P.Y.T, T.L.E, X.Y.Z.

Things that TLE can stand for:

Temporal Lobe Epilepsy
Target Location Error
Total Lunar Eclipse
Transient Luminous Event
Temporary Lodging Expense

But what does TLE stand for today?
Tender. Loving. Empire.

As in, totally great hub of sweet music and Portland lovin' craftiness. As in, record label meets gift shop in an explosion of DIY at 412 SW 10th Ave.

Admittedly, this is one of those times when I've been glad not to have seen the shopfront before I brought my cards by. There's something about sharing rackspace with Ryan Berkley and Nikki McClure that makes me want to give up, go home, and start burning all my paper products. But I'm sure that would cause one of Berkley's suited bunnies to give me a stern glance, and one of Ms.Mclure's sturdy workers would be disappointed in such waste, and so I don't. Instead, I dropped off a small cavalcade of elephants, owls, and cupcakes, and you can now check them out at Tender Loving Empire along with all those other great folks. The shop is right off of Burnside, so it's a welcome addition to the traditional Powells/Reading Frenzy/etcetera trip.

Waxing and Laminating, Waning and Ruminating

I added some gift tags to dottikins.etsy.com, in one of my several shrewd attempts to savvily diversify. There's some lists floating around of the top-selling etsy shops, so I investigated the shops that sold paper goods and discovered that many of them sell a variety of products, not just the single-note-pony of greeting cards that I've been kicking my spurs into.





So, thus, gift tags. It made sense, the photos spice up my shopfront, and it felt rewarding to reuse some of the spare printed pages floating around my work area. Who wouldn't like the idea of matching your gift tags to the greeting card? Plus, it sounds responsible to say "diversify" in regards to anything I've done.



Then I went to work and used the laminator to snazz up some section labels, and suddenly it became a great driving goal of mine to make fancy schmancy bookmarks. Imagine them! The wonders, the glory, the shininess of the cards as they slip into a novel...oh, to have such dreams fulfilled.

Sandwiches, Frock, and Other Wonderfulness

The great thing about Portland is that even when it's raining, you can still have a terrific time. We were wandering around on Alberta today and finally got to enjoy the deliciousness of The Grilled Cheese Grill.

Then, after our cheesily wonderful meal, I finally got to pop into Frock on Alberta! The card-buyer at Powell's Books for Home & Garden has suggested several times that I check them out, and now I understand why.

Not only is their space pretty adorable, but I felt like they've got a good collection on their hands, and a lot of the pieces were things I haven't seen around yet. I toted along a handful of designs, and the owner was not only super friendly and gracious, but she's also going to give my cards a shot! So if you're in the Alberta neighborhood and get a hankering for some lovely accessories and maybe a Dot card, well, you know where to go.

This is the Beginning, Just So You Know

You know sometimes, when you stumble across a blog and think it's just the bees knees? And the next half hour of your life is spent in continual clicking of the "previous" button. But then you get to a post where the "previous" button doesn't do anything anymore, and you're left to wonder whether you've reached the first post or if the internal mechanics of the "previous" button have just conked out on you.

So you read the post a little closer to figure out if it was truly the inaugural post (By this point, the coherency of the blog you started reading half an hour ago has unraveled into idle postings about sandwiches, so perhaps you're not as invested.). That first post can be confusing. "I love this blog! Wait, was their first entry really about some cheese they bought? No ecstatic photographs, no balloons, no exclamation points?"

I don't really have a better answer. I do have a couple exclamation points (!!!), though. I hope that does it for you.