Winner of Name That Bead Jan 2012!

Wow, what a game!

Thank you to everyone that played and voted. You all came up with some awesome names - it was so hard to choose 5!

And the voting was SERIOUS, man. But in the end, one name came out on top.....

Congrats to Kris DeVoss! My newest bead is now called "Chinese Dragon", and you win a free one! Please email me your mailing address to jenn[at]katiescharms[dot]com.

**I'm sorry if my posts were confusing this round. Next time we play I hope to make it a bit easier for everyone - the bead picture and name submissions will be on FACEBOOK next time, instead of on the blog. We'll do the names and voting on Facebook, and the winner announcement on the blog.

I'm trying to stick to Facebook's policy about not running giveaways on pages, hence the back and forth with the blog. But I think this should work for next time!

Have a good night, all!

(CLOSED) Name That Bead Contest / Giveaway - January 2012!

***Name submission round is now closed. Go here to vote for your favorite name!***

All rightie, everyone! Are you ready for another round of "Name That Bead!"?

Need to brush up on how to play? Check out the Name That Bead page now.

Ready? Here we go! I think this one might be a toughie:

Enter your name suggestions as a comment to this blog post (just scroll down until you find the box under "Post a Comment". You have until 9:30PM ET tomorrow to enter - you can enter as many names as you want.

Please make sure you leave your NAME and your EMAIL address along with your submission so I know who to contact if you win.

Tomorrow at 9:30PM ET I'll pick the top 5 names and post them as a poll on Facebook. Facebook fans will then have 24 hours to vote on the winner.

Good luck and have fun!

New Name That Bead Game Tonight!

A new "Name That Bead!" game starts tonight at 9:30PM ET.


See you then! In the meantime, you can read about how to play here.

My Word For 2012

Happy New Year, everyone!!!

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season. I love New Year's - I love the fresh start, the (sort of) clean slate. There's hope and anticipation of what the new year will bring.

I don't really make resolutions, although I do have goals for the new year, especially with my business. But a few years ago I started picking one word that would describe how I wanted to manage my life in the coming year.

My word for 2012 is FOCUS.

I felt very scattered in 2011 - I was starting new projects before finishing old ones, my house was disorganized and I was not very good at keeping my calendar.

I need to FOCUS this year! Part of that word includes organization, but overall I need to tackle one thing at a time, I need to be focused on my goals and try not to stray from them too much.

For my business, this means:

• Finishing my current projects before starting new ones. I tend to get bored after a while, especially with projects such as revamping my item photos, but it needs to be done before I do anything else.
• Coming up with a budget and sticking to it!
• Regularly doing my accounting paperwork so it doesn't pile up at the end of the year.
• Coming up with clear goals for new product launches, marketing and promotions - and then sticking to them.

For my home and personal life, this means:

• ORGANIZING! After Christmas I feel like we moved into Aisle 12 of Toys R Us! I need to go room-by-room, organizing and getting rid of stuff we no longer need.
• Making sure I write everything down on the family calendar so I can plan ahead and not get caught off-guard.
• Sticking to our house budget!!

I mentioned my 2012 word on Facebook the other day and got some interesting responses. How about you - do you do resolutions, or choose a word for the year? What are you FOCUSing on in 2012?