Change and such

So here’s what’s up. I’ve been a little MIA. And no, I did not die. Thanks for your concern though. 😉

For three months, I blogged EVERY day. Now I’m lucky if I blog once every couple weeks. The reason? I’m moving on. I reevaluated how I am approaching this whole ‘running your own business” thing. I feel like I’m breaking up with MD… I guess I kinda am.

“Sorry, Motivated Decor,” (like it’s a person) “you’re just not what I’m looking for in a business. I need a little bit more passion in my relationships – and your just not doing it for me.”

A little dramatic? Yes. Cheesy? Definitely. But I came to realize that the posts I love doing the most are family related. I don’t blog about design and fashion and home decor. I blog about life. I blog about my family. I like to associate with blogs that do the same. I tried really hard not to fall into the “Mommy blogger” category – but that’s what I am. And that’s what I love. So, I’m changing some things. Here’s why:

1. The stuff I write about would not be what most people would expect when they go to what they think is a home decor blog. My business/blog name is holding me back from reaching out to all the awesome women out there.

2. I don’t really have a target market. When asked “What kind of readers/customers do you have?” I cannot answer that question. I don’t know anything about the people that read this blog. I don’t have relationships with my customers. Mainly because I don’t have a general point of interest with most of them.

3. When I try to market my products, it feels forced. Like I’m a creepy salesman. I don’t use my products. I just design them and expect people to buy them. How can I sell things I don’t use? It’s impractical. And stupid. Don’t forget stupid.

4. My passion is my family. When I’m at work, I don’t fantasize about home decor and design. I wish I was home, playing with my little and cleaning my ridiculously messy house.

Motivated Decor was founded with good intentions, but not with passion. Passion drives all things. MD does not have passion. That’s why after 3 months of it, I started making some changes. “So then what the heck are you going to do, Amanda?” Good question! I’m still designing things. But not home decor. I’m designing things like meal planners, budget forms, blog planners, home management binders, to do lists, organization logs and shopping lists! These are all stuff I use! Stuff I can make changes to and adjust as I get feedback. Stuff other moms use. I’m really excited about it. So excited that I wanted to keep it a surprise. I’ve been working on this since December 2013. I’m getting all my products ready so my shop is stocked once I open it. I’m getting my blog designed so it looks good from the get go. I’m doing everything differently than how I did MD. I’ve learned some things. 🙂 So hang in there, I’ll make an announcement (with links and such) on my new stuff as soon as I’m ready.

Just know that I didn’t die.

New posting Schedule for Motivated Decor

For the last 3 months, I have been waking up at 3 am every day to update my blog and run my business. Then go to my day job from 7 am to 4 pm. I even work on more of my business stuff on my lunch break too.  After 3 months of it, I am starting to burn my self out. I’ve been so tired when I get home from work that I don’t want to do anything. At all. I would so much rather just sit and watch TV with some fast food. That’s lame and honestly pathetic.

I started this business and blog because I want to inspire people to GET OFF THE COUCH and DO SOMETHING with their lives. How can I provide motivation in the “physical” area of life if I’m sitting on my butt eating Pizza every night? Gross Amanda, you can’t. Same goes with all the other areas of life. I feel like the only area that I’m strong in right now is career. I need to focus more on my family and my health. I need to read more and spend more time with friends.

Overall, I need to feel more balance. My blog posts are only half way done. My house is a MESS. I keep forgetting to pay bills (even though we budgeted for them. DOH!). My cute family needs more attention and my social life sucks because we are in bed by 8pm (sometimes 7:30!) every night. So I’m gonna fix this mess!

I told you that I’m reevaluating the way I run things. Here is my new schedule for 2014.

–    Blog posts will take place on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. This will ensure that my posts are higher quality. This will also allow me time to prepare my subject  matter appropriately (instead of just winging it when I start a post). I will still try to cover the 7 areas of life in each post, but it won’t be a strict schedule like it was in the past.

–   Instead of taking all my energy trying to come up with a blog post every day, I will be making a new design everyday. So every post, you will see two new products. If you follow me on Facebook and on my Etsy page, you can see my new products before they are posted on my blog.

–   Every month, I am going to offer 2 free product downloads. You can expect these on the last Friday of every month. I will make a tab on my menu bar so you can access them any time you like.

–   Every three months, I am going to participate in a give-a-way with another blog or business. I might even try to host one. 🙂

–   I will add tutorials once a month so you can see how I do different crafts and designs.

 

I have a feeling that I will love what I’m doing so much more with this new approach. I hope to regain my energy, determination and spit fire personality.

Thanks for reading! See you Friday!

-Amanda

New Year, New approach

Sorry for my lack of blogging the past few days. It’s the first time that I’ve missed a day since I started in October. With this new year, I’m going to take a new approach on my business and my blog. I’m working on re-evaluating everything, but I will let you know on Jan 1st what I plan on doing. I have a feeling that I will enjoy this new approach much better.

 

Thanks for your patience as I re-evaluate. I’ll be back on Jan 1st.

-Amanda

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Longing to be at Home

My daughter was sick yesterday. I got to experience my first real vomit clean up as a Mom. That wasn’t fun. But staying home with my babes made it easy to not care about the barf mess.

I ache to be at home with her everyday. I think that’s my biggest sacrifice to becoming debt free. We’ve paid off so much debt that we could probably squeak by financially if I came home. But losing half our income would bring our debt pay off to a screeching halt.

My husband and I had a long talk the other night. In just 3 months he will be at basic training for the USAF. I will be a full time employee, fill both roles of mom and dad, keep the house clean, prepare to move and run a business – all by myself – for about 5 months. I’m so nervous for that. I’m nervous that one of these areas might lack attention. But family comes first. Always. If Chae starts to feel like she’s getting the short straw, some adjustments will need to be made. I’m also nervous because my work is going though some changes. I hope they maintain the same flexibility they’ve shown me over the past 3 years of employment with them. I hope they understand where I’m coming from if I need to leave to take care of my girl.

In just about 8 short months we will be moving to our duty station. It is coming up on us very quickly. My husband and I decided that I will be home with our babes once we move. I would only come home sooner if being without my husband proves too rough and we can make it financially while he’s gone. But for now, the plan is for me to stay at work full time until we move.

All of this is coming quick and I just need to have some patience.

Patience is a virtue that I was not blessed with.

Staying at work is the best and quickest way to have financial peace for the long run. Its just 8 months. I’ll live, my daughter will live. We might just be a little stressed out is all. 🙂

I’m super Mom. I got this.

Thanks for reading.

– Amanda.

We gave our kid financial knowledge for Christmas.

I loved LOVED Christmas morning! 🙂 Last year, Chae was so small; Christmas was SO simple. Last year we seriously just took things from around the house and called them presents. haha. She’s so cute hidden in that swing. Here’s …

Budgeting needs perspective.

I’m cheap. I know it, my husband knows it, all my friends know it. I hate paying for things we don’t need. If we don’t NEED it to survive or stay clean, it’s an extra expense that I don’t think …

Contentment

I have really started to hate my day job.

Those words kind of suck.

It’s not that it’s hard, it’s just not what I want to be doing. It’s sometimes more stressful than what it is worth. But I’m very  grateful for my job. It helps us get so much further with our financial goals. I want to be home so bad. This little life is my motivation. She is my “Why”.

I do this so one day I can be home with her.

My husband made me feel much better when he told me that I will be home with her within the year of 2014. To know that it is that close made me realize that I should be grateful for my time in the workplace and get as much out of it as possible. So until I can be home, I will choose to enjoy my job. Because I’m sure that once I get home, I will say “Man, there are sometimes I really miss being at work”.

 

So even though I’d rather be doing something else, I choose to be content with where my life is right now.

 

I’ve got some new plans to increase production so I can be a “work at home mom” THIS year :). Here’s a sneak peak.

I want to thank you all for your love and support. I appreciate the fact that you took time out of your day to read this.

 

Thank you.

-Amanda.

Grateful hearts

(via)

I don’t want to go too much into detail, but we received a very VERY generous gift tonight. I am very grateful for the love that we share with this person. I hope one day we can leave a legacy just like she has. I’m having a hard time expressing just how much we appreciate and love this person without revealing names or gift specifics. She is just wonderful.

All I can say is Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And we love you!

Remember to give as much as you can this holiday season. Obviously take care of yourself first, but giving is so much fun really make sure that you have the opportunity in this lifetime to give generously. You will have so much fun doing it.

Thanks for reading.

Amanda

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DEBT IS DUMB!

Lately I’ve really been feeling the blessings of Financial peace. My husband and I have paid off over $32,000 in the last 2 years and we only make $45,000. I’m really really proud of us. We are getting to the last haul and it is really exciting.

We owe $835.62 in Medical bills from when our daughter was at Primary Children’s her first week of life, $3,019.15 on Brett’s student loans and $9,760.29 on my student loans. Total of $13,615.06 left!! We started with about $45,000 in debt.

Our initial debt broke down to $1,000 on credit cards, $9,000 in Auto loans, $8,000 in medical bills, $15,000 in student loans, and $12,000 in stupid tax. (Stupid tax is when you do REALLY stupid things with money. I personally think all credit cards should fall under stupid tax because they really are just STUPID). Our stupid tax consisted of putting our tv, xbox, our wedding rings, my wedding dress, my bridesmaids dresses, our wedding venue, our honeymoon, our catering for the wedding – pretty much everything for our wedding was paid for with credit. STUPID!!

Paying off all that garbage has been hard. But SO WORTH IT!! Every week we have money left over to throw at our debt. We don’t have to worry about how we are going to pay our bills. We have it under control. But that is because 2 years ago we decided to take control. You don’t just stumble upon financial peace. You WORK for it. HARD. We did however stumble upon Dave Ramsey in January of 2012. He is a life saver. I’m so glad we crossed his path and DID SOMETHING about it.

People probably think that we are weird with our money. We pay cash for everything and for one year we shared a cell phone. For a while, we also only had one car too. When we felt like we were ready, we each got our own cell phones. And we recently bought a second car (with cash). After a year without these extra items, we are feeling very spoiled now. We have ZERO car payments. I LOVE that.

Normal is broke folks. BE WEIRD! Take control of your finances, be intentional with your money.

If you need help getting started, please feel free to ask. I can provide you with tons of resources. I can go with you to FPU. I’ll do what ever you ask. But I can’t just jump in and fix it. That’s your job.

YOU have to WANT it to make it work. If you don’t care, becoming debt free won’t work for you.

Financial peace is up to you. Are you going to be weird?? We are.

Watch this.

Thanks for reading.

-Amanda.

$6 DIY Shelf

I’m the kind of person that would much rather put a ton of work into something and save a TON of money instead of buying it already made from the store. That being said, I decided to make my own shelf for Quilted Bear. I also want to express a sincere THANK you to all of my wonderful friends that helped with this!! Brett, Chelsea, Kevin, Patricia, Andrew. THANK YOU!! I love you all. Now that credit has been given, let me walk you through how we did this!

I found a ton of FREE wood on ksl.com. It just had these black things and some thick, AWFUL nails in it. I used my 2 door hatchback as a workbench on my lunch breaks. I got all of them off in 2.5 lunch breaks. 🙂

 

When we started, we brain stormed. This is what we came up with. Each board is 2×3. We put down 5 boards for the base of the shelf, and surrounded them with one each on the sides.

My sweet husband measured and cut all the boards to size. Short ones are 16″ Long ones are 3′ 6″.

Then we drilled the sides together and assembled the boards. (Thank you to Kevin for hanging out with Chelae during this time!)

 

Then we sanded it down and painted it. I just got the $2.98 sample paints from Home Depot.

We had our Friends Thanksgiving dinner while the paint was drying. After dinner EVERYONE came out to help! It was so fun to see all of my friends coming together to help me with this project. I REALLY FELT LOVED.

The boys assembled the rest of the boards, the girls painted.

After the paint dried, we sanded everything down to get that rustic, shabby chic look.

By this point, my daughter was getting grumpy. Patricia went inside to watch her, and my friends helped get her to sleep.
After she was asleep, we went back out to assemble the shelf.

After I broke, two of Kevin’s drill bits, I very gladly let him take over. He finished assembling the shelf and this is our final project.

I wanted a scattered type look to it, so the middle support beams are purposely off center. So this whole project cost $6. ($2.98 for two different sample paints from Home Depot) I’m very grateful for all of the love and support (and free labor) I have from my friends. They are so so wonderful!

The shelf will be displayed in my booth at Quilted Bear. Here are some things that will be displayed on it.

(I picked up some wrapping paper and corrugated magazine boxes. I wrapped them up to give them a face lift)

I’m excited to see the how everything comes together! Only 4 More days until I move into my booth!! 🙂

Thanks for visiting! See you tomorrow and HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!

-Amanda