A Fresh New Start

Happy New Year to you all!

The blog hasn't been updated for about 2 months, but I wonder if anyone notices or cares about it except myself :)  Apart from my busyness (or laziness), there was another reason for it - I was out of town again.  I have been to Guangzhou for some time.  This is my first time visiting the city.  It's a nice trip and I have made some new friends.  Let's see some photos from my trip:

Beautiful night scene of Guangzhou

Traditional Chinese Architecture

In this new year, I hope I can make a fresh new start and live a happy, healthy and beautiful life.  Time goes by so quickly and I just want to experience as many wonderful things as I can.  Enjoying life is all I want to do in this new year 2012.

Noah' s Ark

Recently, I have visited a Noah's Ark theme park with my family. It's a sunny day with fine weather.  Let's see some photos.

I myself love the last photo, in which the animals are happily coming out of the Ark in the sunny morning.  Life is beautiful!

A Trip to Zhangjiajie National Forest Park

Recently I have taken a break from work and joined a group tour to Hunan Province, China with my family for a holiday.

As the scenic spots of Hunan are mainly located at some remote areas, we spent quite a lot of time in transportation.  Apart from taking airplane, we also spent many hours travelling on roads by coach.  But, it is worthwhile, as the scenery and landscape there are glorious!

One of the scenic spots we visited is Fenghuang Ancient City, a valley town in Xiangxi Prefecture.  This ancient town is situated at the foot of mountains and beside waters, and is a well-preserved historical site.  The town is added to the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List (Cultural Category) in 2008.

The main purpose of this trip is to visit the Zhangjiajie National Forest Park within the Wulingyuan Scenic Area, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  Zhangjiajie National Forest Park is famous for its distinct geographic features.  As a result of millions of years of erosion, the mountains there are pillar-like.  These pillar-like formations can be found throughout the park.  After reaching a mountain top by cable car, you will find the weather there is misty due to the high altitude.  The scene is just like a traditional Chinese painting.

It is said that the scenery of Zhangjiajie provided the inspiration for the floating mountiains of Pandora in the movie "Avatar".  And you can find this there:

The food in Hunan is a bit too hot for me, but trying the local food is also a great experience you gain in travelling.

I love travelling.  Travelling gives you an opportunity to be away from your routine life.  The world is big and I just want to take every opportunity to explore it.  I hope that I can have another holiday soon. 

The Little Corner's First Anniversity

The Little Corner just celebrated its first anniversity on Sep 15.

Actually, 15 Sep 2010 is the day I registered a seller account for The Little Corner on Etsy.  The first item was listed on Sep 18.  I still remember how excited I was when I saw the first item appeared on the computer screen.

In the past year, I totally got 54 sales from 49 different customers, about one sale per week in average.  I know that the numbers are not comparable to many other online shops, and I also have to admit that my shop has not yet been profitable.  Maybe it is not wise to mention here my shop is not profitable, but what I want to say is that, running this little online shop gives me the satisfaction and happiness which cannot be calculated in monetary terms.  And actually, getting one sale per week in average is something better than what I expected one year ago.

Apart from a few local customers, my customers mainly came from US and Australia, and others from UK, Ireland, Netherlands, Canada, Indonesia, New Zealand, France and Germany.  I have never been to any of these countries so far, but my items were shipped to these places, isn't it amazing?  There may be millions of online shops in the internet world, and these people found The Little Corner among the countless shops, and they even decided to buy something from it.  It is really wonderful, just like a kind of magic, and I am truely grateful for them.  Many thanks to you all! 

I also want to offer my thanks to those who have made enquiries about my items even if no sale is made at last.  It is because they have shown their interest in the items of The Little Corner.  Besides, I would like to thank those who have featured my items in their blogs or treasuries.  Thank you so much!

I know I am lucky.  I have a stable full-time job to support my running of this online shop as a hobby (maybe it is also not wise to mention that I run this shop as a hobby as it sounds not professional at all).  But my ultimate dream is that the shop can expand and I can quit my daytime job to run it in a full-time manner one day.  It is not easy and a long way to go.  But, people should have dreams, right? 

Ok, let's have a look at my newest creations.  Recently I have tried to crochet a bucket hat in pink and gray:

After seeing the finished product, I just thought "Oh, it's not bad."  So I crochet it in other colors:

And again other colors:

  

And finally the hats become a new collection of my shop.  Hope you like it too :)

Dreams of the Much Younger Me

At different ages and different stages of life, we have different dreams.  When time passes by, some dreams are achieved, some become not important any more, and some are lost in the busy daily life.  At the same time, new dreams arise.  As mentioned in my earlier post, recently I love to read a blog about how a couple work hard to achieve their dreams.  I try to recall the dreams I had years ago and see how many of them have come true by now.

Here are the dreams of a 15-year-old school girl, the much younger me who lived a long time ago:

1. the cute and handsome boy in the class (in a teen girl's dreams there is always a place for a cute and handsome boy)
2. own a Hi-Fi set
3. get high marks in the public exams, and then go to university
4. be rich and attractive
5. be a writer
6. open a book shop
7. travel around the world

These are the dreams that I can recall.  Maybe they are some typical dreams of a teen girl.  Some of them have come true, and some haven't.  I will talk about that later.

The Little Corner on Artfire

In my earlier post I have said that I want to make this blog less business-oriented, but this time I would like to talk about my shop again.  I am happy to announce that The Little Corner has just set up a new shop on Artfire.

I love the design and functions provided by Artfire.  The site is very user-friendly, and I love the setting of the shop so much (Artfire calls a shop a "studio").  As opening an online shop is more like a hobby to me, simply looking at the setting and colours of my Artfire studio is enough to make me happy.  I hope you will also like its design.

Here is a new item from my Artfire shop, and you can also find it from my Etsy shop:

Constant Heart Ring - The Mathematical Constant Pi 3.14159...

3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510...

Let this mathematical constant symbolises how constant your heart would be.

Getting where

Recently, I have read through a blog titled Getting There, from its very first post to the most recent post. 

The blogger Laura lives with her husband and four little children in Canada.  The blog is about how she moves towards a simple, self-sufficient and meaningful life.   She now lives in a rented condo, and she and her husband work hard for having their homestead some day.

Though the blog is just about the frugal life of a mother of four, I really love this blog.  Laura and her husband have dreams.  They work hard to fulfill their dreams and believe that they will get there.  I love people who have dreams!

Then I think about myself.  Is the recent life is what I have dreamt of?  To where I want to get?  How many dreams of the younger me have come true by now?  And how many dreams have been lost in the busy working life?  Time flies like an arrow, and I don't want to get old with a lot of unfulfilled dreams.  Perhaps I have to spend some time to think about these questions.