:: 2011 printable calendar now in the shop ::

only on etsy, and in your (my lovely blog reader's) honor. click on the image to buy yours.

:: keep is the new quit, or, I AM PSYCHED! ::

i know i've talked about it before, and i swear i'm not trying to harp on it or whatever, but when my hubby and i decided to move home from columbus to rochester in december 2008, we were also deciding a lot of other things: deciding to leave behind my job as a college teacher, deciding for him to take a major pay cut (between those two decisions our household income was halved when we moved), for us to keep evan out of daycare (where he'd been part time for a year in ohio), for us to rent our ohio condo to people we'd never met...

a year later, coinciding with the birth of little emily last december, we had another big decision-making pow-wow. money was tight and the romance of living on a shoestring (and a raggedy old broken one at that) for the sake of moving home-sweet-home was wearing off. we knew that there was the very real possibility that i would have to go back to work. doing something.

who knows what. 


we looked at the numbers and i wrote a figure on a piece of paper. it was the number of dollars that i would need to bring in in 2010 in order to keep the family above water. i would start out trying to do it from home with my then-fledgling little business. that would keep my with my babies (a good and yet a sometimes scary prospect) and save us the financial burden of childcare. but if it didn't seem like that was going to cut it, i'd have to consider seeking work outside the house.

in the year since that pow-wow, there were definitely moments when it seemed like despite everything, we were going to start sinking. there were moments when i was pretty sure i was going to have to polish up my resume and start shopping it around.

but lo and behold, my income for the year has passed the mark. i made more this year than that number i wrote on a piece of paper last december.

that number was 250% of what i made in 2009, and at the time i wrote it, i only half-believed that making that much money was plausible, and maybe only ten-percent-believed that making that much in my business's second year was remotely possible.

it's not enough. we're still scrimping and saving and i'm still pouring much of the profit of this little biz back into the biz itself. we need this business to continue to grow. but i did it. i set a crazy goal and i achieved it. and more than that, i proved to myself (who needed more proving than my husband did - he seemed ridiculously confident in me all along, the poor sap) that this is going to work. the business is going to continue to grow and we're going to continue to thrive and money will stop being such a constant thought in our minds.

there's a lot of hullabaloo over on etsy about quitting your day job and all, and i think that if my day job weren't, you know, raising two kids and running a business, i'd be throwing my hat in the ring for a quit-your-day job feature on etsy's blog. that is to say: if i had a day job, i think that hitting this goal would be enough impetus for me to quit that day job.

i still can't take the vacation everyone on facebook is telling me to take. i mean come ON! but maybe-just-maybe i'll dress myself up and take myself out for a smaller-scale celebration.

whee!

:: birthday girl! ::

today, my baby girl turns one.

you'd never know it from her shoe size (her slippers, which fit her perfectly, are for babies 3-6 months old) or the number of teeth she has (two on the bottom, two on top, and two more poking their way through the gums as we speak). but watch her make her way around the house on two feet (not walking alone quite yet, she still manages to get around) or tease her big brother, or announce "all done" at the dinner table and there's no question: this baby girl is hardly a baby anymore.



tell me she hasn't got the greatest smile you've ever seen, eh? she gets that from her dad and her gramps, that full-face smile.





i really don't know who she got her sense of taste from, for this girlie refused to eat her birthday cupcake (not to worry! big brother evan was more than willing to swoop in and rescue her cupcake, though not without a fight from daddy).

:: the pic has hit the stands ::

back in august, i got an email from a senior editor at brides magazine. you know, that wedding mag you see on, say, the magazine rack at your grocery store checkout? the one owned by conde nast, publisher of the new yorker, vogue, and wired?

she wanted my invitations. for her magazine. i nearly died.

a few months later, the pic has hit the stands, so to speak. january 2011 issue page 62, under "buzz," and i quote:

"OMG, we're loving the chatty invite craze - so shut that etiquette book and aim for wording that reflects your true personality." and then at the end, "upupcreative.com."

for real. i'm pretty psyched.

perhaps most of all i'm glad that the little blurb they wrote about the invitation (i honestly had no idea what they were even going to do with my invitation) totally reflects my own philosophy on weddings: be yourself and everyone will love it. so yay.

:: twelve, no, thirteen! ways to help support businesses you believe in ::

from its title, you may be thinking this post isn't very me. but it's a topic that means more to me with each day i pass as an entrepreneur and a member of a handmade community. with each new friendship i make in "the biz," with each shop i discover and sometimes even rediscover after a long time, with each marketing decision i make, i become more interested in thinking about how we can all help one another more.

so i give you this post.  

thirteen ways to support businesses you believe in

1. buy from them. duh. moving on.
2. “distribute” their wares, their name, etc. on facebook (i.e. julie green “is loving every single item in the such-and-such shop, especially this” with a link) or on social shopping sites if you use those (i myself don't, but my twitter friends swear by wishpot, kaboodle, polyvore...)
3. tell your local stores to stock them. follow this up by telling the business proprietor that you’ve already done this -- then he/she can follow-up appropriately.
4. sign up to be an affiliate if they have an affiliate program. every blogger i know has now or at one time had an amazon affiliate account. for each click on an amazon link that blogger gets, like, a penny. but sometimes affiliate programs are good, and sometimes they’re even downright lucrative, and sometimes it doesn’t matter how much you get in return since you’re probably going to plug the heck out of someone you believe in anyway.
5. include a link on your blog (in the sidebar), offer a free ad spot, etc. ask the person whose business it is you’re supporting if he/she can provide you with a small banner. chances are good the answer will be a happy YES!
6. if you have your own business, offer to do a cross promotion or to collaborate.
7. put their items on your christmas and birthday wish lists, or even on your wedding registry if you can figure out how.
8. ask them for a stack of business cards and give them out to people you run across. my husband keeps a stack of my business cards in his wallet and he’s always giving them out when someone needs invitations or papergoods or graphic design, etc.
9. wear, give, or otherwise show off their goods to others, then brag about where you got them. this one’s a big one. you can tell people over and over how cool everything at the infusion shop on etsy is, and they may eventually mosey on over to google and see if they can find infusion, but if they see you wearing your gorgeous, organic plum infusion bag and realize that this is, in fact, the bag they have been searching for their entire lives, they’re probably going to follow-through more quickly and completely.
10. recommend the business owner for an interview on your favorite blog, in your favorite magazine, etc. you might go tell etsy to include me as a featured seller, for example.
11. help out with seo. write up your favorite businesses using the right keywords. incoming links help websites rise in the search engine rankings. the better the keywords, the more bang for your blogging buck. to find out what keywords you should use, see what kinds of words the business’s own website tends to use. ecofriendly? irreverent? handcrafted versus handmade?
12. if you have made a purchase in the past, offer to write a little testimonial for their website. be specific about why this purchase was a good decision, what was pleasant about the shopping experience, etc.
13. provide feedback! let the proprietor know what you like and what you’d like to see in the future.