Fall For Design

Chloe’s Big Girl Room Updated

March 6, 2013

If you’ve followed us along, you can read more about Chloe’s Big Girl Room in this post.

Here’s a visual recap. This is what it looked like before…

….and this is what it looked like after we moved in, with paper window treatments.

…and here it is after we repaired all the holes with a dish washing sponge and drywall spackle. Don’t need any fancy sandpaper here. And yes the sponge was brand new/clean. We have found Beebe bullets all over the house so we think some kid went crazy, not to mention the previous owners weren’t… well.. precise about anything. So the owners before them could have had pictures in the wall and they never cared to patch over the holes. Here it is after. We painted the trim Dover White, installed some wood blinds, and painted the room Sterling by Behr. I’ve tried to find a white quilt for a while now, but I haven’t been successful. I’ll probably have to make her one, but she’s been doing just fine with blankets during the night.

The headboard was actually my grandmothers headboard. My dad found it at a garage sale, made it new again, and she had the frame until she passed in 2008. When my parents were able to sale her condo about a year later, they gave us the furniture (we had room in that big huge four bedroom house). I ended up finding out I was pregnant a few months later. He also found the dresser and replaced the hardware…

…and did the same with the nightstand. I wanted to paint all the furniture a shade of white, but it’s in such great condition that I would hate to ruin it. I don’t feel guilty painting furniture that’s beat up, but I feel guilty if it’s in great condition. I think I got enough slack from my family members telling me not to paint it that I caved and decided not to paint. As for the doors? We plan on replacing the doors later down the road. Those doors gotta go.

I’m trying to work with the decor that we have for this room. I rather not spend a bunch of money on anything to be honest, so I’m going to try to keep the butterfly theme that Chloe loves oh-so-much but find a way to make her room still look like a country big girl’s room.

So what’s left for Chloe’s Big Girl Room?

Incorporate her nylon butterflys
Hang a butterfly frame
Add her “C H L O E” wood letters that we have.
Possibly make some sort of butterfly migration art
Find a white quilt or make one
Add curtains
Replace Carpet
Replace doors

If this was your girls room, what would you do different?

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Installing our Dish Washer

March 4, 2013

Phew! Monday already?! How did that happen! The weekend flew by and we made some small progress in the girls room. We took the girls to spend time with their grandma and we ran the basic errands (bank, grocery store). It took up all our morning on Saturday and in the afternoon we ran another errand to our accountant’s office, went to an antique store (dropped a hint here) and worked on the girls room. Next thing you know the girls were back home and our Saturday was long gone.

We’ve lived in our house for almost three months now, and I thought it was about time I showed you our new dishwasher. But first, here’s a recap. We purchased the kitchen appliances for a really great deal. You can find out more about it here.

… and here’s a picture of what our kitchen looked like with the old dishwasher still installed.

We actually installed the dishwasher a few weeks after we moved in. When we pulled out the dishwasher, we found evidence of a pest.

Yup, that’s rat poop. Or mouse poop. When we first moved in we found these little presents in all the bedrooms. We haven’t found any mice/rats, just their skeletons in the attic. You think I’m kidding? No, I’m serious. There was also rat poison in the attic too.

Jeremiah’s brother came over to show us how to uninstall and install the new dishwasher. I stayed out-of-the-way except to take pictures. And the next few pictures I can’t really say anything about because I have no idea what they’re doing. All I know is they had to do some wiring and leak out the water…

….and here’s what it looked like before….

…and after. Installed but photographed three months later. I didn’t catch that it had a dirty mark on the front until I uploaded this picture. But I’m keeping it real. It’s not always shiny.

Yes, we’re Mr. and Mrs. Protein Shake if you couldn’t tell from our stacks of supplements and protein jars.

One of my requirements for a new dishwasher was to have the buttons on the top. At our old house, the buttons were on the front. Chloe was constantly turning the dry option from heat to air dry. Drying our dishes with air dry drove me nuts. I hated having to hand towel all the dishes when I’m in such a hurry. I love modern-day conveniences!

Now imagine this dishwasher sitting nice and pretty with white cabinets, wood flooring, and a grey/white marble counter top. One day folks, one day.

What did you guys do this weekend?

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My Monthly Income Report for February 2013

March 1, 2013

Hi Friends,

Each month I share with you how I make money online. I’m a SAHM with two toddlers and if I can do this, you can too. I use my graphic design skills and monetize them. I share this information with you because;

1) It’s motivating to others
2) I want to document my progress, my failures, and hold myself accountable
3) I want to try to break the standard blog that makes money online by blogging about making money online

This report does not include what my husband or I make outside of the internet, it only includes what I make online.

THE INCOME

Etsy: $267.15
Zazzle: $338.05
Zazzle Bonus: $96.82
Adsense: $3.15
Amazon: $0.00
Affiliates: $0.00

Total Gross: $705.17

It’s a shame I don’t get to keep it all. I have to take 35% off from $705.17. 25% is for taxes, and 10% is tithe. I pay more taxes being self-employed than I would be if I was employed by another company. How crazy is that! I’m now understanding why it’s so important to vote about tax issues. After all that is subtracted, I only get to take home about $460. I have very mixed feelings about my hard-earned money and politics.

MAKING MONEY

Etsy

About 90% of my Etsy sales are made through customer interaction. Usually a customer will contact me wanting to make a specific edit or to see if I have an item available that’s not listed. Through the contact I’m able to positively answer their questions, and about 90% of those who contact me end up making a purchase.

I would say that Etsy takes up about 70% of the time I spend on the computer due to Etsy being the only shop where I have a lot of interaction with clients. We have to communicate to get the proofing process completed. I spend a lot of time working on revisions. Most of the revisions are due to more things being added or the customer changes their mind on the wording. My spelling/grammar mistakes actually take less time to fix than making 2 or 3 more revisions for additional details.

However, about 75% of my revisions are my fault. I’m almost always guilty of misspelling or creating a typo. I end up causing myself stress because I’m going too fast and not proofreading thoroughly. I’m guilty of reading too fast and my mind is picking up the word that I typed, but it’s not picking up the misspelling.

I actually closed the shop for 4 days in February to give myself a break, organize my thoughts and to refresh my mind.

Zazzle

I thought something happened to Zazzle in the beginning of Febuary. My sales dropped dramatically. I usually average one sale a day. It seemed like a whole week went by before I had a sale. I was on the Zazzle community forums and noticed others were seeing a drop in sales too. Some other popular wedding vendors were having a Valentine and President Day sales due to slow sales. I figured due to the biggest romantic holiday of the year, wedding stationery purchases would be slow. People are spending a huge chunk of change on their loved ones instead of their wedding stationery.

I was surprised that I made as much money as I did with Zazzle during this month. I thought due to the slow sales my total blog income report would be around $400 or less.

I also noticed that I have an increase of sales around the beginning of the month and the middle of the month. I give this increase during these dates to customers receiving their paycheck.

I was looking into my zazzle web stats and noticed that half of my sales are coming from a third-party referral. Someone is referring a customer to zazzle and for whatever reason this customer decides to buy my product instead. I’m able to track people being referred to my zazzle store, but I am unable to track if a purchase was made by who referred them. It’s frustrating. I’m curious to see how other people are marketing my products. If anybody knows a trick to this please let me know.

Adsense

Adsense is still laughable. Which leads me up into this next topic..

Blogging Stuff

Since talking with Moe (more about Moe and her juicy goods here) I’ve been working on another change of business plans since my last post here. I’ve done a lot of blog and etsy maintenance in the past month. So much maintenance that I’m in a burn-out phrase of making hideous little tiny edits that will be worth it in the end.

I have a new goal for my blog thanks to Moe.

I’ve also decided to drop my talent into another niche. I know, it’s not like I need another project on my hands, right? But look at Pat from smartpassiveincome.com, he has over 7 different niches and a load of affiliate sales to maximize his profits.

Pinch of Yum has two niches, and really focused affiliates. I think their product is so unique in their market that it ends up being more profitable.

…but back to different niches and growing our current products. I read on a post on YHL that John mentioned how nice it was to finally have all their hard work pay off. That’s 5 years of working almost non-stop (except weekends) on projects, blogging, creating, crafting, DIYing.. you name it. And a lot of blog maintenance. FIVE years!

To think I’ve only been in this business for one year, and I have so much more work to do. The important step to grow your business is using the Dave Ramsey method. Small steps. Baby Steps. The little pesky bills (or projects) get done first before you start picking away at your bigger projects.

So what’s my plan of attack? What pesky little projects do I need to finish to grow these monthly income reports? Well, you’ll have to stay tuned for next month. :) Total teaser, I know. After all I’m still refreshing my brain since I’m in the middle of my Etsy break (I schedule my blog posts, so much easier and less stressful).

That’s all I have for our February Income Report on how we make money online. Leave a comment with any suggestions, questions or helpful hints/tricks. Thank you for reading, purchasing and making this a success!

Pst – Did you find this information helpful? Head on over to our resource page for more information.

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