Hello December!

We had a really nice Thanksgiving. My mom, grandma, sister, and Aubry ate with us. Aubry was the first to arrive and she helped me get some things ready...like putting the new tablecloth on the table, tying the new seat cushions to the chairs, and putting together the meat and cheese tray. Then my mom, grandma, and sister all showed up about the same time. My sister brought cake pops, a pumpkin pie cheesecake, and deviled eggs. My mom brought a ham and mashed potatoes. Then I made everything else. I made one turkey breast in the pressure cooker that day, and then I made another one for our leftovers. I also bought some more bananas to make banana bread again this week. The banana bread and pumpkin bread were definitely a big hit. I didn't get the ginger molasses cookies made, but I'm going to make those to take to Christmas at my sister's along with chocolate chip cookies and chicken salad sandwiches. 

After everyone left that night, I had to finish making and packaging 14 orders that went out in the mail Friday. Sunday night I made and packaged 30 orders and was all caught up. Then Tuesday night I made and packaged another 23 orders that went out in the mail Wednesday. And then last night I made and packaged another 15 orders since I couldn't sleep. So I've been keeping busy with orders lately. 

During this year's holiday sale, my orders were up 2% compared to last year and my revenue was up 10%. So that's really nice...especially considering the state of the economy. A lot of Etsy sellers are reporting slow sales, but things are actually picking up in my shop. October was pretty slow, but November ended up being my best month outside of the unusually busy July and August when my custom name label sticker sheets did so well for back to school. 

I already met my goal this year of reaching 3500 sales in my CandiMakerStickers shop on December 2nd. :)  I have a spreadsheet where I track every 50 sales in my Etsy shops. From October 1 through November 14, it was taking me 10-13 days to hit 50 sales. Then it went down to 8 days on November 22, 6 days on November 28, and then 4 days on December 2nd. Last December was my most successful month for 2024, so we'll see how it goes this year. I'm also just 4 sales away from 500 in my CandiMakerPlanners shop. I think my goal for next year is to hit 6000 in my sticker shop and 1000 in my planner shop. We'll see how it goes. :) 

Johnny and I finished the first part of Season 5 of Stranger Things. It felt to me like it started out really, really slow...but finally got interesting by the 4th episode. I wish Dr Owens was in this season...I really liked his character. I'm looking forward to seeing how everything plays out though. I'm also looking forward to the next season of Virgin River. It ended on a cliffhanger, of course, and I am not a patient person...so I don't like waiting to see what happens. :P I believe it's supposed to hit Netflix in the Spring of 2026. And I really wish Reacher would hurry up with Season 4. I know there's a Neagley spinoff...and I'm sure that will probably be released before Reacher. We are watching the last episode of Murder in a Small Town tonight...no idea when the 3rd season will be released. There are three more episodes of Tracker this season. We're also looking forward to High Potential, The Hunting Party, and The Night Agent coming back in 2026. I really wish the seasons were longer. I miss the days where there were 24 episodes in a season. It's especially irritating when it takes a year or more for the next season to air. Like I said...I'm not a patient person. :P 

It's felt like a very long week so far. The days seem to be going sooo slow. It doesn't help that I've felt pretty crappy lately. It makes sleeping difficult which makes me really tired during the day....so I'm sure that doesn't help. I was up working on orders until almost 3am and I still couldn't sleep, so I ended up making some more banana bread until 4am. :P The bananas were weird...like the bottom part was too ripe but the top part wasn't ripe enough. I didn't want to wait longer and have the bananas end up getting moldy, so I went ahead and made a double batch...which worked out alright. The bread isn't as sweet as it usually is, but it's still pretty tasty. 

Well...I think I'm going to get started enjoying my weekend! :) 

Yay for the weekend!

It's been a loooong week. I've just felt so crappy lately...so it makes every day feel very long. 

We've been getting ready for Thanksgiving. I've already ordered all the food except for the strawberries, rolls, etc. that need to be ordered closer to the day. My mom is making the ham and mashed potatoes, and my sister is making deviled eggs and some deserts. I'm making all my usual stuff plus crockpot mac n cheese, banana bread, pumpkin bread, and ginger molasses cookies. We'll also have some chips and French onion dip to munch on while dinner is cooking. Johnny also wants some veggies and ranch dip, but we'll see. 

When we were talking about everything we need to do, Johnny mentioned that we don't have a Thanksgiving tablecloth or centerpiece. We do actually have some centerpieces that we're going to use...they're fall flower arrangements in small terracotta pots that I made more than 20 years ago. They've been up in the closet in the office. But I did go ahead and get a new tablecloth for Thanksgiving. Since we're planning to put the leaves in the table, we needed an oval tablecloth instead of our round one anyway. It also reminded me that I've been wanting to get some new seat cushions for the dining room chairs, so I got a set of seat cushions with washable covers. These are for everyday, not just Thanksgiving...so we ordered a dark grey set that match the couch pretty well. 

Oh! And we finally found a new tv stand that we like! We had a lot of things on our list as far as what we were looking for. We knew that we wanted a black one to match our new coffee table. Most of the black ones were high gloss...and we didn't want that. Johnny also didn't want it to look too "farmhouse" style. Our coffee table has the "X" decor on the edges, so he decided that he didn't mind if the doors of the tv stand have it as well...he just definitely wanted it to have doors. We have so much dog hair and stuff...it's better than having to clean everything on the tv stand so frequently. There's also only one real logical spot to put the tv, which is in front of the half-wall by the stairs. So we didn't want one that was super tall (I could just imagine the tv getting bumped and falling down the stairs), but we also wanted it to fill the 72" inch wide space as much as possible. Johnny really wanted one with a fireplace heater with different heat, brightness, and color settings and preferred there to be color-changing LED lights. I FINALLY found one that's nearly perfect. I'm not a huge fan of the woodgrain texture look (our new coffee table is smooth), but I like it better than the high gloss. Other than that it seems pretty perfect. It's 70" long and a little less than 27" tall (a lot of the other ones were almost 3 feet tall or more), has fireplace heater (and the look is with logs, =not the "crystals" that a lot of the other ones had), doors with adjustable shelves that have doors, LED lights...hopefully it will work out great. We were really hoping it would arrive before Thanksgiving (estimated delivery window was Tuesday-Saturday when we ordered it), but tracking so far has it arriving on Friday. :P 

I/we did some other Black Friday shopping already. Our old cat tree was ruined when the cat room flooded, and the cats need something to scratch on (somewhere that is NOT the new couch). We don't have a very logical place to put it in the living room...so we decided to find one that we could put on the landing of the stairs. It's a pretty big landing, so we had a bit of room to work with. Plus now that the girls have moved out, I'm pretty much the only one going downstairs and that's mainly just to do the laundry and tend to the cats. 

I found a corner cat tree that has a 17" base and it fits perfectly. We picked the 66" version in dark grey color which matches pretty well with the couch. And with the Black Friday sale, it was 30% off. It was easy to put together...I got it all done in about half an hour. Then after Johnny got off work on Friday, he helped me put it on the stairs and attached it to the wall so it doesn't tip. Milo was a bit cautious at first, but Leo absolutely loved it right away. He was rolling around and having fun before we even put it on the landing. Angel really seems to enjoy it, too. She's a big reason why we decided to put the cat tree on the stairs. She doesn't like to come upstairs with the dogs, so we were thinking that she might feel like she's part of what's going on being able to sit up higher and see what everyone is doing. 

I also got a 40x12 cork scratching mat to put on the half wall which was 42% off for Black Friday. The cats have been having a harder time jumping up there (they'll be 10 years old next year, so I suppose it's not out of the ordinary), so I thought it might give them a bit of traction...plus provide another outlet for scratching. I cut a portion of it to fit on the wood trim and then I hung the rest on the wall. It has some really strong adhesive and seems to be working well so far. 

So...the cats' Christmas is all taken care of. ;) 

Then I also got a new video camera for the cat room and one for the living room. I got a regular indoor cam for the cat room for 50% off and a pan/tilt indoor cam for upstairs that was 33% off. I'd gotten a cheap camera for the cat room when I set up the litter robot to see if/when the cats used it...but despite having an sd card, you can't really save recordings to it or see anything in between motion alerts (and the motion alerts aren't very good at all) without a subscription plan. We already have a Ring subscription for our outdoor cameras which is for unlimited devices...so it makes a lot more sense to have Ring indoor camera instead. And Johnny really likes that they have privacy covers. 

I really like being able to check on things with the cats (like if the litterbox is full or if they've run out of food in their gravity feeder) without having to actually go downstairs. And when we went to my sister's house a few months ago, I moved the cat room camera upstairs to watch the dogs while we were gone and it was really nice to be able to check in on them...so we decided to get a camera for upstairs, too. I thought the pan/tilt camera would be better so we can see all areas upstairs. I added the cameras to our Ring app and Johnny helped me put up the pan/tilt camera up in the dining room after he got off work. I have to move some things around in the cat room before I set the camera up in there so we have an unobstructed view of everything.  

The only other thing I'd really like to get for the house is a new ceiling fan for the living room...but we may wait on that until after the new year. 

Well...I'm going to get some more things done before I go to bed. :) 

 

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Overdue update!

I just realized that I hadn't posted in over a month! November has been pretty busy, though!

We had a nice, relaxing Thanksgiving. It was just Johnny and I again this year. All the kids had their own things going on. I'd considered hosting my family again this year (we'd done it in 2014 and 2019) but it's always so stressful and I just wasn't up for it this year. It never fails...whenever we have people over for Thanksgiving, things don't go smoothly at all. :P We typically make a bigger turkey which ties up the oven for a long time. Then other things don't seem to get done in time. One year I turned on the crockpot for the mac n cheese...only to discover that it hadn't been plugged in. :P There's just so much going on at once and lots of people in the kitchen...it feels like chaos. But this year we had zero deadline for when anything had to be done...and I got it all done at relatively the same time without trying very hard. :P I didn't even bake the breads the night before like I usually do. And with fewer people eating, I just make turkey breasts in the pressure cooker instead of a whole turkey in the oven. It only takes about an hour and I don't even have to thaw them first. 

Work has also been super busy this month. Sales were slow during the first part of November...but they picked up A LOT starting the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. I ended up breaking my previous record for total orders (from both Etsy shops and eBay) in one week (Sunday to Saturday)...which was 36 orders. The week of Thanksgiving, I had 45 orders! I actually ran out of the glassine bags that I use for packaging before my new ones were set to arrive. Luckily Amazon got them here pretty quick so none of my orders were late going out. I love being busy, though! :)  

During the slow part of early November, I used the downtime to make some new custom name designs using individual letter graphics and got a lot of them listed before I got busy. I even sold some of the new designs in the last week. :) I still have more letter designs that I want to make...but I'll have to wait for some more down time. 

Most of my recent sales have been for magnets...which are largely made to order instead of keeping them in stock. They're more expensive to make than my stickers so I don't want to have a lot of unsold inventory. I do try keep a couple of the popular ones on hand...which at the moment are my spreadsheet design and the flamingo design that says "Don't make me put my foot down." Since 11/26, I've had 68 orders and 36 of those orders were for magnets. I'm really glad that I changed my listing photos to make it clear that each design can be a magnet or sticker...because it has greatly increased the amount of magnet orders since then. 

While I'm working, I usually binge watch shows that I've already seen...that way I don't have to really pay attention to it. I just look up at the TV to see my favorite parts. It's my emotional support background noise. ;) I'd been watching a lot of 24 and then switched to Virgin River. I really wish December 19th would get here so I can watch Season 6. There's not a whole lot of episodes to binge watch Virgin River...so I've gone through it several times now just in the last few weeks. :P And then last night when Johnny and I were getting ready to eat dinner, I noticed that Martin Henderson was in the photo for the Australian TV miniseries, Secrets and Lies. So I decided to watch that last night after I was done working. I watched all 6 episodes...largely to see if my prediction was correct about about who the killer was (and it was...I'm generally pretty good at predicting TV shows and movies). It was a good show, though. I think the rest of the week I'm going to switch to Reacher. That's another show with an upcoming season that I'm excited for! It's probably my favorite current show right now.

Ooh! We're waiting for my birthday present to get here! :) We ordered the Whisker Litter Robot 4 during the Black Friday/Cyber Monday says. So I'm hoping that really works out well. It's supposed to arrive Thursday. We also picked out our Christmas present...which was a new set of non-stick ceramic cookware. That'll definitely be nice...since I've been using the same pots and pans (aside from a few new pieces here and there) that I bought in 2005 (and my pasta pot is from 2003). LOL. My favorite large 5qt sauté pan definitely needed to be replaced. So hopefully the new set will be good. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out which set to get. :P 

Well...I should probably get some more work done before I go to bed. 

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. ;) 

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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!

Already December again!

The years just seem to go by so fast. I think it's interesting how...when you're stuck in a miserable life, it seems to go by so slow. Like during my first marriage...the days were long, the years were long...it was just miserable. I think it's because you think about how much you want out...and so you're just waiting for it to be over. You're looking forward...hoping that what comes next will be better. So you're waiting for it to end and it feels like it's too far away. But then once you get to the point where you're happy and content with your life...you don't want that to end. So as time goes by, it feels like the end is coming faster than you want it to. I've never been this content with my life before...so I hope it lasts for a very long time! :) 

We had a nice, relaxing Thanksgiving. I made dinner here at home. Ashlyn decided to spend Thanksgiving with her dad and his side of the family, but Aubry came over and had dinner with us. She took some turkey over to my parents' house, too. And my favorite part...leftovers for a few days! I love a break from figuring out what to have for dinner every night. :P I don't mind making dinner...it's just trying to decide what to make that's annoying. :P

I've been working on a lot of behind-the-scenes CandiMaker stuff. I've been redoing my pricing at CandiMakerTransfers in order to start offering First Class packages with Priority Mail upgrades instead of just Priority Mail. I ordered some rigid mailers in three different sizes and they arrived yesterday...so I reorganized everything to fit the new mailers in my shipping armoire. I'm also working on getting everything ready to start selling stickers...descriptions, pricing, materials, product packaging, etc. In addition to stickers, I am also creating laminated and magnetic bookmarks. :) I want to have quite a few products available when I open, so I probably won't have my grand opening until after the first of the new year. 

I also finished rearranging and reorganizing my office. I've really tried to make the most of the space. Once of these days I would love to build my own desk/storage system, but I'm pleased with how it has turned out so far with the furniture we already had. The only furniture I purchased was a rolling cart to hold my heat press and toaster oven. I was able to find it at Walmart.com for less than $40. So far it's working out great. I also found some nice, cheap white curtains. I wanted some natural light into the room so it took awhile to find some plain white curtains that weren't blackout curtains but weren't sheer. I was planning to get shorter curtains, but our Walmart didn't have these curtains in 63" length so I got the 84" panels. The only things right now that I haven't gotten yet is an LED light for inside the armoire and I still haven't figured out a better method for storing my sublimation paper yet. But I did take pictures of how the office looks so far. :) 

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And on that note...I'm going to get back to work! :) 

Just a few more days!

Today I got the last things that we'll need for Thanksgiving dinner. :) Over the weekend I talked to my mom and sister (and later my grandma) about dinner at our house this year. So they'll be coming over to have dinner with us Thursday evening. :) I'm changing up the menu from last year a little bit to accommodate a larger number of people. 

Johnny is making a turkey and I'm going to make a spiral ham in my pressure cooker (which is a first for me because I don't personally like ham). He'll start the turkey in the morning sometime and then I'll start the ham around 2:30 pm or so. 

Then I'm going to make a double helping of the green bean casserole, cornbread casserole, and candied yams in the toaster oven while the turkey breast and ham are cooking. I'll also make a double helping of the turkey stuffing and noodles on the stovetop. Instead of just heating up Stouffers macaroni and cheese like I did last year, I'm going to make the slow cooker creamy macaroni and cheese recipe from my grandma. It only takes about an hour in the crockpot so it'll be super easy. 

The night before I plan on cleaning house and making the banana cake bread, strawberry whip dream, and the pumpkin pie. I'll wait to vacuum Thursday morning because otherwise it'll look like I didn't vacuum at all with the large amount of pet hair we have around here. :P 

But for now...I need to get back to work! I still have a lot of minutes to transcribe! 

The year will be over before we know it!

I can't believe it'll be Thanksgiving next week! I'm not sure exactly what we're doing other than making Thanksgiving dinner here at home. We've had Thanksgiving here at the house every year since 2013. Sometimes we have a house full of people and a couple years it was just the two of us...usually it's somewhere in between. Each year it's mostly just a matter of...we're making dinner so anyone who doesn't have other plans is welcome to join us (except last year before the Covid vaccine was available for everyone). But we generally make a lot of food for Thanksgiving whether we plan to have anyone over or not. We really like leftovers! ;) In fact, I usually wish we had even MORE leftovers after we finish them. :P I already got all the groceries for Thanksgiving except the turkey, strawberries, bananas, and Hawaiian rolls. I'll probably go ahead and get pie crusts too because I don't feel like making them from scratch when I don't even eat pumpkin pie. :P Last year I went ahead and bought a pre-made pie, but I have some pumpkin pie filling in the cabinet that I need to use. Other than that I just plan on making basically the same stuff I did last year.  

I've been working a little bit on some winter/holiday sublimation designs for my Etsy shop. I'm trying to get some Christmas gifts done as well. I have the design done for my mom's Christmas gift but I still need to finish my mother-in-law's design. And then I have a few other gifts I need to make as well. 

I've also been trying to get some transcription files done so we'll have a bit more money for other Christmas gifts. So...I better get back to work! :) 

So much to be thankful for!

Happy Thanksgiving 2019! There's so much in my life to be thankful for...

I have an amazing husband who loves me and treats me well. He is supportive and kind. I've never met someone so generous and willing to help...not just me, but everyone around him. We enjoy our time together and Johnny makes me smile every single day. I've never been so happy. He is the love of my life and I couldn't imagine spending my forever with anyone else.

I have two pretty great daughters. They're teenagers now and while there's a lot of bickering and typical teenage attitudes, they're really good kids and I'm so very proud of the young women they are becoming. I'm thankful for the school they attend and the many opportunities that are available to them for choice of classes and extracurricular activities (more so than at their old school) and I'm proud of how well they are doing in school. I'm also very thankful that they're overall healthy kids and I hope that is always the case. Oh and I'm truly thankful to have primary custody of my children and no longer fighting with XH over everything anymore. I'm thankful all that drama is behind us.

I am thankful for my family. My mom is truly wonderful...and she has always been there for her loved ones through everything. She is also the inspiration for how I raise my own children. I can't say enough good things about her. And my dad is always there when we need him...and likes to spoil his girls. My sister also strives to take care of her loved ones and always tries to be the person in your corner. She never fails to makes me laugh and her gif game is strong. ;) I also have very involved grandparents who have always had a prominent place in my life...as well as close knit extended family members. This is also the first Thanksgiving that my Uncle Billy will be home for. He's back home after living in California for 30-some years. He retired from the Navy a short time ago and finally made it back home. So I'm thankful for that as well. :)

I'm thankful for the roof over our heads. Johnny bought this house back in 2006 and the girls and I have been living here since 2013. I love the town we live in and I couldn't ask for a better location. We have plenty of room and I've enjoyed being able to make it "our" home.

I'm thankful that we have a nice vehicle that gets us to where we need to be! Last year was spent dealing with a multitude of vehicle issues which led to finally trading in our previous vehicle for a new car. Johnny likes that it's sporty looking, but I'm just glad it's reliable! I'm also thankful we were in a position to be able to get new tires this week.

I'm even thankful for our pets. While they can drive me crazy sometimes...they also provide countless hours of entertainment, snuggles, and happiness.

I'm thankful for Johnny's job and my own job as a law enforcement transcriptionist. I'm thankful for the ability to work from home and to make my own schedule around the needs of our family. It's been a wonderful opportunity and I'm so glad that I found it. I'm thankful that we are able to pay our bills and provide food and all the necessities of life.

I'm also thankful that I'm getting my child support again...especially now that I have a senior. It helps us to be able to get the extra little things...like the "Class of 2020" sweatshirt AND sweatpants that Aubry wanted and a bigger senior ad in the yearbook. And with two daughters in high school, there are more dresses for school dances, more activities (and the $10 here and there to stop for food on the bus ride home), etc. We always make sure the kids have what they *need* but it also helps to be able to say "yes" to some things they *want* as well.

I'm also thankful for the little things in life. Netflix and Amazon Prime...so Johnny and I can binge watch shows together. We also recently discovered that the Dog Whisperer is on Disney+ so I'm thankful for that! Pajama pants so I can be comfy. The pressure cooker I got from my grandma so I can make quick and easy meals for my family. The Kitchen Aid Stand Mixer I got from my grandma so I can make cookies and not wear out my shoulder holding my old hand mixer. Our new carpet cleaner to clean our floors and upholstery.

There are SO many things to be thankful for...the big and the little things! Happy Thanksgiving everyone!