Cottages, Eye Candy and Postal Prohibitions for Pink Saturday 4/28/2012

It's Pink Saturday over at Beverly's Blog, so visit with her and leave a comment to show your appreciation.




*
Okay, first of all again about the new interface. I'm doing a tutorial over on K&S and if you'd like to read it, be my guest. It literally takes many, many hours to do a tutorial and I'm trying my best to do it, but can only do it for 3 to 4 hours a day. I first have to do screenshots, which when taken are tiffs so I have to convert them to jpgs and then photoshop them a little bit. But it involves several images to make things easier for you to understand. At this point, I've got a very, very few of the basics covered and there is much to come. I think. I just don't know how much more I need to do. It would be tremendously helpful if any of you could leave a comment or email me on what has you stumped. Then I could know what to address. I plan on using a template so I can have total control over what my posts look like and not have the photos and text scattered about willy-nilly. So if you're wondering, just ask me after you visit the tutorial. It's not finished yet.

And since I have 19 posts scheduled under the old editor they are going to look a tad out of order on the posts and photos. I am NOT going back and redo those. Starting after those 19 or 20 I'll be using the template and all should be fine then. I like perfection! It will drive me nuts seeing them like they will probably appear but that's how it's going to be for the next few weeks. (And I'm learning much just revising this post. {Grin}
*

Like most people I've given eBay a shot when trying to sell things I've made or old clothes or shoes that I no longer want. It wasn't a huge success for me as it has been for a lot of sellers who go on to open their own website for selling. I tried that also, but it was frustrating and time consuming so I just give things away now or sell them on Craigslist, which has worked well for me. I hated shipping things.

I made a small lap quilt once with silk velvet and a woman in Nova Scotia bought it. It really was beautiful. It got lost in the mail to her. I made another one for her and she agreed to accept it as it was truly beautiful and almost exactly like the first one. I went to a lot of trouble making those two quilts as silk velvet is the hardest fabric in the world to work with. I'll never ever do another quilt or work with silk velvet; although, it is gorgeous fabric.

But a lot of women overseas wanted to buy my items and I said no. I just wouldn't ship outside the U.S. because of the rules and regulations and possibility of getting lost or stolen in transit. It just wasn't worth it to me. I'd have had to refund their money or duplicate the item (and lose money all the way around on that option) and it wouldn't have been through any fault of mine, but postal carriers in other countries.

While I gave it scant consideration at one point early on, I checked postal regulations, or rather prohibitions, in several countries and found very interesting rules that helped me make my determination to not ship internationally. Here are just a few prohibitions in some countries. These are just a few countries but I'll be posting more later on in another post.

Albania: You cannot ship extravagant clothes contrary to Albanian's taste or used articles.

Algeria: Articles made of tortoise-shell, mother of pearl, ivory, bone meerschaum and amber—natural or reconstructed, worked jade or mineral substances similar to jade, canned vegetables, fish, plums, nuts, funeral urns, household articles made of tin, saccharine, used clothing or accessories, blankets, linen, textile furnishings, footwear, headwear, watches or clocks.

Denmark: Dried or powdered milk or food mixtures containing it.

France: Imitation pearls.

Italy: clocks or supplies for clocks, artificial flowers or fruits, footwear of any kind, leather goods, playing cards, nutmeg, vanilla, sea or rock salt or saffron, perfumes of any kind, playing cards of any kind, ribbons for typewriters, tobacco, toys not made wholly of wood, coffee or its substitutes, bells and other musical instruments and parts thereof.

So that's it for now. Just feast your eyes on the cottages and eye candy for the rest of this post.

A sweet cottage alongside the road in England.

Aren't these pillows just gorgeous? And that pink (It looks pink on the photo but certainly doesn't look pink after posting it on blogger!) french settee? Ooo-la-la~

Would you look at that rose arbor covering the entry? Sigh....

Some of you are too young to remember these beach chairs but they were comfortable, easily transportable and fun with all the different colors of canvas you could find them in.

This seems a big large to be called a cottage but it's still lovely.

Have you noticed the only color in this photo is the tool, the candy and the petite tin?

I have a few of these gorgeous fabrics and they look much prettier in person.

I have absolutely no idea if this is a residence or a public building but it is stunning! I wonder where it is.

An inexpensive and clever idea for a candlelight dinner on the patio.

I cannot tell you how much I would love to have a garden like this, but with a gardener to take care of it. Hubs wouldn't have the time or energy to keep it up.

Somewhere in England I think, looking at the kitchen and decor. Very pretty.

When you think of simpler times and wanting to live in those days, just think of how much those people would have given to be in your shoes today. Gives one pause, huh?
*
Now, go do something fabulous!
~*~
Photos courtesy of tumblr and pinterest.