Hello all. 🙂

Sorry that there wasn’t a post last week, but honestly it was our business meeting so you didn’t miss much. We’re holding on to our lovely weather here in Corvallis. Fall is in the air and folks all over town are gearing up for OSU’s students to arrive, football season, and the upcoming holidays.

We started our meeting this morning with a very small group, people trickled in for a while, but the group remained small-ish. Peg O from Citizens Bank started us off today with a positive message. Our local economy is growing. Yay! With 13 locations they are here to help with commercial loans of all sizes. Bonnie {Rice’s Pharmacy} brought in their monthly specials catalog along with some digests. Amanda {Amanda Photographic} is ready for fall family portraits. She got lucky last year with good weather for outdoor portraits until Thanksgiving, but encourages people to book early for the best chances of good weather. Lora brought out the big guns with “…there’s only 102 shopping days until Christmas.” Her new Initials Inc fall catalog is full of great gift ideas. We don’t often get to hear from Diane, one of our members-at-large, but today on behalf of the membership committee she welcomed new members Jacquie Dunham {Jacquie Sews} and Elaine Forrest {Simply Home Professionals LLC}. Ilene from A&S Accounting is here to help fix your messy financial statements. She encouraged everyone to review their statements regularly. Mary & Janelle {Drs. Bugni, Laster, & Jensen} reminded us that they are always accepting new patients from small children to your elderly parents; they can take care of the whole family. Ebeth walked in just in time for her commercial for Valley Eye Care. She shared that sometimes an elderly or disabled patient can no longer make it to their office to have their glasses fixed or adjusted. VEC is happy to make a mini house call for such cases. Oni {Balance Point Acupuncture} shared an article by the AP that whether you have a physical or psychological reaction to acupuncture a response is present in the healing and coping with pain. Julie {Tobias Weiss Design} is also here to straighten out messy things for your business… she’s all about the print media and will create beautiful and well designed media for your business. Lori {The Thank You People} reminded us that sending a greeting card, whatever the occasion, make s a big difference in someone’s day. Have your reviewed your insurance policies this year? Tara at the Jeff Mills State Farm office can help you with that. Make sure that you have the coverage you need for your home, car, and business… before the weather turns on us!  Today we missed Jacquie, Joni, Elaine, Nadine, Karen, and Peg W.

Our speakers today were Amy and Shelley.

Shelley of Alta’s Antiques and Collectibles ran us through a vintage jewelry gauntlet, giving us a brief overview of three distinct jewelry eras. She also had jewelry samples to illustrate the descriptions of each era. 1920-30 Art Deco: in response to the flowing, organic, feminine style of art nouveau; art deco brings geometric shapes and style into jewelry (and everything else). This costume jewelry was cheap, compared to actual gems and precious metals, easily mass-produced thanks to the new industrial revolution, and available to the common woman. – Shelley then talked about some of the grades of silver and gold, but I’m not going to get into numbers – The Retro era from 1935-50 had a distinctly American look with plastics, bakelite, rhinestone, and military influence. The 1950-60s held the Art Modern style with chunky jewelry, bold colors, charms… oh the charms. We see all three of these eras swinging in and out of current fashion. Shelley shared that a year or two ago she couldn’t hold on to any of her bakelite, but now people are over it unless they’re a collector. …for now. Shelley has her antiques and collectibles available for sale at several locations around the Corvallis/Albany area; she is also available for home or office parties.

Amy {Carefree Massage} has magical fingers. It’s no wonder that she uses her light, but confident touch to help heal people through massage. Today Amy showed us how she would arrive to our home or office. With her massage table or chair ready she showed us her heated pad and variety of soft sheet options for the table. She also carries a padded slip cover for the face cradle on her table & chair. Amy knows that not everyone likes the same scents in their massage oil so she has a variety to choose from. She passed around a few bottles for us to smell; some strong and some mild. Which brings up an interesting problem for Amy – and probably all mobile massage therapists – of oils leaking out of their bottles. She has a number of different styles, but all of them have to be kept in a big ziplock bag to keep them from leaking onto her sheets and things. So… if anyone wants to, or knows someone who wants to, invents a 100% leak proof re-usable bottle for oils Amy and pretty much every other LMT in the whole world would be happy to purchase those from you. …just an idea.

Amy is available at your home or office for $60/hour. Several businesses around town use her to give 15 minute chair massages to their staff {awesome!} for $10/person. If you’d rather see her outside your home or office she is also available at Oni’s Balance Point Acupuncture office on Grant Ave.

Until next week…