careful what you wish for...

So I'll bet you're all wondering why my blogging has been so sporadic lately. The Curse of the Old Tyme Train Ticket Invitation, that's why. Remember those train ticket invitations that I mentioned back here? Well, I got sick of producing them so I took them "off the market" for a while, meaning I stopped listing them at my Etsy shop so I could get a breather and work on creating some new designs.

What I didn't realize is that, when you search at Google for train invitations and find my link, the "sold" page for my invites still comes up, which means people can still contact me to ask about them. And boy have they.

It never occurred to me that people would be able to find my products by using a search engine because there are bound to be eleventy-million results when you are looking for such a generic item as "train ticket invitations", and I just figured my stuff would be buried so deep in that metaphoric pile of train-related party stuff that no one would ever get to me.

Well guess what? When you search for "train ticket invitations" in Google, my invites are the number 8 out of about 142,000 results. And if you are a little more specific and type in "old train ticket invitations", I am number 1. Out of about 144,000. NUMBER ONE, BABY. Yeah, I'm so big time.

Thing is, to keep up with production while orders are pouring in is...difficult, to say the least. I'm thinking I need to outsource, but a) I am a completely neurotic control freak and don't trust anyone else to do it right, and b) I'm lazy and don't feel like messing with the whole hiring and delegating process. I suppose I could just tell people no, that I am not interested in making any more right now, but they all seem so excited when they ask about them that I feel bad saying no. I'm kind of hoping that some CEO at some mass merchandiser has a kid who wants a train party, finds my invites online, and offers me big bucks for my design so they can produce them and sell them in their stores. Hey, a girl can dream.

While it may seem like the point of this post is to brag about my popular train ticket design (which it is, a little), the real purpose of this post is to defend my pathetic blogging efforts over the past few weeks because I am SWAMPED. In addition to Etsy stuff, I had 3 Junior League events this week - YES, THREE - and I'm doing MOPS and helping with childcare at MOPS and just signed Alex up for 2 year old choir at church and have about a zillion other things on my plate that I will eventually blog about...oh, and did I mention that I have a two-year old that needs lots of love and attention? We've had a ton of fun over the past few weeks, too, which I promise I will get to...once the train slows down, and I can jump off...