Slacking Off Again!

Yeah, so it's been over 3 months since my last post. Sorry, but it still feels like October to me. The time has flown by! It's true what they say about life speeding up as you get older. Maybe it's the perspective of things. When you're young, time is so much bigger than you. But when you're older time is a fraction of what you are. And I'm babbling. On to the fun stuff...

Mick is still working on Supergirl & The Legion Of Super-Heroes with Barry Kitson. He's been crazy busy inking all those figures on every page!!! But Barry's art looks amazing, so it's worth it.

Genevieve is enjoying kindergarten very much! She especially loves all the friends she's made this year. We had her 6th birthday party with her whole class at The Jungle this year thanks to them sending us a winning certificate for a free party! I hope we win another one next year. That place is expensive!!! In addition to school, Gen is enjoying her piano classes on The Music Bus that comes to her school each week. They make lessons affordable for everybody!

I have been an insane eBayer and achieved Power Seller status as a Christmas gift!!! Too bad I'm not making a powerful profit. That's okay, I use eBay as a way to market the other things in our life like Mick's website and my t-shirt designs. There are a lot of soap opera fans out there! Glad I can make such fun gifts without infringing on anybody's copyrighted material.

Speaking of soap operas, I've given up on Days Of Our Lives. As much as I adore Stephen Nichols and Mary Beth Evans' Steve & Kayla, I just can't handle the writing on that show. It's sooooo boring. And most of the actors are too over the top. Kudos to the actors who play Billie & Nick. Loved that one night stand!!! Sadly, they aren't enough to keep me taping the show.

One show that now has me totally hooked is ALL MY CHILDREN. What an exciting storyline they have going with the serial killer! Just when you think you know whodunnit, they throw in a monkey wrench! Love love LOVE the trans-gender storyline with Zarf/Zoe!!! Bravo to AMC for taking such a big risk!

We want to remodel (well, sorta) our house this summer. I've started a new blog begging for help, input, advice with creating our dream house on little or no money. The link is to the left, HELP OUR HOUSE.

I'll try to write more sooner than later.

Holly =]

Catching Up...

So the biggest adjustment this year has been Gen going to kindergarten. We have to keep track of all the different papers that come home, special weekly assignments, library books to return, volunteer responsibilities, etc. But at least we have a block of hours to work without interruption which is great!!! And Gen loves school, so that's even better!

Holly has become a garage sale maniac (Mick is learning to love them) and having pretty good luck finding treasures to sell. Profit margins are small, but at least it keeps the store interesting. Garage sales really are like treasure hunts, though you have to wade through a lot of crap to find the gold. It takes a special breed to love these events.

Mick has been going to lots of concerts, thanks to his new volunteer job with Slims and The Great American Music Hall in San Francisco. He can go to almost any show he wants for free! You can read his concert reviews on his website (www.mickgray.net).


BIG PROMOTION IN OUR STORE THIS MONTH!!!
Spend $25.00 or more in our store and get a way cool Superman Returns PROMO Daily Planet newspaper!!! A big THANK YOU to Legends Of The Game in Morgan Hill (ph: 408-776-0725) for providing these goodies for you!!! (Any local shops interested in providing small promo items will get free worldwide promotion for your store!)

New items in Holly's One Smile Can Change The World Shop (www.onesmilecan.com). A holiday section has been added, just in time for Halloween.



And there's a new Current Events section featuring SANTA CRUZ The Original Surf City.

Mick Is Selling His 1957 Ford Fordor!!!

Mick is selling the car that made me swoon over him! He was Buddy Holly, I was his buddy Holly and Bessie was our cool car! This classic was restored back in the 80's thanks to Mick's dad Pete Gray (of the famous Gray's Thunderbird Nest). Pete is no longer able to help us maintain our lovely car, so we're going to let her go. Parting is such sweet sorrow and this beauty is a sentimental piece. We're not selling cheap! We started the bidding at eBay Motors at $8000.

The Emmys Were Awesome!!!

I had such a great time and didn't make too big a fool of myself as I walked down the red carpet and had our cameraman film the crowd and me. I spoke to several soap stars, some of which I didn't know, but many I did. I used to watch several different shows. The only time I got nervous was when I thought we'd be late or when I forgot what I was going to ask at one point. Other than that it was a great experience and I hope to do it again next year.

Gen is selling her original refrigerator art to help save up for a Disney World trip. We told her it would probably be a few years before we can go. If you'd like to help, please visit Gen's Gallery for more info.

Holly Does HOLLYWOOD!!!

Holly will be playing host to DaytimeTV.net's very first livestream! I will be actually at the red carpet interviewing the celebrities, so I'm told. We'll see what happens. I'm driving down tongight with my friend Valarie who runs The Dot Net Group. She has faith in me, so I guess I just need to have faith in myself, eh? Wish me luck!

Mick had to give up a concert tonight so I could leave early. He's very supportive, but I feel bad.

More to come soon!

We Started Some My Spaces

Well, Blogger doesn't seem to bring in any traffic, so I decided to start some MySpaces and so far so good. You can visit our spaces at http://www.myspace.com/albmouse, http://www.myspace.com/zandersmith and http://www.myspace.com/onesmilecan. I'll still be popping in here from time to time to talk about the whole family.

So right now I'm gearing up to put together some online seminars for Mick. He'd like to teach inking techniques to young artists. We're trying to figure out how it can be done via web conferencing. More to come on that.

Gen is eagerly anticipating Kindergarten. She asks me almost daily if she's starting yet. I hope she enjoys it as much as she thinks she will.

We're visiting a friend in Austin, Tx next month. We're currently looking for the best deal for travel. I know we gotta book soon or we might not get a flight at all.

Sick Sick Sick

Poor Mick has been sick since early February! He's finally over it (knock on wood). But it was one thing after another! First a cold, sore throat, flu, allergies and migraines. It's a miracle that Genevieve and I didn't catch it. I think I've been a lot healthier since getting my tonsils out a year ago, even though I think the doctor left part of my left tonsil in.

Mick has been able to work a little bit between relapses. Legion of Super-Heroes is doing very well. He's having a great time inking over Barry Kitson. It's especially a blast to be working on Super Girl. He also wrote two new concert reviews: Danzig & The Misfits and The Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival. Visit www.mickgray.net and go to the music section to see all of his concert reviews.

Gen has been going to dance class every Saturday at The Little Gym. It's a combo tap, free form, ballet and gymnastics. I love that it's non-competitive. They just want the kids to have fun and learn coordination without feeling stupid for doing something wrong. And now she has a foundation if she ever wants to take more advanced dance or gymnastics lessons. Of course she'll have to sell more of her art on eBay to help pay for the classes (she loves having her own store!).
So if you know of anybody in need of some lovely refrigerator art and would like to help support the arts (ha ha), send them over to Original Art by Gen.


I have been busy with my t-shirt designs. I created two new sections at my shop, One Smile Can Change The World www.onesmilecan.com . The first is inspired by punk, goth, new wave and retro, but it's all for kids and families. Some of the designs may look ominous, but the messages will be purely inspirational. I call it Cutie Punk and I got the domain name to go with it www.cutiepunk.com. I really wanted to do something that would make people look, yet they would get positive messages rather than rudeness. When I say that one smile can change the world, I mean for the better, just as one rude comment will spread negativity no matter how innocently it was meant. Click on pictures to see the designs on shirts and stuff.


I also started a section for weird humor and my first offering is a lovely design for dogs and babies... I'm a Pooper. Hopefully I won't offend any Dr. Pepper fans. I just thought it was cute. Click on picture to see it on doggy and baby stuff.


I added a new section in SuperSoapFans GH. It's the Gospel Of Corinthos and it was created because of a line of dialogue that had Mick and me laughing so hard we had to replay the scene. Sonny had just found out that Alexis and Sam were mother and daughter. He realized that he had slept with both and got them pregnant. He said "What kind of creepy freaky crap is this?" And Mick told me I had to put that line on a shirt. And hence The Gospel Of Corinthos was born. He is after all the "chosen one" of Port Charles. He's always good for a laugh. We love our "gummi mobster".


I had to go back to work at IBM for a short term assignment. We needed the money and I figure I can handle it for a week. I really need to write a book--we are working on that--so I can become a famous writer and sell lots of copies!!! Then I'll be able to afford working at home on all my little projects.

American Idol has returned for a 5th season and we're enjoying the show very much! They got a great bunch this year and I've been very pleased with America's voting so far (except maybe Melissa--she had potential). Our unanimous choices for the final five are Mandesa, Katherine, Taylor, Chris and Elliot. Another show we look forward to is Rock Star. We enjoyed last years so much that we're hoping this year will be even better.

Well, that's all for now. Sorry it's been so long since the last post. I'll be posting more often now that my writing muse has returned.

Live each today like it's your last.

Love,
Holly

It's Been Over A Month???

Well, slap my hand! So much for posting every week, eh? Time flies when you're busy. Here's what's been happening in the world of the Grays...

Mick has been catching up with work, finally! For awhile there things were pretty crazy with pages being behind schedule before Mick even had them in hand! Mick is really enjoying working with Barry Kitson. They've both wanted to work together for years, but the timing was always off. Now they're having a blast! It's truly a mutual admiration society for these two. Mick has been very lucky with his projects over the years. He's gotten to work with people he admires like Barry, J.H. Williams and Ryan Sook. To top things off, Mick was offered another 2 year contract with DC Comics! He was thrilled. It's an honor to work for such an icon, as well as feel your work is appreciated. He is truly blessed.

I, Holly, have been working around the clock to get items up on eBay, design t-shirts for the cafepress shops, update Mick's website and produce Mick's inker video. The video will be tons of fun, with lots of laughs and cameos from many famous artists. I'm also scrambling to get some marketing plan together for promoting our various projects. A new avenue I discovered is YouTube.com where I can post our videos for the world to see. If people enjoy the videos enough they'll hopefully check out our websites. Right now I have our wedding video, our entry for the Super Soap Weekend contest and my student film project from 1988. Next up I plan to make a short video of Gen doing her art and have an link to Gen's art commission page on eBay. For only 99 cents (or more... further donations are accepted) you can have an original piece of art created just for you to your own specification.

Gen is very excited about selling her art on eBay so she can save up to go to Rock School. We all watched the documentary last week (not realizing is was rated R!!!). But Gen LOVED it! She isn't bothered by foul language. She understands that some adults talk that way and kids shouldn't do that. She said she wanted to be a drummer. We have a budding young rock musician two houses down from us who has a drum kit. Mick is going to ask him if he would take a few minutes to show Gen a bit about the drums. We'll let you know how it goes. If anybody has an electric drum kit (with headphone jack!!!) to spare, we'll be happy to take it off your hands.

That's all for now. I'll try to update more often, I promise!

Holly :)

Time Flies!

Okay, so I haven't been posting every week. Sorry. I can't believe it's already been a month! I feel like I haven't gotten anything done. That's not true, but there are so many things I need to get done that I haven't even started! So let's see what I've done in the last few weeks... Got a bunch of stuff up on eBay, updated a bit of Mick's website including making a neat little photo gallery for his Rock music book covers, started designing soap opera t-shirts because I figured there's a bigger market for that right now than Al B. Mouse (though I gave away a bunch of Al B. Mouse Christmas ornaments in my eBay packages and figure the word will spread eventually), updated The Zander Smith Memorial Website with a hair gallery (Zander fans will understand) and now I'm updating my blog--finally. Sorry if you tried to comment and it wasn't letting you. I had it set up so only members could leave comments. Now you can comment to your heart's delight.

Here are some of my latest soap opera designs. Click on them to see larger versions:


As you'll notice, I've changed the blog from Holly's Projects to Mick & Holly's Projects. It's easier than keeping track of two blogs. We'll also have Gen's projects thrown in. She's writing novels now. No words, but definite stories in pictures. We hope she keeps it up. She got a Reader Rabbit computer game for xmas so she'll probably be reading and writing entire sentences by the end of the year.

This Ain't Easy!

Okay, it's week two and I feel like I've accomplished almost nothing!

Well, that's not true. I created a cool looking storefront for The Al B. Mouse Shop. It looks like an extension of Mick's website. I had to use my limited web development knowledge to go in and doctor the CSS code for the template. It worked great! Here are some of the graphics we're using on the shirts... (click on picture to see larger version)


Here's a coupon for Cafe Press if you're interested in buying something.


I also got a bunch of stuff photographed for our eBay store. We actually sold quite a few items this past week!

For Dot Net, I'll be attending a Marketing conference in San Francisco next week. That should be fun. I told my friend, Valarie Beadle (Dot Net prez), that even if I never get paid I'm learning quite a bit that will help me with my own businesses. She in turn reminded me that the goal is to get all of us paid and she's happy to have me aboard.

Gen has been sick with a cold for almost two weeks. Poor baby. The doctor had me give her a decongestant, rather than cough medicine since coughing is "good". It prevents pneumonia. We're currently looking into lowering our Kaiser bill, since there is no way we can keep paying their new rate of $800 per month! We'll just get real intimate with their advice nurses and have the doctors call us at home to avoid the new $50 co-pay. I'm all for a government regulated health care system like in Canada. Discuss that issue amongst yahselves.

That's all for now. Back to work!

Tripping Into Uncertainty

An historic event has taken place. Holly Gray has taken a giant step toward following her bliss!!!

Every New Year's Eve I promised myself that I would listen to my intuition, but I never followed through. I ignored that tiny little voice inside me that kept saying, "You don't belong here! You need to do what's in your heart!" That was referring to my job. And to my co-workers reading this, I want to thank you for making my time at IBM a very pleasant one. You were the only reason I didn't leave sooner. Well, that and the steady paycheck. But now I must strike out into the unknown and let go of my security blanket. It was tripping me up! I have so many ideas inside my head and I couldn't move forward with any of them. Now I will devote my time to making my dreams come true. Let's just hope the money doesn't run out before we make a profit. The only thing Mick is concerned about right now is not being able to eat out so much. That was our one addiction. If any of you were planning to buy us a gift this holiday season, we would love restaurant certificates more than anything else in the world!!! Seriously.

Well, today was the start of my adventure into uncertainty. There was no stress when the alarm went off. I considered not setting it anymore, but I enjoy hearing trivia and a bit of news on the radio so I know what's going on in the world. I got up, fed Genevieve, exercised a bit and went into the office. Some of my eBay items sold over the weekend, so I got the shipments ready to go. Then I helped Mick finish up some art pages so they could get back to DC before Thanksgiving. He really appreciates that I can assist him during the day now.

This past week, I began designing t-shirts and stuff at cafepress.com. I just wanted to market Mick's character, Al B. Mouse, but then I started getting all these other graphic ideas. So I'm not sure if we'll keep the name "The Al B. Mouse Shop" or not. Suggestions are welcome. The Al B. Mouse Shop (www.cafepress.com/mickgray)

The eBay store will have new items added each week. There will be no more than one page per section at a time, if I can help it. I'm still in the process of designing a new auction template. I'm going to incorporate Al B. Mouse into everything! www.mickholly.com

I've been in charge of the advertising for all of the Dot Net Group sites for about a month. Right now they just consist of banner ads for our affiliate programs. Soon enough I'll be getting real advertisers to pay us for front page ads and stuff.

There's a contest going on right now for anybody who registers at any of the Dot Net sites between now and November 30th. Go check it out, there are family friendly sites for just about any interest you may have! www.thedotnetgroup.net

And for those of you who don't know, Mick has been writing a monthly music column for Entertainmentwatch.net. It's pretty fun stuff, just his own take on today's great musicians, most likely some you've never even heard of! Mick's Picks. He also writes concert reviews, which I've posted on his website. Many of you are already on his concert mailing list, but here's the link anyway. Re-live the hilarity! Mick's Concert Reviews

Next month I will start writing the script for the Mick Gray video. Working title is "Inking With Mick". It'll be about more than inking, but that's a good part of it. Any of you who have advice to share in the field of video production, please send it my way. At the moment I'm just planning to do it in iMovie and iDVD, unless someone gives me a copy of Final Cut Pro and DVD Studio Pro (or the express versions--is there an express version of DVD Studio Pro?).

For my fellow Zander fans, I created The Zander Smith Memorial Website, which will eventually hold all of my old fan fiction and videos dedicated to this ex-General Hospital character. Right now it just links to my fiction and videos site through a cool home page. I don't watch soaps anymore and I've stopped writing fics and making videos (for the moment anyway), but I will always have a fondness for Zander. I just wanted to have someplace to park everything. My EZ Board site will eventually fade away. www.zandersmith.net