Ya I know I’m a little spoiled! As you know for mothers day I got a real in-ground fish pond. The best thing about it was he had most of the work done the day that we brought it home, and with-in 2 weeks he had rocks around the outside and grass seed planted. It takes most men longer than that to pick up there dirty socks and put them in the hamper…..any way here are some new pictures with more grass and less hay.
E-bay has gotten so big that I had to pick up another 350 E embroidery machine. It was used as a demo machine, so it was used very little an i got it at a great price. With 5 kids and Jason running numbers 24/7 its real hard to drop over $1000 on a machine. For a long time now, we pay cash for everything even the big items. Our goal is to be debt fee in a couple of years. So I was a good girl and waited until we had enough money in the bank. Its been running nonstop since I plugged it in. And Jason hasn’t grounded me yet although he did threaten to put me on a shorter leash.
Here’s something I never thought I’d get, since I asked my husband about it years ago and he always said no…
Fish Pond
This picture isn’t up-to-date – I’ll try to post some new ones soon. Now the grass is growing, the fountain is in place, and there are maybe a dozen regular goldfish swimming around. We’re feeding them some food that’s supposed to help the water clear up, and it’s helping somewhat. Oh yeah, and the lilies are growing well, so the plastic ones can come out.
Thought I’d post something on Alaine’s blog today. She rarely has time to post, as business has been booming. The whole cornhole bag thing hasn’t let up. In fact, it probably accounts for the majority of the business right now. It seems like the big thing now is to request designer bags rather than plain colors. Designer bags cost more – how much more depends on how complicated the design. More complicated designs take longer to create, stitch out, and usually require more color changes.
If you’re looking for custom bags for your company – for instance maybe a bar would like to order sets with their logo on them – keep in mind a few things. Bags come in 2-color sets. Usually people pick fabric colors to offset their logo colors. For instance, Facebook’s logo is white on a blue background. They would probably pick blue for one bag color with the white logo, and then reverse the colors to have a blue logo on white bags.
Also, the best size is to keep the logo between 2.5 – 3.0 inches at it’s widest or tallest. Any larger and it starts to wrap around the edges of the bag towards the seam, which can distort the image.
Some people might be interested to know that the corn we use is grown locally and is standard field corn from the local feed distributor. It’s basically shelled corn, stored for livestock feed.
Once a year I tie dye all the shirts for the 5th graders at Baldwin South. The school buys all the supplies and I get to have all the fun, this is for their field trip to the zoo. Every teacher and every kid gets one, plus all the parents that tag along to help with the trip get one. I’m not real sure but I think its over 200 shirts in about four hours. We use dyes from Dhurma Trading Co, this is the only place to buy your dyes. The shirts have to set in the dye for 48 hours at that time, then they can be rinsed an washed. You need to dry them on high hot in the dryer, heat helps set the dye! After all of that I like to take chunky stampers and liquid dish soap to stamp the shirts. Once the soap is dry you can wash and dry them a second time. This makes some of the coolest shirts ever.
Yep! Summer is here and backyard games are a big seller. Cornholing is not a bad word – well, it could be – but today we’re talking about the game. It’s kinda like horse shoes. You have two boards set up at a distance from each other. Each board sits at an angle with a hole at one end. Then you take bags full of corn and toss them, trying to hit the hole in the board. There are rules and every thing. For all the rules you’ll have to go to ACA website.
I’ve been selling a ton of bags in my Ebay store. I use the 350E to personalize them with anything your heart desires – maybe a person’s last name or a bar’s name like “Pete’s Pub”. “The Corn Hole King” and “USA” are also big sellers. The bags are made to regulation specs, 6″ by 6″ with 15oz of corn, double stitch with upholstery thread.
The college kids also use them as tag bags. I shouldn’t have to explain this but I will anyway. You run around trying to hit each other with a small bag of corn. If you leave a bruise on someone you get points. If it’s on his arm, 5 points, black eye, 30points, butt 40 points, groin 100 points. Yes, these are college kids – who else would make a game of trying to hurt each other?
I took the 350E to school for 6th-grade career day. I also took a smaller machine so that the kids could do some hands-on sewing. Only three kids had ever touched a sewing machine before and one was mine. That’s not surprising since they took home-ec out of the schools and more and more moms are working. There is less time to sit down and teach your kid how to sew. Kids used to play house – now they play on the computer. For some reason it’s frowned upon if you’re a woman and don’t have a full time job!
I was at one of the school events – I think it was ‘Muffins for Moms” – and one of the women at my table said, “So you stay at home and do nothing?” At what point in time did we all turn on each other and make being a mom a bad word. If my kids get sick I don’t have to call my boss and tell him I can’t make it. Of course I don’t have a new van or truck and nobody comes to clean my house for me. And it will be a while before we take a cruise but at least I get to be with my kids while they’re young. My kids have grown up sewing and watching me be a mom. I just bought the 4yr old her first sewing machine. She can thread it all by herself and as long as I’m in the room she can sew as much as she wants to.
If anyone needs me I’ll be at home doing nothing.
I spent two days messing with the tension on my Janome. The bottom was too loose and the top was too tight. I loaded hoop after hoop of new fabric, different thread, messed with every screw, turned knobs – even cursed a bunch. Nothing I did made a difference! So after two days I took a deep breath and told Jason that I not only broke my new $1500 embroidery machine but I tried to fix it myself.
Jason didn’t even blink he walked over and in an hour reset every thing back to where it was supposed to be and also removed a small piece of string that was stuck in my shuttle. Yep, one little piece of string gave me a two day headache.
Sale are up!! There is only so much time in the day to make and post stuff. At some point there is just not enough time to keep up! I have a few options – I could hire a part time person to help out like I did during the Christmas, but for now I’m going to raise my prices just a little. Sell less at a higher prce and make the same money. I’m also trying to get the older 2 kids to help more. If I have to pay someone to help, why not them? They’re thinking about it – HA HA! It’s just not fun to be helping your mom, I guess. Anyway, I have at least 3 people I can call if I need too. Well, one for sure the other two are seasonal – kinda – maybe. Oh well, back to the sewing machine.
Last week I bought a CD full of embroidery designs. There are several problems with this (1) You just don’t know how good the designs are until you try one. If the stitches look bad the CD is worthless (2) You have to pay for all 20 or so design even though you only want 2 or 3 out of the pack (3) as soon as you open the package you cant return it if you don’t like it..
So after a lot of thought and lot of research I chose Anita Goodesign. She’s kind of expensive but is one of the best. I got the stuffed animal collection – 128 designs – so I thought. You get 21 + an alphabet!! Basically they took the 21 stuffed animals and also made an applique and a stitched version. 21 times 3 is 63. With the upper and lowercase alphabet adding 52 more, then the numbers 0-9… After all of that it still doesn’t add up to 128. Well it’s mine now so I’m going to use it right!! NOT SO FAST, on the inside front cover of the CD it says if you want to embroider our design on garments and sell them you may, but the limit per design is 50 embroidered garments. I spent a bunch of money for something and I can only use it 50 times.
I will not be buying any more of her designs. If she had put that limit on the outside of the package I would have never considered it in the first place. Now that the package is open I’m stuck with it.
So I’m making a baby blanket set with a burp rag, boo boo buddy, bib & blanket. I can only sell 10 sets thanks to the limits of the CD.
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