When life pelts you with frozen lemons...
As today's title suggests, life has not been great recently. It could be worse, absolutely, but it could also be better...
We've basically been rolling 1's for the past few months.
This past Saturday while mowing the lawn, my husband fell down one of our hills and managed to hit his right foot on the lawn mower, and it went under, breaking his big toe and mildly cutting some toes. The mower was off, thankfully, so he only broke his toe. He was a big baby about and didn't stop whining for a full day. Even now, whenever Elijah, our 3 year old son, gets within 5 feet of his broken toe, Marc freaks out. He's not cleared to drive yet, but hopefully that will change today after his podiatrist appointment. I can't handle much more of the whining about his toe. I spent pretty much my entire junior year of college walking around campus with broken toes because I sucked it up, taped them together and limped to class. Yes they hurt, especially since I didn't have a fancy boot to keep my from bending my toes or crutches, but that didn't stop me from getting stuff done. Marc's pain is absolutely valid, broken toes are not fun, but he's being a bit of a baby about it.
Rant over for now.
Frodo is doing better. He still occasionally holds his head down, especially at night, but he has been cleared for stair usage if supervised and he no longer needs to be sequestered in the kitchen unless we are going to be gone for a while. We will probably be speaking to the rehab people soon to see what else we can be doing to rehabilitate Frodo's neck muscles. We are doing some light stuff now, but more might be needed.
If you go our shop front on Etsy, you will notice some of our items have FREE SHIPPING attached to them. Etsy is changing some things in their advertising stuff. So basically, for me as the shop owner, any of my listings that offer FREE SHIPPING, will be given priority for advertising (I think). Any orders placed that equal $35 or more will be eligible for FREE SHIPPING as well as the items that have it put on them specifically. I encourage you to take advantage of this as it will help my family offset these recent medical bills that are beyond our ability to pay. More items will be eligible for FREE SHIPPING closer to the Fall and Winter Holiday seasons.
With the FREE SHIPPING has come some price increases. None of them are too much, they are just to help my business recoup shipping costs and our present increase in overhead and life expenses. If anything, most of my items are still UNDER priced for handmade objects. I will be slowly reevaluating my pricing schemes over the course this summer to make sure I am actually paying myself a wage, because that's the reason why I opened this shop in the first place, to create a pay check for myself to help my husband support our family. Right now, I am not doing that very well and it is becoming detrimental to our finances.
Please help a family pay their bills and shop small, shop local, shop Frodo's Fancies!
I am currently trying to do all of the things (partially because of hubby's mowing blunder, partially because I'm trying to have a super productive summer in preparation for peak season). Unfortunately, I am finding more and more that trying to do all of the things is making me lose my mind. So I am going to just take one day at a time and try to be productive enough. I am trying to build stock so if I get orders around the holiday season I do not have to freak out at craft shows that I don't have enough stock for. I am also still trying to get some more patterns posted, both here and on Etsy. I also would like to get my patterns on Ravelry, but have yet to figure out how to do that. See? All of the things. And that is just for my business. Running a business from home may seem like the perfect dream situation, but reality if far from that. I constantly have my 3 year old demanding my attention and he acts out if I spend so much as 5 minutes working on something. He knows we need money to buy him food and toys. He knows daddy goes to work to get money and that mommy sometimes goes away on weekends to get money. He just has a hard time realizing that mommy also has work, on top of him and housework, that needs to be done while she's home. This stuff doesn't crochet itself.
Anyway, I guess this post was more of a therapeutic rant so I can get my thoughts in order and realize that I am only 1 person, I can not do everything and it is not worth killing myself trying to do it all.
Thanks for bearing with me, I promise the next post won't be as rant-y.
