Summer has arrived, and planning interesting activities has begun.

My children decided to stay home with me again this summer, so that means planning activities and making sure the boredom doesn’t kill us all.  We have already went to the Adirondack Museum, and to the beach a few times, but honestly that alone will not tide us over.  We are heading out on a 4 day camping trip starting Thursday.  We have made it a routine to check the newspaper for upcoming events so we won’t miss out on some wonderful opportunities.

Filling our days with interesting things can be burdensome but if you get the kids involved it will lighten the load.  The kids want to live at the beach, but I cannot tolerate the crowds or the hot sun (I am just recovering from a bad sun burn….  LOL!).  A compromise was in order, we will go to the beach on the nice days, but it will need to be after 3pm so we can avoid the crowds and the bad UV ray times.

I will be hunting online for new and fun activities for the kids to do, I cannot wait to get started.  If you have a game plan, and keep a routine in which the kids help with the housework, the planning, and the packing for these events, it not only teaches your children great needed skills, it gives them the freedom to have a say in what is their “vacation”. 

I am grateful for the time I have with them and am very blessed to be home to spend time with them (plus they chose to stay here with me for the summer, which is awesome as well).  All in all, when I start to feel overwhelmed by the whole situation I can stop and realize that I wouldn’t trade this position I am in for anything in this world.  Remembering last summer and how much fun we all had will keep me (hopefully) from going out of my mind.  I know that in my past posts, I have sounded well organized a collected, but I lose my grip on sanity more than I prefer to let on.  I am far from perfect, but the awesome thing is I don’t choose to be perfect so its really hard to fail with that attitude.

I hope everyone enjoys their summer!  Check back to find more ideas to keep your kids busy this summer.

Planning a Budget for Your Business Idea

With all of the research that I was doing I found out that I needed 4 types of things.

I needed:

1. Safety Supplies
2. Equipment
3. Materials
4. Storage

I created a list of everything the books told me that I needed.  Then I went and broke that list down to see what I already had and could use instead of what was on the list, or I could ask around for.  Then I made the list of what I needed, which by that time wasn’t as overwhelming as the first list I made, Whew.   

I didn’t need to make a lot of purchases right away, which was a relief.  I had to get the goggles, gloves and mask, there was no compromising on safety.  Since you cannot use your equipment again for cooking once you have used it with lye, I gave up my stick blender, my old crockpot and my candy thermometer, to the cause. 

For the materials  my husband and I checked out the local Wal-Mart to see what oils would be easily available to us, and I took note of them and created my recipes with them in soapcalc.  This gave me an idea of how much I would need.  I will go into this bit of planning in my next post on this subject.

The last thing that we needed to buy was storage to contain all of these items that were strictly for soap making. We bought these a week later after I realized what needed to be contained. If you buy everything the immediately you might not know exactly how you want to organize everything. I am glad I waited, because I was able to really know exactly where and how I wanted to store everything.

My husband and I discussed how much we could spend, we decided on a set amount per pay check.  This could be different for you, you might decide to have a set amount per month, or whatever.  A set amount during a specific amount of time is a sure fire way to not cut into your normal monthly budget and hurt yourself in the process. 

This is important, don’t charge your credit card or take out a loan for this.  It can be done a little at a time.  We started with only $40.00, it can be done.  Plus this makes you slow down and be very careful with the materials that you do use when you start out.  It makes your really respect your outcome more, because you can’t just go out and buy more if you mess up (well you know you physically could, but not if you want to cut into your budget).

If you cannot be disciplined and respect a budget then how do you really think you will be able to manage a business and all of the financial attributes that go along with it?  This is a key lesson here.  Do not put yourself in debt for something that you aren’t even sure you will like doing or are sure you can make into a sustainable income.  It is going to take time, it won’t happen over night, plus you don’t want it to happen overnight, you need to learn as you go.

I hope that you are able plan a budget to fulfill your dreams.  With a bit of planning a small amount can really add up to a big difference in you life.  Good luck on your path, I hope everything turns out wonderful for you.