While everyone was worried about the stock market ending up lower – my investment banker outperformed others and made me some money. When the index when up 0.14% I was quite sure they would go down again – but nope, my investment banker told me to keep it for a little longer last Tuesday. So trading ending about 0.32% higher, so for the first time in a long time – I made some money. So I’m sending him instead of a thank you note – I ordered some cookie bouquets for the entire department = after all, they do deserve something special and I don’t want to give them something ordinary right? The Thanks a buzzillian cookie bouquet definitely fits the bill.
Yes! It’s time to get new signage for the store. When we moved to the new location 4 years ago – we didn’t do up a new one – in fact, we had used an old sign and just asked the sign company to paste in our logo onto the old sign. By the way, the old sign wasn’t even ours to begin with. We will keep the logo of course, but instead of waiting for the sign store to design for us – I rather do the design myself – since I do have the Wacom Bamboo Capture right? gotta make use of it sooner or later – so why not now. Stay tuned for a new signage.
PS : For those who are wondering why we didn’t do it earlier – it was because we were so busy with making money – and taking care of the kid – so no extra time to do this.
13 years in business and not much has changed in town – the infrastructure – the look of the town and almost everything seems the same. Sure, the kids are having a new high school, they also put some fountain at Lake Milo, Christmas lights in Frost parks during Christmas, a new car dealer coming into town and some big boys along the shopping strip. But on the whole, I don’t really see any changes – plus we lost the ferry, the airport look really non-function able and a lot of small business closed its door and a lot more residents left town in search of work.
Politics we are not into, the town had asked why don’t the people who are so concerned do something but we are not paid to take care of the town. We worked 12 hours a day both at the store and online, plus raising a kid – and most people who are working are doing the same thing – they don’t have spare time for politics. Are we not paying taxes, so that in return we have a better living – a better place to raise our kids?
Don’t get me wrong, we are not in anyway doing bad in business nor personally but when I stand on Main Street – on a cold winter day – like today – it’s pretty grey and grim looking for a lot of people. As for us, we better keep our mouth shut and truck on and work really hard.
Everyone must love the boxing day sale – but you would love it more if you could save more with the boxing day sale and if you looked closely at any online store as I’ve found. Nice to buy things online that is already on discount – yet get an extra discount with the likes of flower coupon codes – pretty awesome right? We do have a boxing day sale today – and there were quite a number of customers coming in and I think only the independent store like ours are the ones who are opened for business – because we are the only hardworking ones that depends on every penny that comes in. But that doesn’t meant that we want all the money to ourselves – we just want to make enough money to pay our bills, have money for food and save some for the kid’s college fund. Not too much to ask for if you ask me right? So come on in for a fabulous savings at our store.
For the last one year – the entire town has been in debate – some more actively than others and some care more than others – some couldn’t care less but some pretend to care for their own gain. *shrug* but I can’t really blame them can I? Most people would say – to each his own – we take care of our own first. Is that your assumption too? Is that your stand too?
I think the boss must think I’m mad sometimes – for being so passionate about what’s going on in this town – after all – truthfully I’m really not from here. So why you asked am I sometimes so pissed off? especially when we are doing a lot better than when we had the ferry and tourists. Some may think that I’m crazy and spending too much time in trying to make things better but I’m thinking not for myself only but for the rest of the people in town and the kids and the future of this town. What has this town gotta offer the younger generation?
Christmas is tomorrow – and as I reflect on the many hours I spend reading up the forum and FB pages – I think next year – I’m going to give it a rest and concentrate on what matters most first. My kid and the store – and the rest is going to have to wait till I’m free. So for now – debate or not – the above cartoon tells you how I feel about the situation in this town but not at our business or life. We are doing pretty well – despite everything. I think the town had ignore the signs for far too long – so this is where we ended up.
The government or rather the provincial government here never fails to amaze me – while I know that the local hotel here needs money – so do all of us here – the small businesses. If the government is giving $1 million to the hotel – surely they can spare some change to the small business owners – like the golf store that is closing down and a few others as well. We are all struggling to stay afloat – so why is the hotel the only one getting any money? I guess since the hotels have other hotels in the province – the government need to keep their own boys happy right? don’t worry about the small flies around – they can die and rot for all the government care.
I don’t know about other working moms – but I know how hard it is for me to help out at the store – do my own work yet gotta go home and cook and clean the house. Some people I know don’t really care what they feed their kids nor if their home is clean but I on the other hand being brought up different – is quite OCD about cleanliness. When in Asia – it’s easy to hire a maid from Philippines to help you clean and cook while you are out working but in the West – they don’t practice having a maid. I wished we had residential maid service durham nc here – so that I can get some help with cleaning my home – that way I don’t have to do it on the weekends when I actually want to spend time with my kid and spouse. Plus truth be told, I don’t really think I clean so well either – so I do envy those who can get maid service at a reasonable price and who does a great job.
I’ve tried hiring people to clean my house – but they either don’t clean well – or need specific instructions to what I need them to clean. I don’t have good luck with part time cleaners because they are not trained – and they don’t even come with their own cleaning products. Why I won’t hire a non-professional anymore is because the last one I hired used one cloth to clean just about everywhere in the house, from the kitchen to my dining table and the other rooms of the house. And no that cannot be hygienic, so I won’t hire anyone who don’t have a reference have is qualified to clean my home. When you pay someone to clean your home, you want to make sure they really clean it – and not leave halfway.
Movies have been picking up steadily ever since Movie Gallery closed shop – but to say that we are making thousands every week on movie rentals alone – then you are wrong. For those who wants to open their own movie rental store now – should re-consider for we too found out that a lot of people are downloading their movies and steadily becoming a pirate. So rental may be steady – but to say that we are making lots of money – then you might be in for a shock. For being in rentals for 11 years – we still have people come in and tell us that they didn’t know we rent movies – muahahah!!!
Yes, we went out to pick up more Christmas decor for the store this week – because they are now all on sale – at about 40% discount at the mall. I can’t wait to get some more Christmas stuff for both the store and home. This year – we’ve spent more on decor than other years, I think it’s because we are debt free – from credit cards and everything else – so I can spend money on things that I like to pretty up the store. I loved Christmas and have always wanted the store to look nice and Christmasy – this year – I have to say we are the happiest – with no employees to worry about – and a great help from Gary – who comes in to relieve us when we need to go home for supper. We really should have done this a long time ago.
So we broke down and bought 2 infrared heater at the store – just to see if it would help with the oil bill since oil has gone up again. But after using it for a few days now – it doesn’t seems to work as good as we would like it too. The store is still pretty cold after turning it on for a few hours – and it’s still running to bring the temperature up in the store. But having said that we have quite a long store – so that might be why it’s not heating up as well. Perhaps, it’s only me – we shall see – in a few more days.
It’s that time of the year again – our oil man just came with his big tanker and industrial rubber hose to fill up our oil tank – before the cold hits us bad. I like to be prepared because we’ve had a number of very cold days already, in fact this year to save cost on heat bill – we are planning to get 2 infrared portable heater for the store. We’ve heard good thing about the heater and even though we love our oil man with his rubber hose – we love our money more. Plus, who doesn’t love some savings right in this economy – and no ferry coming our way next year. But the kid loves to watch our oil man fill up the oil tank because he explains to her all about how everything works – from the hose he is using till how his tank works.
While we won’t have the ferry back next year in town – another store has opened in town and their US office had just called today to ask if we would like to do some work for them. Now that’s really good news because we had wanted to do something like that with the other existing company in town – but they had been such slackers and never took our offer.
I’m just glad that we had the foresight to do anything that will make money in this town – had we stuck ourselves to do only one thing – we wouldn’t have survived for 12 years. I’m happy that we are beginning to see a lot of new customers coming in and realizing that we do so many things. But like usual – people still feel that we should be able to match the big chain store and even when we explained to them – they still go to the big chain stores for certain stuff. But I cannot complain much – despite all the things that is happening in this town – we are still holding up pretty well.
We want to carry the Wacom Bamboo Capture at our store but before we do – we have to try out the gadget first and see how we can sell it right? so yes! we went ahead and bought the Bamboo Capture and will be carrying them at our store. There are lots of great artists in town apparently – or college student using it in this town.
The store’s Christmas decor is up ! and early too ! thanks to Gary – who did everything – but of course, this year we also have a Christmas tree from our home – and so it’s really a lot easier to decorate that small window. But all in all – it’s a good beginning – because I didn’t have to do it – muahahha!!
I definitely like the candy cane i bought at the craft show – next year I plan to buy a lot more.
Now that we have Gary who is reliable to help us with the store – we can go for a cheap vacation anytime we want – and we’ve found some really great prices on vacation home we can rent for the long weekend if we plan to go somewhere warmer. I love that we now can look for vacation rentals by owner because they are definitely a great place to stay when you are traveling with kids and older folks like your in-laws.
Sometime soon – we are heading back to Asia for a visit – and guess what we are going to do with our home – we are also going to rent out our home – to vacationers – like ourselves while we are away – for 3 months long. What better way than to make money with our home – while we travel Asia – that certainly will cut our cost down when we are on vacation – that way we don’t have to worry about extra accommodation cost. It’s like breaking even – smart eh!
Halloween this year – sees the store decorated with big items only. We forgo the smaller items – and concentrated on the bigger items. This year also see the store in a better place and after 12 years in business – I have to say that I’m truly happy for the spouse and myself. Not only do we have a good volunteer at the store – that we can count on and honest – for the very first time – he is also very reliable and flexible with his time. He also does not give us any personal grievance and works really hard for absolutely nothing. I’m happy for the store and myself – no more stress.
We’ve watched many kids grow up at our store – for the last 12 years being in business and when we first met them – they always tell their parents what a cool store we have. Most of them would say they want to work here at the store when they grow up – they are just so cute. We have lot of little boys come thru’ our store more than girls because we have more toys for boys than girls I guess – and you can imagine how many of them we’ve left an impression on. For when they come home from college and drop in to say hello – they always remind us of how we used to threaten them to be good or else they can’t get any games at our store. This year for Christmas – we are looking at Personal Creations boys gifts for all these little loyal customers of ours – who’ve made our store a success – because without them – we wouldn’t be here. At the moment, we have a few boys who comes into our store on a daily basis – so we want to reward them with something special that they can carry with them everyday to school and show off to their friends that they got this little duffel bag from our store – with their name on it. We have a few choices that we can choose from – from t-shirts to pencil cases – and they are at reasonable prices – plus I can also get some of these personalize gift for my friend’s kids as well – while I am at it. So yes! this year – we have some surprises for our loyal lil’ customers.
These shopping bags were sent by the supplier for Magic the Gathering – I loved it – because it would give those who are fans of Magic the Gathering something to carry their Magic cards in. I don’t think the supplier sends it to all stores – only for those who are on core level – so there are some good to being a Core level store for Magic The Gathering. For those who wants one of these bags – don’t forget to come buy some Magic cards.
We started dressing up the store for Halloween – even though we haven’t dressed up the store during Halloween last year. But I guess this year is different – because things at the store and our personal life is just going so well and smooth. So we have taken time to go shop for some Halloween decor for the store. Say hello to my new sitting partner at the store – there he sits quietly as I type away and yak with the customers. I haven’t given it a name yet – you have any ideas?
