The day after

I truly hope everyone has had a wonderful, joyous Christmas.  I know it sounds bad but I am glad our holiday season is almost to an end.  Only because after New Years we will have gotten through all the major holidays for our first year without mom.  Of course we have tried hard but the emotions have gotten the best of us.  I truly look forward to working on healing to the point that next year I can enjoy the holidays with my children and grandchildren as I always have.  Even when there has been little or no money we have found a way to have fun and be together. 
I just started back to school last week.  One week of class and then we went on Christmas break.  But that is truly okay, I am out of practice on the school work and the week was a bit overwhelming.  But I look forward to getting back into the swing of things in January.  In the mean time I decided to stop worrying about my shop but while I spend hours sitting with dad everyday I have been stitching a nice stock pile of new pieces.  Sometime in January I will start posting them and filling up all the empty spaces.  Or not.  I am truly spending a lot of time thinking about what I could do different.  Etsy has not worked for me the last year.  All the changes they have been going through are very unhelpful to small shops like mine.  But from what I am looking at there does not seem to be much better out there so maybe this will be the time to work on putting my items up for sale directly on my website.  This will require a bit more thought.
Now that blogger is allowing me to post pictures again I will start showing you some of the new work soon.  In the mean time Everyone have a great New Year!

Sunday's

Well I could not do it again.  Shut down the GoFundMe page this morning.  I just do not have it in me.  I want to earn what I have and use my own common sense on how to handle things in my life.
So now I am brainstorming again.  The problem with my brain storming is that I am just not creative enough and the ideas do not flow freely.  But I have a few forming. 

What do you know!!!!! Blogger let me post a picture.  I love this one because I have so many family members in the service,  this morning my nephew Cory posted pictures of himself, He left in October to spend another year in Afghanistan.  He has been oversea's so many times but he has also been in the service for almost 20 years.  I feel really bad for my niece.  She and Cory have 2 boys, one is 13 and one is 7,  how hard it must be to constantly face a holiday or significant day such as birthdays and anniversaries knowing that dad will not be there to celebrate.  All they can ever do is pray he gets home safely to them. 

Things are quite here, dad is declining, little by little.  One of the Hospice Nurses told me yesterday he could be going into renal failure.  That is not fact, just an educated guess.  I hate getting up each day and not knowing what to expect next.  I wish I had a crystal ball that would tell me what is going to happen day by day so I could make a plan with my life.

In the mean time I will keep stitching away at my piles of beads while I come up with my next idea on how to raise money to fix everything. 

Have a great Sunday!

True Desperation

This week I hit a new low.  All the issues I have tried to be strong and deal with on my own for so very long have hit me upside the head and left me taking desperate action.  Last year, I opened a go fund me account,  I felt so very guilty.....I don't ask for handouts, I don't ask for any one to do anything I can try to do for myself....I shut it down within a few days.  Well the brave act has faded, the strength and willpower to continue trying on my own has been totally exhausted.  I can pretend all I want that my sense of humor will carry me through anything and my good upbringing will help me find the way to fix everything eventually......those thoughts have completely disappeared.  I am giving up because I am beyond tired.  I am once again reaching out for help.  I have started a new go fund me account.  With a bit of a twist this time that makes me feel a bit better about it.  I let it be known that if any one donated to this account I would send them one of my hand created items.  I will let them have choices of what they receive.  So in my mind, I am not really asking for charity...I am still working for every dime just like I was taught and just like I always have.  Of course it's only been up a few day's but I haven't even got traffic yet to look at it.  Would you do me a favor.....would you go take a look, read it, then come back and tell me what you think?  What could I do to make it more appealing?  Just a bit of feedback would help because I can't walk away from it this time.  If I do not get some help I am going to lose it.  I realize people that raise a lot of money on places like Go Fund Me have many family and friends that help raise the money.  I don't have either.  My family or what is left of it is not in a position to help.  My friends,  well I consider myself lucky in a way, I have many online friends.  But that is not the same as real life friends that really know me.  There is a difference when it comes to a situation like mine.  So please, if your willing to do what I am requesting,  go read it, come back and give me your thoughts and advice.  If you like what I have done, share it.  This is probably the most desperate cry for help I have ever made at what is probably the lowest point in my life ,   I thank you.  I know this is not the type of blog post to cheer up any one's day but I just do not know what else to do.  I have officially tried it all starting with working my butt off to market my business and then down the line to organizations and agencies that are supposed to be there to help, down to any one I know that might have a few dollars to spare.  But of course it is Christmas time so even those people have nothing to spare right now.   Any way here is the address of the post, I will be waiting with fingers crossed that someone here in blogger land will have some good advice to share:

http://www.gofundme.com/ijeltc