Halloween at my house:

3 posts in one day - aren't ya'll lucky?

Thought I would give ya'll a little taste of what Halloween at our house has been like. I have obviously been on the computer for a while working and playing with the blog and my new digital camera. BTW - the main reason I started blogging is becuase I finally got a camera and can share some cool pictures with you.

So tonight behold Chris - the Halloween Master. He bought $30 worth of candy (next year I will either supervise his candy purchases or do it myself), donned a fireman cap and dressed Beau (aka the good dog) up in a policeman costume. Cute, huh? He's been bringing this massive bowl of candy to the door and telling the kids "just take a handful!". haha They love our house. In fact we heard some of them say "I remember this house from last year!" before we opened the door. Cute. Greedy, but cute.

So here a couple of pics - of what Chris and I have been doing. Hope you all are having a fabulous Halloween! Here's to hoping you have some candy left over for lunch tomorrow! More importantly here's to hoping all the little chitlins out there have been safe and had a blast tonight.

Love,

Amy

My Office

This is Chantal - she is running my office right now until I can get in there. She worked for the agent that was there previous to me and we are discussing possible employment offers for her to stay on as my 2nd team member. This picture is taken from the vantage point as you first walk in the front door.

This the front of the office. You can see Chantal's desk to the right and the front door to the left. I am absolutely in LOVE with those window treatments. Aren't they cool!!?? I won't be changing them for sure.

As for the paint color...eh, I could go either way. However when you tell me that I'd have to actually perform the physical labor required to change it myself it looks much more warm and inviting. When you see the rugs up close you can see they have the same color green as a stripe and it really ties in together nicely.

This is the other front desk. It is to your right when you walk in the door. The glass divider you see there on the left of the picture is between Chantal's desk and this other desk (where Erin will sit).

I need to find a print to put there on the wall. There was a really cute one there before but the old agent took it with him. Mom - do you feel up to painting one for me? I could send you a copy of the picture! Or I could just leave this wall open to hang your work for sale...keep it in mind!

Wow - now that's blue, huh? This color WILL be changed. I'm thinking on painting it a rust-color...kind of a mix between burnt-orange and maroon. Very symbolic of my "wearing an Aggie ring in a town of Horns" situation. Maybe. Anybody have other suggestions on what I could paint my office? Oh maybe I should mention this room is my office. It's HUGE and has tons of natural light. That's my desk - where I will be writing every single one of my reader's auto, home and life insurance, as well as funding retirement accounts and possibly financing your vehicles, home equity loans and mortgages... ;)

Now we are looking at the view I have from my chair. The door across from my desk leads to a "bat escape" if you will. Jerry would be so jealous!! When I need to escape or hide I can sneak out this door and not have to walk back through the front. I park right on the other side. The table here will be used for team meetings, laid-back policy discussions, etc. The pictures you see are some black and white prints of old Austin (1900's) I purchased last week. I have my own little half-bath just to the right of the bookcase you see there too. WOOHOO!!

So that's the office. What'dya think? I can't wait to get in there and put my own touches on it. I could always use some help - creatively and manual labor-ally so if you should get the bug to come visit me I wouldn't object! In the mean time virtual suggestions (based on the pictures alone) will be accepted. If I can figure out how to get my video camera footage on here I will post a real tour of the office. I walked around and taped everything this afternoon (including the back room and a little part of my commute home...I know, probably not safe to be video taping while driving but traffic was practically at a stand-still).

Just getting started

Well Mom, Meg, Laura, and Sarah...you've been asking for it. And now you shall receive. I'm starting my blog! I'll try to keep you all updated on what's going on through here so that I never get accused of not telling you! haha

Just so you know my start date got pushed back to January 1st instead of December. I'm really happy about this because it gives us the month of December to call our existing customers, warm up to the system, and put processes in place.

I'll be taking some pictures of my office as it looks today later this afternoon and try to post them tomorrow. There really aren't very many changes that I need to make so I'm happy about that.

Here's a picture of my new employee - she's taking her licensing classes the next 2 weeks then will take a training class out of town the week after. Starting mid-November we'll be together in the trenches trying to get some new customers lined up!

Hmm...what else. I need votes on which "look" to go with for my business card pictures. Ya'll probably already saw the pics Meg took at my house on her blog. I still can't decide if I want to go with a more casual (red sweater) picture or the professional black suit. Keep in mind I'm in a lower socio-economic area for the most part with a 50% Hispanic demographic break-down. Which one would you choose?

Also for your viewing pleasure here are some pictures from an event I did this weekend. We got a booth at an event called Trick or Treat Trail at Zilker Park (the biggest park in Austin where they hold ACL Music Festival). It was a huge success! I got about 75 HOT leads out of the deal by raffling off an Ipod Nano. Around 250 people registered.

The first pic is me, Maria (team member of another agent here in Austin) and her friend Mary Ann (who works at the regional office in auto claims).

This next one is just a candid shot of me passing out candy, giveaways, and collecting names for the raffle. There were probably 5000-6000 people at this event!

Last but not least is a picture of me giving the winner her Ipod. She didn't speak a lick of English but believe it or not I could actually communicate with her. Winner - Ganador(a). :)

Well I guess that's about it. Sorry the formatting isn't very pretty...I'll get the hang of it eventually.

This last picture is of Chris and some of our buddies from the flag football team we play on eating at Chuy's. I jammed my finger in our last game! It hurt, and even though it's been 2 weeks I still can't put my Aggie ring on.