Do I Just Jump In?

First of all I would like to say Happy Birthday to my wonderful husband, technically yesterday now I guess. We hardly saw him though because of his work schedule for the day, but he’s off tomorrow so I think he and I will sneak out for some lunch and then I’ll make him one of his favorite dinners and a Low Carb Birthday cake tomorrow night.

He turned 38 and I have been teasing him about being an “old man”, hehe, he’s only a year and a couple of months older than me. We have done a lot of talking lately about how crazy it is how fast the years have gone, and how it’s just such a weird feeling wondering how we could possibly be approaching 40 already. Our aching bodies feel that old, but otherwise I certainly don’t feel any older than I did when I was in my 20’s. We learned several years ago just to slow down and still the years keep flashing by, I wish those people who insist on just gogogo all the time would slow down and appreciate life more, you don’t have to do it all, just enjoy it all.

Anyway, back to my intended topic. I’ve said before that I need to get a plan in place to earn some money. Every month it becomes more apparent with the fact that we cannot possibly live off hubby’s income alone without having to continue to use the credit card. He makes pretty good money but the cost of living here is really high, so it’s just not enough for a family of 4 to live off of, especially when 2 of those are teenage boys who have an appetite that never shuts off. We are eating so much healthier now too and of course with that the cost of food has gone way up(I don’t care what anyone says, eating healthy costs WAY more than not, produce, dairy and meat is EXPENSIVE!). Our rent goes up next month, utilities keep going up, and so does gas for the car….yes my wonderful American friends, we pay more for gas up here than you all do LOL…we luckily have a car that is VERY good on gas though and hubby’s commute to work is less than 15 minutes.

I have to work from home is a big thing in this endeavor to bring in more money, for many reasons. First is I homeschool, I try to make the boys as independent as possible but they aren’t nearly as responsible as I wish they would be and if left alone I know they will not do their work, they slack big time even with me right here on their case all day….have definitely learned it’s a BOY thing!(after years of stressing I have finally decided that as long as they end up with their High School diplomas in the end I’ll be happy) Second reason, while I’m much better than I have been in a long time(diet change helps SO many things!), I get/have social anxiety….which means going out and working in public is very hard for me. Third reason, unless I got totally lucky I’m not qualified to work anything but retail and it doesn’t pay all that well(unless things have changed a lot in 8 years), I haven’t worked outside of the home in almost 8 years and when I did work I worked retail and even as a store manager the pay sucked. When I quit working and figured out the extra costs for me to work both financial(gas to and from, eating out a lot because I was too tired to cook after a long day) and not(hubby and I never seeing each other because of working opposite shifts so someone was home with kids, lack of family time period), in the end we ended up with very little for the hours I worked. It was NOT worth it. People on welfare got more than I made working full time.

I thought for a long time that what I would do from home is make and sell things. I’ve had some designs on Café Press for a few years and I wanted to instead of having them on there make and sell shirts with my designs myself, I could sell them online and here locally at craft shows etc. I can’t seem to make the inexpensive way of doing my designs work to my satisfaction though and I cannot possibly afford a machine to do it the best way. So while I would still like to do this one day, it’s not the solution for right now.

One day while I was complaining about the selection of plus sized clothing out there for a good price my husband suggested that I design plus sized clothing. He obviously thinks more highly of my capabilities than I do because I don’t think I could do that. I am learning to sew, but I’m incredibly new at actually making things, and I don’t think I could actually make my own designs from scratch. It’s just way above my level of talent.

It got me thinking though that I wish I could have my own online plus size store. For several months now I’ve spent a lot of time looking at plus size wholesalers. While I’m not incredibly impressed with any one particular wholesaler I’ve found, there are plenty that have a few decent things for a decent price. I wish I could find more than what I have, I know they’re out there, but I’m really looking for ones that have a low enough price that I could re-sell at affordable prices for people like me. I know there are lots of “me” people out there….plus size women who take pride in their appearance, want to look great but don’t have the money to spend $50 to $100 on each piece of clothing.

I’ve found some pretty great wholesale prices on jewelry too, so I have considered maybe starting out slowly with just jewelry since it’s a lower cost to order stock in to get started. I can’t for the life of me come up with what I would use as a store name, we come up with lots but nothing that is just “clicking” for me. I think though in a way I’m using that as an excuse because I’m a little scared of taking this all on(even though I plan to start small), maybe partially because I’m a little scared of completely failing too. I can’t find a website I like yet either to run a store on, I probably haven’t looked hard enough yet.

I have seen a few plus size bloggers start their own stores recently, so I’m also kind of cursing myself for taking so long to just jump in and get started. I don’t want to look like a copy cat(even though I’ve been considering this since long before I saw any of these new stores pop up). So far from the ones I have seen I think my store would be quite different anyway, and I guess there’s never too many options for us considering there’s currently so few(though it has come a LONG way from a handful of years ago). One day I think I can do it and have so much optimism, the next I think I’ll go to all the work to get it going and then nobody will buy from me because that is the luck I’ve always had with stuff in the past.

So, I need someone to give me a kick in the ass and find the confidence I need to just DO IT!

I’m hoping getting it out there will be enough to get me going! Oh, and I know I’ve slacked on posting this past week, had a little of everything going on. Will try to post either an outfit or a recipe, or at least something better than my rambling tomorrow!

Jolene