February 14th

Today is an auspicious and hectic day for many people as they scramble to gather the ingredients to the recipe of 'impress my lover'.

Of course, the cards, candy, flowers, gifts, etc. are not all nowadays, focused on those who are romantically involved with someone. There are gifts given meant to celebrate this day with friends, co-workers, and even animal companions. No one is excluded during present time.

There is great speculation for the origins of this celebration, and what it means to different people. Among those who worship the ancient Roman deities, this day may be remembered as the day of Lupercalia. Celebrated between the 13th and the 15th.

For some of those who are monotheistic, it is was on the 14th day of this month that Valentine (possibly one of many) was executed for his belief in the positive influence of marriage.

Still others see this as a day for those who are single to unite. This is celebrated on the Ideas of February too.

Many people and countries see it as an over commercialized day wrought with flagrant immodesty and meant only for the profit of the companies. Or just as a bad day.

Some people find their understanding of the history in books of various sorts. Others

Whatever your version of this day, consider it a day for kindness and positive feelings toward others. That should be enough to cover all the above.




Interesting name origins:

Valentine - Derived from the ancient Latin, this rather popular name originally meant 'strength' or 'valour'. So, perhaps asking someone to be 'be my Valentine' means you are asking them to be your strength?

Peace.

New Year

Welcome to 2017! For some the year started on the Winter Solstice, for some yesterday, and for others it has yet to come.

Consider the possibilities of this new chapter in your life.

Store Updates, New Snats and Bigger Workspace

It has been quite a journey since the last time I wrote an entry. Coyote's Blessings is no longer selling at the Mountain View General Store. The MVGS closed permanently earlier this year. Everyone is moving on...

Crow named our house The Pinecone House because the roof and shape remind her of a pine cone. What do you think?

Including us! We moved to a new house in July. We're still unpacking but the weather is great and we have an amazing view from our kitchen window. Our workshop doubled in size, which means more space for bigger projects.

I am working on this year's writing projects. I started 'The Sun', a Found Art piece, and am working on 'The Keys to Success' too. I expect them to be done sometime in 2017. Crow wrote a comic piece in her Yuki's Life about our move. She has a Patreon site too. She has been creating more, bigger snats, including Mega Snat!

MEGA snat

Our store has been renovated! We've cleaned it up, and retired some products. Check out our new Snat Gallery! Most of the snats in the gallery belong to the Snat Lady.

September was event madness. We had an event almost every weekend in September., including Luna Park 2016 (post and pictures coming soon). 

Speaking of shows - we have another official regular show! On the first Saturday of every month we'll be at the De Anza Flea Market, if you happen to be in the Cupertino (California) area. You can view all our up-coming events on our new Events Calendar.

Business as Usual

We always put a quote on the back of our business cards. It is a positive quote so that whoever receives the card can contemplate or enjoy the words on the backside. Coming up with quotes is always difficult because nine out of ten of the cards have unique quotes. One of my current favorite quotes is from Helen Keller: "If you keep your face to the light, you cannot see the shadow."

Last night I wrote in my journal: I'm lost. I need a ray of light so I can see the brightness and ignore the shadow. 

I've spent quite a bit of this day reading articles about project management, leadership, how to improve your social presence, how to generate more Twitter followers and several other topics relating to positively increasing business output on social media. That, and welcoming more than thirty new followers to our Twitter followers.

I am pleased we have so many new Twitter followers. It will also be interesting to see how many of them remain our followers, or -more likely- wait a week and then unfollow our establishment. For those who read this that don't use Twitter, following someone and then unfollowing them to add to your total 'Followers' count is "a thing". Despite this, I am grateful Coyote's Blessings has over two hundred followers!

All this increased interest in our Twitter following, the Universe telling me to pay attention to management and organizing skills, and concern about where we're going come on the heels of Crow and I working on a new business strategy. We're going to revamp the business, which will include shutting down the site next week to work on breathing new life into it. As mentioned in previous posts, we're going to discontinue products that aren't working for us - and focus more on products and topics concerning K.E. Milrona's Andromeda Galaxy (like snats!).

That does not mean we're going to completely revamp our inventory, just bring more focus to it. Items that are currently available won't be available on-line after this point and will only be available if you come to one of our fairs.

Thanks for your continued reading. Please leave a comment or a question or anything if you have something to say!

Store Update

We are gearing up for Halloween time. Interested in some pumpkins for your table or party gift bag? What about a ghost-and-gravestone salt and pepper shaker? These and more in our store. Be sure to order soon so we have time to ship your ornaments and decorations before the season is truly upon us!

Quite a bit is happening in the store. All of the inventory should have the same font format and size now. If you see any items that are different, please email me (coyote@coyotesblessings.com), send a form through the Contact Us page, add a message below, send a direct from Twitter or... well, you get the idea, there are a lot of ways to get in contact with us!

An astute observer, or just someone who has been reading this since the beginning, might note there are several less pages of inventory in our store than there were a few weeks ago. I've also removed some empty entries, not that anyone except me can see them, but at least they're not cluttering the behind the scenes area anymore. We've discontinued some products (like the beaded flags) due to being unpopular and, in addition, made some show-only (like the window clings).

That means you'll have to come to a show to buy them! Well, not completely true. They're still available for sale, just not on the site. You can order them via. email if you really want them or just come to one of our shows and you won't have to worry about paying shipping.

The show-only items are generally either too fragile to ship or don't have the same impact on the web as they do 'in person'. Window Clings, for example, are truly a must-see type of item if you want to buy them. Besides, it is more fun to show off a Window Cling by sticking it to something. The type of 'don't take my word for it, watch this instead!' attitude.




















I considered making a Window Cling youtube video for demonstration purposes. What do you think?

Sally the Titmouse, Luna Park 2015 and more!

NEW AT COYOTE'S BLESSINGS

K.E. Milrona's "Nightmare Through Memory Lane", the third volume in the Bookworld Series, is available in our store. An addition, the inspirational children's book "Sally the Titmouse" is available.

We have a gorgeous figurine of Sally too. We released her last week, and we only have one left in stock. She's quite popular, rivaling Spots as our most popular Clay Critter. Unique to our critters, Sally has a removable hat.


In other news, the website is being updated. The pictures will be fluctuating for the next week, upgraded to better quality and to reflect Crow's ever increasing skill with the clay.

LUNA PARK 

Luna Park was wonderful, again, this year! Our booth was located much closer to the food trucks, and it was nice to have increased traffic. We featured the latest (and last) installment of the Moon Cat Series, New Moon Cat. (picture, top left). Prints of the rest of the Moon Cat Series and other prints, such as Tree (picture, bottom right) are available in our "Paintings and Wall Art" category.

COMING SOON

This year we participated in the chalk art too, and Crow created a piece that is a sneak-peak to our up-coming graphic novel "Dusk of Dawns". Look for more information about it coming soon!

Cover to Dusk of Dawns: Brothers' War

We Live!

Just in time for Halloween we rise from the dead (metaphorically, speaking, honest). With 3 weeks to go for Luna Park and we left you hanging! What happened at Luna Park? How was the FabMo event? What's going on for the holidays? New products? New triumphs?

All is finally revealed.

A computer virus caught us off guard. It went straight through our apparently meager protection and the consequent pop up ads drown me every time I attempted to update a site or so much as log on to the internet to check my email. While Andromeda (my laptop) kept me apprised of in-coming messages and orders, our pictures are stored on the tower computer, CASS. Fortunately Crow swooped in to save us and after four days of wrestling with the Ad Monsters, she secured clear surfing and gave CASS a clean bill of health.

Luna Park Chalk Festival was fantastic. We were in a different position in the park, surrounded on all sides by vendors too. A wonderful array of customers came to visit us. Despite having a few hitches with our display (both tables broke!), this year was just as marvelous as last year. Pictures and a more thorough entry forth-coming in an up-coming post.

FabMo was interesting. The event was inside, held at the Elks' Lodge in Palo Alto. The majority of the vendors were selling fabric goods such as pillows, quilts and small tapestries / wall hangings. Due to the restrictions placed on what the vendors can sell there, none of our products featured on the site were on our table! Crow tried her hand at stuffed animal creation and Mr. Snuffles the Alligator was born. I'll write up more on this event too, though we only have limited pictures (forgot my camera in the mad dash out the door the morning of).