Sunday - Coffee and Cakeweekly mommy babble and handmade goings on...
In, Out And Shake It All About... Warning... a bit of a rant here as I need to vent! It's nice to know that after an entire month of delays both unforseen and out of our control and the masses of stress involved with it all, we are finally in our new house and can worry about normal things associated with moving.
Like unpacking... urgh. I didn't realise just how much stuff we had to be honest as a lot of our knick-knacks were cleverly hidden away in the side passage at our old place which we rarely ventured into. It was so much of a surprise that we totally misjudged how long we'd need the removal van for and ended up having to hire it AGAIN for a few more days over the following weekend to try and get the bulk of it out. Not nice on our finances but with little help it was all we could do, as with the short notice of the move (that we couldn't help) there wasn't any reasonable advance we could give to any friends or family willing to help. Luckily though some of my closest friends offered a hand despite how tight everything was and did their bit either helping to pack, organise, move or take care of my son (as my daughter wasn't having any of it lol), as did my dad who drove all the way from Wales to do his bit for us. It didn't entirely go to plan, but at least the worst of it all has been done and like I say, the normal worrisome parts of moving can be worried about.
It was a very hard time for us as can be expected, but without any more help with the kids progress is slow and both myself and Elric have been struggling. Luckily with my son being at nursery, their are some days in the week where things are easier, but despite my daughters baby protests at the mo we really could do with help with her, but unfortunately the only offers of help we ever get for her are from people who happen to be hundreds of miles away and to us it's just not practical expecting them to drop everything and spend so much money to travel to us when we know that it would cause problems for them to be able to do that anyway, plus the addition of their own personal difficulties to deal with which I really don't want to contribute to! So I have been watching her whilst trying to work, keep the house maintained where I can and unpack where I can, my normal duties of cooking, grocery shops, nursery runs, post office runs, plus watching my son when he's home, working on my PC, editing pictures for my photography shop, working on new hats, managing my babamoon business, generally dealing with the repercussions caused by the bad weather in the USA and homeland security delays that have devestated my business in the past month (I'll get to that), paperwork... oh my the list goes on and the fact I'm not sleeping kind of tops it all off.
Elric having his full time job has also had an equally painful amount of stuff to do at home including helping with the kids so I can work, and we are both just so lucky that at least we can support eachother through it all and try and come out smiling! A lot of our friends try and be optimisitc for us, but I don't think they realise just how problematic things have been and that our lack of time is now pretty much eating into eating and sleeping time. But we have to work, we have to care for our children, and we have to sort out the new house. We're driving ourselves 10 times harder than usual, so at least in about a month or two we can probably get the opportunity to relax! Lol! It'll get sorted, I know it will.
But despite this stress the thing that's hit me hardest recently has been the problems with postal delays and Babamoon. My hat shop is very close to my heart as I started it having being inspired by both of my children, and since January I have received floods of messages from concerned customers not having received their orders when they should have. It was only two thirds of the way through January where my postal provider AND Etsy decided to tell everyone why it was happening as thank goodness it wasn't isolated to my shop (I honestly thought I'd messed up packaging or something). It turns out that a combination of atrocious weather from the East coast stopped post moving full stop, coupled with homeland security in the USA having experienced a bomb threat on a plane in November upped their security to 100% which means any packages travelling on planes are either being held for weeks on end before being released in small batches or are being sent by boat or smaller planes which take a million years to travel. Most of my customers are in the USA so from the 8th of December my orders got hit BADLY by this, so far the latest package arriving in 5 weeks when it should have taken 5 days! I am SOOOO grateful that most customers have been really patient and understanding through it all. I can't tell you how amazed I am at how lovely they have all been. But there is a small portion that are blaming me even though this post problem is a global issue out of my control and effecting everyone worldwide posting internationally, two of whom threatened me out of the blue with action with their credit card company without having asked me before about what was going on. They have really made me feel down about it all. And even down about myself. There was one day with a particularly difficult message where I had considered giving up everything. It took a few hours before I became rational about it and realised that this won't be forever, I am reliable and I am doing my best to help everyone involved. I tell you what though it's been tough, having a barrage of daily negative messages (not necessarily against me I need to add) arriving for over a month and having to deal with it all by myself. It's just sad as I really do feel for this people, I know how it must feel as I am a mother and I make my hats as a loving mother and pour a lot of energy into making them perfect for the new little owners. So besides their money being effected it's my time and efforts too. It's been very hard. I can't control what the post is doing but it has still effected my self esteem as I do work tremendously hard to make everything right before they leave me. I have to keep reminding myself that there are always going to be angry customers and that I shouldn't take it personally if I know I've done what I'm supposed to. All we can all do is wait.
Post has been normal since mid January but now with all the bad weather going on in the USA I'm not sure if it'll slow things down again. I have had packages arrive in time over the last few days despite the snow so it's very confusing to know what to expect.
For me, a large portion of my time is continually being taken up by researching progress and emailing everyone to reassure them and I'm looking forward to the end despite knowing that in a week I'll probably lose a weeks wage in refunds to the angrier customers. I just want the end to come so I can stop dreading all Etsy conversations from coming in. That has to be the worst part. Assuming that all Convo's are negative and that sinking feeling I get when opening up my emails. I am positive at least that things are going well, so here's to good times to come!
moonangelnay x
It's unusual for the UK to get as cold as -25 celcius or something like that, but in places it plunged to that and may have been lower I'm not sure. I know what the weather suggeted for me locally and it always turned out to be colder on our thermometer! My coldest day was -12 celcius and there was the most amazing frost everywhere. It looked like it had snowed in our garden. For my family it was a great spectacle as like I say it's not a temperature we experience often in the UK so I was really happy to capture some new images of the bizarre happenings in my garden. The best find was the frozen spiders web. That was a stunning sight! I have lots of new images to play around with for my photography store... that's something I have wanted to do for ages so I was really glad for mother nature to provide something different for me and my camera to enjoy. I'm not sure when I'll get to work on it as Babamoon has kind of taken over things but I hope to have it sorted by early January. We'll see how that goes!
I do make this for baby and have sizes that go up to 3T but I can happily make a larger or smaller size if the winner requires it. With the Christmas season coming up, I thought it would be cute to offer up this headband before introducing my final giveaway which will be one of my more festive hats (TBA)! When thinking of mice and Christmas I always think of the fabulous ballet, the Nutcracker! But unfortunately the Birmingham Royal Ballet aren't performing it this year :( My little boy called my daughter Angelina Ballerina a few times which was sweet! For any budding mousling I guess this is a place they can start :) They're very cute and I hope that the winner's baby or friends baby will enjoy their new ears for a few months of wear :)
