What I Learned from My Etsy Disaster -Part 1 – Do Your Homework

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Well, it was bound to happen.  I have had my Etsy shop open for about 8 months now, and I had my first very bad learning experience.  I’ve had a couple other learning curves, but all of them worked out, and I never really lost money, or had anything horrible happen.  They were just tweaks that need to be made.  This time, however, let me tell you!  It was a doozy.

However, it’s a truly terrible situation that has absolutely no good come out of it, and this good is the fact that I have lots of information to share with you.  If you’re an Etsy seller, an Ebay seller, or even a Trade-me participant, hopefully, you find some of this information relevant.

Today, I want to encourage you to Do Your Homework!

Ask questions.  Beyond that, ask the right questions.

First of all, find out where your buyer is located.  I was quoting a custom order, and rather than quote a price, and then add “plus shipping,” I just said the price included shipping.  It wasn’t until later I discovered that she lived in Canada.  Oops.  I couldn’t go back and charge her extra, so I was left with extra shipping costs.

Check feedback.  Currently, Etsy is set up so that you cannot see feedback that sellers leave for buyers.  It’s a bit stink, because buyers can see feedback left for sellers.  However, you can see what kind of feedback your buyer has left for others.  This specific buyer had left some extremely bad feedback for a seller.  Obviously, there may be bad sellers out there, but the tone of feedback can tell you a lot.  You can say something negative about someone in a gracious way.  I should have looked for the orange flag, there.

Know your deadline and how it may affect the price of your materials.  I found patterns online for about $3.  However, then, I found out that I needed to have the item done in a couple weeks, rather than the 4-6 weeks that I usually say for a custom item.  I didn’t have time to have the patterns sent, so I had to buy them in the store.  They were significantly more expensive.

I can not stress it enough.  If you’re going to put time, thought and money into a project for someone, make sure you know as much about them as possible before you start.  You’ll never really know “enough,” but if you keep your eyes open, hopefully, you’ll know more than I did.

 

 

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Obstacle Course for Beginners

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To the untrained eye, this may look like a yard, a swingset, and a bunch of stuff the people never picked up.

However, to the initiated, you should be able to discern some signs of an obstacle course.

We haven’t been living here long enough to acquire all the regular accoutrements of an obstacle course.  We have no cones.  We have no hula hoops. We don’t even have any bean bags.  But, we have a swingset and after that, it’s easy.

Start with chalk shapes drawn on the ground.  Hop, hop through the shapes.

When you get to the step at the end, jump off, and FREEZE! (Freeze is one of the most important things you can teach a young child.  They must know how to land.)

Climb up the ladder and go down the slide.

Jump over the broom.

Balance on one foot “in” the circle made out of a jump rope.

Swing on the trapeze, and you’re back to hop, hop again.

This isn’t a design for exactly how you must create an obstacle course.  It’s just a prototype to help you get your creative juices going.  In this course, we have hang, climb, jump, and balance.  That covers a lot of the locomotor skills that preschoolers are working on.

What do you have in your house that you can use to make an obstacle course?  Do you have a 2×4?  Lay it on the ground and make a balance beam.  Catch, throw and carry bean bags or soft balls.  Use hula hoops for lily pads.  If you don’t have a slide, practice climbing with a small step ladder.  Get creative, and get moving!

 

 

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White Water Rafting in Your Backyard

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My goodness, did you ever realize how unreasonable and irrational people can be?  This month, I have learned some hard lessons about good business practice.  The bad news is that it cost me about $40, and hours and hours of time.  The good news is, that compared to college, the number of life lessons I learned for only $40 is significant.  The other good news is that I have lots of material for a future blog post…or 3.  However, since this battle has sucked away quite a chunk of my week already, for now, that blog post will have to wait.

Since it’s warming up, I’m leaving you with a reminder about one of my absolute favorite group summer activities.  Get ready to go White Water Rafting!

This is a fantastic summer game.  Sure to make everyone feel a little cooler:)

Ages: 8+

Number of players: 7+ (you need at least 5 by standers at a time, also, with teams of no less than 2.)

Approx Time: 20 min+

Equipment needed: Cones/markers

Buckets/Supersoakers (at least 5)

Old inner tube/jumprope/hula hoop

Access to a garden hose/source of water

Determine a course for the players.  It could just be a trip around your playing area with some cones in it, or you could have them go around trees, up stairs etc.  Have at least 5 check points.  These would be the best places to put cones. Put a bucket of water or a supersoaker at each checkpoint.  If you have extra parents/adults, it would be great to ask them to be at these stations.  Divide players into pairs or groups of three. Pick one team to go first.  If you do not have parents at the extra stations, put some of the kids at them.  Have the selected team get inside the hulahoop.  This is their raft.  They must get around the course, while remaining in the raft.  However, at every checkpoint, there will be someone waiting to throw a bucket of water at the raft, or shoot it with the super soaker.  Have the first team go, and time them.  The subsequent teams then must try to have a faster time.

Note: As the game continues, the ground may get muddy and slippery.  Please caution the runners.

Don’t forget to stay tuned for how *not* to get hosed in an Etsy sale.

A Special Notebook

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I think I’ve mentioned before how many of my “brilliant ideas” are usually attributable to my mother.  This one is no different.  My parents have been here for two different weeks in the past month, and we did a lot of fun stuff all together, but my mom was also able to do some really neat things just with/for the grandkids.  My favorite was her little notebook that she and my daughter put together.

Mom got a little notebook, and brought a bunch of stickers and pictures.  They spent a morning cutting, gluing and sticking pictures in the book.

Each page has some writing to talk about the pictures.

This page says, “God gives us food.”  Then, under each picture, the name of the food is written.

The idea, now, is that from time to time, Mom will send some things from New Zealand, and I will help put them in the little booklet.  I’m sure they’ll also look at the book on Skype.  That way, even though they live so far apart, there is still something very tangible that she can work with Grambo on.

So far, it has been a huge success.  It has to go everywhere with us.

We thoroughly enjoyed our time with them!

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Top 9 Chalk Activities for Preschoolers

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It’s been a crazy month or so, and I have felt like I have been working so hard just to get vital things done that we haven’t done a lot of fun “learning” things.  Yesterday, I was pretty much caught up, so we took the chalk outside.  We played for nearly an hour, and we came up with some pretty fun things.

1.  Shape Identification  – Draw some shapes on the ground and ask what they are.

2.  Sorting and Direction Following – We found a couple toys and I asked her to put a toy in a specific shape. “Put the snail in the triangle, and the chalk in the star.”  She is great at two step directions, but three gets a little tricky.

3.  Basic Drawing – I had her try to draw a line, or a circle.  Circles are tricky with chalk.  Basically anything that had curvy lines counted.  We ended up with some kidney bean shapes.

4. Counting – I asked her to do one line, then two lines.  I modelled the action, and then asked her to try.  She got carried away doing lines, so I had to stop her sometimes, before she made 18.

5.  Balancing – I drew a large circle, a large triangle and a squiggly line and had her walk on them.  She didn’t get each foot exactly on the line every time, but she did follow the path.

6. Patterns – I drew circle, star, circle, star and asked her what came next.  She completely doesn’t get patterns yet, so we need to keep working on that one.

7.  Letters – I wrote her name and brother’s name and asked her about the letters.

8.  Coloring – with so many shapes, there is lots of opportunity for filling in the gaps, and the gaps are bigger so she can “stay in the lines” so much easier.

9. Jumping- An easier version of hopscotch, we jumped from circle to star, to circle all the way across.

What are some other learning activities that you would like to do with chalk this summer?

 

 

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