Orange you glad?

Finally, a post not titled "Macro Monday..." and not about jewelry. Shocker. I know. I really don't have anything to say these days. Yes, I always say that and then end up writing a novel... but for reals, yo. Most of my time on the computer is spent building and growing our business. It's a full time job, just with no "perks" (yet). I guess that's not entirely true. It has paid for some pretty cool toys. Toys are definitely perks.

Today I spent all afternoon working on taxes. The sad part is, I'm not to the actual tax part yet. It took me all afternoon to enter my end of year inventory into my spreadsheet and add up the totals. People, I have too much stuff. Really, does a girl need so many gemstones?

Well, yes. Yes, she does. A girl just doesn't want to be bothered with counting them every year for uncle Sam. Uncle Sam is not the nicest of uncles. All he does is take our hard earned money and spend it on crap. He's not very fiscally responsible. And yet I have to be accountable to him. That's all kinds of crazy.

Speaking of all kinds of crazy... it's been all kinds of crazy windy here. I mean, knock you over windy. Well, knock you over if you're tiny like me. Ok, I have not actually been knocked over, but "knock you over windy" just sounds so much more ominous than plain old "windy". Shoot, everywhere has plain old "windy". How boring is "windy"? But we don't get plain old "windy" here. We get 50 MPH winds on a weekend for no good reason. That's all kinds of crazy.

Bloggy buds, please take a short break while I drag the recycling bin to the curb. At 1am. Several hours after my husband reminded me to do it (he is out of town, by the way... not a jerk).

And we're back.

It will be all kinds of miraculous if I awaken to the lack of recyclables strewn all across the neighborhood and threatening stares from our neighbors.

Speaking of all kinds of miraculous... the fact that the following photos came out even halfway decent in this all kinds of crazy knock you down wind must indeed be a sign from the heavens. A sign of what, I am not sure.




These are, as I'm sure you guessed, little baby oranges on my little baby mandarin orange tree.

*Pauses to relish in the collective aaaawww*

Not so awww? The fact that I picked and threw away probably twenty little baby oranges. It was so sad. So very, very sad. I did it only because apparently it's recommended the first few years, so the little baby fruits don't take so much energy from the growing tree.

If only I knew this fact when we planted the dang thing two years ago. No wonder it hasn't grown. But it is prolific!

Did you know that little baby mandarin oranges, even when teeny tiny pea sized and still green, smell just like edible full sized mandarin oranges? Oh, so sad having to pick 'n toss them.

Did you also know that I can throw little baby mandarin oranges all teeny tiny pea sized and still green over the fence really really far? I probably made some birdies really happy. Well, if they didn't get hit over the head that is.

Now orange you glad I blogged?

Do you want fries with that?

If anyone ever tries to tell you it's a good idea to start a business... run. Very fast and very far away from that person. Because I can tell you that they are nuts.

This is now my third year doing taxes as a self employed person. For the first two years, I had a home daycare. Well, truthfully I only did it for about a year, but it was from summer '05 to summer '06, so that makes for two tax years. I have always done my own taxes. Wait, no, that's a lie. My mom used to do them for me. Then I decided to be a big girl and let Turbo Tax do them for me. Last year, however, Turbo Tax would NOT work for me because I was doing home daycare stuff AND new home stuff and my gosh that was the most confusing thing I've ever done in my entire life because for part of the year we lived in an apartment and the other part we lived in our house. So not only did I have to figure up all the tax stuff that goes along with buying a home, I also had to figure out how to divide it between personal and business because with a home daycare, you can take a lot of deductions that you normally couldn't... such as a portion of your rent, utilities, etc etc etc even if you do not have a dedicated space in your home solely for the business based on the percentage of the year you were in operation and blah blah blah blah. Turbo Tax was dumb and would not do something right; I do not remember what. So I did them by hand. I spent a lot of time on the phone with the IRS (who, surprisingly, were very kind and helpful). I wanted to die.

However, all of that pales in comparison to THIS year, as I am figuring tax stuff on a new business that started in 2007 and has thousands of little teeeeeny tiny inventory items. *faint* Do you know how FUN it is to count 2mm beads? Yeah, well, it's so NOT. Not to mention that I did not keep impeccable records in 2007, so I'm spending days... yes DAYS... figuring things out. Literally. This is the first real break I've taken all week. I bought myself some fun new jewelry stuff as a reward. Shhhh. Don't tell. But I can't wait to play with it. It's metal clay. So, like, you know, CLAY... but METAL. And you form it and then burn the heck out of it and it turns into solid silver (which is 99.9% pure as opposed to sterling which is only 92.5% pure, and as such the "fine" 99.9% pure silver does not tarnish hardly at all and is super easy to clean). Doesn't that sound FUN?! Metal CLAY. I mean, can you say genius?

But back to the taxes. I do not pay myself enough to make up for all this time I'm having to spend putting all this stuff together. So if you suddenly see my prices jump up to, say, $1,000 per earring, you'll know why. Just chill. I gotta pay for my metal clay somehow, you know, and that stuff is 'spensive, people.

Life was so much easier as an employee. Thank goodness I have a super smart mom who has done self employed taxes for years and a genius husband with some accounting background or I swear, I'd jump off a cliff. I might anyway though, but if I go, I'm taking my metal clay with me.

Don't worry. Come May, I'll probably be the happy go lucky jewelry business owner again. But until then, I'd kinda almost rather flip burgers. It's a lot easier, that's for sure.

Not that I'm complaining... much.

I'm a bad host!

Sorry Ultimate Blog Partiers, I am a bad blog party host this year! This week has been a bit of a mess for me. For one, I'm in the middle of doing taxes. Doing taxes if you're self employed is NOT fun, especially when you have inventory stuff to deal with. Can you say nightmare??

I'm also in the middle of a new advertising thing. One of my goals this year is to start advertising our business. We've been extremely blessed in that our first year (half year, really, since we didn't officially open until the summer) went really well! Starting any business, especially online and especially in a competitive field such as artisan jewelry, is hard. It's usually a rough start. So we definitely feel blessed that our start up went well! But now that we're settled in and starting to get established, it's time to start growing and you need advertising for that. So this week I have been designing a graphic that will be used for it a coupon thing we're participating in. Since I'm participating, I will have packs of coupons from all sorts of indie companies. These coupons are awesome! Our customers can have the opportunity to get a pack if they want, and maybe I'll send some to my bloggy friends if any of you like to support indie companies. Just let me know.

Let me tell you, this whole advertising thing is very scary to me, even though I'm choosing fairly cheap advertising routes for now. But it's still money invested that you have no idea whether or not it will give you a return. I don't like risks! That's why I don't invest in the stock market. But investing in advertising feels almost as scary as playing the market to me. So it is a big step, and one I hope you will cover in prayer. :o)

I donated a prize to the Ultimate Blog Party list. We're number 147 on the list if you want to check it out.

There are also a billion and one other things going on right now, so I'm very scatter brained at the moment. Lots of stress! Hopefully I'll survive 2008. lol