Not what I planned for the weekend!

So...we had another impromptu home improvement project this weekend. Johnny and I sat down to eat dinner and watch a TV show together...when all the sudden I heard what sounded like waterfall downstairs. I ran down there to find water spewing out of the main water line that comes into the house through the cement basement wall. The copper pipe with the shut-off valve was completely detached from the wall. Johnny had to go outside to turn off our water from the main valve in the yard. It was, like, 10:30pm so there wasn't much else we could do to fix it. Johnny used the shop vac to get up all the water out of the room and then I spent 3 hours using the carpet cleaner on "dry only" to suck up the water that seeped out on the carpet outside of the room so it would be easier to remove. And basically we've been cleaning up ever since. We've finally gotten all the wet carpet and padding out of the area in front of the bedrooms and in Aubry's room along with the tack strips and baseboards. Johnny removed the drywall under the water pipe but there's more drywall that we'll need to remove. For now we have some Damprid and fans blowing to deal with remaining moisture. AND...I think tomorrow we're going to have to call a plumber. Johnny thought he had it fixed, but it started to have a slow leak so we turned the water back off tonight. We'll call a plumber in the morning to look at it and see what they think. I'm just tired of dealing with it at this point. :P And I know Johnny is getting frustrated. If it's not one thing, it's another! 

It definitely was NOT what we had planned for the weekend. I had intended to retake product photos for all my stickers...but I didn't get that done. :P Last weekend I redid my mock-up photos and created some informational listing photos. I've been wanting to fill all 10 spaces for listing photos for awhile...so it felt good to finally get around to it. I eventually want to take a good listing video as well to upload to all my listings. But...that'll be for another day. And in August I'm going to work on my SEO some more...checking tags and titles to make them more effective.  

Oh and last weekend I also revamped my pricing a little bit and set up some new promo codes for 25-45% off depending on the size of the order (the larger the order, the bigger the discount). I have them displayed in one of my listing photos, too. So hopefully that will encourage larger orders. My sticker shop really took off in March...and aside from April, my sales have increased each month since. Right now I'm at 154 orders and 180 sales. I've also made sticker sales to 41 states so far! I'm hoping by the end of the year to have all 50 states plus DC. :) The only ones I have left as of right now are DC, Nevada, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Mississippi, West Virginia, Delaware, and Rhode Island. 

Well...I'm exhausted so I'm going to go to bed early tonight (at least earlier than usual). 

Oooh! A shiny new toy!

Okay it's not actually a new toy. But...I'm going to spend a lot of time fascinated with it because that's the kind of nerd I am. ;) 

Back in April I ordered a kit for whole genome sequencing. I sent it off the first week of May...and knew it would take a long time to get the results back. On June 21st, I got a notification that my kit was in the "raw data generated" phase and would be done within a few weeks. Then today before I woke up, I started getting emails that it was going through the rest of the steps...and tonight it was finally finishing up!

The Rare Disease Report was the first available...and I was really eager to look at that. The summary showed that I don't have any of the rare diseases, syndromes, or traits that were included in the screen. That's what I was expecting, though. 

Last year, I realized that the explanation for ALL of my health issues since birth could be attributed to Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. It is actually a rare disease, but the most common form is Hypermobile EDS...for which there is no current genetic marker identified. I talked to my primary care physician about EDS earlier this year...and he said it wouldn't surprise him based on the way that I sit. He asked about my elbows and I showed him...then was like, yep! Hypermobile. So my chart already says hypermobile. 

There's a diagnostic criteria used for Hypermobile...and I overwhelmingly meet that. The first part is basically how bendy you are. For someone my age you have to have 5 out of 9...and I have 8 (used to be 9 but now my knees hurt when I put my palms flat on the floor while standing) plus 3 out of the 5 extra ones that you can add if you fall one point below the requirement. The second part is about related health issues that one with hEDS is likely to have. There's an A, B, and C part...and you have to meet two of the three. For A...you have to have 5 and I have 8. B is a positive family history...but we never really heard about it until me so none of the rest of my family have been diagnosed (although my sister, nieces, daughters, and more seem to also be hypermobile). Then C you have to have at least one and I have all three. Then there's a third section and all three prerequisites must be met...which is basically ruling out other things including other types of EDS. With my Rare Disease Screen from the genome sequencing...I don't show the genes for any of the other types of EDS (which was a big reason why I did the genome sequencing in the first place). 

I was 99% certain that I had hEDS...but I was curious about the periodontal variant of Ehlers-Danlos as well given the extent of the dental issues that I've had on top of the overcrowding that's normal with hEDS...but it looks like it's just hEDS.   

So the next time I see my doctor for my medication refills...I'm going to take my genetic testing results and see if he's able to diagnose me since it's so obvious (and he's been my physician through all of the health issues that are on the list) or if he has to send me to a rheumatologist or something. 

And now...I'm going to go through my 545 page Wellness and Longevity Report to see what other interesting stuff my genes say about me. ;) 

Work Work Work!

It seems like pretty much all I do is work. ;) I don't mind it though...I enjoy what I do. But running a business is definitely time-consuming. There's always so much to do...and so much more that CAN be done. Sometimes I struggle with deciding what to focus on. It all ends up working out though. Sometimes I'll get burnt out with one particular thing and I can just move on to a different thing. 

Honestly...my favorite things are a lot of the boring parts. I enjoy updating my spreadsheets and organizing everything. I enjoy coming up with ways to make things more streamlined. I've spent many years of my life in administrative assistant or office manager roles and it's something I do really well. I get it from my mama. :) 

My sticker shop is doing well. I'm getting pretty consistent sales and nearly every day. Yesterday I had four sales in one day and then another after midnight before I went to bed and woke up to another one this morning. :) Right now I'm at 135 orders and 159 sales (not including when people order multiple quantities of the same item...I really wish Etsy would change that!). I've also sent orders to 39 states so far! My "goal" is to reach all 50 states plus Washington DC by the end of the year. It's not really a goal I have a whole lot of control over...but it'd be pretty cool. 

One thing I would like to work on is social media promotion...but I just don't really make the time or effort. Maybe that'll be a goal for next year! My goal this year is to break 200 orders...and at the rate I'm going, I should be able to achieve that goal. Each month has seen an increase in sales from the month before. Well...except April. April was kind of a dud month where I didn't get any sales for a couple weeks in the middle of the month. But that's not unusual for retail. And actually...summer is normally a pretty slow time for retail, but it's been pretty good for me. So I wonder if things will pick up even more in the fall and leading up to Christmas. :) 

I have some fall/Halloween designs that I'll be listing soon but I want to work on some specific back to school things as well. Right now I'm kinda focused on some administrative things in my shop, though. I am wanting to redo some of my mock-ups and retake my size comparison photos. But before I can do that...I'm going through my "backgrounds" graphics because I started with over 30k files and my computer is not wanting to let me look through them all without freezing up for a few seconds and then going back to the beginning of the folder. :P So I'm categorizing them into subfolders based on the type of background they are and that's starting to help. 

So...that's my "to-do list" right now. And on that note...I'm gonna get back to work! :) 

Ugh...4th of July

I'm just not a fan of the 4th of July. I'm not a person who likes loud noises...and it's SO LOUD for an entire week around here. And of course no one can actually follow the law and stop shooting fireworks off at 10pm/12am (depending on the night). The other night there were people still shooting off fireworks at 3am. And since the artillery shell fireworks are legal here...there's a LOT of noise. We also aren't far from the park where the city has their fireworks show. So yeah...I'm just not a fan.  

Nova hates fireworks. For about two weeks after the first day people start shooting off fireworks, she is very apprehensive about going outside. And if there's a loud noise while she's outside, she immediately goes to the back door wanting in. We give her trazadone which has been helping quite a bit. Without it she just wanders around the house whining and hiding in the hallway any time there is a noise. It's interesting...Boz is the generally fearful pup, but he's not scared of fireworks. He'll hang out with us outside and just goes about his business like it's no big deal. Then Nova pretty much isn't scared of anything EXCEPT fireworks (and thunder around fireworks time or when it's super loud any other time). She's a daddy's girl so when she's scared...that's who she wants to be with. So she's mostly been relaxing with Johnny in the bedroom for the last week. She wouldn't even come in to eat until after midnight...and she LOVES her food. She's the one who tells me when it's time to eat (sometimes before it's actually time to eat) by standing in the kennel and staring at me until I go get the food. But she wasn't even doing that until after the fireworks stopped. :( After it stopped raining this afternoon, people started shooting off fireworks again. So I had to give her some more trazadone and actually let her in the bedroom with Johnny while he was working so she'd calm down and go to sleep. Hopefully people will actually stop after today...but I'm not holding my breath or anything. They were supposed to stop at 10pm...but they're still going on at almost 11:30pm.  

And on top of that, I've had a migraine for the last three days now. The fireworks definitely weren't helping that, either. We didn't end up doing anything for 4th of July. We watched Tom Segura's new special with Aubry and that's about it. Interestingly enough...most of the bits were the same ones from his show that we went to with Aubry last year. It was still good though. :) We watch a lot of stand-up comedy specials, but he's our favorite comedian. 

Other than that, I've just been busy with work stuff...largely a lot of administrative stuff. On the 1st of every month I reconcile my spreadsheets and my Etsy account. Then I make sure all my receipts are logged on my spreadsheet and update my profit-loss sheet for the month. After spending the last almost two years buying new equipment, testing quality of different materials, etc...it's nice to be showing a profit at the end of the month now. :)  

I revamped the pricing for my chose-your-own bundles. They're now specifically 30-45% off depending on how many stickers are ordered. I also went through my profit calculation spreadsheet and updated the pricing for all my postage since it's about to change again. I printed more packaging stickers and worked on some new cardstock folders to send in my rigid mailers that go as a package instead of a letter. My rigid mailers are slightly smaller than the half-letter size kraft envelopes I send my regular sticker orders in. So I condensed my regular sticker folders (a letter-size piece of cardstock folded in half) so that I can get two top-fold cards out of one letter-size piece of cardstock. I don't send many packages out that way...but now the packaging will match my brand more when I do. 

I'm Star Seller again for July...and I've already met the requirements for Star Seller for August, too. :) Orders keep coming in pretty regularly. I'm up to 121 orders and 141 sales so far this year in my sticker shop. My views and favorites have been steadily increasing...which is awesome to see. I'm much better at the office management side of business than I am at sales...but I'm working on it! Global average conversion rates for e-commerce is 2.9% and for Etsy...a typical conversion rate is about 1-5% (generally speaking...the higher the number, the better). For my sticker shop...currently my conversion rate for the entire year so far is 6.1%, 7.8% for the last 30 days, and 8.8% for the last week. :) 

I liked doing sublimation when I first started CandiMaker...but I really, really love running my sticker shop. I like coming up with designs, making the stickers, thinking of new products...I just enjoy all of it. Plus I have a wonderful husband who loves and supports me...and that makes all the difference in the world. :)