Wedding Anniversary... and My Last Day of Work!!!!!!

today is my last day of work! as of monday, i start my maternity leave! i can't believe that the time flew by so quickly - and yet so slowly!!! i have to admit that i have some feelings of ambivalence: this is the first time in a long time that i'll be off of work for an extended period, as well as the first time i'll be home with a BABY, no less! it makes things really REAL now - the mini-muffin is well on her way and we're going to be parents!!!! the most important job in the world! incidentally, we celebrated our 11th wedding anniversary this week, and i think i was secretly hoping that the baby would make her appearance on that day! we went for spicy korean food - but no go. she's not ready yet. it's okay though - i'd prefer that she bake a little while longer anyways!! and at least she'll know that her parents didn't have a shotgun wedding! (not that there is anything wrong with that!)

i've planned it so that i (hopefully) have a little bit of time to myself to do the whole "nesting" thing, as well as catch up on some reading and TV watching. (nothing like taking time off to watch all 6 seasons of Sex and the City - thank you, Laurie!) but i'm usually not one to sit still for very long, so i'm hoping to also think of some amazing ideas for my etsy shop! i have some magnificent beaded sterling silver wire on the way, which has inspired ideas for more stacking rings! the husband and i were joking about the fact that everyone calls us "bohemian" because we're kind of artsy (before you get all thinking we're hippie-esque, we do NOT own one piece of tye-dye), and that his drum machine lives right next to my jewelry microtorch!

i've also been giving a lot of thought to making sure that i try to maintain a good balance between motherhood, career-hood (even though, believe me, if i could stay home full time, i would!), and crafty-hood. i'm hoping to find a happy medium for all the parts of me!

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37 weeks, 5 days... sigh!

i don't know why i insisted on working up to this point. i'm fat, i'm slow, i'm tired, i'm just ready to nap all the time. i'm cranky, and bitchy, and just about everyone is irritating me to no end.

but i tell you, it's incredible how i just love this baby already and can't wait for her to arrive.

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Google Analytics... I Think I'm Obsessed!

Google Analytics is a pretty cool tool for people who'd like to know how to better tweak their website to attract more traffic. ETSY has made it pretty easy for sellers to track the traffic to their etsy shop by incorporating the necessary HTML code into their site.

so, when i log in, i can see where my traffic is coming from, what time of day gets the most traffic, and what pages people are looking at. it's pretty neat to see where people come from, and how long they linger in my etsy shop.

here's a basic tutorial that might help people get their Google Analytics account up and running - i had originally posted it over on the etsy tradeaholics' blog because we got obsessed over it!

STEP 1: visit www.google.com/analytics and sign in (if you have an existing igoogle account)/sign up for a new account.
STEP 2: click on "Add Website Profile". in the URL area and enter your etsy shop address like this: http://www.yourshop.etsy.com/, set your location, time and hit "finish". If they ask for your shop name type in http://www.yourshop.etsy.com/ (Do NOT include the http:// in the URL)
STEP 3: when you get to the tracking code page just scroll to the bottom and hit "finish". you don't need this code - it states here that you should copy the code and put on all your webpages, but, lucky for us, etsy already does this for us automatically. just hit "finish".
STEP 4: on the next page you will see a grey table with your website URL. next to the URL should be a code that looks like UA-1234567-8. highlight and copy the code to your clipboard. (ctrl + C)
STEP 5: open up a separate browser page (don't close your Google Analytics page) and go to http://www.etsy.com/shop_analytics.php. you can also access the page you need on etsy via "your etsy" - there is a link on the left hand side toolbar that says "web analytics". paste (Ctrl + V) the code in the designated area. save changes.
STEP 6: now you're finished setting up Google Analytics for your etsy shop!!

if you look at the overview page in Google Analytics you will see that there is a yellow symbol with an exclamation mark on it under the status column. this just means that your account isn't showing stats yet - not that you did anything wrong! when it turns into a green check mark then you can start viewing your stats. it can take up to 24 hours for the stats counter to update - but mine started showing before that.i hope that it helps make things a little clearer for everyone. i know that the first time i registered, the little yellow symbol never went away and i was freaking out thinking that NO ONE was visiting my shop! however, i just deleted the website profile and added it again. i received a new code and i went to etsy and put the new code into the "web analytics" area. and it's worked fine ever since.

now i can't stop checking my stats. sigh. oh well, at least it's another thing to do while i'm off on maternity leave!

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Spring Giveaway Winner - BIZZIELIZZIE!

congratulations to the fabulous BizzieLizzie for being the winner of my spring giveaway!!!!!! thanks to EVERYONE who posted here and are now following my blog... make sure you stay tuned for my summer giveaway!!!!!!

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