Website is back open!

Store is back open and ready for business! The kids had a great time at their party tonight, my house is almost back to cleaned up and I am ready to start making bows again.

Oh...Say it ain't so!

Nature is truly working against me this week. MORE SNOW is coming! I had grand plans of heading to Costco tomorrow and loading up on food and party stuff. I wanted to clean on Friday and bake the cake as well as some brownies and cranberry bread. Saturday would be a day of touch up and some Wii playing with my kids. Saturday night all the party guests would arrive and my now 7 and soon to be 5 year olds would be enjoying their party.

BUT NO! It is supposed to snow tonight and all day tomorrow 6-12". I closed the store to prepare for a party that may be canceled, well at least pushed to next weekend. URG....... Parking is the true issue since we will be dug out by Friday night or early Saturday morning but can't really have guests over if there is no where to put their cars.

Ah.... the best made plans.......

I may be reopening sooner than planned. It does feel good to be almost completely caught up on making bows though. :)

Website Catch Up Closing....

I always hate to have to do this but I will be closing the website today in order to catch up on orders and everyday life! You all have blessed me with a large number of orders that stays at a pretty high level continually. I asked God to bless my business and WOW has he ever. My mom jokes with me to be careful what you wish for. LOL.

We are celebrating two birthdays this next Saturday and I need to get my house cleaned and in order and I also have a large pile of orders that need to be completed.

I will continue to work on all the current orders in house until they are all shipped. Ebay will not be affected by the closing and I will continue to fill Ebay orders as they come in.

Over the years I have been told to just increase my shipping times instead of closing the website. Problem I have with that is when orders come in I feel like I should be working on them. I try to play with my kids and enjoy their birthday weekend while in the back of my head the number of orders piling up makes me feel stressed and thinking I should be working. I suppose that is one of the downfalls of having an at home business, as in you are also always at work. :)

The End of the Newsletter.....

I have decided to end my service with YMLP which is the service I used to maintain my newsletter. After looking at the cost of $45/year and the amount that I actually use the newsletter, it made sense to save that money and use it in better ways.

I plan to offer some freebies and discounts to facebook fans in the summer months and possibly sooner depending on how things are going. All communication will now be done through FB and this blog.

Business has been nothing but Superb this year! Thanks to all of you!

Gong Xi Fa Cai

Happy Chinese New Year! So I am a day early but we will be celebrating tonight with local Chinese take out. I know it isn't "real" Chinese food but we still like it and can pretend we are sitting at our favorite restaurant in Nanchang. As many of you know our daughter was born in China so we like to celebrate events from her heritage and I have learned so many interesting things about a country that is truly magnificent. Look past all the "political" jargon and you will see a beautiful country full of culturally diverse people that are just like you and I.

For more information about the Chinese New Year, I found a great site: http://www.theholidayspot.com/chinese_new_year/

Gong Xi Fa Cai means wishing you to be prosperous in the coming year.

Big Snow again!

Here it is again! Big snow storm and we are snowed in today and tomorrow at least. Nothing will be shipped until at least Friday. My hubby is in the kitchen cooking yummy pancakes this morning. Mmmm they smell so good!

Also want everyone to be aware that we may lose power later due to high winds expected. We frequently lose power during storms. If I don't answer emails or questions quickly this will be why.

Happy Snow Day to everyone in the Northeast! It is like a friend on FB said "for all those affected; the Northeast USA will close tonite at 8pm. We will reopen on Thursday morning. We apologize for the inconvenience." - too funny but so true!

Seriously?? MORE SNOW?

As you can see by the picture we have having loads of fun with all this snow! We got around 30 inches on Saturday and have been playing ever since. What is amazing is that starting tomorrow night into Wednesday we are supposed to get another 18-24 inches! I have no idea where they are going to put it all to make the roads passable in our neighborhood. This is a kids dream world with no school until next Tuesday for my kids between days already scheduled to be off and snow days.

For ACG business, orders from this past weekend will go out tomorrow and if yours is included a shipping notice will go out from paypal in the morning. I don't expect to be able to ship again until Friday at the earliest. I will just have to see how things go with the snow and I can't work as fast when all the kids are home. I have to build a few snowmen myself as well as sled down the driveway or I am just not being a good mom. :)

Anyone want some Snow??

I don't know about you guys but this is what it looks like outside my house today and it is still snowing! Last I looked they were reporting 20+ inches for us but we have not ventured outside yet. I have Chili in the slow cooker and the hot chocolate ready for after snow warmth. Surprising enough, I think I have the only kids on the planet that are not big fans of the snow. I know when I was young we would have been out there the minute we woke up!

As far as ACG business goes, I have all my orders caught up for once! I thought I would be playing in the snow with my kids today and worked hard to get them caught up so I could play without feeling like I needed to be working. I have been working on the blog and updating the header and slide show. Next up is to add the new Simply Sweet Clip sets I have created to the website. I also need to update all the dreaded color lists for each item. This is one task I truly do not like as I have to go into each item to update them. It is so frustrating that there is not an easier way to do that.

Hope you all are enjoying your families on this wonderful Saturday!

North East are you ready?? For the SNOW!

I am super busy here at A Crystal Garden trying to get as many orders shipped out tomorrow morning as possible. Depending on the snow it could be Tuesday before I can ship again. I know some of you way up northerners are saying. Puh - what is 12+" inches?? We handle it pretty well here too but it could mean no school on Monday and Tuesday which means I wont get out to mail my packages. I also want to get lots of orders done so I can play in the snow. :)

But the real purpose of this post is to let everyone know shipping may be delayed a couple of days while I hunker down, drink hot cocoa and build snowmen.