You've Got Questions, I've Got Answers Part 1

 Thanks for all the questions everyone!  Fun, interesting and thoughtful questions that I thank each of you for taking the time to ask.  You guys are the best.  If you have a blog I'm linking back to you, and if you all get a chance, stop by and say hi to each other.  There's been a lot of blog love lately in the blogosphere, maybe because it's love week, and it gives me the warm and fuzzies!  Let's lift each other up and support each other, even if its just with a simple "hi!".

So that I don't bore your socks off, how about I break it up into 2 posts over the course of the next couple of days?

Allessandra asked:

What would be the first thing you'd do if you had 24 hours to dedicate to yourself?

The very first thing, or just in general the first thing?  If I hadn't had a manicure/pedicure lately, I'd go get one of those because I love freshly painted nails.  Then I would go get coffee and read a book or magazine in my home all by myself.  I love being at home and I especially love having my home to myself sometimes.  Anyone else love to have the house to yourself and relish in the silence?

Jen asked:
What is your favorite go-to accessory?
How many white t-shirts do you own? Mine are out of control.

My favorite go-to accessory is a belt.  It can dress up a pair of jeans, and make a sloppy shirt look more refined.  It can accentuate your waists and hold your pants up!  I love belts, but I only have 3-4 that I wear on a consistent basis so don't feel like it's a pair of earrings and you have to own 20.  A casual black and brown one for pants and jeans, and a dressier thin or thick (whatever your preference) black or some sort of metallic colored belt will do just fine!

And you would think I would own 20 t-shirts since I work for a t-shirt company, but I don't.  I own 3 short sleeve and 2 long sleeved, and I think 4 white tank tops.  I am not counting the old ones though that I now wear around the house and as pj's because they are stained or dingy.  I have about 5 of those maybe?

Laura asked:

#1 I'd love to know more about your job. 

I'm always inspired by women that have creative and unique jobs.

Wow, this was the most asked question.  Let's see, where do I start?  Basically, I work in the Sales department of a fairly large, but still very small, clothing company that is best known as a T-shirt brand.  I'm an Account Executive for the brand, which means I am assigned a group of accounts and my job is to manage every aspect of their business.  My accounts are Saks Fifth Avenue, Bloomingdale's, Neiman Marcus, Barney's and Nordstrom.  Yes, we have some pretty good customers :).  

So it starts with the "Market" process, this is where the traveling comes in, and also the fun part (the market part is fun, not necessarily the traveling part).  I go to NY and Dallas on occasion to see Neiman Marcus at their headquarters, and sell the buyers our latest collection in our showroom in NY.  This happens each time we have a new collection, at least 6 times a year. Why NY?  Well, while there are many showrooms here in LA, NY is still very much the hub of it all and I can see all my buyers at the same time.  I get up and present the line and try to steer them towards certain styles that I think will sell well for them or that our Design team think are important.  

Once we've chosen their "buy", I come home and work on maintaining the account.   This is the unglamorous, not so fun part.  I work with production to make sure we ship product to our accounts on time so the shelves and racks stay stocked.  Sometimes we do, sometimes we don't.  When product is late, the buyers don't call up production and yell at them, they call up me and yell at me!  I also look at how well things are selling or not selling.  If something is selling well, I try to get them to reorder more of that style.  Last week I brought in 2 pretty large reorders so yay for me!  When things don't sell well, the buyers call me up and yell at me for selling them sucky product.  I also occasionally visit stores to see how our product is represented.  If it looks horrendous, I get to call up my buyer and yell at them!  :)  Bloomingdale's wants to move our space in a bunch of their local LA stores, so for the next 2 days I'll be visiting stores to check out the new homes and report back to corporate if they're acceptable or not.

And that's about it.  In between there's a lot of spreadsheets, phone conversations and emailing back and forth just like any other job.  The subject matter in mine just happens to be clothes, which is fun.  I love my job and I hate it sometimes too.  At the end of the day though I feel lucky to have found a niche that is interesting and relatively 'fun', but when tempers start to flare and people start getting pissy and all worked up, my favorite saying is "Simmer down everyone, it's just clothes.  We're not saving lives or anything."

#2 Are you a California native? If you could live anywhere else where would you choose?

Yes, I am a California native, born and bred here.  I loved it for most of my life, but in the last couple of years the love affair with California started to fade.  I started to feel congested by the small yards, and it bums me out that homes are so expensive and the general cost of living is so high.  The traffic sucks too.  I can really see myself back East somewhere on a smallish farm living rather simply where I can experience true seasons.  Maybe Connecticut or Vermont?  Sounds bizarre, but I really crave simplicity and a much more stress free life so badly.  But this is where God has placed me and my family for now so I will make the best of it.  We have friends and every single family member here in Southern California.  All of my siblings and both sets of parents, aunts and uncles are within 45 minutes of each other.  The kids love having their cousins all so close too (there's a total of 9 under 7). 

Oh my goodness I've been yammering a lot here.  I promise in Part 2 I won't be so verbose and will keep the answers short and sweet.  The job one took up a lot of space :)  Speaking of that job, I better get to it!

Thanks for reading, and Part deux tomorrow!  Oh, and the Knitty Bitties camera strap cover giveaway ends today at midnight.  Go enter now you crazy kids!  I will announce the winner tomorrow!