And this is all we need

Since we cut our family income in half almost exactly a year ago when my paid maternity leave ended, we have re-assessed a lot of the solutions we were using for convenience.

Though I love Amazon Fresh grocery delivery with all my heart and soul, we couldn't justify the higher prices and $75 minimum order, so I stopped using it. For the items we buy regularly it was cheaper for me to go to Whole Foods (!). Given that our "regular" grocery store is Trader Joe's, which is a lot less expensive than either of those options, I went back to traditional grocery shopping.

The other thing we gave up was our weekly yard service. We hate doing yard work, and our yard had never looked better, but at $50/week it was definitely not a necessity.

We dropped our Costco membership - every time we went to the store we'd spend $200 in stuff we weren't intending to buy, just because it was there and a great deal.  See ya!

Ditto the weekly organic vegetable CSA-type box from various places. I was never great at staying on top of it (how healthy we'd be if I was!) and it was more than I'd spend on just the things I know we'd eat, even at Whole Foods, so we dropped it.

But the one thing I haven't quit is our Amazon subscription orders for various household items.  For many items, like non-perishable foods, cleaning products, personal care stuff, and dog food (yay!), Amazon has a special "Subscribe and Save" option that allows you to get that item regularly.  You choose the interval from 1 to 6 months, and you can "skip" months, or postpone deliveries if you don't need it right away. If you have 5 or more items arriving each month, you get 20% off on the whole thing, and that's where the magic happens.

When you don't get the 20%, the subscription is probably slightly more expensive than buying the equivalent item at Target. But for the convenience it can't be beat, especially for things like a 30lb bag of dog food - shlepping that and a 25lb baby to the car at the same time is physically impossible for me.  And now that I've figured out what we need on a regular basis, I've got 5 items every month, so I always get the 20%, which makes it slightly less expensive (and that doesn't even count the gas and time needed to go to the specialty pet store, Target, and the grocery store). 

Amazon has changed the program over time - you no longer get to "lock in" the price at which you subscribed, so I've noticed some things rising in price over time and have had to cancel a few when they got too expensive.  They moved to shipping all subscription items together on the same day each month and I can't adjust that if I need something sooner. You also don't get Prime 2-day shipping on the items, so it can take a week for them to arrive (but they are excellent about getting here before the day Amazon tells me they should arrive).

For the first few months, I had to log in mid-month and adjust things as I figured out how we used them, but now that I've been doing this for a year, most of the "regulars" are set up perfectly.  

Here's a quick list of the things I have on subscription:

• Soy milk - 8 64oz shelf-stable cartons. Only a few dollars more (total) than Trader Joe's and they show up at my door. We go through more than this in one month, but it's a good start.
• Wellness "Old Dog" food - this can only be found locally in specialty stores, for almost $20 more than we pay on Amazon. Plus the bag is HEAVY.
• Organic Applesauce Cups - I use these for T's lunches and quick snacks. Shelf-stable and hard to find locally.
• Peter Rabbit Organics "Squeezy Fruit" - hard to find locally and much cheaper than individual packs at Whole Foods
• Larabars - both girls love these, and the price is comparable to Trader Joe's individual price
• Cetaphil Restoraderm Body Wash - the only thing that works on T's eczema. Not always available locally.
• Toilet paper - I hate running out of paper products so we buy the big box.
• Paper towels - Ditto
• Huggies Overnight Diapers - comparable price to Target which doesn't always have them
• All Free & Clear Laundry "Pods" - can't find these locally

I'm not a personal finance expert, so I won't claim this is some fantastic money saving trick, but it does help me avoid extra trips to Target, affectionately known as the "$50 store". In addition, we rarely run out of the essentials like toilet paper, overnight diapers, or our favorite kid snacks, so there aren't as many "emergency runs" to the grocery store.  Did I mention I dislike grocery shopping?

If we ever have to go into financial lockdown, I'll re-evaluate whether we need all of these things, but for now it works really well for us to have them just show up at various intervals.  If you're on the fence about setting up a subscription, I'd recommend trying it.  You can cancel items anytime before they ship and adjust the timing as needed. I love it, especially since we don't have any kind of "warehouse club" membership.

And yes, I do have Amazon ads on my blog, but I wrote this post spontaneously. I love me some Amazon shopping.

I'll keep you my dirty little secret (The Economics of Blogging, 2012 Summary)

this is Peanut's House and we're just living in it

Since my original post about the economics of my blog was well-received, I figured I'd post a wrap-up of 2012.  On the bright side, I made the most money ever here in 2012. Which really just amounts to paying for the domain name, a few cups of Starbucks chai, and *maybe* a craft supply or two.

My Amazon affiliate earnings were finally enough to earn me a gift card (yay!), and totaled a surprising $151. What's even more amazing was that people using my links bought $2750 worth of stuff, most of which was in December (holiday shopping, I guess).  I can see the items, but not who purchased them, so if you're reading this, thank you :)

Project Wonderful, which had worked so well for me in the past, was a bit of a dud in 2012.  I made about $7, and since it costs $1 to withdraw money from my account, it's not worth doing yet.

I love working with BlogHer - they're just really nice people and sometimes they feature my posts, so that makes me happy too.  I earned $58 from the sidebar ad the entire year. It's not a lot, but it's nonzero, so yay.  I also earned $120 for book reviews, plus 6 free books including The Fault in our Stars, which was amazing, and which I never would have found on my own.  Not even sure how I'd put a value on how much I loved that book.  I also "sold out" my social media accounts (Facebook and Twitter) for $100 to do a few sponsored posts for them.

So my total earnings for 2012 (estimating the books at $10 each) was just under $500.  Certainly not "Quit Your Day Job"-worthy, but surprising to me nonetheless.

You've probably already figured out that I have no problem using my blog to make money - I don't have guilt about selling out, or feel like it's a conflict between my art (or writing or whatever) and the almighty dollar.  It's an experiment for me on how monetization works, though I'm still fairly certain I don't want to put in the huge effort it would require to have a truly lucrative blog (if I could even come up with THE idea that would work).

So I'll just carry on, writing what I want, when I want, and reading a few good books along the way. What's not to love?

Subscriptions: It comes and it goes

My love affair with magazine subscriptions started in college when I had hourly jobs.  I'd plunk down the $12 to get a year of Glamour, Cosmopolitan, or InStyle and loved getting new issues in the mail.  After a stressful day of math and physics it was great to lose myself in something mindless, plus it gave me new reading material for the treadmill.

When I got a "real job" after grad school, I got even more crazy.  Buying a house meant I needed a subscription to Sunset "the magazine of Western Living" so I could get recipes, travel ideas, and other domestic stuff.  Their recipes are awesome and always turned out perfectly. 

I also loved Real Simple which is pretty and domestic, but not at all simple, just expensive minimalist design.   Cooking Light was another favorite for healthy recipes, when I learned I could trade in frequent flyer miles for free magazines on airlines where I wouldn't accumulate enough to get a free flight.  I had a job which required plane travel weekly, so having all these magazines helped pass the time.

When we moved to Seattle and my job became more demanding, the magazines piled up.  My new swanky gym had its own subscriptions to things I liked to read.  I didn't have much time to be domestic.  So slowly I cancelled all the subscriptions, except for a few.  I loved the topics and writing at Wired, and got a free subscription to Blender, a music magazine that was surprisingly interesting and well written.  But still, I didn't *need* them so I let my subscriptions lapse in the interest of saving money.

I also had a portable satellite radio gadget so we could listen to XM radio in the house or at the gym.  I LOVED the variety of music, but not so much the monthly fee.  When we were getting ready for T's arrival, we looked at all of our expenses and cut where we could - no more XM, no more DirecTV, no more home phone.

I have acquired my husband's dislike of monthly subscription fees.  I get it - from a financial point of view, it's a regular outflow of money that you're often locked in to, you may not be using it as much as you're paying for it, and it's sort of "invisible" because you either pay up front or it gets billed automatically, making you more out of touch with where the money is going.

So for a long time I had no regular subscriptions to anything - no magazines, no online services, no TV, nothing.

But they've crept back in.  I signed up for a subscription to the gorgeous CARDS magazine.  I also found out from my friend Jenn that there are scrapbooking kits you can subscribe to monthly.  I didn't need to know this, given my tendencies to shop for and hoard craft supplies.

I signed up for Scrapscription, which is a monthly mini-album kit.  They're wonderfully complex, and the projects take me days to complete.  In fact, I've only finished two and I've been subscribing for 4 months now (yikes!).   But they're beautiful and I feel a huge sense of accomplishment when I finish one, not to mention they make fantastic gifts for relatives, or quick mini-scrapbooks to capture things we do.  The one I'm currently working is going to be about our girls' trip to Portland in July.

And of course craft hoarding begets more craft hoarding, so I also bought a small monthly subscription to the Silhouette Online Store, which allows me to download files to use with my electronic die cutting machine.  I've made T's birthday invites, lots of cards, and doo-dads for my Project Life pages this way.

Roller Rink Kit by Studio Calico. Droool.

My biggest temptation/money sink is my Studio Calico subscription.  Every month they release a new kit, plus several "add on" kits that coordinate.  I'd be fine if I just stuck with the main kit, but the "extras" are so gorgeous and fun that I usually end up getting one or two of those.  And recently they came out with a Card Kit, which I also "had" to have.  The nice thing is that everything in those kits matches, so for projects I can just grab a kit and get going and end up with a nice cohesive look.

So really, I just need to STOP with the monthly subscriptions.  I certainly have enough supplies to last me a long, long time.  Probably more than I'll ever be able to use!  In a month or two, I'm planning to re-evaluate these choices and see if I really need to continue *all* of them.  I'm sure I can scale back and still feel like I'm getting my little "treats".

What's your financial "vice" - the thing you can't get enough of?

Rearranging my time

A few weeks ago, the third trimester BLERGH finally hit me.  I'd look forward to a little crafty time after putting T to bed, only to realize by 7pm *I* was also ready for bed.  And then I figured I'd get up early and grab a few hours before she wakes up, only to sleep well past 7am, thanks to a hubby who's an early bird and usually gets T ready in the morning.

I'm taking the prenatal vitamin, iron, and vitamin D regularly so I doubt it's fixable.  It's just that being the size of a planet takes its toll on one's body, I guess.  Which is a bummer because I was late to the OMG AWESOME second trimester energy party thanks to whatever ick I picked up on our way to Ireland back in April.

I'm coming to terms with the idea that my productive hours are severely limited to morning/afternoon now and trying to work *with* that rather than against it.  I've shifted easy things like showering and reading blogs or fiction to the evenings since they don't take much energy. 

I try to "seize the day" as soon as I get out of bed to attack my to-dos.  I get dressed and ready, grab some crafty time, make phone calls on my huge list (which is decreasing!), do the brain-intensive work tasks like writing and reading technical docs, etc as early as I can in the day without setting an alarm to get up at an ungodly hour.

Not a perfect solution because I feel like I've got less time overall to "get stuff done" but I have to come to terms with that sooner or later.  Baby X' is going to force the issue in a big way, so the sooner I can get used to that, and start being gentler with myself about productivity, the better.

Tomorrow T is going to spend the day with my mom, so I'll have a little extra time to get some things done while I'm not completely exhausted.  But I also have another doctor's appointment (sigh). 

one of the list items - T's birthday invitations - CHECK!

On the list for tomorrow- tackle some financial tasks.  I've set up an auto-payment to pay my credit card bill automatically each month, but it's not the full balance - just enough so I don't get charged a late fee.  I just need to get in there and pay the darn thing.  For some reason I hate this task with a flaming passion.  I probably just need to stop using that card and only pay cash/use my debit card instead.

The second thing is to call the credit card company and block charges by Northridge Publishing so they can't sneak in any more extra charges.  It's ridiculous that I have to do this but in the long run it's more work to keep an eagle eye out and dispute every charge (there have been 3 unauthorized ones so far!).

Totally doable but too much to think about now at the late hour of 8pm.  So I'm going to curl up with my Kindle, and be asleep before 9.  Such a glamorous life!

Peeves

Dear Coworker,
No, I am not willing to send you the FREE item I'm giving away via internal mail as it requires me to find an envelope, find your address and drop off the envelope in the mailroom.  FREE, remember?

Dear Coworker,
No, it is not amusing for the 65th time to see you imitate me waddling down the hallway. And no, I don't want to have a heartfelt conversation about why I suddenly snapped and told you to stop.

Dear Amazon Vendor,
I ordered a $2 cable from you a month ago and it never arrived.  You said you sent the replacement last week and it's still not here.  Really??

Dear Google,
While I appreciate you updating your software, when it causes my phone to lose all mobile network connectivity, I get a little twitchy.  It seems like I *should* be able to check email when not connected to wireless, right?

Dear Northridge Publishing,
Your magazines are gorgeous but your billing practices and customer service suck.  $200 of random charges on my credit card and it's not renewal time?  And when I inquire about it, no response?  WTF?

Dear Dentist's Office,
I realize it's been over a year since I last came in, but why did it take 4 phone calls to figure out I was an existing patient?  Because we need the dentist visit to be *more* unpleasant?

not impressed.

All the Money in the World: Book Review

Laura Vanderkam was nice enough to provide me with a copy of her book, All the Money in the World: What the Happiest People Know About Getting and Spending.  I devoured it in a few hours which is pretty remarkable because I am really not into reading personal finance books.  Her writing is crisp and clear and the examples and stories were again relevant and useful, like in her previous book, 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think.

What I liked about this book was that it was far more about the *philosophy of money* and what it could do for you, more than tactical tips about budgeting or doing crazy frugal things like washing out Ziploc bags for reuse (which she does talk about but in a different context.)

This book wasn't quite as useful to me as 168 Hours, simply because as a family we are on top of our finances, thanks to my fabulous hubby who actually likes that sort of thing.   But it was an enjoyable read, and the exercises at the end were useful to clarify priorities in life, which can then inform how we choose to spend our money. 

There were some really interesting ideas in there, too.  One was creating the "perfect weekend" full of fun things to do.  It was couched in terms of cost, and how "perfect" doesn't automatically mean expensive, but that section resonated with me more on the time management/planning side than the financial side.  We often fritter away our weekends doing non-essential stuff, and not planning ahead, and on Sunday night we mourn that we didn't *do* anything with our weekend.  This approach means planning activities ahead - not a wall-to-wall packed hourly schedule, but just a couple of activities each day, but still being able to adjust on the fly.  I'm intrigued by the idea and will definitely do this in the future - more to maximize happiness than to minimize my spending.

Another idea that resonated with me was her view that finding work you really, truly enjoy means you're not just slogging it out until thankfully it's time to retire and play golf all day.  That in fact, if you like your work, you might want to consider doing it *past* retirement age, and then continue to earn more.  I interpreted this to mean that we also don't have to postpone our "big dreams" until we retire and have all that supposed free time - that we can pursue them now, and keep working at the same time.  Or take breaks from working to pursue them and then go back.

I love her writing because she has opinions and I get a sense of the author's personality, unlike a lot of nonfiction which reads like college term papers, dry and lacking any personal insight.  But that quality also made it frustrating to read at times - there were several points in the book where I flat out disagreed with her statements.

For example, in the chapter about how having more kids isn't necessarily a huge financial burden, she posits that it might not be necessary for parents to pay for their kids' college, and that private college tuition may not be "worth it".   In some cases that may be true, and if your child is brilliant, they'll figure out a way to get a stellar education even with no college. 

But for students like me who were smart but not super-extroverted "go-getters", going to a small private university where I was guaranteed personal attention was exactly what I needed.  Quite simply I would have gotten lost in the shuffle at a huge state school and just coasted my way through as I did in my entire school career prior to that.  For us, the cost of college (and potentially private school before that) is a huge financial consideration and given that we have the means to pay for college for our kids (if we're careful about our resources), it would be irresponsible of us not to plan for that.

The other chapter that didn't ring true for me was the one on charitable giving and the "selfish joy" it brings to people.  I found the examples fascinating, but I just couldn't relate to the idea of getting personal satisfaction or pleasure out of giving to charity.  Don't get me wrong, we write lots of checks to organizations we support and I try to research them to find ones that use the money wisely, but by and large I do it because it's just the right thing to do, not because it makes me feel good.  I feel neutral about it - I see it as one of those things you do as part of a community, especially as someone who has a lot of blessings in her life.  Perhaps that means I'm an unfeeling person.


In this book she definitely toned down her "everyone should do paid work full time" message, for which I was grateful (it was a consistent frustration for me in 168 Hours).  


I loved the chapters where she talked about buying less house than you can afford (or the bank thinks you can afford), as well as scaling back the expenses related to the Engagement-Wedding Industrial Complex.   This would be a great book for someone in their 20s just starting out in the "real world".


I definitely recommend reading it- even if you're super-responsible with your money, you'll likely come away with some new ideas after reading it.  It's more about figuring out your overall life priorities than the nuts and bolts of personal finance, and that kind of introspection is good for everyone, right?

Now I can get that chai!

We Americans have this cultural thing about not discussing salaries.  I was surprised to hear from a Norwegian friend that what *everyone* makes is actually public knowledge.  Fascinating.

So maybe it's incredibly bad form for me to talk about how much money this blog makes, but I have to think there are people who are curious.  And honestly, it's so little money that *I* should be embarassed about it.

She can't believe I'm telling you this! 
Photo by Kristi Lloyd Photography

I think I love the idea of making money from blogging more than I'm willing to put in the effort to create an actual blog that would bring in real cash.  For one thing, I blog about random stuff.  I just can't focus on one thing and create a specialized niche blog like I'm supposed to.  I also don't have enough time to endlessly tweak for SEO, maintain my own hosted Wordpress, etc.

But I was curious about whether I could make *any* money.  Turns out the answer is yes, which is kind of cool. 

I've had Amazon referral links for a little while, maybe 3 years, but I put them in pretty rarely when I'm discussing a specific book or product. Over that time I've earned a kingly $21 from Amazon in credit, which of course, I promptly used.

This household spends a LOT of money on Amazon. It's so convenient, and since we gave up our Costco membership, we actually use it to buy some things in bulk, like Apple Sauce Cups for T's preschool lunches. (See how I put my link in there? Tricky, right?)

I had Google ads for a while because Blogger makes it so easy.  Unfortunately Google doesn't pay you until your balance reaches $100.  I think I've made about $8 total there.  I'll probably never get to the $100 threshold, which I'm sure they expect, so I don't count this in my total.

Someone on Etsy told me about Project Wonderful ads, which I have on the left sidebar.  It's an auction-based inexpensive marketplace, and is pretty easy to set up.  I've had these since 2008, and have made about $40 from them, which is pretty good.  I suppose I could set my minimum ad price a little higher, but I often have times where the spots aren't filled (because so many people set a $0 minimum) so I think my 1-cent minimum is working out ok.

I also have BlogHer ads, which are my favorite.  They're really nice people to work with.  Some people make real money with them.  I'm not one of them. 

I started with their ads in 2007 and took a hiatus when I wasn't posting for most of 2010 and 2011.  In total during that time, I've probably made about $40 from those ads.  In addition, I've done a few book reviews through their awesome Book Club, for which I got a free book (yay) and $20 each, so by far those have been the most "lucrative".  I'm glad to be reading for pleasure again, and have discovered some pretty fantastic books that way.  The per-hour rate for all that work isn't much though, so clearly this is a labor of love.

So, I've been blogging since 2005 and have made a total of $141, plus some awesome free books.  Not exactly time to quit my real job, huh?  But enough to pay for my domain name and the brief period I spent hosting my own Wordpress instance (disaster).

And, I still have money left over for a couple of Starbucks soy chai lattes!  Sweet.  So, wanna share your lucrative blogging stories?

*Edited 4/23/2012 to add Project Wonderful stats.

Doing Taxes for my Teeny, Tiny Handcrafted Business

I'm totally cheating by recycling a post I wrote for my now-defunct 1000 Markets blog.  I have a vision of consolidating all my blog posts here, so I'll slowly add in the ones from my short-lived work blog as well.  Some I'll just import into the date I wrote them, and others I'll actually update/repost as "new to you".  :)  So if your feed reader gives you deja vu, that's why.  Sorry for the confusion!

When you're an official business in the great state of Washington, business taxes are due on Jan 31, if you're small.  If you make more money, you need to pay monthly or quarterly.  I don't envy those people!

And of course, every year I wait until the last minute to do this truly unpleasant task and swear I'll start earlier next time.  Here it is, Jan 17 and I haven't even started yet.  And Mama Weekend Away is coming up, and lord knows I DO NOT want to do taxes then.

The first time I did this 3 years ago, I sat down with the forms and realized the process was totally incomprehensible.  That made me angry. I have a Master's Degree in Molecular Biology, so I like to think I'm reasonably intelligent.  And I couldn't parse that stupid form.  I can't even imagine what folks do when English is not their main language.  Sigh.

So I broke down and set up an appointment with a CPA so he could walk me through the form.  I still wanted to complete it myself, but he helped me understand what the state was asking for.  And he also gave me the cheerful news that I have to keep better track of my cost of goods and inventory info for my federal taxes - oh joy.

With his help, I realized that the state tax form for retailers is actually pretty simple.  That, and my reports from Paypal and Amazon Payments helped me fill everything out in about an hour.  Which isn't too bad.  Totally worth the $50 I paid him.

After doing it for a few years, I have an Excel spreadsheet that handles most of the calculations. There's a ton of manual work to download the data from PayPal, add in receipts manually, and pull out non-business related transactions. Setting up a separate PayPal account for my personal stuff is something I've been meaning to do every year, but it's such a hassle that I just suck it up and deal with the manual work at tax time instead.

The outcome of the January tax party is that I figure out how much I owe the state in sales tax. Fortunately most of my Etsy customers are out of state, so it ends up being a pretty small check I have to write.  And over the years, I've gotten better at collecting the tax, thanks to Etsy and Paypal doing the work for me.  So the difference in what I've collected and what I owe out of pocket gets smaller each year.

The other cool result is finding out how much I spent on tools and supplies (!), what my total sales were, and how much profit I made.  I've been lucky to be (minimally) profitable every year.  2011 will be the first year I'm not, and that was by design, both for our tax situation *and*  just because I was so busy I didn't take many custom orders on Etsy all year.

This is by far my least favorite thing about turning my hobbies into a real business.  But I think it forces me to use parts of my brain I don't normally use, and gives me more confidence each time.  TJ normally does all the tax and finance-related stuff in our house because he likes it better.  I don't like doing my business taxes, but it's good for me.

What about you, my fabulous readers?  Are you the one that does taxes in your house?  Do you have a business to account for as well?

Your lies, they drop like acid rain

Today I am imagining all sorts of cartoon character injuries to the bastards who stole my debit card number. Maybe I need a voodoo doll or something.

TJ got a call at home today from the Visa fraud protection people who noticed "unusual activity" on my debit card. To the fraud protection people, I send love and virtual warm chocolate cupcakes. I called my bank, and lo and behold, someone decided to go on a grocery shopping spree in Bellevue with my debit card today. They bought $300 worth of food at Whole Foods and Cash and Carry.

Suspiciously, both of these fraudulent transactions, plus a $1 charge at FedEx Kinkos, were made just minutes after I dined at another Bellevue restaurant for lunch with my friend Jenn. Strangely one of the grocery stores is in that same shopping center. Very sketchy.

So I had to drop everything and hustle in my car over to Seattle to get to my bank and fill out fraud paperwork. And of course there was crappy traffic both ways. Boo! Hiss!

The good news is that they didn't completely clean out my account. And after just those three charges, I canceled my card. I am super-grateful for the Visa fraud protection automated system. And the bank people were nice too. Hopefully they process my claim soon so I can get my money back.

I did call Whole Foods and they're looking into it. Lovely people there too.

Sigh. I really didn't need another stupid errand/personal action item. I hope these people fall off a sharp cliff. Or get hit on the head with an anvil. Thunk!

I depend on me if I want it

You may have noticed the Google ads in a prominent place on my blog. I've been getting a lot of hits lately, so I figured I'd try out the ads and see how it goes.

I held out for a long time, but I'm curious to see how it works.

Let's just say a wise friend suggested I try it :)

Sea winds brought her to me

Woo hoo! I've got my first craft show under my belt. This past week has been a frenzy of preparing for it; hence no blog posts. I had to figure out display, pricing, packaging purchases and keeping track of my inventory. Oh and fretting about whether I had enough to sell. I did.

So yesterday at 6:30am, I woke up, got dressed, ate a hearty breakfast and dragged myself over to the Phinney Ridge Neighborhood Association Community Center. This trip to Seattle proper made me remember why I love this city so much. The old neighborhoods are so interesting and quirky. And have giant old converted schoolhouses as community centers that people can rent for various events - very cool!

It was freezing outside as we waited for the custodian to show up and unlock the door, but warm and toasty inside the auditorium. The organizers patiently pointed us to our spots and thus began the slow process of carting everything from the car and setting up. (I was smart and had packed everything into the car the night before - lord knows I would have forgotten something if I had waited until morning to do that.)

I didn't want to spend a lot of money on this event - what if I don't like selling at craft fairs, and plus, I don't want this to take over my life. Oh wait, I think it might be too late for that.

So I used tablecloths and a beaded table runner I already had, which worked great. For display I used a few of the little props I bought at Goodwill for my photography, plus the trays we got from Jasmine and Chris as a wedding present, and the corkboard I use to hold my own personal jewelry at home. I got a couple of compliments on the corkboard idea, but I can't take credit for that one - I saw it in a book. Oh, and the 1995 Big T Caltech yearbook was another display platform because it's just a smooth solid black.

It took the better part of an hour to set all my stuff up, and in the meantime, my table sharing partner Kirstin showed up and set up all of her fabulous recycled cashmere scarves and pillows. You *must* check them out - they're gorgeous, soft, and eco-friendly. These would make great Christmas gifts. No one could walk by our booth without touching her scarves, and I think I benefitted from that attention, too.

So then it was 9am, and the official start of the show. We waited patiently. It was a pretty slow start, but Kirstin and I chatted since we had never met before and that kept me entertained for much of the day. I guess it could have turned out very differently - as most people know, I'm easily annoyed - but she was a *great* person to share a table with for 7 hours.

I was a little peeved because there was another jewelry seller right next to me - I knew there would be several, but I was hoping they'd try to space them out a bit. This woman had the craft show thing down - credit card machine, tons of inventory, quick setup. But my work was pretty different from hers so it worked out ok in the end.

Eventually people started coming by. I am so lucky to have such good friends in Seattle. I sent out an email inviting everyone I knew to attend the craft show, not to buy stuff from me, but just to come and see all the fabulous handmade stuff there.

I was *so* pleased to see Chris, Catie, Mrs. Bryant and Jenny - and pretty surprised since Jasmine and Chris's new baby Charlie was just born earlier this week. Understandably, Jasmine and Charlie were at home sleeping :) Mrs. Bryant bought one of my favorite pieces as a gift for someone - very cool.

Then Lisa came, and it turned out she works with the crafters sitting at the table directly behind me! Small world, I guess.

I had a steady trickle of both known visitors and new ones all day. Hans and Doyle showed up to chat for a little while (and buy something - woo hoo!), and so did Carey and her cutie pie son Greyson, who I haven't seen since he was a baby. Carey and I worked at Deloitte together, and then eventually she ended up at Microsoft so we got together for lunch several times (yay Mexican food) when I was still at Microsoft.

In the end, I sold 10 items, which was 9 more than I was hoping for! Of course, there's this little nagging doubt in my mind about whether my friends were just being nice. I hope not.

One of my sales *was* actually to someone I didn't know beforehand, so that made me feel better. She bought a bracelet that I wasn't sure anyone would like (except me, of course). TJ certainly didn't like it, because it was had bright orange flower beads on it.

The day passed rather quickly. I still have to work on my sales persona. When someone stopped to look, I definitely said hello and smiled, but didn't want to seem pushy so I let them ask questions before I said anything more. One lady tried on one of my necklaces, but I didn't say anything to sell her on it - maybe I should have pointed out its features while she had it on. She didn't end up buying it.

A couple of people took my business card so hopefully they'll be online shoppers later.

Thanks to the wonders of my Motorola Q cell phone and its Internet access, I could delete items from my etsy shop as they sold, so I didn't have to take even the slight chance that someone would try to buy something that's unavailable.

Next Saturday I've got another craft show in Redmond, at the Redmond Senior Center from 10am - 3pm. I think the crowd will be very different but I'm looking forward to it since it's close to home and pretty short. The organizers claim that they've advertised in several places, and I've put it up on several websites as well. As Leslie told me, it's an inexpensive way to do market research so even if I don't sell anything, I'll probably learn something.

Oh - and one of my custom orders reached its recipient on Friday - it was a set of mother-daughter necklaces. Apparently they *love* them. Too cool. That was a fun project, for which I have my dad to thank for the referral. Thanks Appa.

Taking the long way around

There's a light at the end of the crazybusy tunnel! This weekend I am flying down to Pasadena for a meeting of an alumni committee at Caltech. But then I have several free weekends, with no travel. Yay!

Each day at work I'm figuring out my job a little better. It's been a source of frustration for me - being new to the team and the product we're working on, while the rest of the team seems to be so much more knowledgable than I am. I've noticed as I get older, these kinds of transitions seem harder. So I guess it's good that I worked in consulting while I was in my 20s or else I'd have serious trauma everytime I got a new project now!

I have been putting my head in the sand about a credit card issue I'm having. My balance has gotten pretty high, mostly because I haven't made the time to sit down and work on my finances each month, so I don't really know how much money I have, and thus just pay a few hundred dollars rather than the whole balance. After several months of doing this, the balance is now quite significant, and I'm honestly not sure if I have the money in my account to cover it all immediately.

Just a digression here. Yes, as a married couple, *we* are doing fine financially, and have the money to cover our bills. But TJ and I have a system for personal spending money where we each get a small sum to spend on our own, in our own checking accounts so we don't have to "answer" to each other about why he bought another motorcycle part for $200 or why I bought $300 worth of shoes in one day.

So it's that account I'm having trouble with. Which means I need to scale back/budget a bit. I guess the transition from getting paid 100% salary to 75% is finally catching up with me - I knew it would, but I hadn't exactly changed my lifestyle as a result.

But today is the day. I'm going to go through all the unopened mail from my bank on my desk, and get my account in order. (I mean really, it's just one checking account, with one monthly bill, so not exactly rocket science!) And come up with a plan on how to pay off that credit card. Somewhat conveniently, I lost this credit card on my last day of vacation with Kristin and haven't gotten its replacement yet (possibly in the unopened mail?) so I haven't had the opportunity to increase the balance any more. Which is definitely a good thing.

As insignificant as this sounds, it's causing me a whole lot of stress for the past several months because it's been "lurking" in my mind. I got into some credit card debt trouble in college and remember that stress and the feeling of "I'll never get out of this" and not wanting to deal with it. When I finally got a "real" job and could make big monthly payments to pay off that balance, it really felt great. I was ecstatic when I sent in the last payment for that giant debt.

So here's to not getting into that situation again, and getting control of this now before it gets out of control. Wish me luck!