A Fresh Look, Fabulous Jewelry & Exciting Plans

I am covering the last two weeks, since we did not have an estate sale last week I took a week off from the blog. We started our time in Prescott and the weather was absolutely beautiful! We took advantage of the nice weather to run some errands. The internet connection with AT&T had been painfully slow as of late and we are still waiting for fiber optic to be installed in our area. Kuochun did some research and decided to switch to Sparklight. So far, it has turned out to be a big improvement but they gave us some old-school equipment which requires a cable connection. Kuochun did not think we had one but I said oh no, we do! The connection is in my bedroom and high up on the wall because it was behind the wall-mounted TV I inherited with the house. There is also a little shelf that was built to hold the old-school modem but they also gave us a second component which there is no room for. I built up a temporary place to put the second component, on top of Mother's cedar chest and an air purifier which is not in service right now because I need to buy filters. The good news is that the modem is out of the living room but the bad news is this "setup" is certainly not cute! I invested in the good-looking TV stand to keep the area clutter-free. However the longer cord I purchased for the TV is long enough to plug it into the wall, but not long enough to thread through the TV stand and reach the wall while the TV is in viewing position. I will have to look into an even longer power cord and get some advice about how to make this look better. Other good news is while the connection is not quite as speedy as Scottsdale, it is much speedier than it was. I cannot wait four hours for estate sale photos to upload to the ads!

After our visit to Sparklight, we went to another place Kuochun had researched, Touchmark. We are still in search for a fitness center to use while in Prescott and Touchmark was recommended by ChatGPT. Touchmark is a senior living community but its fitness center is open to the public. The community is so nice, definitely the nicest one I have seen in person. The fitness center is not huge but has the most stunning mountain view. The photo does not capture how beautiful it is. They do not have a NuStep machine which both Kuochun and I use but they do have something very similar, as shown in the middle row of machines. They would give us a 7-day free trial so we are going to take them up on that offer as soon as we can spend a full week there.

We headed to Prescott Valley afterwards and wanted to try a restaurant at a golf course but they are closed on Monday and Tuesday. Google suggested a similar restaurant down the highway in the next town, which is called Dewey-Humboldt. It was fine but I would not make a point to go there again, it was too far from home to get the type of food we ordered, a brat and a hot dog. We ordered key lime pie and after a few bites, the server came by and asked how it was taking pieces off with the fork. I said one of them went flying a little but but the rest were fine. She then told me that the chef was using real butter but a customer suggested they switch to margarine because it would cut easier! This freaked me out because I do not eat margarine. I thought it tasted odd but could not put my finger on it. I took the rest home and for some reason all the whipped cream turned into yellow liquid! That is the problem with dining out, you never know what you are eating. The Whatnot seller recommended a seed oil free restaurant in Chandler called George & Gather, she said she and her family eat there all the time. It looks amazing, I am excited to try it out!

We were able to visit Ace Hardware in Prescott Valley which is a great store. I needed some shims to level out one of my jewelry display cabinets. I also was able to get a battery charger for the van. I think we were gone from Prescott for about two weeks and the battery had died once again so we had to call AAA. I had the repair place where I picked up the van after having it transported from Mount Prospect check it out back in May and I was told that there is no outside force draining the battery. Next time I bring the van back to Scottsdale I am going to get a second opinion. In the meantime, I hope the charger is working!

We went to Costco in Prescott, mainly because I have been thinking about getting an Apple Watch. I love technology but have resisted getting an Apple Watch for a long time because I was concerned about radiation coming from a device which directly touches the skin. I asked ChatGPT and it said that although Apple Watches have only been around for 11 years, the type of emissions they transmit are not new and considered safe. Since I do not like to have the ringer turned on because all of the sounds are disruptive to my work, I can wear the watch around the house and not have to carry the phone everywhere I go. Also, it operates in GPS mode which means it can be paired with the phone and there is no extra cell phone bill. Costco does not allow for the watches to be tried on due to theft concerns so I opted for the larger 46mm size. One of the guys working at Costco said it is much easier to read, although my up-close vision is still perfect. It is kind of large on my wrist and not the most comfortable but I am getting used to it. I have a lot to learn about it but it does remind me to stand up and move around if I have been sitting and working too long and I have learned how to record my workouts. I can even scan the watch on the treadmill and it perfectly records everything! It does not seem to catch 100% of the text messages but hopefully that will improve over time.

The next day, first thing in the morning the ASUS computer that we just brought to Prescott was shut down and would not turn back on. We went to Best Buy but had to make an appointment and come back in the evening. The Geek Squad technician could not get it going. He did say the computer kept cycling on and off but it would be $100 to see what was wrong with it. In the end I decided to hang onto the power cord which is worth up to $150 on eBay and have the computer recycled. I thought there was nothing on there that we needed to keep because my files are either on a thumb drive or in the cloud. I was wrong! Kuochun mentioned late that evening that all of our TurboTax software and files were on there, going back to 2018. Good thing I always printed a hard copy of my taxes! It will make doing next year's taxes more challenging because TurboTax will not be able to automatically transfer our information from last year. At least I now have ChatGPT to help me through the exact steps if needed. I will not be buying a new computer right now since I just purchased the new one for Scottsdale. I will use the small white computer for now and bring the laptop to Prescott as a backup. There has been no progress on the Arizona Room so I have not been able to set up an office there anyway.

Rachel and I have been working on a redesign of the C'est La Brie's logo and graphics to match the Prescott pop-up shop. The previous logo is beautiful but the background is of the floral print that I had in the garage in Mount Prospect. She was able to pick up where ChatGPT left off and she designed a logo with a background inspired by the backsplash tile. The business cards have been ordered and are scheduled to arrive next Tuesday.

Rachel is going to help me with a trunk show of vintage Native American jewelry at a store called Faherty. We scheduled the trunk show for November 21-22 at the Greenwich CT store. I have been busy curating a collection of pieces that I think folks who love Faherty's clothing will enjoy. I am including multi-color inlay, turquoise only and no stone pieces. I would like to expand to chip inlay but Rachel said the store is tiny and there probably will not be room to display a ton of stuff. I always like to be prepared though! I am trying to keep things budget-friendly but will include a couple of classic squash blossom necklaces. I have one which is Dry Creek turquoise, jewelry with this turquoise is very hard to find and I have never seen a Dry Creek squash blossom necklace before. The color is fabulous, a very pale blue. I will send Rachel some photos if she wants to help choose the jewelry for the trunk show. She will also try and sell some of her pieces that she no longer wears. As soon as the business cards are ready next week I am going to send her a package with the jewelry and a few utilitarian display props. She is thinking about pulling a drawer from her antique flat file cabinet to fill with jewelry for the display. I am sure that she has some cool stuff that she can use to enhance the display as well. Mother had the most amazing hand forged compote and matching candlesticks that she purchased at one of our estate sales. Rachel has the set now and I think the candlesticks would be great to load up with bolo ties and heishi necklaces. Items on cards could go in the compote bowl. I will share some photos once the display is put together.

This past Monday the Whatnot seller came by to pick up more items to sell. She had been to New Mexico the previous two weeks in a row and needed to take a break from the grind of traveling. She only brought a couple of pieces back which is awesome, and since I had lots of new items to show she was able to fill up a basket again. She also did some sourcing around Old Town Scottsdale before coming over, and was able to find lots of goodies. She even gave me the information about a store I was not aware of, where the owner is looking to liquidate his collection of 1990s new old stock pieces from Running Bear Shop. She told me to let her know when I would visit because then she would give the owner a heads up. She actually told him he cannot miss me because of my purple hair! But right now I am not in the mode where I need to expand my source pool. I am definitely curious to visit the store though!

As part of the preparation for the Faherty trunk show, I have been working on updating the C'est La Brie's website. After Rachel provided me with the round logo, I worked with ChatGPT to make lots of updates and improvements to the site. The new logo is up and I was even able to easily update the favicon in Shopify, so the updated logo displays on a Windows tab next to the tab name, C'est La Brie's. The favicon was from two logos ago. If I knew it was that easy to change I would have done it years ago! ChatGPT also helped me optimize the pages for mobile phone viewing, and suggested that I remove hashtags and social media links from individual products. Shopify's settings were still referring to X as Twitter which ChatGPT did not like! It also suggested that I remove the retail pricing and just use the discounted pricing, changing the color from red to the dark teal color from the new logo. It does look classier now! The process was very technical so it was wonderful having assistance with making these changes every step of the way. The photos and overall design need to be taken to the next level, but at least the information is now up to date. Next step is to create some images of the girls wearing jewelry! They had to be shaved two grooming appointments ago so right now they are in a weird grey area as far as their looks. Also, Margot's fur on her left front leg has not caught up since she needed to be shaved to insert the IV before her surgery. I am going to see if ChatGPT can superimpose jewelry on them until their fur grows out.

Since I turned my attention to extra projects these past two weeks, there was not much time to post new items. I decided to tackle my bag of vintage Native American watch cuffs. I lined them all up and started to shoot the photos assembly line style. This led me to think why not see if ChatGPT could help me streamline the listing process for new items? When I first joined Vendoo, I saw that there were templates but I gave up quickly after not having good luck using them. I was able to get ChatGPT's help to get a template set up for vintage Native American cuff bracelets, and successfully posted the watch cuff above. These cuffs are actually sort of flexible design-wise. A watch case can be added, or the new owner can add a stone or vintage coin to turn it into a non-timekeeping piece. Lots of folks have been viewing this one so it should just be a matter of time before it sells! I was also able to have ChatGPT customize the item description for several of the selling platforms. Some of the platforms have character limits, and I was having to manually reduce the size of the description or removing everything except for the initial paragraph. Now ChatGPT creates a customized format within character limits for the platforms with restrictions while still keeping the important information. All I need to do is copy and paste! This will be a solid time-saver going forward and also reduce errors.

I really gave ChatGPT a workout this week because I also asked for help with the estate sale package process which is very time-consuming for me. I will not be able to totally automate the process but we made huge progress and this will also be a time and energy saver. I am asking ChatGPT more and more for help. I have a business account which I pay for annually and it has been worth its weight in gold. It also helped me solve ongoing problems with my printer this past week. I no longer ask Kuochun for help because I do not want to take the time to deal with technical problems so he is happy! As an example, it took a couple of hours to troubleshoot the printer issue but now I feel confident that printer issues are in the past.

I actually did pretty well with online sales over these past two weeks considering that I did not post much. I sold one item on eBay, three on Poshmark and four on Etsy. The most valuable item that sold was this beautiful tufa cast corn maiden pendant by Santo Domingo Pueblo artist Joel Pajarito. I also sold several pieces which have been online for a while such as a very interesting cuff bracelet by Wilbert Benally on which someone attached a carved lapis flower to the top. The customer noticed that one of the prongs was missing. I was able to have it fixed and the flower is so secure now! It is on its way to Quebec, Canada. I hope she loves it, it is definitely one of a kind! Another notable piece was one of two Lone Mountain cluster pendants which I purchased several years ago. The dark one sold, the light one is still available!

That is all the news for now, see you next time!