Today's Waffling!

This morning me and Mr Messy had a meeting in the lovely new cake shop in the next village. We were meeting with a friend of LMS's from school, who is a talented violinist and plays at weddings and functions. She has also just qualified as a Beauty Therapist and Make Up Artist. She contacted Mr Messy on his social networking site and the meeting was to discuss how they could cross promote each other's businesses and to work out if they could partner up in any enterprises. I just went along for the cakes :-) The meeting went really well and Mr Messy and Violinist think they could work together and cross promote really effectively. Mr Messy also arranged to do a photoshoot with Violinist next week, so that she knows what sort of thing he does and how he works, and can more effectively tell her clients about him. She is also trying to build up a portfolio of shots, so she can use the pictures for that too.

Then this afternoon I was just settling down to answer some of the emails I had received over the weekend, when a very excited Mr Messy burst in and said we had to go out to Town NOW!! He had just found out from some of his photographer colleagues that he and Drama Teen have been featured in this month's edition of a professional photographers magazine :-) They obviously knew they were going to be featured, as they had been interviewed and had to provide photographs, but Mr Messy was thrilled to find out they'd been given a full page spread :-) Unfortunately we found out when we got to the large newsagents in Town, that the people who've already seen the feature get the magazine on subscription and it isn't available in the shops until Thursday lol. We made the most of the unexpected shopping trip, by having lunch, buying a present for fellow adopters from Ethiopia we are meeting up with tomorrow, and by visiting the printers who are sorting out some promotional postcards for Mr Messy. So it wasn't an entirely wasted trip :-)

When we went round to school to pick Little Prince up, he decided to go round to his friend Post Lady's daughter's house for a play and tea. Mr Messy gave Post Lady the DVD slideshow of pictures from the print he did of her daughter's the other weekend. Post Lady and her husband have just come back from a family wedding in Albania, so this was the first chance they've had to see the photos and I was dying to see her reaction. When she dropped Little Prince off later that evening she came and chatted with Mr Messy and she was THRILLED with them :-) She and her husband will be round one evening this week to go through the images and chose which ones they want making into a canvas print.

We decided to surprise Drama Teen with the magazine feature. Mr Messy had received a pdf copy from the publishers, which he printed out and placed where she was most likely to find it - next to the bread bin lol. We both waited in the dining room when she went to the kitchen to get herself a sandwich, and listened to her squeaks of excitement :-) She came bouncing out of the kitchen, hugging her Dad and boinging around in a very manic way lol. She is taking the printout to show her friends at school tomorrow :-)

Mr Messy has also contacted a local PR person, who works with the image consultantcy that Mr Messy is setting up joint promotions with, and is meeting her on Thursday to see how/if they can maximise on this publicity and promote Mr Messy's business :-) And to top it all he has got a new IT Contract, which is mainly working from home, so he will have the time to do more promotional and marketing work for his photography and also be around a lot more when New Child is home :-)

Things are looking good :-)