In Business News

I thought I would write a little update on my new little business. Things are going good. I'm excited to say that I had my 100th order this week, yahoo! This is a pretty big deal for me since it's only been a few months and only two of those orders are from people that I acutally know. I've now had customers in every province, which is also pretty cool; many repeat customers already and more and more referrals.

I am learning tons and often find myself thinking of new layouts, combos, etc that I could create and post. I'm thankful for photoshop tutorials online that I have had to access a few times already to figure something out. I love the challenge! It would be nice to take a course or have someone show me some tips. However, I haven't found any relevant courses in the area, and everything I've wanted to know I've been able to figure out so far.

I've been getting quite a few wedding thank you card orders, which has been really fun. I love seeing everybody's beautiful photos, it's like a peek into their lives. I've also had several requests from small businesses wanting to wholesale my cards. Yikes! I've decided to shy away from this (at least for now) and just focus on my own site, customers, and designs. I really don't like the idea of having a middle man to always have to go between, not to mention the added effort with less pay off. Oh well, it's been interesting anyways.

I've also made a few more connections with photographers across Canada, which has been exciting for me. I love being able to use their professional photos in my work and the potential advertising is awesome. I look forward to adding more in that area on my site in the near future.

At the moment I'm trying out a few different advertising ideas, so I'm curious to see how those turn out and which ones will equal results. This week almost all my orders have been referrals, that's super encouraging for me since it means that people are happy with the service, products and prices!

Anyways, that's about it for now. Thank you to so many of you who have been so encouraging with all this. I have really appreciated your kind words and thoughts. I'm always up for hearing advice and tips. I've got a long way to go; I feel like I'm just scratching the surface at the moment.

www.dolcettodesigns.com

Happy Sarah..and more free goods to come

I thought I would post a clip of Sarah as she is most of the time (minus those very rare tantrums). I just love her smiles and giggles. Funny girl was just laying on the floor for fun, smiling and laughing. She loves being tickled with our feet while she lays on her back. This is the happy version of the tantrum video. Thankfully we see this sisde of her much more than the tantrum side.

On another note, remember when I got all that awesome free shampoo and conditioner in the mail? Matchstick (the advertising company that sent it to me), e-mailed me yesterday to see if I wanted to participate in another similar campaign but for Green Works Laundry Soap (a new product). Of course, I said yes! I filled in the qualifying survey and received an e-mail today saying that I was one of 50 accepted into the campaign. Can you believe it?!? Now people are coming to me to give me their products for free. In return all I have to do is talk about it, try it and hand out more free stuff!

Yahoo, more free goodies here we come. So they say I will be getting laundry soap and other free cleaners to try out, not to mention 30 samples and 30 coupons for free laundry soap to give away. Laundry soap isn't the most exciting product to get, but it's something that we all need and use. I figure it should be great timing with the new baby, since there always seems to be lots of laundry with a baby around.

I'll let you know when I receive the goods. Hopefully I can send some of the free coupons out west with my mom when she comes to visit. Can't believe my mom, Michael and Rebecca come in just over 6 weeks already! That means that baby will be here by then (hopefully). Wow, is time ever going by fast!

Sarah going Golfing

I love end of summer sales. We were at Walmart the other day and David saw this little golf set for $5. which he had to get for Sarah. She's been having a great time playing with the set, the clubs and the balls. This morning she decided she was going to take her golf clubs in her car, go for a drive and then play some golf.

Trying to get her golf set in her car, just a little too big.

She figured out that she could get the clubs in if she took them out of the case.

All is well. Clubs in the car and ready to go.

The clubs got taken out this time.

Parks the car, it's game time! David's been working on how to get her to hold the clubs correctly, it's not quite taking yet. Oh well, she's having fun.

All done. Time to eat some tomatoes...again. Sarah and Keisha LOVE eating grape tomatoes from the garden. Sarah goes back and forth to the tomato plants to pick and eat. Keisha is a little more lazy...she just lays beside the tomato plants and continually eats and/ or waits for Sarah to drop tomatoes around her while she's eating. Weird.

Peek a Boo

Sarah loves playing peek a boo. The other day she was having fun walking around the rec room with her blanket over her head. She was walking into things and falling over, giggling and laughing. By the time we brought the camera out she was about done, oh well, you get the idea. We had a good laugh.

Baby Pool

With our due date fast approaching, I figured we would create a baby pool. Something that we didn't do when we were pregnant with Sarah. Since we were living around our friends and family it seemed like people were always telling us what they thought we were having. This time around, not being near people, we really have no idea what people are thinking (or if they have even thought about it).

Anyways, feel free to check it out at http://bebepool.com/saysomsacks

We're going to send out a $10 Starbucks card to the person that scores closest. It's not much, but it helps make things a little more interesting.

We look forward to reading your thoughts and guesses!

Static Slide

After dinner today, we went for a walk to the park together. Sarah loves the swings and the slide. Her hair gets staticy easily, but we thought this was incredible! Thankfully we had the camera along. Pretty amazing! There was a woman and her grandaughter at the park, they both thought it was pretty funny too (she's the one making the comments and laughing)

More fun times with our little munchkin!

Little Play House

This afternoon we went to Ikea for something to do and pick up a few things. When we were a minute from home we saw this little playhouse on the side of the road with a "free "sign on it. So we drove home, parked the car and walked back to check it out. Since it was just down our street, David carried it home and I pushed Sarah in the stroller.

Sarah was thrilled! She loves opening and closing the door and shutters. The back of the little house is an open door and says "garage," perfect for putting her little coupe car! What a great find! And just a 2 min walk down the road, perfect! What a lucky little girl we have.

Baby Update

Can you believe I'm already 32 weeks along! According to the baby centre, the baby already weighs approximately 3.75 pounds/ 1.7 kilograms and is about 17 inches / 42 centimetres long from head to toe. Sobey's (grocery store) had a sale on diapers the other day so we bought a couple of packs of size 1, I already have a couple of newborn diapers too. I can't belive how tiny they look compared to Sarah's.

David and I spent time yesterday going through a baby name website trying to find a boy's name. We now have a little list of ones that are 'ok.' We're both starting to feel the urgency in figuring this name thing out. Why couldn't there be a name that we both just love?

New Website...Dolcetto Designs

As many of you have probably noticed (thanks to facebook) I've finally got my new website up and running! www.dolcettodesigns.com. What a lot of work that was! The hardest part was figuring out how to do it all and where to go, especially for a fair/ reasonable price and a good product. I'm really happy that I got it figured out and actually did it all myself. David is the computer guy in our house so this was actually pretty surprising for me.

I was amazed how tedious the whole process was. Each photo on the site had to be resized to a low resolution image before it could be uploaded, every product had to be entered in seperately. Just when I thought I had figured everything out I would discover something new or be asked a new question that I would have to come up with an answer for.

I have really appreciated the use of my last site for the past couple of months. I have learned so much in this time and have been able to answer questions for my site that I didn't even know I previously had.

With the new site up, now it's just a matter of filling orders and creating new designs when I have the time. I still have lots of ideas that I would like to incorporate into the site and blog, but there's lots of time for that. Now that I've spent all my profits on the website, graphics and a large stock of envelopes it's time to start making some money. This week I'm completing two large wedding orders; very exciting for me!

Sarah having a Tantrum...

Every so often when Sarah is upset about something (wanting to eat or go to sleep but usually eat), she will throw herself on the floor and cry...awesome. We just wait for her to eventually get up and go to her highchair. Then we feed her, problem solved. Everyone has their moments. Did you hear David achoo in the background? Thought that was funny when I watched the clip.

Not many new posts these days

Yep, haven't been posting much these days, so I thought I would write a little something. Between playing with Sarah, having different guests for the past couple of weeks, David being home now, working on card orders, madly working on my website now that our guests are gone and me dog sitting 2-3 times each day there has not been a lot of time or energy for posting on the family blog.

Everyone is doing good. Sarah continues to be a little rascal, into everything, yet still an incredible sleeper. She continues to sleep 2.5-3 hours in the morning, 2 hours in the afternoon and goes to bed from 7-7. We are blessed. It's amazing how you can love your child(ren) so much yet look forwwrad to their bedtimes so much as well, I've always thought that was odd. The other day she decided to walk off the couch and gashed her ear, it looks pretty good already thankfully. In the same afternoon she was walking from our rec room to the downstairs kitchen area, fell on the tile and chipped one of her front teeth. Poor girl, we are continually amazed with her pain tolerance and ability to shake it off and go again.

I've been feeling great. Can't believe we're almost 32 weeks along already, where has the time gone?!? Actually a little scary. I would say my excitement for this baby is about the same as my first pregnancy, however my focus is very different. With the first one you read the What to Expect book weekly and take in every new and special moment. This time around it feels like the pregnancy is just happening and life is just going on as normal. I suppose that's the difference when you already have a little one to care for. We have an empty room for the baby but still need to get the bassinet and other items figured out and set up.

I must admit that this one is very active. Sarah was very active, but this one seems to be constantly moving. Could be interesting. I'm down to doctor's appointments every 2 weeks now, yahoo (with sarcasm). All seems well. I just broke the 150 mark this week, the doctor says I seem on the smaller side, so who knows. So far we have our full girl name picked out but have no first name if it's a boy, we better get on that soon.

My business is coming along well. I've reinvested all the profits, and now it's time to start making some money. I have felt "risk" as I have created a new website and put money into advertising. There are no guarantees. Let's hope that things pay off. I'm excited to launch my new site this coming week and see what happens.

This afternoon we went to the Book Depot here in St. Catharines. It's a place that I've wanted to visit for a long time now and for some reason we just hadn't (David always thought it would be no good). Anyways, it's a massive book warehouse with lots of incredible deals. I wanted to bring my cousin Debbie there when she was out to visit but we didn't get around to it. Now I feel like I let her down, since the place was pretty much amazing. Tons of books all at great deals. We were in there for nearly 2 hours and didn't even see everything. The children's book selection was incredible as well, not to mention the Christian literature area. It's a place we'll be going back to in the near future.

Also a very Happy Birthday to our niece Chloe who just turned one yesterday! Wish we could go to her party tomorrow!

And a big congratulations to our sister in law Libby, who just got hired as a full time teacher at MEI middle school. We couldn't be happier for you! You've worked really hard for this, we are so thrilled for you!

Our little munchkin dumping out her toy bin. She's making an odd face here. I don't have any brand new photos, so this is from a couple of weeks ago.

Spending Time with Debbie and Tim

A week ago my cousins Debbie and Tim came to vist for 6 days. It was great to spend time with them, see some sights and experience some new things. Amazingly, I didn't take many photos while they were here, but here's a bunch to give you an idea.

We spent a day at the CNE. It was opening day so admission was only $1.75 pp

Sarah enjoyed looking at the animals

Debbie taking a break from all the walking.

We went to Port Dalhousie for an afternoon.

We spent a day at Marineland where we fed lots of animals.

We went to Centre Island/ Toronto Island for a couple of hours before Debbie and Tim had to be at the airport.

Sarah liked watching the train go by.

There was a large amusement park all for kids about 2-6 years old. Perhaps next summer we'll have to come back..

Our group sitting in a HUGE chair.

Our little family

There was a Franklin Storybook Garden. Debbie and I thought it was pretty cute.

View coming back from the island on the little ferry.