I’ve always loved blogs, and blogging. However, I don’t feel I’m a very ‘good’ blogger so I decided to get some help!

I’m reading a book right now called:

31 Days to Building a Better Blog by Darren Rowse and participating in a 31 days blog challenge put on by Lisbeth Tanz & Michelle Shaeffer.

In the first ‘lesson’, we learn how to write an elevator pitch. I actually found this to be quite difficult for a couple of reasons.

First off, it had to be short. Hee hee. I’m not always so great at keeping things short. I’m the type of person who likes to explain things. However, I do know this isn’t always the best thing for me, or for my business, so I was totally willing to give this ‘short’ thing a good try!

Secondly, it had to be to the point.

How does one summarize the life of 7 people, a business, a homestead, and everything else it all entails, briefly?

And especially, how does a wordy person, who likes to explain things, summarize all this, briefly?! At first, I thought it would prove to be impossible but as much as I like to be wordy, I also enjoy being challenged!

So here it is. Two elevator pitches. A one liner, and a slightly longer version.

Short pitch, will also serve as my tagline:

Our small homestead, the emporium, our life as a family of 7 & my ramblings about it all.
Longer pitch, will also be used on our “about page”:

Our family, and our business, reside on a small hobby farm on the west coast of Canada. Here we raise our children, raise animals, and we raise the bar on organic cloth products for you, your family and your home.
Homestead Mama does the majority of the writing & photography, but you’ll also find snippets from our five children who range from 11 to 19 years of age. Homestead Dad shares from time to time as he travels away from home in search of work.
To quote William Cowper, a well known poet from the 1700’s, “Variety’s the very spice of life…”
Variety is what you’ll find on our blog. Homesteading, homeschooling, home business & home sewing. Raising children, raising animals, growing vegetables & growing our faith. Living life with Homestead Dad away and learning how to cope with it all.It’s all here, and it’s all real. One day at a time.

So there you have my first lesson!

Tell me what you think. Tell me if you feel I added too much, or not enough.

Does that pitch tell you just what you’d want to know when landing on the blog?

Does it leave you wanting to read more? I’d love to hear your comments. Feel free to leave a link to your own pitch, or about page!

Isn’t that the way life goes. It simply goes, it goes on, it goes fast, it goes by when you think you’re looking but realized you just blinked and almost missed it!

That’s life here at the Homestead right now.

There’s so much to share, but so little time, so I’m going to share what I can now and save the rest for later.

Dear hubby came home on Thursday, Feb. 24th for six glorious days! Certainly not long enough, but I wasn’t going to complain after not seeing him at all for 39 days and 23 hours!

We had decided that since it had been SO long, and since we had never been apart for any great length of time before, we’d splurge and stay at a hotel the night I picked him up from the airport. Even though we knew the children would want to see Daddy as much as Mommy wanted to see him, we felt it was important to have some one on one time. We also know how important it is for our children to see that Mom and Dad WANT to be with one another. That we missed each other, and desired to have that time together, just the two of us. We may be parents, but we’re also a couple. They may be our children, but they will also be one half of a couple one day, for many more days then they will be young children at home. We want them to grow up realizing how important that is.

So we spent one wonderfully quiet night, just the two of us, locked up in a hotel room. Catching up on all the time we lost while he was away. Feeling like newlyweds on our honeymoon.

I got to the hotel room a couple of hours before I had to pick Graydon up at the airport. This gave me a bit of quiet time to relax, enjoy the quiet of the room and even have a bubble bath. Hee hee. Life is all about enjoying those short small moments while you have them!

The room was quite nice. Nothing overly fancy, but fairly spacious. I only had my little point and shoot camera with me but I snapped a few photos anways.

As much as I hate taking crappy photos, I hate missing memories even more, so I’m learning to just be happy with the crappy point and shoot photos, and be glad I still have the memory, even if it’s not preserved for all time the way my Nikon D300 may preserve them!

I got myself all dressed up and ready to go to greet dear hubby. Snapped a quick photo on my way out the door.

These point and shoots don’t do any justice when the lighting isn’t quite right. I sorely wished I had brought along my other camera when I saw my only photo, a blurry photo, of dear hubby finally home.

But, it is a memory none-the-less, and I do have it, so again, I need to be happy about that rather then the lack of a clear and perfect photo. Such a hard lesson to learn!

It was so wonderful to see Graydon again after such a long time. To have him home, with me, then with all of us, where he belongs. Time apart certainly does make the heart grow fonder, but as William Cowper says, “Absence from whom we love is worse than death, and frustrates hope severer than despair”

Almost six weeks ago, my husband left the Island in search of work.

Now, almost six weeks later, thirty nine days and 23 hours later, he will be home here on the Island.

In exactly 11 hours and 42 minutes.

But who’s counting?

At the moment I hear Shaylah excitedly saying over and over, like a cheerleaders cheer, “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!”

I think she may be excited.

I think… she might not be alone in her excitement!

He’ll be home for 6 days. I know it won’t feel like it’s long enough but it’s better then not at all!

40 Things to do While I’m 40

Through a round about on the internet last night (I was reading blog articles, got side tracked at one point…) I came across this website: http://www.squeezeitin.com/

It immediately caught my attention because I’m the type of person who does like to try and ‘squeeze it in’, whether it be exercise like this site teaches, or a chance to smell the roses, a few minutes with one of my children one on one, bringing along my camera for a photo opportunity ‘just in case’, or a spontaneous opportunity to go for a quick ride on the atv with my husband. Doesn’t matter what it is, I figure it’s better to be aware of opportunities to ‘squeeze it in’ then to miss out! Life’s just too busy to wait for the perfect time to do anything.

I pondered on the ‘squeeze it in’ exercise routine today. I even downloaded the neat app! It’s pretty cool! I’m going to try and ‘squeeze in’ some more exercise into my days.

However, on a day like today I’m left wondering why I even need to try.

Today, I seem to have gotten plenty of exercise, simply through life and didn’t even have to TRY to ‘squeeze it in’!

First off, there were the countless trips from the house, to the car, to the house, to the studio, back to the house, to the car, to the house and back to the studio again, and then yet once again at 9pm. What? It was Sunday today? The day we’re to ‘rest’? Hmmm… didn’t feel like a Sunday here.

Then, as I was working in the studio during the afternoon, I heard a sound I know all too well. The hens going berserk. When they REALLY go berserk you know there’s trouble. I flew (almost literally) out of the studio, down the stairs, and across the lawn to the hen yard as quick as I could, hollering “HEY!” as loud as possible. Sure enough, a hawk had one of them. There were feathers everywhere, and some blood on her comb, but otherwise she actually seemed ok. My hollering scared the hawk off pretty quick. All the hens and ducks had run into the hen house so we checked them all over, gave the injured hen a squirt of vitamin e and locked them in there for the rest of the evening.

We have one small area that is not covered in netting, and sure enough, that’s where the hawk flew in and then back out again. I guess we’d better either get some more netting, or some fishing wire. Now that the hawk knows it can get in and out of there, I’m sure it will try again before the leaves grow back and cover up their yard a little better.

Shortly before I had run out to rescue the hen, I had spent a few moments wrestling with some very large bolts of fabric.

Ever wrestled a floppy, taller then yourself, 50 yard roll of bamboo velour?

I envision that it is probably similar to wrestling a VERY large, and VERY fat, boa constrictor. Sorry to snake lovers, but I envision it dead, because that’s what I’m dealing with. A large floppy roll of dead weight. Trying to fit it into a space which it would fit into perfectly, IF it were to behave and actually STAY PUT, and STAND UP!

Thus… the wrestling. It flops, it falls, it squiggles, and doesn’t want to stay put.

And actually, we’re not snake ‘haters’ around here. I have lots of proof!

You may notice that all these hands in the photos, are children’s hands though.

I said I don’t “hate” them. I didn’t say I “love” them.

Although they do make for great photography.

Anywho…

All that to say. Today, I didn’t do a whole lot to try and ‘squeeze it in’ other then simply live life.

And today, I think that was enough!

I just wish that one day, the scale would feel the same way I do!

but since my posts on facebook have a limit of 420 words, I decided to post here instead!

Check out this seriously gorgeous new colorway from Three Irish Girls:

http://www.yarnista.com/blog/2011/2/16/i-dont-know-why.html?lastPage=true#comment11949086
Some of the proceeds go to a great cause as well, get yourself some beautiful yarn while supporting a great cause! Really, what could be better on a Friday afternoon?
I’m determined to learn how to knit socks this year (I’m turning FOURTY, it’s about time dontcha think?) so I got some adorn sock yarn. Can’t wait to see/feel it!
To top it all off, Sharon, the woman behind TIG, THE Yarnista, is totally awesome. 🙂

I thought I’d take a moment to share a bit about things here at the Emporium, the business end of things, since I’ve been sharing so much about life on the homestead, the personal side of things. I feel it’s important to keep you all in the loop!

There’s no doubt about it, life is busy here around the homestead and the emporium right now.

However, keeping the business running as smoothly as humanly possible has always been a top priority! Things within the business (and home) are changing though.

With my husband away, it means there’s only one of us to take the kids where ever they need to go, just one of us to pay the bills, get the groceries, run errands, AND, get to the post office to ship all these packages. I won’t even begin to say I’m doing the single parent thing, because I’m not. I still have a husband, my kids still have a father, he’s just not home and able to help right now. He is still my constant support though, and I won’t take that for granted!

On top of it all, Alesia, my biggest helper within the business, is now working not just one job (on top of working for the emporium) outside of the home, but two.

So what’s this mean for Homestead Emporium?

Well… we’ve had to do some reorganizing, restructuring, and… upgrading!

It’s the ONLY way things can continue to run smoothly.

The first step was to figure out a way to decrease Alesia’s work load within the business, without overloading mine.

So, I invested in an electric cutter! It’s great! I now cut all the inner fabrics as well as the tops. Alesia and I will share the cutting of the backs (the windpro fleece), but she will no longer be doing the inners. This is a big weight off her ‘todo’ list.
It does mean there’s a bit more work on my end BUT, the electric cutter makes it quick enough that it’s ok. I can handle it.

The next restructure will have me going back to packaging all the orders.

This is a big one… this job takes aprox. 10-14 hours each and every week. We were sharing this job before, I would print out the orders, she would then print out the shipping labels, gather the orders/products with help from another sister and put them in their packages. I would then go through and close up packages and get them ready to head out the door. Previously, at this point dear hubby would take them TO the post office.

Now, with her gone to work 7 days a week, I just don’t think I can ask this of her any longer. I’m going to do my best to take this entire job back over.

In trade, Alesia will now be taking the packages to the post office. Her main job at the grocery store just happens to be right beside the post office so that works out rather well and saves me from having to get to the post office during open hours amidst driving her and Joshua back and forth to work every.single.day. We’ll simply try our very best, as we have done for the past years!

The absence of remaining home is the VERY biggest part for me to get accustomed to.

I lived for TWO years without a vehicle. THAT’s how much of a homebody I am. THAT’s how I grew this business and still maintained the home, the schooling and life in general. Being on the road SO MUCH now, has changed that a LOT. I just keep reminding myself it’s just TWO more months until they get their drivers licenses.

In the meantime, I think I’ll need to slow down on taking custom orders. As much as I always want to help customers out, even when they are in a bind and need something quickly (baby due soon, etc.), I’m realizing I can’t do it ALL and I need to take a step back and slow down on trying to meet EVERY need. Something always suffers for it, and lately it’s been my children, and my own health. That’s not something I can allow to continue.

So although there are changes taking place here at the Homestead Emporium, be assured that they are good changes and we will always try our very best to keep customer service, and product quality, at it’s very best!

Over the last while Alesia, my eldest daughter, has been bringing me home flowers.

Alesia knows I love flowers.

I love everything about them.

I love any one of them.

They are all so different.

The intricate-ness of each one amazes me.

The vibrancy.

She knows I love photographing photos as well.

Beauty!

I can’t wait for spring! In the meantime, the photos will have to do!

After a rude awakening this morning while it was still pitch dark outside, I started thinking of a new business venture.

“Think Again Riding Camp”

At think again riding camp, our horses will teach you how to “think again” about the idea of adding horses to your life.

You see, most people when we tell them we have horses immediately say something like, “Oh! You are SOOOOO lucky!”

I mean, why wouldn’t they react that way right?!

Horses are WONDERFUL!

They are beautiful.

Graceful.

Always calm.

Always clean.

Always VERY Loving (my horse even has a heart imprinted on her, see, PROOF she’s loving…)

Even when young.

(not our horse, but one at a rescue, as well as the mother shown with it above)

And always, always, very obedient.

(this is our baby, Lacey, she’s much bigger now)

Oh wait! These are HORSES we are talking about, living, breathing, LIVE horses.

At “Think Again Riding Camp” you’ll learn all about REAL horses.

Horses that look all sweet and innocent after you’ve fed them the night before and put them safely away in their paddock…

…who then wake you while it’s still dark outside by trotting past your bedroom window.

Real horses who then go running off down the road.

We live in the country.

We do NOT have street lights here.

Have you ever tried finding horses in the pitch dark with just a flash light?

At “Think Again Riding Camp” we could teach YOU how to find five horses, including two black ones, in the pitch dark.

First lesson, it looks something like this:

But darker.

Wait? You don’t see the two galloping horses in the neighbours yard? Oh I’m so sorry, you’ve already failed.

But thankfully, all hope is not lost because at Think Again Riding Camp, the horses will also find a way to weasel into your heart… forever.

And you’ll never be the same again.