My Varied Life!

Well, at least I managed yesterday’s task- I finished both bedding sets last night and Mike took them to the post office for me this morning! Doing so kind of proves to me that if I manage to get on top of all my orders, I should be able to eventually get ahead of myself. On the other hand, I didn’t manage to get back to my sewing until after dinner was cooked and eaten, the washing up was done, the younger girls were in bed and everyone else was settled for the evening in front of the telly. But I haven’t let my customer down, which is the main thing- whether or not the parcel arrives tomorrow is now down to Royal Mail.

It’s raining again this morning, and I get drenched taking my littlest to school, and get even wetter putting the recycling out. After three weeks of illness, and with it nearing the end of the week, I could really do with a sit down and warm up by the time I’ve finished, but it’s easier to get on with the breakfast washing up and loading the washing machine first- while I’m still ‘on a roll’! I finally grab my chance for a sit down while having breakfast, and also take a quick look at my emails and website and then take another look at my pesky google ad. I’m still having trouble targeting my seasonal range, and now I’ve realised that I also need to advertise my Red Nose Day dress or I won’t sell any.

Half an hour later and I’m still not getting anywhere. I’m not quite sure what I’m doing wrong, I’ve never had trouble with setting keywords before, so I think this is something that I need to dedicate some proper time to- when I’ve not got a million other things going through my mind that I really should be doing instead!

Today’s task in ‘operation tidy-up’ is the bathrooms. Ok, they were on the list for yesterday, but that was another story. I’m determined today to have a more successful day than yesterday; it couldn’t really get much more frustrating, so I shut the computer and grab the cleaning stuff. Somehow the cloakrooms don’t seem to have suffered by my being ill as much as the rest of the house, I’m pretty certain that no one else bothered to clean them in my absence so perhaps it just reflects how up to date I normally keep them!

A couple of hours later we have two shiny clean cloakrooms, with only the floors needing washing. It may be a very mundane task, but it is enormously satisfying- I did say I was a bit of a sad person when it comes to housework!!

Grabbing some toast for lunch I sit back at the computer and head to my website. I need to check the stock levels for my bedding sets- I currently have three different designs on offer, and I’m pretty sure that at least one is sold out, when I check I notice that only one actually has any stock left! As bedding sets are easily one of my biggest sellers I need to keep on top of the stock situation so I log onto one of my favourite online fabric shops and find that (fortunately!) I can easily replace both designs. Fabric bought, I decide to wait until I know it has been despatched before updating the website, having been caught out before with another store’s apologetic email to explain that their shop stock was showing wrongly!

As I’m on admin duty I take a moment to just check through the Dolly Clothes Calendar I made up last year- a record of dates when I added various items, changed over to summer or winter stock etc. With a bit of a shock I notice that I normally start my end of winter sale on the first Sunday in March, and that that makes it this weekend! Where’s February gone? Other than most of it in a haze of illness…

I’ve just about got time still to get some sewing done before end of school time, so setting Dragon’s Den playing on iPlayer I get out the next order that I need to get made up and sent out. I started the tops last week and sewed the poppers n while they were in the very early stages of completion, and now I take the chance to finish both of them. The order is for a pair of pyjamas and a top and trousers set, and although I don’t have the time today to make the two pairs of trousers, I should be able to make them up tomorrow and hopefully get the order in the post on Saturday morning. For now though, it’s time to fetch my youngest from school, and start on tonight’s dinner- no one could ever accuse me of living an uninteresting and unvaried life!

A Very Frustrating Day

It’s raining again. Being a Wednesday, I’m back in school first thing this morning, listening to the readers in the younger class, which again I haven’t done for a few weeks due to being poorly. I love being in with this age group as every child is at a different level in their ability, but I don’t much enjoy sitting in the classroom with wet ankles- this is one morning where I wish I was just dropping my little girl off and heading straight back home!

Reading time finishes late this morning, and so by the time I’ve got back home and dried out a bit, it’s already getting on for 10 o’clock. With Tesco due very soon, I pop the washing up into soak, and grab a quick slice of toast for breakfast as I don’t want to have to leave it just to put shopping away! The doorbell wakes up sleepy second eldest daughter, who crawls downstairs to help bring the last of the shopping into the house, as she was feeling guilty listening to me doing all the work. I guess I should be grateful, and the fact that she felt bad is the second sign this week that perhaps my family are at long last beginning to appreciate me a bit… maybe.

However, no job in this house is ever as simple as it sounds. I was in the middle of doing the breakfast washing up when the shopping arrived, so that’s still only half done and needs to be finished once I’ve put the cold food away. Putting the cold food away though means clearing out the fridge- another job that is left over from my days of being poorly and no one staying on top of things in my absence. There are remains of dead grapes in their plastic boxes- only a few scrappy ones so why is the box still in there? There are a couple of carrots that have gone soft in amongst the decent newer ones, so why haven’t they been disposed of long since? Clearing out the fridge though takes time, and also shows up the fact that the drainage hole at the back is blocked, which explains why there was water on the floor under the fridge last night…

Eventually the shopping is mostly put away, the washing up finished and the washing machine loaded, but now it’s almost lunchtime. After my good start to the week and ‘Operation Tidy-Up’, I was hoping to be able to continue this morning and cleaning the bathrooms was next on my list of things to get done. However I also have an urgent order to get made up ready for posting first thing tomorrow morning, and if I now turn my attention to more housework I’ll end up letting my customer down.

It’s the same dilemma I often find myself in- if I concentrate on the housework my business gets neglected, or if I concentrate on the business my house suffers. I really don’t know how people with proper, big money-making businesses manage- maybe they all earn enough money to employ housekeepers, or maybe they don’t have five children and a husband all living at home- none of whom seem to know how to work a vacuum cleaner or even a dishcloth!! Whilst eating a quick lunch I come to the conclusion that on this occasion the customer is going to have to come first, if I can turn around a super quick order then they may well recommend me to friends and family, and their little granddaughter will get her birthday present on time.

It will also prove to me that one of my major aims for this year may well actually be possible- achieving a quicker turnaround time on my orders, meaning I can advertise myself as such, and thereby attract some of the customers who must surely be put off by having to wait three or four weeks just to receive their goods. In these days of virtual shopping, most people expect their purchases sent out the second they have checked out of any given online store. Any purchase that takes even as long as a week to arrive these days is seen as delayed, and we all frown about it and decide we’re never shopping at that particular place ever again. And indeed, with so much choice, we rarely do.

My customers do, on the whole, come to me because they like the ‘handmade’ side of my business, and generally they do accept that to buy such things takes longer than buying ‘off the shelf’. However, I often wonder just how many sales I miss out on, just because we live in a society where patience and waiting are becoming a thing of the past. If I can manage to get to the point where I can compromise, maybe only taking a week or two to get orders completed and sent out, I think I may boost my sales considerably.

Of course, in order to achieve this, I firstly need to get on top of all my outstanding orders- starting with the one I need to make up today. It’s a nice straightforward order for two bedding sets. Bedding sets aren’t terribly complicated, but do take a little while to finish, and with the way that time seems to be running away today I’m beginning to doubt whether I’ll actually be able to manage this relatively simple task.

After setting some more washing going I start by cutting out the fabric for the sets- fortunately I still have enough pieces of the filling ready cut, cutting wadding is a messy job as it tends to shed lots of tiny whiskers everywhere. Cutting done, and end of school time approaching, I just about manage to start sewing when my second daughter calls me into the living room- where she’s enjoying watching some telly. It seems our little trapped birdy friend from last week is still in the chimney somewhere, as she can hear him chirping weakly from behind the log burner!

With only ten minutes until I need to pick up my youngest, we make the decision to ignore his heart-breaking cries for now, and try to coax him out once more of us are home. Strangely enough, I now can’t settle back to my only-just-started sewing, so with time disappearing once more, I head off down to school. Once back, we wait for the other two girls to return home before trying to move the fire out again. I’m still not getting very far with my work, and now I realise that I’ve also got to get on with dinner- especially as there’s thawed meat in the fridge from yesterday! There’s noise from the chimney as we go to lift the fire away, however once again as soon as we have achieved that there’s nothing. Not a sound. My girls all spend the rest of the evening shut back in the room, with the windows open, but with no sign of the bird. I really hope that this time he did find his way out, as he can’t have long left to survive if he hasn’t.

My poor sewing once again has to take lowest priority- after a trapped bird, dinner, washing up… It’s not right for business, and it’s not how I want it to be, but there must be some way to work everything in together. Other than just keep battling through every day in the vague hope that one day I’ll finally be on top of the tidying, housework, sorting etc. and finally have some sort of routine where both sides of my life run along smoothly side by side. Perhaps the secret would have been to have a much more sorted life BEFORE starting a business? But then again… what fun would that be?!

Photo-shoot

It’s dull and raining again this morning as I head off down to the school with my littlest girl. Being a Tuesday, I’m due in to listen to readers in her class, which I haven’t done since before the flu took over our family, and most of February, and I’m quite looking forward to it as it might just begin to make me feel like I’ve got my life back on track a bit.

Back home I look around the kitchen with a sense of satisfaction- after all my work yesterday I made sure I got the washing up done straight after dinner last night as I could see that no one else was going to bother to do it for me. Poor Mike wandered into the kitchen just as I was running the water, and felt shamed into doing the drying up, so maybe we’re making some sort of progress!

I don’t mean to make it sound like my family are lazy. They are clearly not, and work extremely hard in their day to day work and school lives, achieving good grades and being praised highly- even if those out at work never seem to be rewarded financially in any way. The point is though, that they just don’t seem to understand that housework doesn’t do itself. It’s probably my fault in reality- I have to admit I’m one of those sad people who actually enjoys the cleaning, washing and ironing, and being a stay-at-home mum I’ve always quite happily taken it on as my responsibility. We don’t have a highly polished ‘show home’- with seven people all living under the same roof there would never be time to achieve it. However, it niggles at me a bit that while I spent nearly three weeks unable to actually do it no one else seems to have noticed the jobs piling up. This now means I have to work three times as hard to get the house back to the state it should have been in, and it feels like I’m being punished for daring to be ill, which seems a little unfair.

Today’s main housework job is to get downstairs vacuumed, I’d like to aim at upstairs too but again, even I can see that to do too much in one go could end up with me needing to take more time out- which I can’t afford to do. The weather has brightened up a lot, with no sign of yesterday’s wintry showers so I’m also aiming to clean the stairs so that I can finally get my photos of the new demo dresses taken while the sun is actually shining. My two biggest girls are both around again today, and settle themselves in front of the telly just as I get the vacuum out. As the living room needs the most actual ‘tidying’ before I can clean it thoroughly I was only going to give the middle of the floor a quick going over anyway, but that doesn’t stop them complaining that I’m making too much noise when I’m in the hall!

With the hall, dining room and stairs all cleaned, I’ve just about finished my quick go of the living room when the vacuum decides to stop working- it seems even a Dyson knows when it’s being over worked! With time once again running away from me, I decide it’s best to pack it away for now, and check for blockages next time I get it out- probably sometime in the next couple of days!

After a quick lunch, and check over of emails, Facebook page etc. I take out the new dresses and fetch my Annabell ‘model’. It takes a while to get decent shots of all the dresses, and all the different views of the dresses that I want to show, but looking at the pictures on the computer I’m happy with my mini photo shoot. The photos need editing before I can add them to the website- they all need compressing or they’ll be rejected for being too large. It’s a time consuming process, as although not terribly complicated I haven’t yet worked out how I can change more than one at once. With several photos of each taken, I firstly have to narrow them down to the four or five each that I want to actually use, and then resize each one individually.

With the photos now an acceptable size, I then add them onto the dress descriptions. Again, this takes a while, despite the fact that it’s a fairly straight forward job. While I’m editing the dresses, I take another look at the descriptions to make sure that everything is accurate- I know for example that I originally described the St. David’s Day dress as white with flowers, when it’s actually cream. It may not sound terribly important, but firstly I know I can be a bit of a perfectionist, and secondly if I want to be taken seriously in the world of business- all be it a tiny one- accuracy is very important, and I don’t need any complaints that I’ve miss-sold something!!

With the photos added, I then highlight a couple of the dresses on the homepage of the website to draw attention to them. I then also add them to the Facebook page, in a new photo album I’ve created especially for these and any other seasonal dresses I add throughout the year. By now its dinner time- Mike came to the rescue when he rang just as I was in the middle of resizing the photos, and has bought something quick and easy for tea, so my dinner plans went out of the window. Or to be more accurate, they went into the fridge! At least that’s tomorrow night’s dinner already sorted then…

Operation Tidy-Up Begins!

The weather doesn’t appear to be too bad today, as everyone gets up for their first day back at school, and Mike heads off to work after a week of working from home. Our eldest daughter isn’t scheduled to be on shift today, but is getting up anyway as she promised her youngest sister she’d walk down to school with us this morning. Our son also has a day off school- one of the scheduled teacher training days, which I didn’t know about until last night! He too is getting up though, as he’s off to a friend’s house to complete an art project, so it’s a busy house once again after the laid back week we’ve just enjoyed.

Standing in the playground though, waiting for my littlest to start her day, I notice how dark it’s becoming. There’s a real bitterness in the air too, which had gone last week but is now biting through my gloves. The first drops of rain start coming down as a teacher comes rushing out and starts rapidly ushering the children inside into the warm and dry. It’s all very nice for them, but as we walk the short distance home the rain turns to hail, which then turns to sleet. By the time my eldest daughter and I reach the house we are soaked through!

I have a lot of plans for today, but even so I’m aware that I need to take things a bit slower than usual or I’ll end up wearing myself out completely and be right back where I started! The kitchen is a complete tip, and most likely very unhygienic as it looks as though literally every plate, mug and the entire cutlery drawer is cluttering all the available space. I’m not too sure why it has ended up in this state (apart from the fact that my usually useful husband seems to have gone on strike while I’ve not been myself!) but that has to be my first job of the day.

My eldest girl heads off to catch a bus to town for an opticians appointment just as my son’s lift arrives, and suddenly the house goes quiet. It’s been a while since I had the house to myself, and was fully conscious and it feels very odd. It’s not long though before I’ve loaded the washing machine and done the drying up from whenever the last lot of washing up was done, and I’m set to begin my day.

Several hours and three draining boards full loads of washing and drying up later, with the recycling from the last three weeks sorted, the bins emptied and the remains of the shopping from two weeks ago put away, I’m ready for a sit down. It’s time for a late lunch- a fancy sandwich which my big girl has very kindly bought from town for me, and then I need to get on with some sewing.

The weather has continued with the winter theme all day so far- one minute hail, then dark with heavy snow, followed by brief periods of bright sunshine before starting the cycle all over again. I’m cold, but compared with how I’ve been feeling recently I’m surprisingly able to get on with things. I have some cutting out to do for the next order on my list, so I do that first and then measure out the remaining fabric I currently use for the little pyjamas.

I’ve not quite got enough to make a final pair in this design, which is annoying until I remember to look through my fabric boxes in case there’s any left over from a previous purchase. It seems my luck is in today, as I find one piece which happens to be just big enough to complete the set. It’s a very slightly lighter shade than the newer fabric, but I can fit the back of the bodice into it so it shouldn’t really show too much. I’ll sell the pair at a bigger discount than my usual clearance price, with a description of the fault so they should sell with no problem.

With the pyjamas now showing as the last pair, and with the description updated, it’s nearing time for dinner. It’s only a simple tea tonight as I knew today would be hard going, so my big girl offers to sort it for me giving me an extra half hour to start sewing my next outfit. With the top ready for me to add the popper to tonight in front of the telly, I pack up feeling very satisfied with my day, and looking forward to a nice early night.

The Rest of Half Term

Today the weather is miserable. There’s no other way to describe it- it’s cold, dull and raining steadily. It’s the sort of rain that just comes down straight and determined, and normally lasts all day. If we didn’t need to get up for church, I think I’d happily just curl up in bed with my book. It’s also the last day of the half term holiday, and having spent most of the week still feeling a little out of sorts I’m finally feeling more myself as I wake up and it feels like the world outside should be celebrating with me- not trying to bring me down again.

The second half of this week seems to have flown past. I was really hoping that I’d be able to start getting on top of the housework once again; I had plans to help the younger girls sort out their room, and make sure that all their homework was done. Plus, of course, I had been hoping to have Little Dolly Clothes Shop completely up to date by the end of the week. Ok, perhaps I was being a little over ambitious, but I had hoped that at least some of these things would be achieved by now.

Instead, I spent most of the week still struggling to get up at a decent time, watched the washing up piling up whilst I still didn’t have the energy to cope with the speed of it, and watched as the house fell more and more into a state of disarray. Ok, it was the school holidays. School holidays mean everyone being around, and everyone being around naturally means more washing up, and less chance to tidy up as everyone’s in the way. But it would have been nice to have seen some sort of progress from the pig sty the house had become while I dared to be ill- and by that I mean it getting better, not gradually getting worse!

On Thursday the entire day was wasted on trying to persuade a bird to come out of the chimney where he had fallen the afternoon before. There’s a log burner in the fireplace, and we spent an age trying to work out if the hole at the back was big enough for him to come through if he wanted to. Having decided it was we made sure that someone was watching out for him all day. We then spent the whole (cold) day with the living room shut off, its windows open and the log burner doors open. The bird spent the entire day sitting just above the opening to the chimney- we could see his feet or at one point his face when he bothered to look through the hole. He responded to birds outside, and to bird song on the computer, but he refused to come out.

We gave in in the end and closed the log burner doors in the hope that by morning he would have found his way into it, and we could then just let him out from there- I just didn’t want to come down in the morning to find a bird flying around the living room! We tried again on Friday, by which time we also discovered that the log burner actually pulls away from the wall, but after hearing a lot of flapping and chirping to another bird (who was obviously up on the chimney pot) we couldn’t see him any more and haven’t heard from him since. I'm really hoping he managed to find his way out at the top!!

Friday also saw a visit from my parents who had come down for a few days. It was lovely to see them, and the children enjoyed catching up with them- especially our youngest who was able to show off all her birthday presents, but I was very embarrassed by the state of the house. Ok, I know there was a reason for it to be looking like it was, but I don’t like anyone to see it looking like a complete tip. Fortunately they knew all about how poorly everyone has been recently, and when I apologised they told me there was no need.

I did at least manage to achieve a couple of my goals over the week. By this afternoon I had managed to complete all four of the demo dresses I needed to get made up. Unfortunately the weather has been against me for the last few days and I still haven’t managed to take the photos yet, as it really does help if it is bright out. Hopefully tomorrow will be and I’ll finally get a chance to put the photos with the descriptions on the website.

I’ve also managed to get some more work done on a couple of outfits for some outstanding orders. Having managed to get one ready and posted during the week, I’m pleased when I manage to get the bedding part of another order finished this afternoon. That’s another order ready to go, and I can let my customer know in the morning that it’s finally on its way to her. I’ve also got two outfits partly made up, with the poppers already sewn on.

It may have been a bit of a slow week, and I may feel like I really need another week with the children off school to make up for all the lost time, but I guess all in all it’s not been a bad few days. I’m finally feeling like tackling the mountain of housework that’s waiting for me, I’ve managed to send out or complete the longest outstanding orders and make up all my new dresses. On that positive note, it’s now time for Mike and I to put our brains in gear and head off out to the monthly quiz night at the pub…