Feeding Baby for Cheap...well cheaper

So since I am a stay at home mom I always try to get the best deals when I am at the grocery store. My newest challenge was trying not to blow the whole grocery budget feeding the smallest member of our household. Let's face it babies are EXPENSIVE between all the stuff they need then you add diapers, wipes, formula, baby food, and snacks and I am probably leaving out a couple of things that cost big bucks.

So I found a couple of corners you can cut to prevent needing a second job to feed your tiny tot.

1. Buy generic formula. I know some parents think this is "not doing the best for your child" but read the ingredients and nutrition labels, it has all the same stuff and costs almost half of the name brand stuff. I pay $11.49 for target brand formula vs. about $22 for the name brand. Wal-mart brand "Parents Choice" even has an organic formula for about $14 a can!

2. Buy the baby cereals for breakfast. When Carter first started baby food I was thinking he needed to eat only stuff out of a jar so he was going through sometimes 6 jars a day and eating mostly fruits and veggies. I started feeding him baby oatmeal with some rice or wheat cereal mixed with fruit and saved a TON. It is also super easy to make as you just add water to the flakes and you are done!

3. Starting at around 8 months (ask your baby's Dr.) they can eat yogurt and cottage cheese so take advantage. I buy ANYTHING that he can eat that is not from the baby section. It seems as though when you step away from baby-land EVERYTHING is cheaper. Keep in mind they need as many calories as they can get so find the whole fat products, and larger quart containers are cheaper as well.

4. Natural no sugar added applesauce is no different than baby apples. I buy a big jar for about $3 and it lasts a long time.

5. Make baby food whenever possible. This does not have to be labor intensive. I get ziploc steamfresh bags and frozen veggies and then use my submersion blender or food processor to make it the right consistancy.


I hope these little tips help, and if you have any other tips please feel free to share in the comments.

Ultimate Etsy Newbie Guide!

Tips and Tricks to Selling on Etsy

First of all you will have to figure out what it is you are going to make. Most people who decide to sell on Etsy already have a craft in mind. Do a little research as far as how many sellers are selling your same craft and how well there shops are doing. There are many sellers selling the same wares in the site and you will need to find out the best way to make your shop stand out. For example if you search “jewelry” on Etsy there are well over 56,000 pages of listings, what makes your product better than the rest? Once you have decided on what your handmade craft is going to be it is time to get started with your “shop”

Shop appearance

Your shop appearance is one of the most important things you should consider when it comes to being a great seller on Etsy. This includes everything from your avatar and banner to your featured products. For your shop announcement most sellers like to keep it short and sweet with some information about their shop, products, and maybe promo information or special sales. You want to make sure it isn’t so long that a buyer has to scroll way down to see your first products. Remember that many people are going to just skim over it so if there is very important information that you highlight it so it gets the attention it needs.

Banner

Two very important things when thinking about your shop is your avatar and your banner. The banner is the image that will show across the top of your shop, this is the very first thing anyone will see when they come to your shop. It should reflect the feel for your shop and many sellers like to include images of your items along with your shop name. Keep it simple and make sure that the image is crisp and not blurry. Although many sellers opt to buy a banner from someone who sells them it is simple to do and can even be created in PowerPoint.

To create a banner in PowerPoint:
1. Go to PAGE SETUP and change the size to 3.55cm width and 37cm for the height

2. Go to VIEW and make sure you have the FORMATTING PALATTE open, use this to create your banner. You can use all those shapes and functions and add images and text to your liking.

3. Select SAVE AS and change the FORMAT to JPEG

4. Go to SHOP APPEARANCE and upload your file as your new Etsy banner.

Avatar

The avatar will be found under PUBLIC PROFILE, this is the image that will show on your profile, shop, and in Etsy Chat and Forums. Most sellers use one of their products as their avatar. The simple trick to getting the right size file is to go to the item that you would like to use as your avatar and right click one of the thumbnails and “SAVE PICTURE AS”, this will save the photo the right size to upload it as your avatar. I usually just save it to my computer as “(item name) avatar”. Just remember if you have one of your items as your avatar to change to a new avatar when that item sells.

Featured items

When a buyer scrolls past your shop the first items they will see are your featured items. In order to select your featured items click on YOUR ETSY at the very top of the screen and when your items show select the ones you would like to feature by clicking the star next to the item, when the star is green it is already one of your featured items. Then to create the order you prefer your featured items to show click on FEATURED IN SHOP on the left side of the screen under the ITEMS heading. When on this screen move items up and down to create the order you like. One the first couple items will show on your shop main page, but buyers can also click to just see your featured items. It is also a good idea to switch these around some so buyers always see something new when they come visit your shop.


Policies

Another thing you will want to think about is your shop policies. Many sellers have their own ideas as far as what works for them in regards to returns, exchanges, shipping issues and lost packages, etc. Check out this for a lot of helpful tips!


Photos

Your item photos can be one of the most important things when it comes to your online sales. Almost every sellers still has some concerns with their own photos and still fusses with their existing ones to try to improve them.

Some of the best things to consider are lighting, staging, and using all of your slots.

Play around with different color backgrounds. I use scrapbooking paper, try more than one color with each item and never trust that the picture looking good on the camera screen means that it will look good on the computer.

Find something interesting to stage your items with in your photos...I have had a lot of fun with feathers and hanging earrings/necklaces off a martini glass.

use natural light whenever possible...I found that next to the kitchen window makes great pictures, but I still edit and brighten them more.

Always take pictures of your earrings hanging off of something because laying flat is not always the way they look on.

Use the "macro" setting on your camera (the symbol is the little flower)

More often than not the flash will ruin the colors in your photos.

Since people cannot pick up your items and look at them for themselves try to show all sides of the item

I like to include something to help show size, I recently started playing with putting a bottle cap in my photos because unlike a quarter it is international...as far as I know bottle caps are the same size all over.




Listing

Take your time listing your items, choose the best titles that will grab attention of the buyer. Make sure that you use the best picture for your first image since this will be the one responsible for getting the buyers attention. Describe all details of the item, including color and size in both inches and metric since you will have international buyers who don’t know how big an inch is. Don’t assume the buyer can see anything from the picture including exactly what the item it, if it is a pillow or a necklace make sure you state that in the description. Do a little research with your shipping costs, see what it really would cost before setting it if possible. You do not want to be charging $8 for shipping if it will only cost you $2 because buyers will know this and will buy elsewhere where they can find more reasonable shipping.

Tagging

Use ALL 14 tags! You have 14 slots to get buyers when they are searching for items, think about the following things when tagging:
What is it?
What specifically is it? Go beyond just the basic in very direction possible
Who is it for?
What color/s is it
What is it made out of?
What technique did you use when making it?
Where or how would it be used?
What syle/size is it?

Remember to try to use different tags for your items because that will funnel more people into your shop!


Promoting

There are so many ways to direct people to your Etsy store. Many of these would be social networking sites (myspace, face book, twitter), blogs, and interactions with people in your everyday life. Wear, use, or carry your items with you whenever possible. I try to wear a stand out piece at all times and carry business cards with my Etsy store website on them. Use your social networking stills to do that…network. Connect with as many people as possible and make sure they all know about your website! Create a blog and talk about anything you want, once you have people following use it to direct them to your Etsy site. People will want to buy from you if they feel like they have gotten to know you as a person. You can also use other people’s blogs to promote yourself. Try this list of blogs for blogs and tips on how to be featured in one of them. Think about the fact that the more people you drive to your store the more sales you will get. Some sellers get great results and increased traffic by doing giveaways through blogs or other mediums. Don’t just sit around and wait for someone to stumble across your shop because they searched the right words. Be proactive and don’t be shy about sharing your beautiful crafts!

Renewing

Many sellers swear by renewing as much as possible. Whether it works or not is still debatable. Most people say that 7pm is a high traffic time on the site and therefore the best time to list or renew. Regardless of if you believe that renewing your listings results in sales it does put you back to the top of the search results. The results work in order of most recent listings so if you and 150 other people have listed “Vanilla Soap” and you were the most recent person to post or relist yours than you will be at he top of the search results, same goes if you were the oldest lister of the item. Many buyers will not go to the 60th page of search results to find your listing so being one of the first to show is a much better bet. It does cost $.20 just like when you first list an item to renew a listing so keep in mind that it can add up.

Chatting and Forums

There are a lot of Etsy sellers that are also buyers. Reaching out to other sellers to let them know about your shop is a great way to get sales. Spend some time in the forums and you will get attention and also learn a lot of valuable information from your fellow Etsians. You will find the forums by clicking on COMMUNITY at the top of your screen and then click on FORUMS. Just remember to be kind to everyone in the forums and never call out a shop, meaning you should never talk specifics on any shop or transaction in the forums, that should be handled with Etsy Admin.

You can also get exposure in the chat rooms on Etsy and also meet some great people. One common chat room you will see is 5 MIN FS this is a 5 minute featured seller chat room. A seller is selected to be the “FS” or featured seller for 5 minutes and everyone can go to their shop and find things that they like and post them into the chat. To post an item copy either the entire link when on the item page or the item number which you will find on the right side near where you see who hearts that item. Copy either of those and paste it in the section on the right and a photo of that item and your avatar will show. To show a sellers name with a comment to them just click on their name that is next to their avatar at the bottom of the screen and then type the rest of your comment and press enter. The first person to buy from the FS within the 5 min is the next featured seller! It is a lot of fun and you can sometimes end up buying more than selling, but more promotion for your shop!

Teams

You can click on TEAMS under community too and this will take you to all of the teams that you could join on Etsy. Most teams will work together to promote everyone’s shops and therefore get more traffic with less of a time commitment on one person’s part. It is a great way to meet other sellers with similar crafts, interests, personal situations, or local people. Check out the teams and if you find one that interests you then look for their information on how to join.

Helpful links

You will probably create your own list in your favorites as you work your way through creating a shop and selling your heart out, but here are a few of the links I have collected along the way

Shop hearts

Was I on the front page?

Check if you were in a gift guide

Am I in a Treasury?

When will the Treasuries open next?

How many views have I had?

Etsyhacks... The all time greatest tools every etsy seller needs!

Pre-make a Treasury

Treasury West...The 'hidden' Treasury


Tag Finder...helps find appropriate tags


Make text links 'Clickable'


For information about craft shows in your area

Chris Brown "Ain't no monster" and he 'ain't' speaking English

So Chris Brown posted a video saying that he "ain't no monster" and all about his new CD coming out. First of all I know that it has become cool to be Ghetto and not speak proper English but when it gets to the point where we can barely understand what you are saying it it a little much. Secondly oh we must have been mistaken and it must have been your car that attacked Rihanna?! I mean look at her face and tell me again how you aren't a monster? I think any man who beats a woman isn't a monster because maybe that would give monsters a bad name!

I worked hard for my millions!

My sister decided we were going to win the lottery...correction...we ARE going to win the lottery TONIGHT!

I did the research on the best way to pick the numbers and got it down to an outline of how we were going to pick

2 odd 4 even and 4 low (1-27) and 2 high (over 27)
4 odd 2 even 2 low and 4 high
3 odd 3 even 3 low and 3 high

we picked our winning numbers and I headed to 7-11

Deciding on the numbers was the easy part because remember I have a 6 month old...I packed him up and we had to stop at the bank because I had to deposit a check so I take all 18 pounds of him plus whatever his carrier into the bank to the ATM and think about getting out cash but decide it was too many steps so I put the check in and we head out to the car.

We arrive at the 7 11 and I take the carrier out once again. We head in and I have no idea how to buy a lotto ticket. The cashier directs me to the back of the store where I see the kiosk and I get my cards and fill in my numbers.

I decided to play all 4 sets of numbers we picked on the TX lotto and one set of the numbers on the Mega Million drawing. I take my filled out cards heaving the carrier towards the front of the store to get my tickets.

I hand her the cards and once they print and I got my total I hand her my debit card...and find out you have to pay with cash...great! So she tells me I can buy something and get cash back so I grab the closest thing, a bag of peanut M&Ms (and I wonder why I can't get the baby weight off?!) and swipe the card only to press the "credit" button! So no cash back! Then she grabs a laffy taffy to ring me up yet again so I can press "debit" and get my cash. Finally all that hassle and I get my tickets which included a non-winning scratcher...but that's ok I didn't want to waste my luck on a measly $50K!

I will update tomorrow on what I am going to buy with my millions!

Teething Bites!

Carter at 6 months still doesn't have any teeth, but I am sure they are coming soon. He is really irritable and has been drooling and biting everything. And I had thought he was going to be 18 and still gumming his food. Then the poor already cranky kid rolled off the couch, he is ok, but he was even more angry! I gave him some tylanol and now he is napping, hopefully he will be a much happier little man after he gets a little rest. I just wonder why he had to wait until his Daddy went back to work to finally start cutting those teeth...I guess I am the lucky one that he decided to save all the "fun" for me!

Vlogemotions May 21st

If you would like to get involved with the Vlogemotions carnival please go check out Fort Thompson for the info and to post your link
Here is my 3rd Vlog and I got my new mini laptop that was my wonderful Mother's Day gift from my dear husband and I was having fun with the editing software...I will probably get more and more rediculous as the weeks go on with the editing... well enjoy!

Birthday Party for a hero!

Tonight was a fantastic night, we went to a suprise birthday party for Dr Mendeloff, who was Carter's surgeon for his heart defect repair. All of the kids got up on the stage and sang Happy Birthday when he came in the room. It was awesome and very emotional to see all the kids he has helped. Even he had a hard time resisting the tears.