30 Days of Gratitude 2011: Day Fourteen

When my friend sent me an email asking me to host a party for her new Scentsy business, I was less than thrilled. I had never even heard of Scentsy, and I haaaaated those parties. But I hadn't done one in forever, so maybe people would come, and I did want to help her get started...so I did. I had a party.


And about two-thirds of the way through the party, I was already pretty sure that I'd be signing up myself.


I did - in March 2010 - and I have been grateful for Scentsy ever since.

I had done the home party thing in the past - twice, actually - and sworn that I would never do that again. I'm so glad I took a chance on this one, though! It's turned out to be a nice little side income (not mega bucks, mind you, but it sure is helpful to have spending money once in a while) for very little work. In fact, I do more "basket parties" than anything - in which my hostess takes a bag full of samples, catalogs, and order forms, and collects her own orders - and those require pretty much no work on my part. Get the bag to her, get it back from her, put the orders into the computer, earn commission. Um, yes, I can certainly live with that.


I've done more home parties in the past month than I've done in the past year, and I'm starting to enjoy them more as well. Although I typically don't enjoy speaking in front of people that I don't know well, I've met some of the nicest people through my parties. I am grateful for them, and for the church friends that got the latest round of parties rolling.


Scentsy is helping (a LOT) with Christmas this year, and helping to pay for me and Rachael to accompany our Girl Scout troop to D.C. next summer - all while meeting new people (when I choose to) and enjoying a product that I truly love. Can't beat that!

(Shameless plug: if you'd like to know more about Scentsy, visit my website!)

Randomness!

I have just discovered the Thursday 13, which is "a weekly meme with a simple theme: each Thursday you blog a list of 13 things. What kind of things? Any kind! Just come up with a list theme and run with it."

Hey, I can come up with 13 things! I'm not very good with coming up with a theme for them off the top of my head, but I shall work on that for next week. Meanwhile, please enjoy 13 very random thoughts...and then go post 13 of your own.

1) The word "random" makes me think immediately of random dancing from iCarly, which is the current (and long-standing) favorite "whole family" show in our house. For those of you who are unfamiliar, Carly is a teenage girl who airs a live webshow with her two best friends. It's all very techy, and occasionally a voice will announce "RANDOM...DANCING!" and everyone must stop what they're doing and dance. It's all very random. And fun. Life would be more fun if there was random dancing everywhere.

2) Neither my husband nor my older daughter are able to find things on their own. Even if I tell them, "please get the blue hairbrush off of the bathroom counter," and if the blue hairbrush is indeed lying on the bathroom counter, in plain view, with no clutter around it...they will not be able to see the blue hairbrush. This must be a genetic defect. Thankfully, Milly does

not suffer from this particular chromosomal abnormality.

3) My husband is currently sitting beside me on the couch watching a movie on his laptop. This is very annoying because a) it's nothing that I would ever choose to watch (ie, I'm not interested), b) he has to listen to it at max volume, and c) the children are playing outside, so the house would be nice and quiet if not for him.

4) After being snipped at and asked to turn it down to just half-past blasting, he has now donned headphones. Victory is mine.

5) Rachael is obsessed with tree frogs. I have no idea from whence this obsession came. We were in Dollar Tree last night when she spotted a book with a tree frog on the cover, and it simply had to come home with us. (She has learned that I will rarely turn down pleas for a book - especially a cheap book.)

6) There will be a brand new giveaway posted right here tomorrow. Uh-huh, that one crept up on ya, didn't it? I'm pretty excited about it. Check back to see what's up, especially if you have a little girl too.

7) I've spent far too much time today stalking Facebook for updates from Scentsy's annual convention in Forth Worth. (I didn't even consider going this year, once I found out where it would be held. Texas in the summer? I don't think so. It's a bazillion degrees in Virginia; I'd absolutely melt in Texas.) Anyway, there are tons of new things coming out in September, and I want them all.

8) Plastic bags make great parachutes for stuffed animals. Combine with an open floor plan so that stuffed animals may be tossed from upstairs to downstairs, and you have a toy that will occupy two children for an entire week. I kid you not.

9) I swore that I would never be "that mom" who succumbs to second-child syndrome - you know, where you have exactly one framed photo of the baby in your living room, but 22 of your older child. (Why my friend Cathy thinks that I fault her for not being quick to hang pictures of baby number four is beyond me.) Anyway, I have at least scrapbooked lots and lots of pictures of Milly...those just aren't readily apparent when you walk into my house.

10) While cleaning off our overflowing homeschool shelf this morning, I realized that we hadn't read the last three chapters of last year's history book. So we did. I learned that the Roman emperor's sister, Honoria, betrothed to a man she detested, actually wrote a letter to Attila the Hun promising to marry him if he would just come and rescue her from her miserable life. Yeah, it must really stink being sister to the emperor. (It didn't work, by the way.)

11) I have read 20 books since June 1 - a combined total of 5,918 pages, which averages out to 295.9 pages per book. That doesn't include newspaper and magazine articles, blogs, anything read on my Kindle, or the pages already read in the four books I'm reading simultaneously at the moment. (I'm such a multi-tasker.) I only started keeping up with them because of our library's summer reading program, but it's so much fun logging them all at Shelfari that I think I'll keep it up.

12) Last night, I knocked a pitcher of tea out of the fridge. It landed upside on the floor and made a huge mess. I'm glad no one else was awake to witness that.

13) I'm trying hard to resist the urge to wander into the kitchen and whip up a batch of peanut butter cookies. I'm obviously not allowed to bake anything without two little pairs of hands "helping" (which I usually don't mind, but it's been a long day) and then they'd want to stay up to have cookies. It's way too close to bedtime for that mess - they'd never go to sleep. Maybe some celebratory It's-Friday cookies tomorrow...even though "Friday" really doesn't mean much in our house any more. Saturday is the new Friday, and the weekend was shortened by a day. (Thanks, Utz!)

Wow, thirteen items of randomness was a tad more difficult than I thought...suggestions are welcome for a theme for next Thursday!

My Big, Whiny Comeback Post

When I blow a New Year's resolution - or rather, goal - I do it completely. One of my goals for this year was to blog regularly, and yet here I am on April 18, having not blogged in more than two months.

There are several reasons that I've been MIA from blogdom:

1. busy
2. busy
3. busy
4. fear of writing the dreaded big, whiny comeback post when I finally decided it was time to start blogging again.

The biggest reason, for the past couple of weeks, has been #4. So much has happened in the past two months - where in the world do I begin...again?

My last post detailed Rachael's 7th birthday, back in February. Gene had just started his new job with Utz, and was enjoying it, despite the crazy hours that were sure to get better soon.

Thing is, they haven't gotten better. The poor man leaves home at 4 a.m. and we don't usually see him again until 6-ish. The spring semester hasn't yet ended, which means that he doesn't get home until around 10 p.m. on Tuesdays, and the girls don't see him at all that day. Once or twice, he's gotten incredibly lucky on one of his "short" days and gotten home around 3:30 or 4. There's no day off mid-week as he was told when he signed on. And I've learned that his having to work every single Saturday sucks about a million times more than I expected it to.

In theory, we should still see him from about 6-10 (his new bedtime) four nights a week, slightly longer on Saturday, and all day on Sunday. But since he is still in school, and taking two online classes in addition to his Tuesday night class, he has to devote at least a night or two per week to studying, taking quizzes online, and going to the college to take tests. On Sundays, our routine is church-lunch-nap (because he doesn't get enough sleep now, ever, and he's a beast if you insinuate that something could be planned that would maybe interfere with his Sunday afternoon nap.) Sunday evenings usually include his doing more schoolwork and my doing the grocery shopping. We truly see each other in passing most days.

This has meant that I've had to pick up more slack at home than I was previously used to. When it was still cold - through February and March - the job of building a fire in our outdoor furnace and keeping it going through the day fell to me. Learning to build a fire wasn't as hard as I thought it might be. In fact, I've learned to embrace my teensy inner pyromaniac and actually rather enjoy seeing things go up in flames now...within the confines of the furnace, of course. What stunk was never having enough kindling to get the stupid fire started, or enough wood cut that was smallish enough for me to chunk into the furnace, since he didn't have time to cut anything in the evenings. This resulted in our having to buy two loads of already-cut firewood - which really irked our chickens since we have 27 wooded acres from which to find firewood.

He no longer has time to take out the trash. Or check the mail. Or several other menial tasks that I'm quite capable of handling myself. The thing is, when you add any menial task to the kazillion things that a mom already does on a daily basis, it's kind of a pain in the butt. As is never knowing when he may finally get to come home, which makes timing a hot evening meal practically impossible.

Of course, I still have it better than he does...I still get to stay at home with my children, and I don't have to drag my carcass out of bed when it's still dark outside. I don't have to deal with other people all day long unless I choose to do so. I don't get even one day off per week, but even my "work" time is more leisurely.

Still, I hate this. HATE it. Loathe, detest, despise and abhor this. I knew that this job was going to be such a blessing to our family, after years and years of trying to get out of the sawmill where he worked before. I had no idea that it would mean never seeing him, that our children would be sad that Daddy is never home. I don't know how women manage whose husbands are gone - really gone - all the time. I would lose my mind.

But hey...free chips.

Back in February, Rachael participated in the Missoula Children's Theatre production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. She was so excited and nervous to audition this year, since she auditioned last year and didn't get a part. We were all thrilled when she had a great audition and was cast as one of the evil queen's pet bats (clearly, this was not your traditional telling of the story!) Auditions were held on Valentine's Day - a Monday evening - and the children rehearsed all week before performing in two shows on Saturday. Thankfully, Gene was able to finish up in time to catch the second performance. I couldn't miss either one. :)

I survived my first Girl Scout cookie season...with much encouragement from my troop co-leader and the moms in our troop. I thought it would be so much fun to do the whole thing myself, being my first year as a leader, but I'll definitely be recruiting more help next year. Gene and Rachael attended their second Girl Scout daddy/daughter dance, and she looked just like a little princess. And our troop attended a lock-in at a nearby mall - a dozen girls from 10 p.m. until 7 a.m. No one slept until 4 a.m. I didn't sleep at all. And I hope we get to do it again next year. We only have three meetings left before breaking off for summer - as well as a service project, a yard sale, and a trip to a farm with a ropes course and zip line. Our last meeting of the year will be a fairly big to-do, with pizza, sundaes, games, awards for the girls, and the ceremonial "bridging" of some up to the next level of Scouting. I'll cry, but I'll also be happy for the reprieve of summer. Being a troop leader has been so much more time-consuming than I imagined it would be, but also so much more rewarding. I love "my" girls - all 18 of them. 18! After we worried that we may not have the five we needed to start our troop last fall! We just keep growing and growing, and are actually holding two spaces for next fall, which will make us a troop of 20.

In March, I celebrated my first anniversary with Scentsy...with a BIG promotion, thanks to a fundraiser that I landed with an area high school band. They did so well that I was able to write them a check for $1400, and I was promoted two levels, to SuperStar Consultant. The next step up is Director, and I want it. It may take me a while, but that's my goal. I have a great little team of eight going, I still love the products, and the company is one that I'm proud to be associated with...so I'm still "the Scentsy lady."

That wasn't the biggest deal in March, though - I loved celebrating my friend Cathy's 30th birthday with her! I wish I could have made just a huge, spectacular deal out of it, but her party was a lot of fun. (Turning 30 made her even again, while I'm still odd...but I'll be even again before long!) She's such an amazing friend, and such a blessing to me...I've never had a friend quite like her, and I hope to celebrate many more milestone birthdays with her.

And on April 7th, another reason for celebration - our 10th anniversary! That sounds like such a long time, and then like no time at all. I told him when we celebrated our 5th anniversary that if I put up with him for five more years, I'd be needing more diamonds for our 10th anniversary. He didn't disappoint - I got a beautiful new wrap for my engagement ring, and I definitely don't want any more ring on that finger now. Hmm, what idea should I start planting in his head for our 20th...?!

So to recap - I'm tired. Gene isn't here. Rachael is sweet, when she's not being sassy. Milly is still mean, with a side of cuddly. I still need a housekeeper, I spend way too much on gas, and our church conflict has yet to be resolved. Life goes on, even though I'm a little overwhelmed with it.

There's so much more that I could share, but the update will suffice for now. I'll be back soon, with randomness rather than an overview. I miss Pink Saturdays and the Saturday 9, and although the idea of the Wednesday Weigh-in makes me a bit queasy, it's something that I should be doing as well. There was also a giveaway that was left hanging when blogging disappeared entirely from my stream of consciousness...I'll be emailing the store owner soon to see if we can resume that. My apologies to those who entered already.

How about a SCENTSY giveaway this time?!

Oh, you knew it was coming. Sooner or later, I just had to have a Scentsy giveaway, given that it's one of my favorite products ever. But first, please allow me to share the top five reasons why I love it so much.

1) It's pretty. The warmers are so much more attractive than your typical plastic air freshening device.

2) It's cheap. I know, the warmers are a little pricey, but once you have one, it lasts forever. Then bars of wax are only $5 each and are much more economical than jar candles and pricey oil fresheners. (Yes, I have a comparison chart typed up around here somewhere that compares price and burn time. No, I can't find it at the moment. Yes, if it's that important to you, I will dredge it up.)

3) It's SAFE. No flame (like a candle), no smoke (like a candle), no soot (like a candle.) Yes, the warmers get a little warm, but never hot enough to burn your hand. You can even stick your finger right into the melted wax, and it won't burn you. It's kind of like a paraffin wax at the spa. The very worst thing that could happen is that you spill the wax and make a mess, but that can happen with a regular candle too...and those could burn down your whole house. Oh, and Scentsy wax is considered "food-grade" too, in case your curious pet or toddler decides to bite off a chunk. Not that I'd recommend it, but you know.

4) It smells sooooo good. There are more than 80 different scents, and I could name ONE that I really don't care for. (I won't, but I could.)

5) It's an amazing business opportunity. I did the direct sales thing twice before, with Mary Kay and The Body Shop at Home. I failed miserably with both and said that I would never sell anything else. Then a friend starting selling Scentsy, and I had a party for her. I saw first hand how it just sells itself...let people smell it, and they're sold. I decided to give it a shot, and I'm so glad that I did. It's a super easy "job", especially thanks to basket parties that travel around without me, and it's a product that nearly everyone loves. The extra income is wonderful, and the time commitment is minimal. I know I sound like a Scentsy cheerleader, but it's really been a blessing to me. :)

Okay, wanna know what you can WIN?!

How about a plug-in warmer and not one, not two, but three bars...all of YOUR CHOICE!

(This would even make a wonderful Christmas gift...IF you can bear to part with it!)

So here's what you have to do...

Mandatory entry: Visit my Scentsy site and tell me something else about Scentsy. Anything at all that I didn't mention already. You can tell me something about hosting, about joining, even which warmer or scent is your favorite. :) Please be sure to include your email address so I can contact you if you win.

Want to earn extra entries? You don't have to do any of these, but you're welcome to do as many as you'd like. Each one is worth one additional entry unless otherwise noted; please leave one comment per entry, and don't forget your email address!

• Follow June Cleaver Would Be Shocked via GFC.
  
• "Like" June Cleaver Would Be Shocked on Facebook.
  
• Follow this blog on Twitter, too!
• Tweet about this giveaway - copy me @juneshocked, please. May be done once per day.
• Subscribe to this blog via email - check out the handy box on the right! (+2)
  
• "Like" my Scentsy page on Facebook to keep up with sales and giveaways. (+2)
• Blog about this giveaway and leave me a link! (+3)
• Snag my button (top right of this page) and add it to your blog. Leave a link in your comment! (+5)
• Make ANY Scentsy purchase from my website. (Contact me with your order if you're local to receive free shipping.) (+5)

That's 22+ ways to enter...have lots of fun with it! ;)

Restrictions: Open to U.S. residents only. Sorry, other friends. :(

Contest ends: 11:59 PM EST on Tuesday, November 16. Winner will be chosen by random number generator and emailed immediately. Please contact me within 48 hours to claim your prize, or a new winner will be chosen.

Good luck, everyone!!

Question #8

#8: Short term goals for this month and why...

I have several goals for this month - survival being foremost among them. With one child just back to (home)school and a 2-year-old to keep busy/entertained/alive in the meantime, "stressed" is my usual operating mode. But I do have goals beyond mere survival, and here they are.

a) Keep the housework under control. At the moment, my house is cleaner than usual, thanks to a recent visit from the in-laws. My goal is to keep it that way. However, the whole point of this blog is that I'm no June Cleaver around the house - rather, I would let it fall apart around me while I do schoolwork and fun things with the girls. Must...find...balance. My friend Brittany over at Short Change posts daily cleaning lists that I'm trying to adhere to...mostly. Days like yesterday really throw me for a loop, when we have plans all morning and then come home just in time to do a little bit of schoolwork, get showers and dressed, throw some food down our throats and run back out the door to church. Who has time to clean on those days?! I managed to wash the dishes and clear some clutter off of the kitchen table, and that just had to suffice.

b) Be a more patient mommy. Patience just is not my strong suit, especially when I have two children simultaneously screaming/crying/nagging/acting like little neanderthals. I just started a Wednesday night class at a nearby church (that I absolutely love) called My Bathtub Is Overflowing, But I Feel Drained. It's a small group comprised solely of moms, and is based on the book by the same name, which I already love even though I'm only three chapters in. Surely some fellowship time with other moms will help me to adjust my mommy attitudes a bit!

c) August was a slow month for my Scentsy biz, so my goal is to pick it up this month! (Actually, it's picked up quite nicely on its own, thanks to the new fall/winter scents. I've sold more in the past day and a half than I did in the whole month of August - WOOHOO!!) My goal for September is to maintain my Lead Consultant title...and who knows, maybe even move up another level. At any rate, the "work" I do this month will pay for our family's weekend beach getaway in October - and I'm soooo looking forward to it. Have I mentioned how much I love Scentsy?!

Gravy = Beverage

Well, it does in most of the South. Not so much for me. But since we all dragged out of bed super early this morning and drove an hour to meet my mom and stepdad for a big breakfast hosted at their church, and since Mom had been raving for three weeks about the amazingness of the gravy at these breakfasts, I did feel compelled to try it. And it was pretty good. Milly gobbled up quite a bit of it, which made her Gramma very proud. :)

I'm a bit ashamed to admit that, after breakfast, we headed to Petsmart...with a particular purchase in mind. I had always found the notion of doggy cologne a bit ridiculous (okay okay, utterly ridiculous) ...until I found myself cohabitating with a very large, very stinky dog. I'm not sure I've mentioned Walter here, actually. A friend's Chocolate Lab gave birth to a very unplanned first litter on April 30th - a litter of twelve. All of which were black, which led them to believe (rather strongly) that the father was likely the sneaky black neighbor Lab. We had been tossing around the idea of a family dog for a while, although I freely admit to being not so much of a dog person. I love the concept of a dog as playmate, friend, protector, what have you. Not so much the slimy nose and doggy slobber and the smell. Gene would be the first to tell you that I can detect the teensiest odor from about sixteen miles away, so it only stands to reason that a big, stinky dog in my house would drive me absolutely nutters. And since my dear sweet darling husband and I don't see eye to eye on the necessity of a weekly bath for Mr. Stink, we headed to Petsmart in search of (sigh) doggy cologne.

They had plenty of it, too, ranging from $4 up to $17 or so per bottle. The pricey stuff came in Blueberry Muffin scent, which I would normally find downright mouth-watering, but I'm not sure I wanted my dog to smell like food. Gene immediately nixed all of the "girly" scents (Sunflower, Passion Fruit, etc.) and we eventually settled on a more manly (if somewhat non-descript) scent called True Blue. Yes, I sprayed Walter down with it practically the moment we walked back through the door. And yes, he does smell better. My apologies for ever smirking at the mere mention of doggy cologne.

Speaking of smelly things...better smelly things...I'm having a neato special Scentsy sale through the end of the month! It's called the LAST CHANCE SALE, since it's the last chance to save 10% on nearly everything in the catalog - all but the college and charity warmers, which I've yet to sell anyway. Anyone who purchases $40 or more by clicking on the link above will be entered into a drawing to be the party's mystery hostess - who will receive all of the 1/2-price items and free product credits from the party. It starts out with one 1/2-price item (including several of the warmer/bar combos) and $15 in product credit, and goes up according to party sales. Sooo...go take a look around, save some money, and maybe win some stuff!

And speaking of winning stuff...I'm excited to announce that I'll be hosting my first giveaway starting on Monday! If there's a little one in your life, you're not going to want to miss this... :)

Yes? No? Maybe?

So, I have this problem where I'm physiologically unable to say the word "no". My lips and tongue just won't work together to form the word, even when my brain is screaming it over and over and over. Most of the time that's a real problem - I get myself into a ton of things that I don't really want to do, but just can't help it. Sometimes, though, it turns out okay.

For instance. An old friend recently began selling Scentsy products - yummy smelling wax tarts that melt in a decorative warmer via heat from a light bulb. No flames, no smoke, etc. She had posted several times on Facebook about starting her Scentsy business, how much she loved the products, and how she needed people to book parties. I ignored it for a little while, but when she mentioned the Cherry Limeade scent, well...my fingers grew a mind of their own and said that YES, I'd host a party! So I did, last night.

She rolled in with baskets upon baskets of little jars of scented wax, in nearly every scent you can imagine. Fruity, tropical, foody, coffee, manly, flowery...just everything. And although only a few very good friends showed up to party with us, we had a great time smelling them all, making lists of the ones we liked best, playing games. It was a great time, and I really did earn nice hostess credits for *very* minimal effort on my part. I had to clean my house (which I needed to do anyway) and make a few refreshments (big deal.)

It was SO easy, in fact, and I like the products SO much that I'm even contemplating becoming a Scentsy consultant myself. I would (hopefully) make a little money selling something that I enjoy. It hasn't been difficult at all for her to sell, and she's a full-time mom like me. Hmmm...

The things I'm thinking right now:

• I've done the direct sale thing before. I've sold both Mary Kay and The Body Shop at Home, and failed miserably at both. However, the parties for both of those were waaaaaay more involved than a Scentsy party. With TBSaH, for instance, I had to haul in big tubs and fill them with warm water and set them out with towels and washcloths and scrubbers for everyone to soak their feet, scrub them, lotion them down, etc. I can see where that wouldn't appeal to everyone...and I can't tell you what a pain in the backside it was for me. With Scentsy...you plop everything on the table and watch everyone descend onto it and go into a happy sniffing frenzy. Then you talk to them a little between sniffs. MUCH easier.
• My friend has had great success with Scentsy so far. She bought her warmer after seeing them at a home show and loving it. Over the next few days, she had people drop in and comment on how nice her house smelled, and place their orders through her. After she'd sold several hundred dollars worth of products for someone else, she finally decided to just sell it herself! And now that I've had a warmer burning in my home, I can vouch for how long the scent lasts. It was turned off at 8:00 last night - at 11:00 the next morning, my whole house still smells like yummy Black Raspberry Vanilla. She just posted on Facebook today that she's made her first $1000 in sales - and that's in her first month, with only one party (mine) under her belt. She hasn't even had her debut party yet!
• It's $100 for the starter kit. That's not a LOT of money - certainly less than the startup for my last two flopped ventures. But it's still $100, and that kind of IS a lot to us right now. I'd have to sell $500 in products to make that money back. My friend has made twice that in a month. Could I do the same?
• How would I get started? My mom has already offered to have a basket party - taking a box of miniature scent samples - to work with her. It's another $60 for the sample kit, though...of course, my friend's first basket party netted her $600 in sales, more than paying for the kit. I have a couple of other friends that I could probably guilt into having parties to help me out. Hopefully they'd invite people I don't know that would book parties with more people I don't know...but that's "hopefully", and it certainly didn't work out that way before. Of course, I didn't know the same people before, either.
• I'd have a great "upline" in my friend. She's really into it, has watched the videos and scoured the web, and really knows her stuff. More than that, she really loves her stuff, and that can make a big difference.
• I'm just not a salesperson. I couldn't sell a heater to a naked Brazilian in the Arctic on the coldest night of the year. I'm told that this stuff sells itself, which I absolutely believe to be true to a point - you still have to get people to smell the stuff. Once they do, well, they want it. :)  Can I get people to smell it?

So. Those are the things on my mind at present. I'm just not sure.

* * * * *

And on a totally different subject...we're taking Milly to get her first haircut tonight! Praying it goes well - she generally doesn't like being too close to people she doesn't know well, much less sitting still in a chair for them while they get close to her face with scissors.