Promoting for Free

Who doesn't love Free.. it is like the magic word.. to get something for nothing... well nothing is for truly free.. but in this case Free equals no money... you have to do some work but it won't cost you any money. Every since I started selling online I have been meeting people who are looking for free places to put links to their shops and items they sell.. we all want to sell more and to sell more we need more people to see what we have for sale. It only takes one person seeing it.. the right person to buy it.. but often that person is buried in a pile of hundreds or thousands of other people.

Ever since I started selling handmade items online I have met a lot of people who are very supportive.. we share blog posts about each other and links to each others stuff... help spread the word as much as we can. Always seeing place mentioned that you can use to promote your shop/items/sites. That is how I found blogger, and twitter and facebook.. all of us talking about different places to share free links to our sites... how to get ourselves out there with the most coverage and the least amount of money.

On facebook I met Linda who is all about helping out small businesses and getting our links out there and sharing and supporting. She has been creating different groups and pages and websites all focused on these things. We got to be friends and I have trying to help her as much as possible in keeping these places going. Some have grown and are working good.. others have not grown and are now closed.. thing is.. she is all for trying new things and keeps trying them until she finds ones that work. Which is where the not so free part comes in. It might not cost money but there is a lot LOT of time involved in running an online site. One of the things that takes so long is finding the best places to promote your site. Linda has offered up a way to take a little bit of that time out of the equation for us. She has started a group on facebook Free Ways to Promote where we can all go and share the places we have found and see what is working for others. I decided to start a blog Promote For Free that ties into that group and we can work together to get as much info gathered up and shared as possible.

You can go through and post your link everywhere ( spamming it ) but who wants to do business with someone that is rude enough to do that. You need to find ways to get your links out there.. to the right market... in the right away so that no one is offended. Remember when you post your link you want people to want to visit.. to want to see what you offer.. and then to want to buy from you. Hopefully having a place where we can have a lot of different places offered to share on and all of us can communicate about how they work for us and give feedback.. will help us all to find the right places for our shops/sites. Some people are facebook people and some are bloggers.. some of us do both.. this has both options.

Would love to have you visit, follow, like and join. :)

Hike Through the Woods

Went hiking today at Four Springs with my friend Cassidy and thought I would invite everyone to enjoy a little of it. We started out by the Big Maple by the barn and headed out.

Stopped for a bit of a snack along the way, lots of huckleberries and salmon berries out there today.

One thing I really do not know how to show is the hills... there are some pretty steep ones.

Back to the barn and the jeep and headed home. Felt great to be out there in the woods again.. even wore my hiking boots.. I love them still! I met Cassidy last month, she is a friend of my daughters. I have seen her running around past the house for the last year and have admired her for getting outside and doing something and having the stick to it to get it done. I am really enjoying getting to know her and look forward to many more hikes with her :)

Catching Up

Well it has been awhile since I posted... before the 4th of July... A bunch has happened since then.. going to try to just wrap it up quick and move on. Will also post some random photos that might not relate to anything :)

The baby birds above the shop have hatched and are growing so fast.. they are so dang cute I can spend hours just watching them.

Dave's mom passed away on the 4th of July and it just sucks.. no matter that we knew she was not doing so well or that she lived many years longer than the doctors said.. it still sucks.. I am forever thankful to her for raising such a wonderful son.

We are getting everything out of storage... getting ready for son to be moving out and daughter moving to the back room ( or moving out ) so that we can take over the office... will be nice to not be spread out all over the kitchen table any longer.

Dave has been working just about 24/7... he goes to work for ten hours.. gets home.. has dinner.. works in the shop for an hour or two and then he is back to work ( at home ) until anywhere between 2 and 4 in the morning.. back up at 5:30 to start it all over again. He does this about 4 nights a week and has been spending time every weekend working crazy hours too. There is some stuff going on at his job that hopefully will help this.. but not in the really near future. Fingers are crossed and praying hard that it does get better though.

Still have not hooked up the auto sprinklers for the yard... seems we can not go more than 2 or 3 days without it raining.... this is the longest we have ever made it into summer and still had a hint of green in the yard. I am sure summer is right around the corner.. maybe.

Diet/exercise/getting healthy... is no where to be found... I do great for a few days then life happens and I am right back where I started... I am maintaining, which is a joke since I hate where I am.. but at least I am not getting any bigger or lazier. Vegas is coming really soon and I KNOW if I do not get on it I am going to regret it BIG time. Not only do I Need all my clothes (0ne size smaller than I am in now) to fit comfortably, but the amount of walking will kill me if I am not ready for it.

We are not getting as much done in the shop as we would like at all.. spending as much time out there as we can.. but it is just not as much as we would like.

I have been doing some battling with the bi-polar.. so far I am holding my own.. trying to stay focused and up but not too up... so many changes with the kids and home and everything right now that it is hard... been keeping my cd collection very busy!

Ok so that about wraps it up... I have a post coming about some places I want to share, places I have been using to promote my site and how that is going :)

Fun New Stuff

I found these cute little wooden frames awhile ago.. and I knew I needed them.. just was not sure what I would do with them.. well I figured it out... lol sort of as I went.. I just sat down with the frames, some paint and some boxes of imagination (different supplies) and started having fun with them.

I have them listed in my shop now and if they do not sell fast I may be claiming them for myself.... I love them! I also had fun trying out a new setting for taking pictures.. I think it worked pretty well.. Basically.. today was a lot of fun!

I Am a Blue Berry Snob and More

I do this every year.. and I am clueless as to why.. I should know better. I was at the grocery store and I saw they had blue berries on sale... I picked them up and then put them back and then ended up going back and getting some. They are horrible.. a huge waste of money. Not only are a bunch of them squished but some are moldy and some are not even ripe... they are just gross.

I grew up on a 45 acre blue berry farm and I am more than a spoiled snob when it comes to blue berries... I am really looking forward to visiting the local U Pick farm this year... am down to one small bag in the freezer and I need some great tasting fresh berries.

I have not been blogging much.. been too wrapped up in daughters graduation and her turning 18 and our last forced family road trip.

She did graduate and we had a wonderful day with friends and family stopping by for a bbq party.. it was a good weekend. She got a LOT of flowers :)

The following weekend we took Missy and John on a forced family road trip to the ocean.

The kids standing in front of a drill bit at the whoops site( Satsop Nuclear Power Plant ) ... and below is one of the towers... these things are HUGE!!!

we explored the whoops plant on the way there and then played some mini golf at one of our favorite places.

and spent sometime on the beach

we played games and had some great food...it was nice.. but it was very clear that even though we all had a good time.. we all would rather have been doing something with friends... sort of a weird thing.. it was a great time.. the kids were involved and part of it.. but... it is just not the same anymore.. which will be good... time to move on to having adult relationships with them all.. no more kids here.. sort of mixed feelings... excited to see what is coming and a little sad to see this change, but it does feel good... I am very proud of the kids and in myself for raising them to be independent.

Got some really cute fun cowboy shot glasses last week.. they were totally on sale and I could not refuse them :)

My mom brought me her spinning wheel, the one when I was growing up that I was not allowed to touch... it now lives in my living room... it is all put together and a friend came over and helped show me how to use it... now I practice a lot and I love it! It is another thing I am limited in how much time I can spend doing it due to the shoulder.. but I love it! I love the memories it brings from growing up.. I love that it makes yarn... furry stuff goes in and yarn comes out... I love it love it love it.. and I get to touch it every time I walk past it :)

We are still working on the wood shop... we did get most of the dust collecting items and are starting to get those set up so that we can finish building the rest of the cabinets and then it will be good to go. The dust collection has been the biggest challenge.. need it to gather as much dust as possible.. and be as out of the way as possible.. some tools collect from a couple of different places and some tools need to be able to move around the shop... all the tools seem to have different sized ports and there are 3 or 4 different ways/ type of hoses/pipes/and joints to use... and one kind matches with another but then another won't work and you can't seem to use all of one kind because none of them had all the pieces we need.. it has been a huge puzzle but I think we are on a roll now.

I am hoping to be doing a blog post all about that in the next week or two. We have been getting some trim pieces up on the one row of cabinets... makes it look so much more finished. We are both getting in a hurry to be able to use the shop to build fun stuff.. we still have orders coming in which is very exciting :)