Sad start to the year

Not for us, but for others. My daughter, over the weekend, lost a friend to suicide, and Mom called today, because Aunt Liz's youngest, my cousin Jackie, lost her husband to unknown-at-present causes over the weekend. The tragic part of that one is that Jackie and her husband had waited to find the right person, planned and had the perfect wedding for them, and they just got married back in mid-October. From what Mom said, Jackie came home from work, found him in his chair, and thought at first that he was sleeping. She was so wigged out over it, the cops had to call Aunt Liz and Uncle Mike. What an AWFUL way to start the year.

For us, it's back to work as normal today, which is fine, because to get where we want to be, money is essential. One big thing I highly recommend when you are starting your own online business as we (mostly me, because hubby is definitively NOT tech-savvy ... his phone is about as technical as he can get) are doing, is do not quit your day job. Put an hour or so a day into getting rolling and it all builds up. But by doing so, you keep an income flowing so bills can keep being paid, and things can get done, but you get your business going as well. That is essential. It's not a lot of fun to have a business and be starving or without heat and lights because your business isn't off the ground yet and you have no money to pay for things you need.

As for "winter homesteading," over the weekend, when the winds weren't too bad, hubby went out despite the cold and got warmed up really well by cutting some wood to stove length. As we have about six or seven orders for ricks of wood, we need to get busy making big logs and smaller logs/kindling. Like we've said, even for ourselves, if all you have is one to two inch logs, you just stuff the stove full of them, and they'll burn a good long time. Shoot, by the time you get done splitting, you usually don't have pieces much bigger than that anyhow. Me, I did a lot of stitchery. I FINALLY got the last butterfly done on the lap quilt top, so my next step is to get the backing material out and cut the pieces for the backing and sew them together. As the material is more than long enough, but not quite wide enough, I need to cut two pieces and sew them together to make one piece for the backing. Then its assembly and basting and quilting and binding ... then it will be done. I also got the fourth panel done on the mile a minute scrap afghan, and a bit done on one of the baby bibs I will be putting up for sale when they are finished. So a LOT is getting done, which is GREAT!

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