Archive for ‘Personal’

October 25th, 2011

Time To Slow Down And Relax

Wow, what a busy weekend/week we’ve had!  I’m so thankful we finally got some time to relax today.  Between Ellie’s birthday party Saturday and my Fleischmann’s party on Sunday I’ve been going non-stop preparing and executing.  Then I spent yesterday making up for the cleaning I’ve neglected to do all week while I was busy with all this other stuff, so I decided today was my be lazy day.

I was lazy for the most of the day with the exception of reorganizing some of Ellie’s toys and cleaning out more to donate.  She’s already got a bedroom and playroom full of toys, and today I noticed there isn’t a room in the house that doesn’t have a pile of toys in the corner.

Because we knew she’d be getting even more toys for her birthday we decided to get her a desk instead.  We got an American Plastics toddler desk that converts into a small easel, and that was good enough for now.  I wanted to get her a larger easel with the chalkboard, but it just wasn’t possible right now.  Ben got laid off again last week, so we needed to keep it cheap.  The toddler desk/easel was under $20, and it’s the perfect size for her even if it is something cheap that will probably fall apart in a year or two.  Then again, it could last forever.  She has a ton of other American Plastics toys that we thought were sure to break within a few months, but she’s had them all for over a year with no problems.  The top of the desk isn’t as great as I’d like, but what can you expect for $20?  It’ll do the job, and she absolutely loves it, especially now that I let her decorate it with stickers this morning!

Cheap is good for me right now, so I’m very happy she’s still young enough to be happy with a cheap toy!  I know one day she’ll be asking for the expensive stuff.  As much as she wants to play with my Eee PC I’m sure one day she’ll be begging for an Eee Tablet, so I’m going to enjoy the years when cheap toys are very acceptable birthday gifts!

My biggest problem right now is figuring out where to put all the big stuff she’s got.  We are definitely running out of room, and cleaning out the toy box doesn’t really help with that.  As far as the big stuff Ellie now has a desk, laundry center, nursery, shopping cart, kitchen, slide, baby stroller, and vanity…all American Plastics toys, and everything but the desk was a present from a grandparent. I’m starting to feel like that company could stay in business thanks to our family alone!

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August 2nd, 2011

Website Launch Making Me Nervous

I’ve been working on a new venture lately, and so far it’s going well.  Over the last few months I’ve had a lot of people ask me to make diaper cakes for them because they just don’t have the time or desire to learn to do so.  It’s turned into a nice little side business for me, and I’ve decided to expand to the internet.  I decided to setup a website not because I think I’ll have so many orders coming in I’ll need to invest in a posguys barcode scanner (although it would be nice to have orders pouring in), but because I wanted a place to showcase some of the cakes I have already made.

I’ve been putting pamphlets, and business cards out at a few local businesses, and those have been doing well.  I think having a website that I could include on the material would allow possible customers to see even more of my work when trying to decide if they would like to hire me.  Any online orders would be an added benefit.

The website has been coming together pretty well even though I’ve only got an hour or so at a time to work on it, so I don’t know why I’m feeling so nervous about launching it.  I admit I could have probably launched it a few days ago, but I’ve been procrastinating.  Even though people have been showing interest and I’ve had a few orders I still sometimes feel like people will take a look at the site and think my work is absolute crap.  Maybe it’s because I’m a perfectionist who is always finding at least one thing on each cake I’m not happy with.  Maybe it’s just a normal reaction to launching something new.  Only time will tell how things go, but I feel the cost of the website and a few hours of my time is a small price to pay to possibly expand my little side business into something more.

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July 26th, 2011

Oops, My Bad!

burnedI’ve seriously got to get it together.  I don’t know what’s been giving me this major case of brain fog lately, but it’s screwing with me big time.  I handle all the finances in our household, and for the second time this month I made a mistake and screwed us up pretty badly for the week.  It’s not like we have money to burn, so I’ve got to stop screwing up.

I was so excited when I deposited more money that I had planned this weekend, and I had enough to pay off a medical bill that’s been getting $20 a month from me until I could afford to pay the whole darn thing.  Even after I deposited the money I went over what I had written down 3 different times to make sure I wasn’t overlooking something.

But I still overlooked something and screwed up.

I totally forgot to write down that my hosting payment now comes out bi-yearly instead of yearly.  I received the email invoice within hours of paying off the medical bill, and it royally screwed us up.  It’s Tuesday night, and we now have $5 left in one account, and $3 in the other.  Ugh.  At least I haven’t touched my change stash in awhile, so I should be able to roll enough money to get us through the week if nothing else pops up.  I’m crossing my fingers and hoping it doesn’t!  As long as I come up with enough to buy diapers tomorrow and fill up the gas tank one more time we should be good.  It just sucks because we’re driving my Dad’s Dodge 2500 this week, too, while Ben is fixing the Blazer, so this week we’re spending twice as much on fuel to fill of that sucker.  Oh well, it’ll all work out in the end.  We’ve got food to eat, and the bills are paid.  That’s what matters, right?
Creative Commons License photo credit: shoothead

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