April 7th, 2011 -- Posted in scrappy / stampy |
These were a really fun project to do…
For my first card order of the year, a friend commissioned a birthday card in blues, browns and greens. Suitable for a male in his 20s… oh a by the way, it’s being sent to a celebrity rock star, no pressure. 
She only needed one card but I ended up making two (I often do make more than one at a time, often in pairs since that’s the way an 8 & 1/2 x 11″ page of cardstock evenly divides!). Then she had the choice of which one to opt for. She ended up choosing the guitar, so the star card will be added to my KStar Card Store…
continue reading »
July 5th, 2010 -- Posted in blinkies & other cuteness, domestic engineering, family, pain / disability, pics |
| I hope everyone had a great weekend, and I heard somewhere it was it a long weekend for some people? I guess maybe in the States since the 4th of July fell on a Sunday this year. It’s always been kind of nice to kick off the first week of summer holidays with these patriotic celebrations that fall so conveniently soon after the end of the school year.
|
|
We enjoyed our Canada Day celebrations, but although we are lucky to live in Canada’s capital (where there are always a ton of things to do, especially downtown in and around Parliament Hill), we just stayed local for the events we attended. My son loved visiting a park that had all sorts of games and “bouncy” air-inflated rides set up. He went on a small one with an obstacle course and slide, then on a very tall slide, then got his face-painted and tried some of the games. My daughter was very aloof about the experience (as preteens can often be), but when she saw her friends there, she was running over to say “hi” to people.
We finished off our holiday day with a yummy BBQ at home, complete with some freshly-baked Canada Day cupcakes that I’d made that day. I’d tried to do a layering effect, but the recipe I was using was a little on the small side and I didn’t have quite enough batter. I think they still came out great though, and the icing (also red – or at least as red as I could make it without dumping in a full bottle of red food colouring, which my hubby and likely also my son are sensitive to) added a lot to the top “layer” to get the red-white-red look that I was going for (like our flag).
Also on Canada Day, I worked on creating some blinkies for both our celebration and started some for the US holiday a few days after on the 4th of July. I finished those ones off yesterday (the 4th), so it’s not likely they’ll get much use this year, but hopefully in years to come they’ll be handy for anyone wanting to show a little patriotic love in their message board posts, siggies, blogs, etc.
Summer Patriotic Big Blinkies
Our family had a very busy first week and weekend of summer holidays so I’m looking foward to a slower pace for this week! My daughter is taking a trip with her grand-parents to southern Ontario, and my son has settled in nicely into his daycare center’s summer program (full-time instead of part-time!) so I’m really eager to get caught up on all the work around the house (both in slowly plodding through some housework interspersed with lots of resting as well as some much-needed paperwork and overdue phone calls), work on my websites, and work on my health (like more regular and less cut-short-noisy-interupted naps)!!!
June 1st, 2010 -- Posted in work/career |
So, time to share some important “mompreneur” info…
… file it away for next year’s “tax time”!
This year was the first year that I filled my taxes as a small business owner. And I really wish I’d not been so overwhelmed by the idea before! I feel the advantages definitely outweigh the disadvantages and it was easier than I thought.
There are many things you can claim if you are self-employed, including:
* a portion of your home space
* a portion of the costs of running your home (keep those electricity, water, and heating bills handy!)
* a portion of your internet and phone line costs
If there are things you need to buy to run your business, keep the receipts (and/or run them through a flatbed scanner) because you can claim those against your income as well. I actually wish I’d saved *more* of my receipts because I only managed to chip away a few hundred dollars off my income. Still did not need to pay any taxes, but I could’ve taken a larger chunk out of the amount of my income that went towards reducing my spouse’s taxes.
These business expenses can be things like office supplies (paper, folders, writing supplies, printer ink, labels, etc.) or things that you use to create your products (cardstock and ribbon, photo splits, etc.). And of course any membership or registration costs (such as the first-time business registration I paid last year to make KStar Design an official little company) count as well.
I don’t think I’ve ever remembered to post a picture of my home office, even though I took one a long time ago! Here’s my new little spot in our upstairs “4th bedroom”:
It still needs a lot of setting up (and I think may actually be messier now than in the picture, taken 1 month after we moved in last summer), but it’s coming along well and everything I need very often is at my fingertips. It’s a huge step up from our old office basement and I really feel very motivated when I’m in there to get as much work done as I can in the short times I’m able to attempt to do all those magical things that used to come so easily when I was able-bodied (sit up, focus, have a decent posture, not be distracted by pain, etc). I still have some hope when it comes to making my online work count for something, one way or another.
Signing off for now, your small-business-savvy “mompreneur”! 
