This Joy’s Life

Not just an awesome band from the ’80s.

Nope. WAHM is how I’m classifying myself these days; a WorkAtHomeMom. After all, watching Clara all day is its fair share of work, not to mention I still do some work for the Fence Company, so I think I qualify. But, besides playing soccer 3 days a week, I’m also making time for fun stuff like writing, for myself mostly, just because I like to.

So, I started another blog dedicated to that task and signed up at Twitter to force myself to write something creative EVERY DAY (you can see my most recent Twitter posts under the slide show to the right). You can be the judge of whether I’m accomplishing that goal. The point of Twitter, if there is one, is to answer their question, “What are you doing?” in only 140 characters, which is about a sentence worth. Some folks answer the question, some ask questions to other folks -their “followers”, and one middle school teacher is using it as a writing tool for his students. I’m just using it for random thoughts that I think I might be able to turn into a more detailed post one day. Most of them I probably won’t ever do anything with and some of them don’t need any more than the 140 characters to say what needs to be said. That’s fine. Whatever. But, I must say, it’s starting to get addictive and it’s a fun challenge to try and say something other than what I had for lunch today.

Back to my writing blog, I wasn’t too sure what I was going to write about at first, but I think it will be a combo of rants on various topics, probably “mom-issues”, expanding or retelling the “stories of my youth“, and my own struggles with personal finance. You may have noticed that a number of the Other Great Blogs I’m Reading on the right there are personal finance blogs, so I’m taking that as a sign that I might have something to say on that topic, although I haven’t just yet.

Might I point out that there are some really great blogs out there and as I find ones that keep me coming back for more, I’m posting links to them on my blogs, so if you have a moment check them out and see if you might find them of interest as well. If you are reading any great blogs, I’d love to hear about it.

Ciao!

I got a comment on my last post, so I know at least one person is reading this blog!! Shout Out to Pammy! Actually, Suzanne left me a message that she is still speaking to me after reading it so I know that at least two people are reading it

Dad’s Status
They moved dad into a room the night before last and he’s eating solid foods and most of the many, many tubes are gone, so things are really looking good right now. They say if he keeps progressing like this he may come home in a week. Today is his 71st birthday so I took Clara to the hospital to surprise him for a few minutes and to remind him why he needs to get well soon!

Latest Business Venture
Okay, I have some business to take care of here. I want to plug Chad’s latest business venture – Seattle Cedar Company. We are going to try our hand at reselling cedar products such as benches, chairs, planters, bridges, etc. It makes sense with the fence business and we think we will find a market in those customers, as well as folks in the northwest looking for such items.

Chad has become a self-taught website designer and I must say his sites do look clean, nice and professional. (He does ask my opinion with some of the layout and color issues.) Anyway, he and Dan (friend and co-owner of the fence and paint companies) and Feline (office manager) came out to the house one afternoon in January to get pictures of the cedar products for the website. Clara, of course, wanted to direct the photoshoot and did a mighty fine job of it. See:

So check out Seattle-Cedar.com and see what you think. (If you see any mistakes or have any suggestions, we’d appreciate hearing them. Thanks!)

Well, tomorrow it will be official. Not only will we be proud co-owners of the Custom Fence Company, but we will also be co-owners of A&R Painting!!!

You may or may not be aware that Chad’s final day at PwC was 2 weeks ago, and now he is home(!) focusing on getting and keeping his businesses up an running. He’s teaching himself everything about how to program websites right now and creating another company for us – Cedar Company - where we will be reselling cedar products like picnic tables, planters, bridges, gates, etc. The site is still a work in process and not officially live yet, but you can take a look and see what all we will be selling. Initially, the plan is to ship to Washington & Oregon. We have to learn more about shipping in order to make it cost effective even to ship there before we can think about shipping to other states.

Another online venture Chad is developing are his CitySource websites that deal with travel type booking – hotels, rental cars, but also covers finding lawyers, jobs, and apartments. His first focus is the hotel booking and you can see what I’m talking about at his CitySource Hotels website.

So, yeah, Chad’s an entreprenuer and we are really excited about this new chapter in our lives!! Wish us luck with these new ventures :>