I will be giving away BLOG CANDY to one happy commenter!!
Got your attention with that line didn’t I??
This year is the dawn of a new Year….and era in our country.. bet you wonder how this figures into stamping. Well, it does on a round about way…let me try to explain…
Our country and it’s citizens are going through a rough time. We don’t have it as good as in days past…things are harder to acheive, sales are harder to come by, even paying everyday bills for basic necessities is getting harder to do. So we all have to tighten our belts a bit, get a little “greener”, use and re-use, recycle, re-purpose items and learn to do more with less. My last few years working for the government, we were being given more and more work, less time to do it in, and less people to do the work. There was no overtime authorized most of the time. It was considered “contributed comp time” or some term like that. In other words, we put in the hours to get the job done, whether it was 40 or 60 a wk and weekends, and we “contributed” our time for the good of the organization. Guess that was good training for “RETIREMENT”!!!
I recently had my knee replaced and have had some difficulty getting up and down my stairs to my stamp studio. I did manage to have a Mini Stamp a Stack last week (with the help of my daughter who helped me cut all the cardstock).. for some of my faithful customers. …sooo… I thought while I was getting all my pictures taken of the pretty cards and such.. I’d do a poll with those of you who read my blog regularly. I will pick a random number using random number generator to give BLOG CANDY to one commentor. All you have to do is leave a comment, answering my question:
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1. How is the economy impacting my standard of living? Is your family doing as well, are you struggling and having a hard time, are you having to go out and get another job?
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2. If you had to get another job, are you working out of your home (such as an independent contractor for Stampin Up!, Avon, Mary Kay, Pampered Chef), or are you working outside the home at a local store, hamburger joint, cleaning houses, babysitting??…what all are you doing to help out?
3. Are you going back to school to change your career? 
Here is my response to this poll… to give you an example.
1. My family is temporarily worse off than it was 1 yr ago. My bills have gone up, my expenses have gone up, food prices have increased, and of course there are always “the refrigerator conks out”, “the car quits (a new computer had to be installed), medical bills , etc..My daughter who is going to school to be a nurse, quit one job that was not working with her schooling and finally got a job working at a local big box store. They promised full time hours, but due to decline in retail sales, no one has been getting “full time hours”. This is impacting whether she can go into her nursing clinicals when the time comes.
2. What are we doing about it? Well….I’m cleaning out stashes of supplies, selling my retired stamps (even though I wanted to keep some of them), and trying to scale down as much as possible. I am going to be having more Specialty classes using my Stampin’ UP! training, once I can get up and down the stairs better!! My daughter is also looking for a 2nd part time job to help fill the gap. We don’t eat out, we cook from scratch, we use renewable products (in other words use GREEN products) instead of using a lot of disposable items. We recycle everything we can, donate a lot, and try not to throw out anything that can be re-used or re-purposed. I have used cloth napkins since the 70’s before it was popular to “go green and use cloth napkins”!!!
What are you doing to help the economy?? Here’s a blog where the lady has some things to say about how to have a good home, live modestly, and some just good plain common sense approach to life. Go to Penny Raine. I’ll warn you, Penny Raine is a Christian lady who home schools her children and her philosphy on life is built around her love of Jesus and the Christian lifestyle.
Thanks So Much Box
