Higher Ground

I'm taking charge starting today. Many of you know what I mean and I would love some advice. I've started a business on Etsy and because I work from home, I've allowed life to interfere with this goal and others.

With serving my family so fully for so many years, we have put ourselves in a precarious position. Our home is not fixed up to the level it needs to be to sell. The town will be eliminating the place we have our livestock and the new facility will be built by them and not in a fashion that will meet our needs. This will happen in the next year or two. We need land, and we need money for this purchase and to fix up our home which is still an unfinished work in progress. Mostly unfinished. 

                                                          Project Knitting/Crochet Bag

So to help my husband facilitate this need for extra cash, I started an Etsy businesshttp://www.etsy.com/shop/TheCalicoBush?ref=ss_profile but it is a much greater challenge to get it up and out there to the mass public than I thought but, I'm loving it. It's something I can do with a lazy thyroid and adrenal gland. 

With most of the materials coming from things we already have on hand, I'm hoping to use the proceeds to offset our livestock costs, freeing up that money to put into an account for land.

With new goals and renewed determination, I've headed in a new direction and in that spirit, yesterday, I started a new blog, http://thecalicobush.blogspot.com/2012/04/half-done.html

Here, I will post Saturdays and Wednesdays. Today, you can pop on over and see the progress I've made with my cable hat and see just how much a frog and I have in common. Quite a bit it seems. 
                                   
Then check back Saturday, The Calico Bush blog will have a post on Gerry. He and I have become friends, finally. Who's Gerry, he's the latest assistant in my quest to produce a unique product for Etsy. He's very old, but very nice once you learn to do things HIS way. Find out what Gerry and I are creating from a once wasted by-product of raising livestock. 

It will also be here that you will see what materials Kirk and I have scrounged up to make buttons out of. We've gone through his stash of scraps from making knives to find scraps of buffalo horn, mammoth ivory, exotic woods, composite turquoise, and we've even made a couple purchases of marble. He gets the big pieces and I the left over scraps. This is only fair since he pays for the materials with his business account. Between the project bags, the livestock by-product product, and the buttons, I think I'm most excited about making buttons. 

So after you've checked out the new blog, then join me on Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Calico-Bush/339573436081232?ref=ts  and see where I've been knitting. Lets start an gnome thing a ma jig. You know, where you post pictures of where you knit or crochet, the crazier the better. This could really be fun.

Though my dad told me yesterday on the phone that I'm filling my plate too full. I'm thinking yes I am. I need to reapportion it. Not at all in the way he thinks I should, sorry Dad. I'm taking John Wayne's advice instead. On my favorite movie, McLintock, he told his daughter she would only inherit 200 acres of his vast spread (ranch) because there was a whole lot of growing that happens when two people struggle together. May I add on your own too. I'm thinking I might just allow a little more struggling to happen in my children's lives. Often it's not that they have asks for our help as much as we haven't been able to not step up to help when we saw need.

Today, that changes, I'm reapportioning my plate to focus a bit more on US, Kirk and I. If not, we may be the ones needing help next year. I hope they don't move us for two years for we might of waited too long. Thinking of the advice," You can't lift another if you are not first on higher ground." We best be securing our high ground before the rains (challenges) come and wash us off the hill.

So take control is my new buzz word and I'm starting my to do lists today. Don't fret, this blog will still be moving along. How many days a week is still under discussion, but know that with eggs in the incubator, kids still to be born, a garden in the works, and sourdough rising on the counter, there is lots for us to discuss.