Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving snuck up on me this year. About a week before, I was like...oh crap, I need to get groceries! I made a ton of food for Thanksgiving again...which means now I have a lot of dishes to do. :P 

This year I got two 3lb boneless turkey breasts to cook in the pressure cooker. The last 3 years I got a bone-in turkey breast but it's always extra work to cut it all off the bone...so it went a little quicker this year. ;) I love using the pressure cooker... tender and juicy turkey in less than an hour. Then we had gravy, mashed potatoes, corn, Reames noodles, green bean casserole, cornbread casserole, candied yams, stuffing, macaroni and cheese, banana bread, and then the only new thing I made this year was cinnamon and sugar pumpkin bread which was super yummy. All that food...just for me, Johnny, and Aubry (Ashlyn went to have Thanksgiving with her dad). We always make a lot of food for Thanksgiving though...which I love because it means I don't have to decide what to make for dinner for a few more days since we have plenty of leftovers. ;) 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Candace Pride (@tinycandi)

The dogs enjoyed their Thanksgiving dinner too. ;) We added some pumpkin puree and a little bit of plain macaroni noodles to their dog food. They LOVE noodles. Well...Nova loves all food but Bozley is very fickle. He can like something one day and then want nothing to do with it the next. Even people food. Like cheese? What dog doesn't like cheese? Bozley about 95% of the time. :P But he ALWAYS loves pasta. They like turkey too, but I didn't leave any unseasoned for them so they didn't get any this time. 

Aubry had gone to the store the other day with a friend of hers and bought two card games: Cards Against Humanity and What Do You Meme Family Edition. After we ate our Thanksgiving dinner, we played What Do You Meme for about 20 rounds or so and then we spent a couple hours playing Cards Against Humanity. It. Was. HILARIOUS. The funniest part is that Johnny would be reading through his cards and just start giggling...which made Aubry and I laugh and the more he read his cards, the more he would laugh. There were multiple times he was literally laughing so hard that he was crying. I laughed so hard it gave me a headache...which I didn't even know was actually a thing. lol. It was the three of us and "Rando" (random card from the pile each round) and we played 75 rounds. I got a lot of crap cards (I even traded in one of my cards to get almost an entirely new hand) but I did manage to win about 15 times. Rando beat me with 17 cards. :P Then I think Aubry had 19 cards in the end and Johnny had 24. It was a lot of fun. 

Johnny has to work tomorrow. :( Aubry has a long 4-day weekend, though, so she's pretty happy about that...especially since she's been working some 10-hour days and a few 12-hour days here and there. We don't really have anything planned for the weekend...just relaxing around the house. Saturday it's supposed to snow...so I'm definitely not going to be leaving the house if I don't have to. :P I'll probably just work this weekend and enjoy all the leftovers. :) Oh and I got three Sims 4 expansion packs during their Black Friday sale for an early Christmas present so that's always fun. :) 

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!

RECIPE: Cinnamon Sugar Pumpkin Bread

Like all the recipes I make (aside from those that are recipes from my family), I looked at a lot of different recipes and just came up with something that I hoped worked out. So far I've had great luck doing it that way...and this was no different. It turned out VERY yummy...and actually tastes a lot like my banana bread. :P 

Cinnamon Sugar Pumpkin Bread 

Ingredients:

3/4 cup 100% pumpkin puree 
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup milk

2 tsp vanilla extract
3/4 cup sugar 
1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
1 tsp molasses
1 1/4 cup flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
1 tsp cinnamon

1 1/2 tbs sugar and 1 tsp cinnamon for top

Directions: 
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grease loaf pan. 
Mix pumpkin puree, vegetable oil, milk, vanilla extract, sugar, brown sugar, and molasses. Set aside. 
In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking powder, salt, pumpkin pie spice, and cinnamon. 
Stir the wet mixture into the flour mixture just until the ingredients are no longer dry. 
Pour into loaf pan and sprinkle the top with the cinnamon sugar mixture. 
Bake in oven for about 30 minutes hour. Cover with foil and return to oven for 15-20 minutes or until toothpick in the middle comes out clean. 
Remove from oven and let sit in pan for 10 minutes before placing on cooling rack. 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Candace Pride (@tinycandi)

UGH...my head :(

For the last almost 2 weeks I've been battling headaches and migraines. The headaches...they're more irritating than disabling. I've always had headaches for as long as I can remember so, sadly, I'm used to it. It's one of those things that's just always been normal for me and when I was little, I didn't realize that other people don't have daily headaches. My mom has always gotten headaches and migraines too...so that's what "normal" looked like to me. Luckily my headaches have only developed into migraines a few times in the last couple weeks. A couple nights I went to bed a lot earlier than normal because my head was hurting so badly. I even had to get up in the middle of the night at one point to get a new ice pack and more ibuprofen. BLAH. 

The headaches are making me feel a lot less productive. There were a lot of things I'd planned to get done that didn't really happen. I did manage to design, print, cut, photograph, and list some Christmas sticker sheets in my Etsy shop, though. I have 4x6 Christmas sticker sheets and then 5x7 Christmas coloring sticker sheets...where you can color your own stickers. One is even a DIY color-your-own Christmas card with a blank Christmas tree and "Merry Christmas" on the front of a cardstock card (blank inside) and then a 5x7 sticker sheet with some Christmas decorations, presents, and gift bags that can all be colored and used to decorate the card. I thought it was a neat idea...especially as a craft project for kids. :) 

I think now I've pretty much got all the Christmas stuff I plan to upload this year. Now I have a lot of other ideas I'm working on...including a lot more general sticker sheets, planner stickers, and of course more die-cut stickers.  

Ooh! And I got my first Faire order on November 10th! I was so excited that I print and cut all 60 stickers that same night. Of course, then I couldn't get it in the mail until Monday because of the holiday...but I dropped it off at the post office first thing Monday morning. I really love doing wholesale orders so I hope my Faire shop is successful. :) 

My Etsy shop is doing well. :) I have almost 350 sales from almost 290 orders in my CandiMakerStickers shop. I put my CandiMakerDesigns shop on vacation mode for now because I'm planning on completely revamping the products I'll be selling there. I plan to start making personalized planner covers, dashboards, folders, and even planner templates. I haven't decided yet if I'll be putting my planner-specific stickers in my sticker shop or my planner shop. 

Oh and I tried setting up my TikTok shop...what a nightmare! After sending all my documentation, my shop got approved on October 31st. The following morning...I got a shop policy violation. When I clicked on the link for information on the "related policy" it sent me to the Negative Review policy. I hadn't even uploaded a single product yet...let alone had any orders or negative reviews. And then it stated that if I felt the violation was in error, to send in documents that were totally irrelevant to my business which consists of making my own products in my own home (like utility bills for my shop in my shop name, inventory invoices, etc). So I filed an appeal that same day on November 1st and it says on the appeal that they'll respond within 48 hours. Yeah well I STILL don't have a response. 

So I started a support ticket. I explained that I got a shop policy violation for a completely unknown reason, the link took me to negative review enforcement, that the documents requested are irrelevant and impossible, and that I appealed the violation and still haven't received a response despite the appeal saying I'd get a response in 48 hours...and I included screenshots of the email, the link it took me to, and my appeal. Their first response to that ticket was literally within 3 seconds (I submitted my ticket at 11:16:18 and their response was at 11:16:21) was that if I believe the enforcement given was erroneous, to file an appeal. SERIOUSLY?! So I responded back that I ALREADY appealed and that was my entire problem. Then I get a message back the following day that starts with, "sorry for the inconvenience encountered with the ratings on your product," and that the buyer's review is compliant and I should reach out to the buyer to understand their concerns. WTF?! So I responded again to ask them what they don't understand about the fact that I've never even uploaded a single product yet and I've had no orders or reviews. Seriously...it's OBVIOUS that an actual person is NOT responding to support tickets. 

So I tried using "live chat" but that was just as useless. They SAY that they're escalating my concerns to their specialized team...which is a load of nonsense. Basically they just create another support ticket with the live chat copied and pasted into it...but the same automated bots are obviously responding to those tickets. The first ticket created from the "live chat" agent...the response was, "Thank you so much for letting me know about that. I am totally happy with your situation that you have already approved and resolved the concern." Are you kidding me right now? I respond to ask what they're talking about because NOTHING has been resolved...and ask if there is even a person reading the support tickets. They respond again to say, "Good day! We do apologized for what happened on your account. Upon checking on my end that the violation is still on the process. Please bear with us about this concern that you had. We will reach you once of our relevant team will have ab update about this." All of those typos are theirs, by the way.

So I start ANOTHER live chat that is "escalated" and get another ridiculous response: 
"Upon checking, the appeal already in success status, this will be reflected and all of the violation will be reversed within 1-3 business days, this should be fine now, if the violation still not removed after a couple of days, please don't hesitate to get in touch with us. I know where your frustration coming from, but I just wanted to tell you that your emotions are valid and we are currently working on good for this to give a better resolution to each and everyone of you, but for this matter we want to give the best that we can offer to resolve this matter, I hope you even appreciate each of our services." 

Seriously? It reads like someone is just using auto-complete in a text message to type a response. People think Etsy seller support is bad...obviously they've never encountered TikTok seller support because I don't understand why anyone would sell on that platform with "support" like this. So I doubt I will be doing anything further with my TikTok shop. I definitely wouldn't suggest it to anyone else, either. 

Online Labels Review

I'm so disappointed. Now that I have my new printer, I can print larger. Circut now has print then cut capability for 11x17 pages so I was excited about making larger sticker sheets (there's a full-page hack but it's time-consuming and with tiny stickers there's less margin for error). Ever since, I've been looking for some sticker paper or printable vinyl sticker paper that is 11x17 in size. All I found were between $1 and $2 per page. My current matte waterproof vinyl is less than 25 cents per page...so paying at least 4 times the price for only double the space...it's not a very economical option. So I was thrilled when I found 11x17 sticker paper from Online Labels. I'd seen people talking about OL forever and liking their sticker paper (although usually it's about their weatherproof paper) so I had high hopes. I bought a package of 100 pages of the 11x17 paper and was excited to try it out. And...now I'm returning it. :P 

After printing and cutting 12 pages...they're all going in the trash. My Cricut keeps wanting to kiss-cut the pages too deep (I have it on the lowest pressure setting possible)...so I already have to mess around with the blade and the depth (raising the housing before I clamp it down) for my sticker sheets. But regardless of the cut, the pages curl horribly when I remove them from the light-grip mat. The brand of matte waterproof vinyl that I currently use for my sticker sheets don't do that on the same mat...so I know it's not the mat. I'm just so disappointed. :( 

I also realized that their "no-hassle guarantee" policy for returns is completely different than their actual policy for returns. The no-hassle guarantee says, "If you're not completely satisfied with your order or the product differs from what you need, you can return the item to us within 60 days for a full refund." However, if you go into your order and start a return...it isn't a full refund if you're not returning a full, unused package. How would someone know if they're not satisfied if they haven't used the product? When I went through my account to start a return, it wanted to deduct the number of pages I'd used. And I was well within the "60 days" as I ordered it on the 15th and it was delivered on the 19th. Then when I went to their return policy under their FAQ, it says, "Ask our customer service representatives about our convenient return option. With this type of return, we'll send you a prepaid return shipping label. When we process your refund, you will receive your money back minus the cost of shipping." Again, that's not the FULL REFUND described in the "no-hassle guarantee." 

So...they gave me a return label and I'm returning the paper in the same product packaging AND box that it was sent to me in. The customer service rep in chat said that I'd be getting a full refund...but the email with the return mailing label stated the refund amount did not include the original price of shipping. 

It's totally fine for companies to have a return policy that doesn't include refunding of the shipping price or that the customer has to pay for their own shipping label to return. However, it's NOT okay for a company to say they have a FULL refund if it's not actually a FULL refund. And considering I had to go back and forth with the representative on chat in order to get the "one-time courtesy" of a full refund...it's definitely NOT a "no-hassle" moneyback guarantee. On their website they talk about their no-hassle moneyback guarantee that's supposed to be more convenient and instill buyer confidence...but then their actual return policy is the same as everyone else's. So honestly, I'm not sure that I'll ever order anything from their website again based on that fact alone. I don't appreciate misleading information. 

This is why I shop on Amazon...which truly has no hassle returns. I don't have to find a box for the item at all...I just use the barcode that Amazon gives me and show it at either the UPS store or Kohls (depending on which one I choose) and then that's it. I'm usually refunded to my Amazon account within a few hours of that barcode being scanned...and then I turn around and buy something else from Amazon. I feel comfortable buying things on Amazon because I know that 99.9% of the time I'm going to have an easy solution to any problem I might have.