Design Crafters

This may take several blog posts to get through our story, but for those who are interested, here goes. Everyone knows how expensive colllege can be. I have three children, the oldest entering high school back in 1996 and I was trying to think of what I could do to raise up money to put him through college. My yougest had just started kindergarden.

I started selling birh announcements and little pink and blue pencils with a newborn’s name and birthdate imprinted on them to be passed out instead of candy or cigars. I went around to OBGYN offices and asked if I could leave brochures in their waiting room. Upon encouragement from friends I started selling personalized stationery, wedding invitations and Christmas cards from my home. I acquired a list of trade and other professional organizations in Washington DC (I live in Norther VA) and had a friend  who would set up appointments for me to show my Christmas cards. I  would get two or three appointment every day, drive or take the metro into DC and usually would close most orders with a decent sale. I felt pretty good abou the money I made and was rather pleased.

My son, a freshman in high school said, Mom you need to have a presence online to sell your Christmas cards. I said, "That would be great but how do I do that?" He said, "I’ll build you a website." And he did. We bought a domian name, set up a webhost account and uploaded a rather crude website. That was June of 1996. The rest is history. More next time.
 

In my last post, I mentioned picking up baskets at yard
sales that could be used as gift baskets for Christmas presents. As long as they are in good shape,
you can put new or even used items that are in good shape in them as a gift.

Sometimes you can find items that are new or like new, some still in original
packaging at yard sales that could be added. Even if you end up buying new
items to put in the baskets, you can watch for Christmas sales for individual items to
put together, and if you can get the baskets at least at a yard sale, you can
save a lot on those. Gift baskets can be rather expensive and everyone know that, so
to give a nice basket filled with practical or even non-practical but fun
items, add a nice Christmas card, and that would be considered a great gift.

Next time we will discuss a lot of different variables/items that could be
included in a real nice expensive looking gift basket.