Saturday

Ok, I was obviously more tired than I’d realised as I didn’t read more than a couple of pages last night before falling asleep. That, and the knowledge that this is the first proper weekend of the year encourage a bit of a lazy start as I snuggle up in bed with a cup of tea, determined to actually finish this book- which I’ve been really enjoying and only started about five days ago, a speed at which I only manage to get through books in during school holidays!

Half an hour later, novel finished, time’s already getting on as we weren’t exactly early waking up, and there are things to do. Mike wants to go and finish the sorting he was doing the other day in the storage unit- juggling things around, even though we have no time to actually get rid of anything at the moment, means we can hire a smaller unit and thereby save some money as an in between measure. Once I’ve got to the end of sorting all the boxes from the house fire, I can start sorting through the ones in the unit- I am getting there, and towards the end of last year got into a good routine of spending my Saturdays doing the horrible task. However, I know that this week is not the week to do restart that particular project, so Mike sets off with our eldest daughter as the storage place shuts at 2. He pops briefly to our local shop on the way, drops my parcel to the post office there, and drops some sausage rolls in with us before they go.

Our second daughter works as a waitress on Saturday lunchtimes at the local pub, and she’s already left before the others head out. With the house emptying out its beginning to feel more like a weekday than a weekend, so the fact that I could really do with working doesn’t really feel like a problem. The youngest two seem very hyper today, four days of school seems to have sent them loopy and all suggestions of doing homework are met by giggles and ‘Yes, in a minute!’ Still, they do seem to be playing in amongst all the mad behaviour and the poor Playmobil figures are getting blamed for all the noise.

After lunch I get some more drafting done for the blog, and finish typing yesterday’s post up. Not that it went online yesterday, or even will today, that’s the trouble with having taken several days to get around to actually signing up for this idea- I had several days written before it went live, and it seemed wrong to miss any days out as the story of it made sense as the days went on. At some point I’ll try to put a couple of posts on in one day, and try to catch up a bit. I’m only a week behind, but what I’m posting about seems so very long ago.

In between the normal weekend school uniform washing, I also manage to start on my Google ad for my new seasonal range, but I struggle a bit. The actual ad isn’t much of a problem, but when it comes to picking keywords I get stuck. I type several into the box, and click ‘save’, but although none are rejected, AdWords happily tells me that most of the ones I’ve picked have a low search volume, and therefore won’t trigger my advert to show up. How exactly do people search for a Valentine’s print dress for a baby doll? It’s not like I think the dolls or their owners are actually celebrating Valentine’s Day itself, it’s just a chance to include a pretty and relevant pattern into my range at an appropriate time. Something to leave and think about when I can’t be doing anything else I think.

I decide to try advertising for the blog instead, deciding how to target the ad seems the most tricky thing here- my adverts for the business are well tried and tested, and generally work. But how do you target an advert for a blog? After a failed attempt at creating a ‘display’ ad- failed because I was getting too confused doing it, I decide to stick more or less to what I already know, and go for the ‘search with display select’ option, which uses keywords to determine who actually get to see the ad, the same as my ‘search’ campaign for Little Dolly Clothes Shop itself. Keywords for the blog prove less awkward than for a Valentine’s dress- blog, mum’s life, diary etc. fit easily and will apparently at least trigger the ad.

Advert written, and with some basic starter keywords in place, it’s now getting on through the day. It’s dull and overcast once again, and the little two are resisting getting ready to go out- even though they wanted to go into town once Mike came back so that they could spend some of their Christmas money. They have at least got on and mostly done their homework, so take themselves off to play once again. Now they’re not sitting at the table with me, I take the chance to spread out a bit and get on with some cutting out.

Cutting out fabric is a job that takes up more than its fair share of time, and is one of the reasons I have to put a longer delivery time on the website than I’d like. One of my plans for this year is to find the time, and get into the habit of, cutting out several items worth of pieces from any new fabric when I buy it, ready to sew when the orders come in. It’s something I’ve never had the confidence to do before, as even if I’d found the time, I’ve never really believed that the doll’s clothes would sell. The fabric would be useless for anything else if cut to pieces, at least while whole I could make the girls a dress or something from it. Five years into the business and I’m beginning at last to start to believe in myself a bit, so hopefully I can make this next step and save time for both myself and my customers along the way.

 
For today though, I settle with just cutting out a couple of outfits that are next in the ‘orders’ queue, ready for hopefully sewing tomorrow afternoon. Saturday evening is normally our family telly viewing time, but everyone’s still out of routine, and there isn’t really an obvious pattern of programmes that appeal to everyone yet either. Once the two younger girls have gone to bed, our eldest daughter declares she’s going up too, so Casualty gets recorded while Mike sits watching something random and promptly falls asleep. Having posted the next day onto the blog, and feeling I’m starting to get somewhere at last I take that as my cue to go up to bed and curl up with a new book.