ads are effective. Patience, Barbara.

--Barbara

Quiet Sunday

My big activity of the day was picking up my granddog, Porter, from the kennel where she spent the weekend while DS and family were busy. If you pick up the dog before a certain time you don't get charged for an extra day. I'm glad to be able to step in when needed.

I spent a lot of time throughout the day watching recordings of the Q&A sessions from this week's Amazon Ad Challenge. I was hoping to pick up answers to questions that I had but everything he spoke about were things that I already knew. Ah well.

After dropping Porter off, I went to the grocery and did the shopping for the next bout of Investment Cooking which will start tomorrow. I know that I won't get the cooking done before Tuesday night to take out the trash but it isn't reliably warm enough to have the trash stink up the garage just yet. I spent $141 which I figure isn't too much considering that I'll be making 6-8 weeks of suppers.

I realized this morning that I'd tucked the book 365 Days of Drawing on a shelf and stopped doing a page a day. Bad Barbara. So I pulled it out and flipped to the next page where I was asked to draw an iris with colored pencils. My colored pencils aren't as richly colored as the ones they used for the example but I don't think it turned out too badly.

Then on the next page of Draw 500 Fabulous Flowers I found this lovely arch of what looks to me like Bleeding Hearts. I know it's not as colorful but I'm really enjoying drawing these flowers with just an ink pen.

Late in the afternoon I looked out to see a male Cardinal sharing the platform feeder with a pair of House Finches. Just as I got the camera up and on to record the oddity, the Cardinal flew off. I guess he wasn't willing for anyone to see him sharing his seed.

I didn't paint today. I just didn't find the time or the energy. I did take a walk around the block and nearly froze my fingers off. It got up to the mid-40s with a sharp little breeze, not very springy. Oh, I should have carried up the slow cooker this afternoon. Well, I can do it in the morning, I guess.

--Barbara

Third One's the Charm

I told you that I'm taking an online 5-Day Amazon Ads Challenge class so I've been hyper-focused on my books, both paperback and eBooks. Every aspect of them has to be right. On the first day of class we made sure to have the right subtitle for the books. Unfortunately you can't change or add a subtitle to paperbacks but you can to eBooks so I changed the one for Better Than Mom's from "where you don't have to be told to clean your plate" to "life and love in a small town diner." Much more of a hint of what's inside. Now for The Seaview we have "Caribbean love after loss romance" and Horizon got "mature romance in a rural setting." I was happy with those changes but I kept thinking about ways to make the books more appealing and I thought that Horizon's cover was too dull and dark so the other day I found a more cheerful sunset picture for free and changed the cover. Better but not exactly right. Today I went over to JB's house to brainstorm keywords, categories, and navigating the Marketing tab of the Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing dashboard. I talked about wanting to change Horizon's cover and she pulled up a stock photo site that I hadn't seen so I went there and found the perfect picture. Naturally it wasn't free. I had to sign up on the site and pay for a month's membership to get a copy of the photo without watermarks all over it but it's worth it. It's exactly what I was hoping for. And when I got home I went right into my account on the photo site and cancelled the recurring membership charge. They were bereft to see me go but I was adamant. Anyway, here's the picture. What do you think?

I spent the morning surfing Amazon looking for authors and titles of books that I could piggyback my ads onto. I found quite a few so I made a list, made two lists for each title actually, and spent the time at JB's constructing ads and typing in all of these keywords. All of my work is paying off. I've gotten over a hundred new impressions since I started the class, no clicks or sales yet, but I can be patient.

The Cardinal landed on the platform feeder in the morning sunlight (it got cloudy and rainy in the afternoon and only got up to 45 degrees) so I couldn't resist taking his picture. I saw a pair of Goldfinches (the male was all bright yellow and black) on the round feeder but they weren't here long enough for me to get a shot.

And here's the day lilies sprouting on the other half of the retaining wall. I just love looking out back and seeing all of the green getting taller by the day.

I pulled out 10-Steps: Flowers late this afternoon and found some Snowdrops to draw and color. They remind me of spring.

Today's Daily Practice wasn't as much of a challenge as I thought it'd be. I confess that I didn't paint in as many flowers as she had because I didn't want them to all bleed together. I think she uses less water than I do or maybe they cut out the drying time from the video but anyway here's one of her faces with a floral braid. Not bad, although the eyes are a little odd. Next time I won't use ink in wet paint.

Now I have a mission to sell through all of the copies of Horizon that I have on hand so that I can order some with the new cover. I'm so excited that I found it--and now all of the old ones will be collector's items! Next Saturday is the last indoor Market on Military. We've all decided that we aren't going to do the summer market, it's just too much of a commitment, every Thursday from 2-7 from May through October. No, not giving that much of my time to flogging books. I'm waiting for the tour buses to visit the Sturgeon Bay bookstore, those might be some very fun and profitable times. I never thought I'd burst forth in all of this marketing stuff. Never. I was going to be happy selling a few books to family and friends. Oh well, a girl can change her mind.

--Barbara

Scrambled Brains

I'm just not getting the Amazon Ads Challenge very well. Today I was supposed to find 100 keywords for one of my novels and make a keyword ad with them. I found/figured out 31. Keywords are words or phrases that a person might put into the Amazon search bar when they're looking for something to read. The idea is to position your book(s) so that the covers pop up when someone searches for something similar. I had enough trouble with finding categories yesterday and keywords were harder to find. I'm going over to JB's tomorrow morning (she's doing the challenge too) and we're going to see if putting 2 heads together helps. Wish me luck.

That big Mourning Dove was in the platform feeder again today only this time it managed to spill or eat almost all of the seeds in there. When I went out to fill feeders this afternoon there wasn't hardly anything in there, not even much chaff.

The perennials up on the retaining wall are sure sprouting. It didn't hurt that we had a couple 80 degree days last week, I'm sure. I've got a call into the landscaper to come and fill in a couple gaps where there were raspberries that gave up the ghost in one spot and I'm not sure what didn't come up in the other. I'm happy to see a nice row of green.

The rhubarb is really growing. I wonder how tall it has to get before I can cut it and cook it and eat it.

I flipped open Sketching this afternoon and found a page with cups of coffee on it so that's what I drew. To be honest I spent most of the day glued to the laptop trying my darnedest to figure out keywords so drawing was a quick thing today.

I almost didn't pull out my paints today. I wasn't too enthusiastic about the next Daily Practice but I started to feel guilty and I had a little time between supper and my knitting Zoom so out came the paints and I booted up the next video. I was expecting to paint a face but instead she had us paint a block of different colored circles, add different colored hair, and then draw the faces on in archival ink. It's obvious I didn't wait until all of the paint circles were completely dry because some of the hair paint bled into the face paint but I don't hate it. 

And I added on a bunch of rounds on the Rainbow Brioche Beanie tonight at Friday Night Knitting. Get used to seeing this rectangle of striped knitting because I'm usually slow and in this stitch I'm even slower.

I took a walk around the block again today and again today I made it less than halfway around before I was puffing like an old steam engine. I'm determined to keep going. I hate it but I'm too stubborn to quit.

--Barbara