My New Etsy Store is NOW OPEN!!!

After planning, preparing, and a lot of dreaming, the day I have been waiting for has finally arrived!

My Etsy Store, Aava's Best Kept Secret, is finally open!

I could not be more thrilled and proud of my store. I have worked very hard for a year now to build this new business. I have never launched a product line and have done this completely on my own. The last year has been spent cutting, sewing, and hotglueing my dreams together. Hours of research and building prototypes for my final products. I launched 10 flowers and headbands yesterday, I have many more, but I am starting with these 10. Some I feel will be staples and some are to test the waters as far as what people are looking for in today's market. I will continue to add new products as the weeks go on and hope to write about my first sale experience soon. For now though I would like to share my 10 product line with you.

https://www.etsy.com/shop/AavasBestKeptSecret

Thank you for reading,

-Alexandra L.

I am opening a crafting eCommerce store!!

   

I am opening a crafting eCommerce store!!

Ok so I have had this plan in my head that I wanted to start a little side business in the crafting realm. For nearly a year now I have been going back and forth about which of my many hobbies I would attempt to turn into a profitable business. The key word being profitable, I love crafting and building but I also have to have a budget and actually make enough money for it to make sense. It has taken me a year to come up with what I want to create and sell, now I am not ready to tell you what that is just yet but I can tell you I am most likely going to be using a combination of Etsy and Facebook to sell my products. I am currently working on marketing and budgeting. I have a couple of orders of materials that I am waiting on to complete the first line I will be coming out with in September. YES! I have set deadlines for myself. I want to make money I want to be successful and I want to stay at home 100% of the time with my child and my other day care kids. The only way I will be able to do everything I am dreaming of is if I stay organized and have many small deadlines and keep my expectations low.

     I am less than two weeks away from my first child being born and while I am going to be completely focused on her when she is born, I still have some time to kill so continuing my marketing development and creating the prototypes for the line is what I am focusing on right now. I have already made a few and like I said, I am waiting on a little bit more material to come in so I can round out the rest of the line. I have spent many hours learning about branding, marketing, shipping, packaging, and of course smart safe and legal business practices. Since I already have a business license it is easy for me to add this business to the tax forms I already fill out. I am crossing my T's and dotting my I's, to make sure I do this right the first time and come out with profit. 

     I will go ahead and give you some current number so you have an idea of my total investment so far. I have bought $58.00 of materials for making my products. I have saved carts in various online stores for packaging and shipping materials. I have also spent the last two weeks developing handmade boxes for my product to be shipped in, the material for this I already had so it counts as free. There are several items that I need in order to make my own labels, tags, better boxes, and marketing material. I want as much of what I am selling to be as handmade as possible. A week before my products launch in Etsy, Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram, they will be given a sneak peek HERE!!! on my blog!! So please subscribe to this blog if you want to see my line first! 

I am so happy and excited about my new venture and if any of you have or have had an online store from any website, please give me advice in the comments section I would love to have it.

Thanks for reading,

-Alexandra

Erin Condren 2016 Life Planner!!! Ordered!

2016 Erin Condren Life Planner!!!

I ordered it!!

I chose the Pink shade of the New Geodes Covers

I also went with the personalized version and put "The Leatherman Family" as a sort of title as my first child is set to be born this year making us a full fledged family of five! I have also added a front and back photo, which I will debut once I receive the planner in the mail. I will go ahead and list all of the things that I got along with the planner and break down cost as well for those of you in the US that may be interested in investing in this planner.

2015/2016 18 month Life Planner- 55$

Front Cover Photo- 5$

Back Cover Photo- 5$

Customizable Event Stickers (blank)- 2$ each sheet containing 60 stickers

Customizable Event Stickers (filled)- 4$ each sheet containing 60 stickers

I bought 4 filled sheets bringing me to 16$

Life Planner Launch Bundle- 25$

(Break Down)

-10 Sheets of metallic stickers bound

-6 Party Pop Markers in Case

-Free Designer Clutch

Coil Clip Connectors- 7$ includes 12 clips

Pen Holder- 2.50$

Snap in Meal Planner- 4$

Snap in To Do List- 4$

Budget Book- 5$

Acrylic Easel- 10$

Subtotal- 138.50$

Shipping and Handling Charge for FEDEX Ground- 19.95$

Grand Total- 158.45$

I decided that since I will have this planner for 18 months that I would treat myself and get everything that I wanted. However, if you just bought the planner at 12 months for 2016 it would have been just the 50$ plus whatever shipping you choose. So it is up to you how far you take it. I have a lot going on this year so I had to buy the 18 month version. I cannot express how excited I am about this planner, I have been eyeballing it for about 6 months, I even bought my Mother one for an early Mother's day gift!!! I will have a video up soon about the planner and then more once I get it in the mail!

 Stay tuned for that!!

Channel Link Here!

Thanks for reading,

-Alexandra

TheOtherSideOfAlex Pregnancy Vlog: Week 28 | Lots of Movement!

TheOtherSideOfAlex

Pregnancy Vlog: Week 28!!

I will start off by running down all of my symptoms for you then go into some specs and finish off with a horrible tale of despair.

In the last four weeks I have felt great, some sciatic nerve pain a couple of days out of the week, but nothing I can't handle. I am growing more and more uncomfortable at bedtime and it takes me hours to fall asleep. Once I am asleep I can only sleep for about six hours then I wake up for several hours and then take about a three hour nap at some point in the day usually before or after my husband is coming home from work. The reason for the trouble sleeping is the very frequent movements my baby is doing. While I love being able to feel her and know she is ok, it leaves me feeling quite queasy. (I don't think I have ever written that word out before so weird) 

The main cravings I am having lately is chocolate milk and fruit. 

At the start I weighed around 120lbs and I currently weigh 145lbs, so that is a running total of 25lbs so far. I expect to gain at least another 15-20lbs before she is born and am not worried about gaining the weight. I know that my baby is perfectly healthy and that my blood work and scans are all perfect, so if I gain 50lbs then I gain 50lbs, I am loving being pregnant and I appreciate so much the ability that I have to become pregnant and have such an amazing support system on this journey with me. 

Now let's get to the horrible tale of despair...

Ok so in the video that I filmed on Sunday, that I have linked down below, the horrible tale of despair had not yet occurred so I was all happy dappy not knowing the evils that night would bring me. 

I have to preface this by letting you know that my husband and I have been watching all of the episodes of Star Gate SG1, (Will make sense.) I am dreaming that I am in a world that looks like the realm that Biblo and Frodo Baggins go into when they put on the Ring. The edges of everything pull away in soft gray and white moving like there was some kind of intense wind pulling the color off of everything. There was a bucket looking object that I, for some reason, had to put over my head while crouching in order to escape without getting sucked away to where ever this "pulling wind" was taking the edges of this world. I cross into a teleportation device that I am not familiar with and it takes me to my mother, as I get my footing and hold on to my stomach to feel my baby it collapses under my hands. She is gone. Some how she did not make the trip and she was just gone. I screamed and screamed "my baby, where is my baby", I screamed so intensely that I woke up screaming. My husband gets woken up as well and I am still not fully awake, just yelling and checking my stomach. Of course she was there, but the damage was done. Once I realized it had been a dream and that it was over I just sobbed into my husband chest and he reassured me that she was in there and that she was ok. I cried for two hours. I ended up giving myself hives and two swollen eyelids. I told my Mom and my Sister and they calmed me down pretty good. 

This is the first nightmare that I have ever had of my baby, which we nicknamed Embryan until she has a real name. It's just a name that we came up with when she was still just an embryo. Anyways, both of my sisters have children and all of our husbands are active duty service members, so I have had many nightmare about my nieces and my nephew, even of my Mom and my sister's husbands. I have had many night terrors when my nephew was born 11 years ago, so I am no stranger to having these types of anxiety driven dreams. But to have a dream like that of my own child, I was not prepared for in the slightest. I have cried dozens of times today. It just felt so real and it was so cruel, that it is very much burned into my mind. As I sit here now writing about it, I feel myself getting over it. 

This is my pregnancy update in video form if you would like to subscribe to my YouTube Channel to see all of my pregnancy vlogs as well as other great content that would really mean the world to me. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=of4cvfY6bG8

  Don't miss out on my other blogs!

My Coffee Blog where I talk about most everything:

https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=742145424423563805#overview/src=dashboard

My Newest Blog is my Woodworking Journey Blog!!

https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2474569448689020369#overview/src=dashboard

Thank you for reading,

-Alexandra

Pinterest Unpinned: Naked Palette For Hooded Eyes!

Pinterest Unpinned: Naked Palette For Hooded Eyes!!

This Photo was taken from Pinterest. I did not take this picture, nor do I own any rights to it. Just using it so show the pin that I unpinned!!

Now when I look at the picture I feel there is a lot of editing done in it, so keep that in mind as my photos are untouched and raw. But I have to say I think I did a pretty good job, she didn't give any direction when I clicked the link that this picture was pinned from. So I just guessed at where she placed things, she did give a list of which shadows she used but know how or where. So please let me know what you think in the comments section!!

The only products I used were the Naked Palette, Tarte's Black Gel Eyeliner, and my favorite mascara duo! Revitalash and Clump Crusher Extensions!!

If you want to see how I recreated this Pinterest Look Then Just Watch My Video!!

I'M Pregnant!!! I am 17 weeks and 2 days and the first 15 weeks nearly killed me!!

I haven't posted on here since I started getting sick back in the second week of December. I have been completely bed ridden and questioning my choices of parenthood. Well it is easy to second guess ones self once the decisions have already been made and there is no turning back. I am happy about this very well planned pregnancy, but I do not however, plan on sugar coated any of it. It has been rough for me and my husband for the last 4ish months as we settle into realizing that we did this to ourselves on purpose. I am unbelievably humbled by this pregnancy and what it has brought to my life and my marriage thus far.

My husband and I have enjoyed 5 years of it just being the two of us, granted he was deployed for over half of that time, but you get the point right. We had decided to try for a baby this past October and had what I believe to be either a chemical pregnancy or just a late period. Either way it didn't happen, we decided to count the days and figure out which two days would be my projected ovulation. We did the math and well my husband is really good at math so yes, we got pregnant the following month! 

I have dealt with throwing up, nausea, indigestion, car sickness, constipation, cramping, brown bleeding, round ligament pain, sciatic nerve pain, dry heaving, gagging, exhaustion, hair shedding, acne, breast soreness, frequent urination, and some minimal back pain. All of this for nearly four months straight with not one day of a break until my friend came into town  on the first of March! She brought with her some kind of magic that just made it all go away. I ended up having a couple more bad days, but basically for the last week and a half I have felt pretty much not pregnant. 

I have some pictures to share and a little video of the doppler I bought!

Also we have already gone for our gender ultrasound and they confirmed that 100% the baby is a GIRL!!! 

Of course you know I make videos so here are the videos I have posted so far, please do Subscribe and Like!

Thanks for reading,

-Alex