Modern Elegance!

I added a beautiful & modern necklace and earring set to my shop tonight. This set is just eye catching and very gorgeous. It's modern but yet elegant at the same exact time. This set is definitely something that, I think, would be a great asset to your jewelry collection!! It's made with an artistic and modern pendant for the necklace and focal bead for the earrings. The pendant/focal beads are frosted, but they have that black and white look that is so popular! (I know I love black and white!) The purple that is splashed here and there in small glass beads and round beads (in the earrings) really make the set POP! It really is the thing that catches someone's attention and draws them to your earrings or necklace. The necklace can be adjusted before shipment to fit your size/length needs and if you would like to swap out the faux crystals for swarovski crystals, that is also available. (Free of charge!!)

I can't believe I had the chance to list something tonight. LOL My day was so busy. We finally got Alayna's party booked at Chuck E. Cheese for Friday. I am excited and I can't wait for the party! I believe this is going to really be something Alayna remembers. Especially since she actually understands the concept of a party this year! LOL Hopefully, her cousins will be able to come. I got in contact with my sister today and e-mailed my brother about this, so I hope they do come.

I really gotta get to bed since I have ANOTHER full day tomorrow. :D

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This week is a loss!

This week is pretty much a loss for anything Etsy related. I was trying to get something done a day plus advertising, but I don't see how I can do that this week. Yesterday and today we are in Staten Island looking at houses and after that, we have to look for a new place for Alayna's birthday party. Alayna wanted to have her party (so badly) at Roller Jam USA. And I agree, that would be the perfect place. It's just I cannot afford her party there. It's $299 and right now, I'm fighting with my former boss for my money and my child support is being held up because the lovely NJ Child Support agency has a new rule that I cannot get more than $300 per month in total. (Which is fucking bullshit if you ask me.)

So, now I'm stuck with $100 to: Get Alayna at least 1 birthday present, Figure something else out for her party -- Even having it here will cost me for things, Balloons for the front of the house (at least one), and a cake. I guess because the child support agency wants to have their own stupid rules, I have to tell my daughter... "Ok Alayna...I have to hold your birthday party up two weeks and you can't eat either because THEYRE holding the money." Bullshit bullshit bullshit. I'm so sick and tired of it. So I'm screwed. I'm having to borrow money from my grandmother again and I don't want to. I just started crying hysterically because I can't do that. I just want to have one fucking present for my daughter and give her a good birthday party. I try to do everything for her, being a single mom, and I feel like I fail terribly. :(

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I met Anthony Rapp today. :) That is the greatest way, in my opinion, to start off a blog post. The first time I saw Rent I was 13 years old. I fell in love with the show AND with Anthony Rapp. He was such a great actor. I saw Rent many many times after that and had always tried to meet him outside the theater. Never did. Flash forward now, to when I'm 24... Even though my friends and I were going to another show today, I convinced them to go over to the Broadway Cares Flea Market so I could get a picture with him. We did and I got one! My friends were paranoid we'd miss our show. I wasn't budging! I told them to go to the theater and I'd meet them there if I had to! lol He was one of the first people that ever struck my attention so much and turned me onto Broadway shows all together. :) Now I'm a Broadway addict! He was so sweet and just a great guy. I got a hug before I left and let me tell you...it was the best $20 charity donation I had ever made!! :) Then we went on to Next to Normal. (Which is such an amazing show. If you're in the area...GO SEE IT. There is nothing better than a powerhouse Broadway show that makes you laugh, cry -- rather bawl your eyes out, and then laugh some more.) All in all, I had an amazing day.

Tomorrow starts the real work. #1. Promoting my shops. Since I am now going to be a full time artist until I can get a new job, promotion will be key. I am going to have to really promote with all I have. I was trying to see if I had the $96 to advertise in the Etsy section in Bust magazine, but I'm not going to have nearly $100 to throw around. :( I will save up for the next time with that. However, I am going to advertise wherever I can. I'm really averaging about 130 visitors per day to ThreeSeventeen and 85 per day to OhMyCupcake. I'm going to have to improve those views if I want my shop to succeed. I will start promoting, posting new items and renewing items daily now. I also am going to be getting some more Showcase spots. My ring sale the other day, I found out, came from the customer seeing my ring on the showcase! :) Best $7 to spend. It pretty much paid for itself.

#2. We're going house hunting tomorrow. There are a few houses in Saten Island that my mom and I want to look at. It's bittersweet because we're going to be leaving the only house I have ever known in a few weeks (or a month) and move somewehre new. But i'm excited and looking forward to a new start in a town that I have always loved and a town that has ALWAYS felt like home to me.

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Selling, Selling, Selling.

It's true that one man's trash is another man's treasure. We cleaned out our entire attic and house, since we are moving in the coming months. We had another garage sale today. I was sure it was going to be the worst garage sale of our entire season, but it wasn't! We made $400! I sold a lot of MY old toys. (From 24 years ago!) I also sold my old iPod, Blackberry, some of my old Coach bags, other purses, clothes, etc... A lot of my plus size clothing got sold, but there is so much more that needs to go! I figure that if I get rid of those clothes, I will NEVER go back.

Alayna was playing outside while we had our garage sale and she picked up a pair of pants that I had right after I had her. I will be honest. It's very embarrassing to me, but I had a size XXL after I had her. Hell, I was so sick during her pregnancy and was always in and out of the hospital. I had pre-eclampsia and that's why I was induced early. However, I gained 70 lbs during the pregnancy with her and afterwards I had so many problems and did not lose as much weight as I wanted to right after. I picked up that pair of pants and put it by myself and OMG...you can fit a second person in there. I'm so happy to have lost 33.3 pounds at this point and it will keep on going until I lose what I want to lose. I know I can do it and I am so happy that I have the willpower this time. I haven't been the size I am now since I was in college. It makes me so happy. :)

We had to come up with a new venue for Alayna's birthday party next weekend. There is no way I am going to be able to come up with the money that I need for her party at the place she wants. :( It makes me so sad because I do everything for her and want to have her party at Roller Jam USA, but it's a lot of money. And we're paying for 15 kids when we only have 6 going. I am not ruling it out, but I just don't think I can do it. If I can't, I may consider another place or may have it in the backyard and just have the kids paint pumpkins. She wants these two presents so badly (the Hannah Montana beach house and a princess castle set) and I want to get them for her. I think she'd prefer that than the huge party. I'm gonna make her a Hannah Montana cake too.

I am now a FULL TIME ARTIST! I got fired from my job today...BY E-MAIL! What was my former boss too freaking chicken to call me? She was being completely unfair to me, she owes me $1200 from back pay she never paid me and the job started to get too stressful anyway. So honestly, I am grateful for this. However, I feel amazing that I got a chance to tell her just how I felt about her and that job before I left. I told her how unfair her business is and how she would succeed better if she treated her employees with more care. I didn't care what I said, I wanted to get it all off my chest. So...now I am a full time artist until I can pick something else up. (Which I will) I am kind of happy that I am going to be able to devote my all to my business. Promoting is going to take a step up which will start on Monday. :)

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The delicious smells of fall!!

I worked on this for hours today and came up with the best formula for the greatest smelling soap. (Oh, it's exfoliating and moisturizing too!) It is made with fresh real pumpkin puree for all of the great skin benefits of pumpkin. Pumpkin has great health benefits. It has tons of antioxidants. helps with fine lines and wrinkles as well as balancing both oily and dry skin. There are so many more benefits of pumpkin for skin. Along with that, there is the great smell of cinnamon sugar, pumpkin pie as well as fresh ground cinnamon. We also have pure cane sugar throughout the soap to get you the great exfoliating benefits of sugar! Your skin will be thoroughly moisturized as well as exfoliated with this great soap. We have three sizes as of now. We have a large 10oz bar that is for sale in our shop as well as two smaller 3-4oz bars and a 6 piece sample set. The sample set includes 6 little tiny hand soaps; the size of guest soaps -- it has all of the great ingredients as well as the cane sugar as our larger bars do! You can really give your skin a great fall treat as well as yourself! :) I am planning on working on some more soap tonight. I have planned a great variety of fall fragrances for this season and I'm excited to get working on more!

We had another doctors appointment today, this time for a TB test for Alayna. It was another screaming experience that I don't want to relive. lol Kids and injections just do not go together well! I am hoping that one day, the screaming will subside when we go. :D

Tomorrow we're having a large garage sale because we're moving in a few months and need to get this mess we call a house cleaned and emptied out, so hopefully we can make some money there so we will have more to live on. *prays* I really hope so.

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Taking a 4 year old and 2 year old to the lab to get routine blood drawn is NOT a good idea! lol Not at the same time, at least. That's what my morning consisted of. My mother went with me to help me with the two maniacs, thank God. Getting there, they were great. Sitting in the waiting room, not so much fun. They were so hyper and running and singing. We were the only ones in the waiting room, thankfully, but it just frustrated me because they're usually great quiet kids. Then....came getting INTO the room with the nurses. They made the crazy mistake of taking both the girls at once. I was with Alayna and my mom was with Olivia in the next little cubicle. The nurses were SO good with the girls, but the girls screamed bloody murder. The picture to the left is of Alayna holding her arm. lol She kept saying her arm was "scarred for life". LOL She's better now, but she's a little drama filled princess. (As was her dad, so I know where she gets it from!!)

I worked a lot of the afternoon on Oh My Cupcake and ThreeSeventeen. I spent equal time on both shops. I finished some "bath bombs" (fizzies) and started to come up with an idea for halloween/fall scented soaps. Thinking about that, I realized I need to order some new oils from my supplier to get what I need. (Though I can do what I need with what I have for now.) As I started to do that, Olivia fell asleep in her high chair. lol She's so adorable. She usually is my little craft helper. lol She doesn't talk much (or at all!) but she lets me know what I should use and what I shouldn't. :D She enjoys helping while Alayna just wants to make her own necklaces or make her own soap or make her own things. She doesn't care too much about helping me. The girls are SO different. Sometimes it's hard to believe they're sisters. hehe. I got a lot of work done and hope to list my new items tomorrow. (Although I already listed some new items on OhMyCupcake today!) I have a lot to get done tonight or tomorrow too. Whenever I can get things done!

I listed some great bath salts on OhMyCupcake. I listed the 4 Sample Pack and also listed my FAVORITE Warm Almond soap. The Warm Almond soap is a jumbo soap bar that smells heavenly. You may want to eat it. :D It will last you a long time since it is a large large bar of soap but is so moisturizing and lathers so smoothly! I really love it myself and my family does as well! Go take a look at it!

31.4 lbs I have lost since the end of July. :) I woke up this morning to find out that wonderful surprise. I am so happy and so proud of myself that I accomplished that. I now feel that I know how to eat normal food (as well as healthy food) and eat the right portions. I know when I am full now and I know I have learned so much. For lunch I made butternut squash soup that I got at Stop and Shop. It's reduced fat and was so great! I felt like I was cheating. :D

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Splitting my shops.

I had been adding my soaps and body products to ThreeSeventeen, but it was getting cluttered and I didn't like the feeling. I thought maybe more diversity would be better, but I don't think that is the case. Honestly, I think too much diversity is bad and realized I would feel better opening Oh My Cupcake back up. So I am!! To me, this feels a lot better. I can de-clutter ThreeSeventeen and use it for what I need it for; my jewelry. I am going to make my jewelry successful if it kills me! (And it just might!)

Another idea that I had, was to open up a vintage shop. I have one item in my ThreeSeventeen shop right now, however we are cleaning my grandmother's stuff and I realized that the amount of vintage stuff she left me is massive. I don't want it to completely overtake the entire shop. Since we have over 200 things, I may have to just open another shop. It wouldn't be terrible.

I have spent all night working on bath fizzies and soaps. That has been my last 6 hours. I now am feeling inspiration to do jewelry and have a vision of a piece I want to create. I may put away the bath & soap supplies and start on a new piece. I just have this clear vision of what I want to make. That happens very infrequently! Usually, I just go as I go and not have a definite vision. :)

Looking at a garage sale find of an antique shadow box, I am really thinking about making that into a piece of art. I feel I want it to express my childhood and who I was when I was younger. I will probably put it on Etsy when I am finished with it, but it is a project that I want to start sometime soon.

This entry was completely jumbled and not even one complete thought, but that's how my mind is working right now. :)

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Destashing Coming!!

Going through my supplies today, I realized I don't need all of the supplies that I have. I have doubles and triples of some things I'll probably only use once and have just way too many scrapbooking supplies I never use and don't even know why I have them! :) I'll be adding a section in my shop soon for destashing my supplies, because I can use the money more than I need the supplies!! I have to run out to get my kids' blood work done (the excitement!) but when I come back, that will be what I will do all evening. :) I really want to get things organized and into nice boxes so that I would be able to actually put things in the room I want to be my studio neat and organized instead of just thrown in boxes! Therefore... if anyone needs beading supplies or scrapbooking supplies, keep watching here, twitter and my shop for updates on my destashing listings! :D

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Pissed off and new items.

I posted some new items today that I am very proud of. Actually, I am proud of all of my items. Some pictures of my items are above in my pretty little banner I made. :) I actually listed some of my new bath and body line today. I listed Pomegranate Message Bar, Passion Fruit Bath Salts and my Large Fall Sample of Vanilla Sugar Bath Salts! Sadly, my labels haven't come in yet for my full size bath salts, so I had to list them without the labels. When they send, I will have the labels for the jars. :) They've actually been in high demand, but now that I finally posted them, I have views but no sales. GRR!! lol In time, In time, I know!! I actually love the scent of all of my items. My bath salts are made with HydroTherapy essential oils that are water soluble and are good for your skin. They don't clog pours and don't irritate your skin. They're great for sensitive skin! (They have been tested on myself and my mother, we both have terribly sensitive skin with high sensitivity to any scrubs, lotions, salts, etc...) Check out my new items. :) As before, every purchase gets a free lip balm.

I'm a little angry in general with my day. Where do I start. Let's start with my daughter going to school. My mom sides with her ALL the time. So my daughter stayed home from school today. My mom ran me into the ground today. She told me that I am a useless SOB, she told me I'm pushing my daughter so hard to go to school because I want the "convenience", she just kept going on and on. None of which is true. My daughter just doesn't want to go to school because she says they learn and they don't play. Well, that's what school is. But my mom just keeps on siding with her and telling her she doesn't have to go to school if she doesn't want to, she bypasses ALL of my rules. We had a huge fight over that this morning. You can't even imagine the fight between myself and my mom.

Secondly, my boss decides that since she doesn't want to pay me, she is moving my pay rate to $1.75 PER CALL. Right now there are almost NO calls available but I still have to sit there for an hour or two and go through to see if there are any calls available. EVERY OTHER REP GETS PAID HOURLY FOR THIS, but she hates me for some reason. I called the Board of Labor today and they said that is illegal. I have to get paid an aggregate for the hours I do not have any calls but still work. So I had to file a Complaint for Wages form (Which totals quite a bit of money that she has cheated me out of) and I have to send that back tomorrow. They said it will take 2 weeks probably because they have to assign a private investigator to my case and they have to look into this. I really don't want to get anyone in trouble, but I am getting cheated and I'm very upset about that.

I am getting so fed up with life at this point. :( We're still poor as hell, I had to change in actual change to get money for lunch and dinner tonight. I invested some money in scratch off lottery tickets and won $6, but reinvested that in more tickets and that's where my luck ended. We just checked our Mega Millions tickets and won $7. At least some things are looking up, but not so much. My paycheck is gonna be crap again this week and I'm just not looking forward to anything.

New York is on High Alert again and so are we. I'm supposed to be going to New York on Sunday, but that's going to be high traffic because of the random traffic checks and I'm not even looking forward to that anymore. Hopefully, maybe my shop will pick up sales and it will cheer me up a bit more. My only dream is for my own creations to get some popularity and actually sell. I'm praying.

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What a day this was!

Alayna cried again. All the way to school, all the way into school and in the classroom. She begged me not to leave, held onto me, screamed. The other kids in the class were trying to tell her that I wouldn't leave and I would be back at the end of the day, but she wanted no part of that at all. I had to sneak out again, though she saw me and started screaming again. To be honest, I cried in the car on the way home because I can't stand to leave her there while she is crying. I understand the separation anxiety, I was like that for most of my life. I think it is worse in kids who do not have fathers or any kid who only has one parent. (Or live with grandparents and do not have parents.) I know my fear was that my mom would leave and I wouldn't have anyone. I'm sure Alayna feels the same way.

On top of that, my car got hit when a jerk pulled too close into the school parking lot. He got out of the car and said, "Haha, I hope I didn't scratch your car." And walked away. How the hell does anyone justify that as a normal comment when you pretty much hit someone's car. (Sideswipe, whatever.) I got so angry.

Third of all, I'm just angry at myself for really not having anything right now. For months I have been doing so well always having money and always having something in my pocket. Now, we are broke again. We're back to square 1. I know I will probably get some money in tomorrow night, but until then we're flat broke. We had to eat leftovers tonight because otherwise we had nothing to go out and get food. :( It made me so angry because I haven't had that happen in such along time.

I'm angry at my boss at this point. She was telling me she is only able to pay me for 12 hours in the past two weeks because her system is not showing I worked more than that. I don't see how that is possible. I worked nearly 40 hours. I feel I should be paid for the hours I worked. Granted, we do work from home, but I have my own documented proof of my hours. It is just frustrating that this happens when I need the money and she has never had this problem prior to this. She should not take out her frustrations on her employees. :(

Besides all of that, my shop views have been great! I feel like the promotion I am doing is actually working. I listed some new items today and really played around with different times of the day and listing. Tomorrow, I hope I will be able to tell more about what and when brought the most people in. I will do this again tomorrow to see if I can get a pattern of some sort.

NEW ITEMS:

Fleur De Lis Vintage Train Case my grandmother left me along with other vintage items and I love this so much. I think this is a great vintage item and since my grandmother took care of everything she had, it's in great condition.

Bouquet of Beauty dangle flower earrings are a great item because they are beautiful, elegant, trendy and fun. They can be worn for a variety of occasions and I believe they are awesome!

Home is Where the Heart Is stand up home decor such bright and beautiful colors that would match any decor. I think this is such a great decoration for a mantle or shelf.

Apple Spice beaded earrings They're "dainty", petite and just beautiful. They remind me of fall and apple spice. I love the scent of apple spice, and if it could be contained into a beautiful piece of jewelry, this would be it.

(Too many things to list to put pictures of them all.)

Hopefully things will get better soon. At this point, I'm considering having Alayna's birthday party at my house because I doubt I'll have the deposit for the party I was going to throw. I just pray I don't lose my job over defending myself and the hours I know and have proof that I worked. :(

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