As you might see by the time of this post, I’m up burning the midnight oil, again.

I made a goal to get super caught up by the first of July. I wanted to have my slate clean for some summer projects for the girls and I as well as some work related projects that I really wanted to focus on. Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of client work, and it’s really been consuming a good deal of my available time. Now, it’s nice, and I love helping out, but to be honest, it’s just a sort of trading hours for dollars and doesn’t have a lot of income stream potential. Once it’s done, it’s done. I really need to be focusing more on building products that I can then sell over and over, such as over 200 of our publications and products that we offer. In fact, one product alone, the homeschooling Master Planner has actually grossed over $24,000 in it’s lifetime. I created it almost 7 years ago in about a month of dedicated focused work and effort. And it’s certainly paid off, and continues to do so. I am planning to revamp and add to the product, but basically for the last 7 years I haven’t done a single thing to it, and it continues to sell and help families all over the world! That is really cool.

I’m proud to report that I am down to only 20 to-do cards in my pack and that feels good. (If you’re curious on my system, you can learn more HERE… click this link to see the post) Two years ago I had over 160 cards. And I have added tons to the pack and finished tons of cards. But now, I’m trying hard to not add things to the pack and trying to learn to say no. For awhile. I really need to.

One of the best things, though, that we have been working hard to do, is upgrade some of our processes and equipment. The new computer is working great and I hope to be adding a new one to the herd for Jessy soon. She really needs a higher powered desktop machine for her photography work and a larger viewing monitor.

However, this week, we FINALLY got our little thermal postage printer to work and let me tell you, boy, oh boy, is that wonderful. We use a shipping service called Endicia, and we love it, but we’ve been printing the labels on paper and cutting them (as the program will only print on half a piece of paper through a regular ink jet printer and then we have to tape the heck out of it. A waste of paper and tape and time. We bought the printer a few months ago, but we accidently bought the wrong model for our Macs. And it took us a while to sort it all out, because, well, we thought it was us, just not understanding the whole process of connection, when in reality we had the wrong printer. The folks we bought it from were super helpful in making all the connections finally work and this past week, we got it going!

Printing postage is now a dream! And it’s fun. The thermal printer uses heat and a special label to burn the image into the sticker. No more wasted ink and paper. And it’s sticky, so we just peel and stick. The labels are actually very reasonable, we got 250 for $4 on eBay. When you consider that we were burning through those nasty little expensive ink cartridges like water… this is a great deal for us and a huge labor saver.

I’ve been looking hard at many of the things we’re doing to make them easier and smoother. And to waste less time and resources. We already recycle packing material, but I am looking into a little decent strip shredder to begin making our own packing shred. Since we ship rocks, it’s a perfect way to recycle office paper and keep the kits nice and comfy on their ride.

Well, tomorrow is my last day of working hard on the cards… And then I want to enjoy the weekend with my daughters and relax. Come Monday, we’re going to hit the ground running on our own stuff for awhile and be a little selfish of my time and skills. We just have to. We need to replenish our product offerings, bring out some great new stuff that has been in the wings and help our family out a bit. I just can’t wait! We’re just getting the finishing touches on our very first ROCK AND MINERAL KIT CATALOG!!! It’s so pretty. I can’t believe we’ve taken so long to get one done. Jessy just got the last few photos shot and I can’t wait to see how it all looks. All in a busy busy week’s work!!!