Isaac Perry and Binghamton

Life of Isaac G. Perry:

Born in Vermont, Perry's father as carpenter influenced young Perry in his modeling skills and the sense of design. Perry goes to an architecture firm in NYC, where he meets the physician Joseph Turner through whom Perry builds NYS Inebriate Asylum. Perry's relationship with Turner role was crucial as for Perry to gain the trust of the board of trustees. Perry retired when he was 77 year-old, and the Perry Building and other buildings in Binghamton and Albany continues his legacy of architectural works. 

Perry Block: 89 Court Street 

Broome County Courthouse: 92 Court Street

Phelps Mansion: 191 Court Street

How to Make Money Through Recording Your Voice

- Sing at special occasions or friend's weddings

What you need would be your friend/client connection, your song demo CD, and your business card as freelance singer. It can be "Singing telegrams," where you deliver your singing performance to local home, restaurant, hospitals, and other events. You would need to print some pamphlets to market your service at those venues and give your business card to business owners who can spread the word. Best is to regularize such performance occasions to be paid. Schools and pre-schools welcome such music artists to entertain children, and they often pay you well to sing on the school's special occasions. 

- Sing for Songwriters

Visit local recording studios and leave a flier with the studio owner with recording samples of your singing. Per song, they charge about 50-70 dollars but it includes your practices, rehearsal time and the energy until you complete with satisfaction.

- Skype Concert

You don't have to leave the house to sing a concert for fans. You can provide Skype concerts from the comfort of your living room. Of course, you would need good mic and internet connections. 

- Jingles

You can sing for advertising. Try finding the jingle website that can feature your voice for local advertisers. Add a value by creating your own jingle service site to introduce yourself to the local businesses. 

Five Checklist Before Going to Garage Sale

Are you planning a yard sale around your neighborhood? Here are a few tips on making the best use of time and money. 

1. Yard Sale Mapper: To your surprise, there might be actually tens of yard sales going on around you! Use this simple Craigstlist yard sale mapper app to orient yourself to the best one in town. Go to the best neighborhood, which will save you ROI! 

2. List for Shopping: Just like any other shopping, it is not that garage sale gives freebies but it does take your money! In order not to waste money instead of saving money, you would need a good shopping list before you move on. It is useful to keep in the list some items that you would need for Holidays or special occasions like friend's birthday - Christmas gift, decorations, and birthday wish card are not a bad idea.

3. Timing: If you are going to yard sale on Saturday and the sale started from Thursday, you probably wouldn't be able to find anything useful there. Only leftover's, which to your benefit, you can negotiate and cut down the price by far, which you wouldn't be able to as an early bird. Be sure to check the timing when it began, before you go to one. 

4. Ask to turn it on: Be aware that good-looking electronics may not turn itself on. Why would it sit there and be used if well-functioning? For hand tools, be aware that before using it, you would have to restore it. Know that perhaps the tool is too outdated that you cannot find the part to restore. Ask how long ago they were purchased. Also, know that for rust, you can deal with it by coat of wax or oil. 

5. Don't be too excited, you will pay more. 

Busy Yet Relaxing Weekend

Are you beginning your weekend but you are not completely liberated from your to-do's? Here are list of wisdoms that you might desperately need right now!

1. Turn the music on: Music makes such different for your atmosphere. Turn on your favorite music for your living room (unless you are doing that every day), holiday music if that helps you to relax, or music that you won't normally hear. Let your brain wave and creative juice overcome your tiredness from the weekdays.  

2. Don't Overeat: Anything of overdose will kill its enjoyment. Do not eat or drink too much: Do not trust your bodily instinct but try to optimize rationally. For example, healthy, cooked food might give you more relaxation and satisfaction than salty junk food that might seem easy and readily available. 

3. Your Favorite Project: It was found in a scientific research that when you are doing something that you are good at, you are busy yet relaxed and joyful. You become actually happier when you are busy! In contrast, if you watch TV or movie for whole day, you might instead get depressed. Save several projects of your favorite during the weekend, and mark the calendar to make clear time for them. 

4. Exercise of your favorite or new sports: It is very obvious from experience that when you exercise of any kind of sports, you would feel that your body is different and refreshed in greater extents. It is said that when you are in competitive sports, your body adjust itself to the most optimized condition. Get better in shape through your regular weekend exercises!

5. 5-minute Break Rule: Have your luxury of many mini-breaks, even as short as 5 minutes, it will create rooms for you to relax in between the seemingly unending tasks during weekend. Give yourself a slack and be generous to your productivity so that you can give "satisfied" stamp to 70% of your planned schedule.

Simple Steps to Relax During Your Vacation

Have you prepared a lot before going on a vacation? Having a great time DURING vacation actually matters more. Here are a few tips on how you do that: 

- Make the vacation memorable: Find out what others are doing special in town that you are visiting. Try sample local delicacies and make creative photography. 

- Remember to Put It Back: Always lose important items during the trip to somewhere? This habit is not only critical at home but even more on your vacation. 

- Travel Journal: Carry around a notebook and a pen so that you can record creative thoughts and inspirations on your mind.   Take advantage of relaxing time, brainstorm ideas, and design composition. Also, when annoying thoughts or works that stress you out, do not be alluded by them, but record them away right there. 

- Do Extraordinary Things: Try things that you normally wouldn’t do like turning off your alarms, eating out for whole day, checking emails for 10 minutes a day, or not turning computer  at all. Purpose is to enhance your relaxing experience. 

Simple Checklist Before Vacation

Getting ready but want to make sure you are prepared for your glorious vacation? Here are simple checklist to get done before your long-awaited vacation. 

- Get Organized with Home: "Back to life" moment should not be screaming at your own messy kitchen and dirty laundries. Be sure that your home is still inhabitable and safe place to live. Turn off all electricities, wash all dishes, and make sure no food rots during your away. 

- Pack Your Bag Early: Don't forget sunglasses, camera, all kinds of chargers, headphones for airplane movies, lotion, face cleanser, floss, first aid kit, razors, gel, postcards, cash, ATM cards, printouts for reservations, travel pillow. But remember, you need extra rooms to store newly purchased items during the holidays. 

For detailed list of items, check out: 

http://www.simplify101.com/travel-checklist.pdf

- Lesser the Better: Don't bring all your home equipment, because you are not moving out but coming back. It'll be a hassle to keep track of all things and that will be a stressful thing to keep you from being peaceful on your journey. Make it as simple as possible and travel light! 

Simple Checklist to Get Organized After Vacation

Before you take off to your glorious vacation, remember to be back home and know what to do. Here are simple checklist for your "back to life" steps. 

- Get Organized, Physically: See from the fresher perspective on what needs to get done at home. Broken knobs, wrong color matches, furniture compositions, and etc. Of course, you should get your laundry done. 

- Get Organized for Fridge: If you had eaten everything or threw out before vacation, not is the time to stuff it up again. Try dropping by grocery shops on the way. 

- Transition Nicely: Give yourself a room to come back to busy working mode. Get some rest, quiet times, and get your mind organized before resuming your commute! To-do's should not overwhelm you more than photo-sorting or unpacking. 

How to Create Your Own Cell Phone Case

Here are seven steps to produce a unique phone case with your awesome design on:

1. Order phone cases (eBay, Amazon, etc.)

2. Print your design

3. Cut out the design

4. Clean the phone case with alcohol 

5. Glue it on the case (Mod Podge)

6. Paint gloss paint over it (for protection and finish)

7. Leave it a day or two

Varying Sentence Structures for News Writing

With examples, below I described the four types of sentence structures for varying the types of sentences used in news writing. 

1. Simple Sentence: Literally simple and short phrase is used to make impact or to make a brief conclusion. 

Ex) Grace overflowed. 

2. Compound Sentence: Two or more independent phrases are combined to list and to describe series of actions or event.  

Ex) Grace overflowed and the retreat concluded. 

3. Complex Sentence: Two or more related phrases are used to explain the cause and effect, time and sequence, and more complex thoughts. 

Ex) Grace overflowed as the message deeply touched the hearts of participants. 

4. Compound-Complex Sentence: Within two or more independent clauses, it carries complex structures as well. It is used for vividly describing part of the news article. 

Ex) Grace overflowed when the messeage deeply touched the heart of the participants, and the retreat concluded after setting the next date. 

Useful Vocabs for News Writing

Here, I gathered lists of basic vocabularies for beginners to use in their news writings. 

Informing Facts

Furthermore

In addition

Likewise

First, Second, Third, Finally

Firstly, Secondly, Thirdly

Mentioning Details

For example

Particularly - Specifically or especially distinguished from others

Specifically

Cause and Effect

Because

Because of 

Due to

As

Accordingly 

Consequently

Therefore

Thus

Making Conclusion

For the aforementioned reasons

To sum up

Given these facts

In conclusion

To conclude

Overall

In brief

Summing up

Describing or Explaining 

portray

depict

exhibit

present

represent

demonstrate

constitute 

embody

Comparing or Contrasting

Whereas

In comparison

In contrast

However

Although 

On the other hand

Nevertheless

Despite

Emphasizing

exceedingly

extraordinarily

truly

utterly

perfectly

dramatically

Three Simple Business Principles

Below are the three business tenets that I take it as my business philosophy that I'd like to share:

- Prioritize Time & Work: Business is a game to use limited time and resource to make the most important works done. Prioritizing your works constantly and delivering the best results under pressured environment will be especially very important if your business is starting up with few people. 

- Prioritize People: Business is what people do. Money, products, or goodness out of business come from your team and your network, and ultimately it is to benefit "people." Surround yourself with best staff, mentors, suppliers and partners. Create networks and communities where people of common interests gather, feedback, contribute and compete. 

- Use Numbers: How to grow business means how to measure. If you want to double the sales, you would double the sources and the customers. That would mean to hire another person as your position. Use technology to scale your sales and ultimately, make the sales flow predictable and repeatable to greater increase. 

Market Research on Best Product to Sell Online for Calligraphy Business

To find the best product selling online, I went onto Amazon for the best sellers and extracted some of potential items for applying to calligraphy business.

Here is the list of my initial market research for best online product: 

Cleaning Clothes (Package of 10) $14.80

Case Cover for iPhone 5 $1.64

Men's Boxer Brief $9.52 - $32.99

Girl's Short Sleeve Leotard $8.09 - $17.47

JanSport Classic Backpack $20.95 - $128.21

U.S. Polo Men's Solid Polo $19.99 - $35.99

Alpine Swiss Mens Leather Bifold Wallet $13.99

Celluloid Guitar Picks (Package of 5) $3.20

Guitar Strap with Leather Ends $5.68

From here on, I will choose a few products that I can add calligraphy designs to. For clothes, I would need to learn how to print on clothing materials. For iPhone cover or wallet, I would need to research on producing some types of permanent stickers on plastics or leather. 

How to Earn Money with Calligraphy

If you have calligraphy hands and promotional/marketing skills, calligraphy business would give great opportunities to develop your interest and further create income revenues. 

Attactive is that once you have skills, calligraphy business needs your brush and paper, and you can start taking orders! Scale of it is to start by charging small, then gradually buildling up the trust and custmer-base. 

Here is how to start: 

1. Buy a kit, learn basic skills, and make sure that your handwriting is good enough. 

2. Design your dazzling business card 

3. Determine the hand-lettering product that sells (Framed poems, greeting cards, invitations, etc.) 

4. Make samples or portfolio of your work 

5. Hire a web designer or design your own website

6. Receive order, and produce creatives 

7. Pay for regular basic supplies or courses to further develop your skills 

More tips in details are found here: 

http://www.studioarts.net/calligraphy/moneytips.html