Weekly Mileage #175 and Shop Stickers

Monday we cleaned the house, which it desperately needed. I detest cleaning. It's one of those futile tasks that gets undone as soon as it's done (if not while it's being done), especially with little boys in the house. But at the same time, I hate living in a dirty house.

I was still feeling more anxious than I'd like, but definitely better than the previous few days. That afternoon I took the RV in for its annual inspection, which it passed this time.

That evening we had a socially distant kayaking activity for Scouts. Sunshine did some stand up paddle boarding as well as kayaking.

The lighting setup I ordered last week arrived, now I'm just waiting for my backdrops, which have been ordered. Then my product photos should look a lot more professional. My stickers also arrived. They have a matte finish, which I like. The square one didn't photograph very well, but the color is a dark blue gray slate color.

Tuesday I worked on getting back in the groove of getting stuff done. Last week threw me off and I've got a lot to do to catch up, which doesn't help my anxiety levels.

My second order of waxed canvas arrived, so I now have the materials for all my initial projects, if I just had the time to actually work on them. Everything in their time though, and there's other tasks that have to be finished before I get back to actual leatherwork.

Speaking of other tasks, I worked on blog posts for my shop site and almost finished them on Tuesday.

Ocean was playing with the felt letters and made this design on the floor. Then he ran downstairs and came back with an xbox controller to make sure he got it right :)

Wednesday I ordered a rubber stamp and two brass stamps with my logo. The rubber stamp will be used on packaging, the brass stamps for marking on leather. I considered just using my acrylic stamp for awhile longer, but I kind of wanted to just get it done and not have to worry about the inadequacies of the acrylic stamp (which it definitely has). Though it'll probably take a month for the stamps to arrive, so I'll still have to use the acrylic stamp in the meantime.

I finished catching up the blog posts for my shop site and then started on some other site updates. I also updated my social media logos.

And then it was time to stop and pivot back to my travel blog. My last batched post was published last week and now it's time to batch another round. Last time it took me a bit more than a week to batch two months' worth of posts, but I'd really like to shorten that timeframe. I've got another two months' worth of posts in the works, and I want to finish them by Tuesday so I can finish my site updates (just a few things left), then start making tote bags.

After I took this picture, Ocean rearranged the letters and brought in a green one so that the colors matched up. He was a little put out that he could match the letters, or the colors, but not both.

Thursday I did a bit more site work as well as updating a few things on my Etsy shop. Then I worked some more on the batched posts.

I also took some time out to go through the keto cookbooks I ordered last week. I went through and marked recipes and made a list of ingredients I need. Most are pretty repetitive and we already have most of the ingredients, but there were a few oddball ingredients like hazelnut meal, peanut flour, and lupin flour. Some can be bought locally, others online at sites like Amazon and Thrive Market.

I realized if I'm going to stay low carb/keto long term (which I need to do to manage my narcolepsy), I need to put a little more effort into it. I've only been using the same couple recipes over the last year and a half, which has not been helpful for staying on track. Sweets are a real issue for me, so I need to find some good recipes I can make, that I like, so that I have substitutes that won't knock me off track when holidays and celebrations come around. I seem to get derailed around holidays and celebrations much too easily, which is why I haven't been able to stay low carb long term. I bought keto breakfast, dinner, and dessert cookbooks, but I also bought a keto baking cookbook. That one has some intriguing recipes that I'm looking forward to trying.

My new business cards and product tags arrived. The care tag is double sided, and I'll punch a hole at the top for string. I was aiming for rustic tags and business cards, which I got, but I'm not completely sure I like the end result. The waxed canvas care instructions didn't turn out as clear as I'd like- I should have used a different font. Overall, though, they're not terrible, and I doubt anyone will look at them as critically as I am.

Friday I hopped on my bike for the first time in several weeks. I also adjusted how it sits in the trainer, which unintentionally resulted in no more easy spinning. But I wasn't getting a lot of benefit from those easy spinning miles, so that's not a bad thing. I also worked on my batched posts.

Saturday I walked on the treadmill and tidied up the desktop on my computer, went through the millions of open tabs and windows, and brainstormed a socially distant product feedback party where I have fellow homeschooling moms look at and examine my products and give feedback on them. How's that for multi-tasking? I thought about running part of the time, but I can't run and work on the computer at the same time, and I really needed to get that work done.

Did a little more shop site work (I keep thinking of random things to look into or take care of, so I stop and do them while I think of them). Then onto the batched posts. The last two need a bit more research before they'll be at draft stage. I leave final edits till after I get the pin images and alt texts done, which gives me time to go back to the posts with fresh eyes. So, good progress, but the research stage always takes longer than I'd like.

I made some low carb peanut butter cookies that were pretty good. They used peanut flour instead of almond flour, which I liked, since coconut flour and almond flour (the usual low carb flours) don't always agree with me. I used half the low carb sweetener the recipe called for, which affected the rise a little, but they tasted good.

I used a new brand (Lakanto) of sugar free chocolate chips, and I like them better than the other brand I've used (Lily's). They're both sweetened with erythritol, which has an unpleasant cooling effect in the mouth. It's worse in the Lily's chocolates than the Lakanto chocolates, which are also sweetened with monkfruit. One thing I liked about this recipe: it only made two cookies, so there's no extras sitting around, begging to be eaten. They're less tempting than sugar-sweetened cookies, but there's still a good chance I'd eat more if they were there.

The friendly(?) neighborhood bear made another visit Saturday night, strewing trash across the driveway and pulling several bags into the woods. The kiddos were not impressed with being tasked with the cleanup. Sunshine asked about animal control services (they won't do anything with a bear unless it's aggressive) and River thought shooting it with a machine gun would take care of the problem.🤦‍♀️ Really, we just need to figure out a better way to store our trash cans so they're not tipped over so easily.

Last week I started teaching River how to do his and Ocean's laundry. They've recently started changing their clothes 3 or 4 times a day, which has resulted in them running out of clean clothes much sooner than they should. They play outside in the hose or the rain, come in and put dry clothes on. They go back outside and play in the water some more, maybe changing beforehand, definitely changing again after getting wet.... Anyway, so far it's going well. I think Sunshine was 10 or 11 when I started teaching her, so they're getting a head start on her. Never too early to start learning life skills!

Jeremy had online training with the military all week. They're supposed to do two weeks a year, but they did one now and they'll do the second week later. I'm not sure if it will be online as well, or if they're waiting to see. Anyway, lots of fun. Lots of telling the kiddos to "be quiet, daddy's on a phone call!" and "go upstairs, or downstairs, or outside, but get out of the library!" (where daddy was working). Ideally, I would have taken them off on an adventure, but if it was ideal, he wouldn't be doing training at home, so it would be a moot point. As it was, I wasn't willing to take the kiddos anywhere because it's been so hot and humid and I'm trying to get caught up on my work. I've gone two weeks without doing any leatherwork and I'm getting antsy about it.

Weekly Mileage
Friday- 10.0 miles biked
Saturday- 2.50 miles walked on the treadmill
total- 12.50 miles

2020 totals

27 hikes towards #52hikechallenge
0 kayak miles towards #365milechallenge

164.19 outdoor foot miles towards #365milechallenge
20.50 indoor foot miles towards #365milechallenge
210.0 bike miles towards #365milechallenge
394.69 miles total

Weekly Mileage #143 and All the Notebooks

Monday it was raining again so no trail run or hike. Instead I squeezed in work sessions where I could throughout the day. I got some notebooks finished and hit the post office two minutes before closing to ship them off.

We had freezing rain a couple days and most of the week was below freezing. Despite that, I'm finally over most of my cold (just a bit of phlegm left), so I would have done more hikes, except I had to focus on getting notebooks made and shipped as quickly as possible.

Even though my listing clearly states 6-8 days to ship, plus the actual shipping time, people placed orders as late as Tuesday, hoping (or just plain expecting, in some cases) to still receive their order in time for Christmas. In the interest of keeping happy customers, I did get all the orders in the mail by Thursday, so they should arrive in time, but I'll need to be more specific next year so I'm not doing so much work right before Christmas.

Monday night was the winter Court of Honor, where Sunshine received her Second Class rank. She earned it a month or so ago, but she didn't receive the patch till now.

Tuesday morning was our last music lessons of the year. Afterwards we picked up my second batch of paper. When I placed my order last week, I'd actually placed two orders. One that I could pick up quickly, and a larger order with adjusted lines. Sunshine didn't like how thick and dark the lines were in the original order, so I had the print shop adjust the lines (1 pixel wide instead of 2). That took a couple days, which is why I placed an order for the original paper as well, since I needed some paper right away. I do like the thinner lines, so it was worth waiting a little extra time. While I was at it, I doubled the order so I wouldn't run out quite so quickly. The paper in the first order was spoken for before I even picked it up, and I needed some of the paper in the second order for notebooks.

That night Sunshine and I had our second stint at the Scout Christmas tree lot. Once again we sold one tree. Definitely not the best location or time.

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday I worked on notebooks whenever I had time and I got the last of them shipped out Thursday morning. I made and shipped 13 notebooks this week plus 6 more in the past month, for a total of 19 music notebooks. I wasn't expecting to get that many orders, but I will plan for this next year and have some on hand already made, with leather and paper ready to go, so I'm not ordering more of both while trying to get orders out like I did this year. Apparently people think my music notebooks make great gifts :)

The success of this season has given me ideas for the future. I'll be building more of a stockpile of all my notebooks so I'm ready for any orders that come in. I'll also contact some local antique and gift stores to see if I can rent some space. I'd like to see how sales go when people can touch and hold the notebooks before they buy them.

One good thing about making so many notebooks in such a short time is that I have my systems down and have cut down on the time to do each step. Working in an assembly line fashion also speeds things up as I do the same step over and over for multiple books. A big time saver has been the acrylic template I made for tracing the covers. What used to take 15 minutes as I measured and re-measured and checked for square, now takes 3 minutes tops, and I can mark the stitch holes in the spine at the same time. So far I've only done the template for the music book cover, but now that my orders are up to date, I'll have the time to do the templates for the other covers.

My order of acrylic sheets for the templates came wrapped in bubble wrap. Those big bubbles are so satisfying to pop, regardless of how old you are :)

Thursday morning after a post office run with the last of the notebooks, our Christmas cards, and ornaments for the grandparents, I went on a short hike with the boys.

ice on a shallow part of the river

That afternoon Ocean had his hearing test finally. We'd had to reschedule in October when he had that nasty staph infection in his ear. I was worried that the infection might have done some damage, but that was not the case. His tubes are clear and functioning, and his hearing is great. He can hear all registers and there's no problems. It's very reassuring to know that his hearing wasn't impacted by the infection. And it's good to know that he can hear just fine. So if he's ignoring us now, it's because he's a strong-willed 4 year old, not because he can't hear what we're saying :)

Thursday night we went caroling with the YM and YW. It was cold but fun.

Friday after speech therapy Ocean and I went for a short hike. I wasn't able to do as many hikes as I'd hoped this week because I've been working on notebooks, but I should still be able to get my 52 hikes for the year.

We found a random deer leg in a clearing with no sign of the rest of the deer. Also no idea who was munching on it.

We found some cool ice crystals.

the white wormy looking crystals is water that freezes as it gets pushed out of the ground

After our hike I started painting the kitchen walls. It's so nice to get away from the grubby yellow. It was supposed to be a cheerful color, but somehow it just ended up looking grubby. I also started caulking and painting the crown molding that I hung years ago but never did anything with. I'm not done with that part yet, but I'll finish it as I do the second coat of paint on the walls.

first coat on the walls. the second coat will be a little lighter.
don't the cupboards look so much better? of course, now the counters and floor look truly awful.
we'll do the counters and floors (and the sink) when we rip everything out. this is just a stop-gap measure.

Saturday I went for a short trail run and hike. Definitely feeling out of shape after being sick, but it was good to get out again. That afternoon Jeremy and I went to a local running shop that specializes in trail running and I got my first pair of trail running shoes! I can't wait to try them out on the trails. Merry early Christmas to me :)

Sunday just as we were leaving for church the internet tech stopped by to figure out why we've been having problems with our internet. He was scheduled to come Monday, but we got a text 15 minutes before it was time to leave and he was there 5 minutes later. Needless to say, the kids and I were a bit late to church. Jeremy had left as the tech arrived because he had a meeting with a high councilor (he's now an assistant ward clerk). The internet outside the house is fine, the modem is fine, it's the wiring. Blech. The tech gave us a couple ideas to try first, but if it doesn't work, we'll have to replace the wiring. Adding to our internet issues is that we have no choice when it comes to internet providers. We have DSL, but fiber optic or high speed is not an option. We could do satellite internet, but that's even worse than DSL. Lots of fun.

Weekly Mileage
Thursday- 1.30 mile hike
Friday- 1.08 mile hike
Saturday- 1.10 mile trail run
Saturday- 1.35 mile hike
total- 4.83 miles

46 hikes towards #52hikechallenge
2.56 kayak miles towards #365milechallenge

162.40 outdoor foot miles towards #365milechallenge
41.16 indoor foot miles towards #365milechallenge
130.0 bike miles towards #365milechallenge
336.12 miles total

Weekly Mileage #141 and a Business Win and a Business Setback

I wasn't able to go on a trail run or hike on Monday because I had a chiropractic appointment and errands to run. The monthly appointments continue to keep my headaches to a manageable level (ie, mostly gone).

We've been fighting colds all week, to varying degrees. I feel like I got hit the worst, of course. Despite that, I have managed to get some stuff done. Though that's more because I've got deadlines I'm working against.

I've been working on notebooks for my Etsy shop. I've added these flap notebooks, which I really like. I'd made one in the spring, but the leather I used was really stiff and I wasn't really happy with it. I bought this leather because I love its flexibility, but it turned out to not be great for laser engraving. It's got an oil finish, which I'm pretty sure means it's not a veg tan. Veg tan leather is really all you're supposed to put in the Glowforge- anything else is too unpredictable, if not dangerous (due to fumes). It may not be a candidate for engraving, but it works great for these flap notebooks.

The funny thing is that out of the variety of notebooks I have listed, I'm only selling the music notebooks right now. In fact, I've run out of my staff paper and have to go the printer first thing Monday to see how quickly they can reprint paper for me so I can get my orders filled on time. I've sold 11 music books in the last 3 weeks!

It's interesting to see that the music notebooks are selling so well. I'm guessing they'll all be given as gifts for Christmas. But the sales velocity means I could probably raise the price on them after the holidays. The cost to produce these is higher anyway because of the printing costs, so raising prices would improve my margin.

Wednesday I went for a hike because I needed some fresh air. It wasn't fast or strenuous, but it got me moving.

Friday I thought about going for a hike after speech therapy, but it was too cold. If I'd been feeling well, that wouldn't have stopped me, but I was not feeling great, so it was enough to put a kibosh to that idea.

Friday afternoon I discovered that I broke the site I'd been trying to transfer last week. I thought I'd saved backup files, but once everything was transferred, I couldn't find the backups. I was able to rescue about a third of my posts by copying and pasting cached views, but two thirds of my posts are still missing (they weren't cached). Super frustrating and depressing. In the grand scheme of things though, it could be a lot worse. This was my newest site, with the fewest posts. I was able to rescue a third of the content. I was able to piece together the titles for 98% of all the posts, which gives me a starting point at least for knowing what I wrote about. I still have all my images as well.

My first thought was to start rebuilding my site, but after some thought, I don't think I will. I'd planned on pivoting slightly with that site after the new year, so why not just make the pivot a bit more permanent. I don't need my site for the pivot, at least not yet, so I'll leave it be until I'm ready to start writing for that site again. In the meantime, I'll repurpose the content I was able to save and incorporate it into my travel site. I can change the focus a bit and make it relevant to that audience. This is actually a double win- only writing for one site AND having a number of pre-written posts that just need to be tweaked a bit. This will save me a lot of time, allowing me to focus on some other aspects of my businesses that need some attention.

So it's not how I would have gone about doing things, but having the issue mostly decided for me is freeing. Finding the silver lining and figuring out how to make it work for me rescues the situation from the disaster it could have been. Though I'd still love to recover my lost posts and save myself the work of recreating them...

Friday evening was our ward Christmas party. They had asked for people to share musical numbers before the dinner portion. Since Sunshine needs to rack up some performances for her Music merit badge, I volunteered her and River. They played a simple version of Angels We Have Heard on High, with her on the piano and him strumming chords on the banjo. They did a great job! After the short program (there weren't a lot of volunteers), everyone headed in to dinner and we headed home. I was feeling pretty crummy and half the kids weren't feeling great either. If Sunshine and River hadn't been performing, we wouldn't have gone at all.

I forced myself outside for a hike on Saturday, just to keep from getting too far behind. There's just over 3 weeks left in the year and I have 10 hikes to do still. I went slow, and there was definitely no trail running, but it was still a bit draining. The fresh air was good though.

That afternoon I let the kids decorate sugar cones in lieu of doing gingerbread houses. Gingerbread houses, even the graham cracker versions are just too much of a commitment- time, energy, etc. We decorated sugar cones in YW Thursday, and I realized it was the perfect substitute for gingerbread decorating.

the tree I decorated at YW

The boys lasted just long enough to decorate their trees, and then they were done. They never would have lasted for a whole house. Even better, the only thing I had to do was ice Ocean's cone for him. River did his own.

They enjoyed demolishing them afterwards, though I think they only ate about half of each one.

I think we may have found a new tradition!

After taking pictures of the kids' trees, I headed downstairs to work on notebook orders and organize my workspace better. This is when I realized I had run out of staff paper. I thought I had more, but there is no more hiding anywhere. When I thought back about the music books I'd made, I realized that yes, indeed, I'd used up all the paper (my original order had been enough for 10 books). Time to order more!

Weekly Mileage
Wednesday- 1.70 mile hike
Saturday- 2.00 mile hike
total- 3.70 miles

42 hikes towards #52hikechallenge
2.56 kayak miles towards #365milechallenge

156.17 outdoor foot miles towards #365milechallenge
41.16 indoor foot miles towards #365milechallenge
130.0 bike miles towards #365milechallenge
329.89 miles total

Handmade Leather Notebooks

The first business idea I had a couple years ago, the one that started me down this entrepreneurial road, was making leather bound notebooks. It took a lot longer than I intended to get things up and running, but I finally got my first journals listed before Christmas. More will be coming, including some with designs on the covers, but for now I've got two sizes of plain notebooks and a music practice book. You can find them at my Etsy shop.