it’s been a while…

Well, with all the busy-ness of daily life, it’s been a while since I’ve been able to come up with something really great to write about.  Today is no different, though I do have some good news: Andrew and I wrote a business plan for my company, I called a few local stores to talk about my idea and get a feel for it, and I’ve decided to go ahead with it.  Right now, in addition to blogging weekly for Yaya’s, I am designing an awesome site for The Clothes Gallery in Crystal Lake, IL.  The site design is complete, and I am just getting ready to start the shopping cart. 

I think the shopping cart is going to be much more complex than I ever could have imagined.  Since I’ve designed my whole site visually, not using any code, I need a cart that can be done visually.  It sounds simple enough, but it looks like it’s going to be hard to find.  Who would have thought that to do web design, you’d actually need to know code?  Ha.

After I finish TCG’s site, I get to start designing a site for a scale company called Systems Associates.  While it will be less “pretty,” it will also be a challenge.  They want a very streamlined site, also with a shopping cart, so I’ll have to find some really great software for them too.  Wish me luck.

On the home front, things are going well.  It’s finally spring, so we go to the park or for a walk almost every day.  I’m so happy to finally get out of the house!  The girls are growing like weeds, and both have developed pretty severe attitudes.  Olivia loves to just ignore me, while Jenna says “no” to almost everything.  It’s really quite fun. 

Anyway, that’s all the time I have for now.  I’m being paged.  Every seen that episode of Family Guy where Stewie yells for Lois?  “Mama, mama, mommy, mama” he says about a hundred times.  When she finally responds to his incessant whining, he just looks at her, smiles, and says “hi.”  That’s what I’m living at this very moment.  Maybe I’ll change my name.  “Mama” is really way to common, anyway….

Humbled

A few months ago, I took over the maintenance of my church’s website.  I designed a new format, rewrote some of the content, clicked publish, and voila!  The new beautifulsaviorantioch.com was born.  At first, I thought nothing of the prayer request page that I update every week; the average age of the church members is probably 60, so I assumed that most of the cancer patients, terminally ill, and recently deceased were all in the elderly segment of the church body.  Unfortunately, that does not seem to be the case.

On our prayer list are a 14-year-old girl with a brain tumor, 3 women with pregnancy complications, several women in their early 20s with mysterious illnesses, several people with drug or alcohol dependencies, a few babies born with health problems, and several people under the age of 40 with terminal diseases.  Add to that the constantly increasing list of those laid off from work (now including several former co-workers from Claire’s), having financial difficulties, or searching for better jobs, and that list seems like it is a mile long.  It truly is staggering to see the amount of suffering and difficulty facing your everyday average human being. 

I can’t tell you how blessed I feel every time I add a name to the list and it isn’t a relative or friend of mine, and I can’t tell you how humbled I was today to add the family of a friend who lost her brother-in-law.  Her unexpected phone call during lunch today shook me to the core.  I was angrily composing a letter in my head to the corporate office of a local store for some problems I encountered while shopping recently when she called, and her tearful voice on the phone cut through my anger like a knife through butter.  Who am I to get so angry over such inconsequential things as cans of veggies in the wrong spot on the shelf when there are families suffering far greater tragedies every day. 

For the ability to have misplaced groceries as my biggest problem these days, I am truly thankful, and for everyone out there suffering the loss of a loved one, I am truly sorry.  May God grant you strength and light in your time of need.

Rant: Fuel

I went grocery shopping yesterday, and came home so frustrated and demoralized that I wanted to cry.  The price of groceries is sky-rocketing and I feel like there is nothing I can do about it.  In the past three weeks, I have seen prices of most items I regularly buy jump by 10 or 20 cents a unit.  I bought 49 items yesterday, so at an average increase of .15, that’s a $7.35 increase.  While not a lot of money, this is over the course of several weeks.  Couple that increase with record inflation and my recently reduced budget, and it becomes a huge problem.

 I’m not entirely sure what is causing the sudden price surges, but I have some ideas.  First, inflation.  We had a record level of 1.0% inflation for the month of January at the wholesale level, and from January 2007 to January 2008, I’ve seen estimates from 2.5% to 4%!  That is huge!  But inflation is caused by so many things that I’m sure these other factors below are contributors. 

Second, the rising cost of fuel.  We’ve been experiencing that for a while, I know, but we need to stop complaining about the price of gasoline, and start raising concern over the price of diesel!  Here in IL, the price of diesel is anywhere from 50 to 75 cents more per gallon than gasoline.  I know you’re saying, “But I don’t drive a diesel vehicle.  Why should I care?”  The cost of diesel effects EVERYTHING!  Every single item you purchase is transported by diesel-burning vehicles.  Those cute jeans from the Gap?  Shipped by a diesel-burning cargo ship from China.  Toiletries at Wal-Mart?  Sent here by diesel-guzzling 18 wheeler.  Coal to burn for electricity?  Hauled across the country by diesel-powered train.  Food, toys, furniture, new cars…every single thing.  And companies just pass that increase in fuel cost along to you.

 Finally, the sudden surge in the use of bio-fuels is causing prices to jump on the grains (mainly soy and corn) used to produce them.  Since those two grains are used to feed livestock and are in almost every commercially-produced food product, it stands to reason that as the cost of them increases, so will the cost of the finished product. 

 We need to find a way to slow the increase in fuel cost.  We need to find an alternative fuel that is both inexpensive and effective.  We need to use less fuel and be more conscious of the ways in which we waste.  If the situation is going downhill so rapidly right now, just think how bad it could be in a few years.  We need to make a change today.  I’m not entirely sure how to go about doing that, but I will find a way!

So bored

Wish I had something great to blog about this week, but it’s been a pretty low-key week.  To be honest, I’m bored out of my skull.  I finished my Yaya’s blog for the week, the church website is finished, and the house is clean.  I can’t leave the house with the girls because we only have one car seat, and the weather is too cold to walk anywhere.

Well, enough whining.  Maybe I’ll just veg out in front of the TV for a while. 

Rant: The Media

I was in the grocery store yesterday and I saw a headline on one of those gossip rags that said The Sad Life of Suri Cruise, or something catchy like that to make you want to buy it (or, in my case, speed read while waiting in line).  Intrigued, I picked it up and read a bit: No TV! No Happy Meals! Scientology play dates!  I stopped at that point, flat-out offended at the audacity of that article!

That trash-filled piece of garbage is claiming that her life is “sad” because 1. her parents don’t want her exposed to TV’s garbage, 2. they don’t want her eating MickyD’s garbage, and 3. they don’t want her around kids that are going to fill her head with garbage.  That makes her parents bad parents?  How ludicrous.   Just because TV and McDonald’s are the cornerstones of our culture doesn’t make them necessities to have a happy childhood.

My daughter doesn’t watch TV, has never eaten McDonald’s, and hopefully, will soon go on play dates with children from our church.  Is she unhappy?  Is she bored?  Is she wasting away from not eating processed crap?  Am I a bad parent?  I think not.  In fact, I have had many compliments from complete strangers about what a calm, happy, well-behaved, beautiful child I have.  She’s growing perfectly, and in 13 months, she’s never been sick.  If I’m a bad parent, then let’s hope there are many more like me out there.

Though I think Scientology as a religion is just complete B.S., I give credit to Katie and Tom for being true to their faith and choosing not to raise an obese couch potato. 

So, Katie, Tom, kudos to the two of you.  Your daughter is gorgeous and I commend you for the great job you are doing raising her.  May God bless you and her as you continue to grow as a family.

A sleep what?

Just when I thought we were starting to get it together, everything fell apart this week.  Olivia has never been a good sleeper.  She’s always been more interested in, well, ANYTHING, than in sleeping.  It’s just who she is.  When I was working, I cherished those moments at midnight (and 10:00 and 2:00 and 4:00) when I would get up to nurse her and cuddle.  I loved being able to bring her into bed with me and wake a few hours later with her warm little body snuggled up to mine.  It was really the only time we got to spend together.  I usually woke her 15 minutes before we needed to leave for day-care, and she went to bed as soon as I was home from work and she was fed.  Those precious middle of the night moments were the extent of our bonding time. 

But now that I spend all day with her, I want her bedtime to be her bedtime.  When she was 11 months old, we tried decided to let her cry herself to sleep for a few nights in hope that she would start sleeping better.  After only 3 nights, she was falling asleep on her own!  It took only a few more weeks, and she was sleeping through the night.  That was about a month ago, so this sudden deterioration of her sleep schedule has been a nightmare.  I can’t believe I slept this little for almost a year and felt just fine.  I’m a walking, nursery rhyme singing zombie!

So, back to this sleep regression: apparently, a baby’s development takes huge strides at certain times.  4 months, 8 months, 13 months, and 18 months are a few of the normal ones.  These developmental milestones are so intense that they require the baby’s brain to go into overdrive, basically eliminating the need for sleep for a few days.  Good for baby; bad for mom.  What’s really funny about the 13 month regression it’s caused by her learning schedules and routines.  So, now when I take her upstairs to put her jammies on, she’ll anticipate that we’ll go brush her teeth, read a book, and put her to bed.  So she now knows when bedtime is coming, but can’t seem to sleep.  How odd.

I guess it’s not that bad.  Supposedly she’ll grow out of this in a week or two.  I can survive on caffeine and willpower until then.  Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going take a nap.

To all my yayas…

As part of my plan to help boost my portfolio, I met with Sherree from Yaya’s a few weeks ago.  We spoke a little about her store and what kind of customers it gets.  Though my original offer was to do visual work for her, she asked me to write a blog for the store’s website.  Find it here. 

I’m having a great time writing this new blog.  Our agreement is that I write a new entry every week or so, about the trends for the season, runway shows, events at the store, and new merchandise.  I love it!  I can work from home when the girls are sleeping, I am required to keep up with fashion trends, and I’m getting paid in store gift cards!  This is perfect!

If you get a chance, check out Yaya’s website at shopyayas.com.  There are a lot of great independent designers and the prices are pretty reasonable.  The clothes are trendy without being outrageous, but there are also some more classic pieces.  They carry jewelry and accessories, in addition to the clothes, and you can shop online! 

Roadblock!

It didn’t happen.  I didn’t make my 10 calls.  I let you all down.  More than that, I let myself down.  But, to be fair, I had good reason.

The first place I called was the first store that responded to my offer letter last spring, Yaya’s.  Yaya’s is a trendy, classy boutique in Libertyville, Illinois.  Though I can’t afford to shop there right now, I love the clothes they carry.  I spoke for a few minutes with Sherree, the owner, about my marketing idea and my offer for help, and she loved it!  She asked me to stop by her store so we could talk in more detail, and that is where I ran into trouble.

Most store owners are going to want me to visit sometime during the day, when they are in the store and the traffic is slow.  I have Jenna and Olivia during the day so that isn’t really a possibility.  Though I was able to meet with Sherree during the evening so Andrew could be home to watch the kids, it was a hurdle that I won’t be able to overcome with all prospective clients.

After taking some time to really think it through, I’ve decided that running this business isn’t going to happen right now.  I need to be able to get out during the day to meet with store owners, to visit the stores, and to do the window displays.  That just isn’t possible right now.  Instead, I’m going to wait a few more years until baby girl is in preschool a few mornings a week and try again. 

To be honest, I’m quite relieved.  I was feeling a little stressed out about trying to keep up the house, watch the kids, and still get projects done for the few clients I already have.  I think this will be the best.  Once Olivia is two or three, we’ll get her in a preschool and I’ll try this again.

In the meantime, I’m going to continue to work on my marketing and graphics skills.  I hope to take a few marketing classes at the local community college and to continue to do work for Yaya’s, Beautiful Savior, and Cellcessories.  I need to get my portfolio together and work on my business sense.  When timing seems better, I will be more confident and more willing to do the work it takes to succeed.  I have a good feeling about this!

Work, work, work

As I mentioned earlier, I own a small business and work from home so that I can take care of my daughter.  I say “own a business” and talk about working from home like I’m some sort of high-powered, successful entrepreneur.  I’m not. 

Technically, I do own a company, called Becker-VanHoveln Retail Solutions.  I have business cards and letterhead to prove it.  Unfortunately, that ‘business’ hasn’t done much business to this point.  That’s not to say it doesn’t keep me busy.  I have three clients for whom I have done web design, advertising, blogging, and data entry. For free.  So much for making a living.

See, when I first started my company, I knew that the best way to earn clients was through word-of-mouth referral, especially in the retail world.  I sent out a dozen letters offering to do a trial project for free, in return for recommending me to other business owners if my work was satisfactory.  I had one reply.  Before I had a chance to even do one project for that company, medical bills started pouring in and I had to end my maternity leave and go back to my full-time job.  My train was derailed before it even left the station.

So, when I quit my job for good this fall, I thought, Great!  Now I can dedicate all the time Olivia is sleeping to getting BVRS up and running!  Ha!  After six weeks, all I had done was research how to write a business plan. 

Step one: Make a goal and write it down. 

OK, easy!  My goal is to own a company that specializes in marketing, web design, and window displays for independent retail stores.  Step one, complete!

Step two: Find out if there is a market for your idea. 

Here is where it all falls apart.  I have a whole list of questions I want to ask potential clients about their current market practices and needs, and I have pages of information on businesses in the area to contact.  All I’m lacking is the motivation to finally call them up and ask those questions.  I feel like such a fraud every time I pick up the phone.  They’re going to think I’m just another telemarketer calling to harass them, or that I’m some kid making a prank phone call, or worse, they’re going to take me seriously but tell me that my idea sucks.  I have such high hopes, and I don’t know if I can accept rejection before I even get a chance to start. 

I have to do this.  Owning a business and working for myslef is my dream.  I want to go to my 10-year high school reunion next year and say “I own a business and work from home” and mean it.  So this is it.  I am committing to all of you out there in blog-land that next week, I will call at least 10 businesses and ask them my questions.  I can do this.  Wish me luck!

It’s all about me! part 2

This time, it really is all about me! 

I’m amazed at how different my life is compared to what I had planned even 5 years ago.  Five years ago, I was a junior in fashion school, planning a Spring wedding to my high school sweetheart, followed by a summer interning in London, before finishing my degree and moving to New York to design store windows.  I craved the fast-paced city life, where I could take the subway instead of driving, live in a tiny high-rise apartment instead of proper suburban two-story, where I could get Thai or Indian or Mexican food at any hour of the night.  More than anything, I wanted a life that was the exact opposite of what I grew up living. 

That dream began to unravel slowly as I realized that a summer interning in London would cost more than an entire year of school at home, then realized that my new husband and I would never be able to survive in New York on the entry-level salary for a window designer and TV repairman.  So, instead, I took a few summer classes, interned at a dress shop in town, earned my degree, and moved to Chicago to be a buyer’s assistant for the well-known accessories chain I worked for in high school.  A few months after I moved, my husband followed and we bought that cliched two-story on a quarter acre lot.  Within a year, I was pregnant (did I mention that kids weren’t part of the plan until after 30?), and I felt my life was grinding to a halt.  Suddenly, we were our parents; we had the house, the baby, the careers, the hour-long commute twice a day…the stress.  We were concerned with 401k’s and 529’s, with retirement plans and college saving accounts, with our blood pressure and our lacking sex life.  We were miserable.

We knew we had to make some changes.  Andrew got a new job as an electrical engineer for a scale company only 8 miles from home.  I got a new job as a stay-at-home mom and small-business owner.  We kept the house, the baby, and our sanity. 

Here I am today, a few days past my 27th birthday, watching my daughter tear apart a bag of old magazines while I work at the computer and sip green tea.  I have a cat purring on my lap and soft music on in the background.  In a few hours, I’ll head into the kitchen to make that Thai food I’ve been craving, then bundle Olivia up and we’ll head out for a walk around the cookie-cutter neighborhood.  The pace is slower, the glamour is gone, it’s not the life I imagined, yet, somehow, it’s just right.