Now that your here, why am I here? And who the heck am I? Why do I have a space her on the internet?
Well, if you want to check out the About Me section here, it will tell you a little bit of my story. This is focused on my life so far and why I have chosen EZ Angel Creations as my company name.
But who am I today? Currently, I would say I am (in particular order):
- a Mom to 3 amazing children and one angel (Z)
- a full-time employee providing the primary income for our family
- a Wife
- a Maker trying to make all the things for myself, kids, & some stuff for my shop here
- a Daughter
- a Friend
- an avid reader & TV watcher
- From there we go into many things (neighbor, niece, granddaughter, cousin, etc)
Sooooo, why the heck am I here typing right now? Well, I have long thought about having a blog and even tried once before. I had a pattern review post and a post about my disaster of a craft room being redone (still a work in progress years later!), and a recipe gone kind of wrong. Then the blog and my website kind of ended.
Last year I revisited my business desire and website. I wanted to include a blog although held myself back to find the perfect topic and have a longer term plan for how often I would post & what it would be about....none of that is done yet.
Recently, Rachael of Addison James Knits shared some stories about not holding yourself back anymore & just doing it! So I decided let’s do this darn (blog) thing! If you don’t know Addison James Knits, your missing out. Fellow makers, she is always working on some amazing pattern and makes these amazing luxury poms. Non-makers, she also has some gorgeous makes for sale as well as being down right funny & inspiring. You can find her on Etsy at Www.etsy.com/shop/addisonjamesknits or on Instagram at www.instagram.com/addisonjamesknits - check her out, I’m sure you won’t be sorry!
Now, why do I want to blog? Well, I have had some really good & really bad life experiences. Overall, I’m very much an introvert & talking about myself is sooooo scary, although through practice I’m getting better about it. During some of my down times, it has helped to hear or read from others about similar experiences. I’m hoping with my blog to share some crafty adventures, maybe some family life adventures, and be open and honest on who I am and my current headspace, so maybe if someone else is in a similar spot it might help to know they aren’t alone.
Which brings me to today. Where am I currently at?
Crafty business wise: I’ve hit a year of restarting this dream of mine and haven’t gotten very far. I have an LLC, an online shop, know how to do sales tax stuff (I hope), have an Instagram....and huge plans. I’ve also learned & am working on a bit of a change to my original plan. Here’s what I’ve learned about myself this past year & some changes I’m making around a big realization:
- I thought custom order hats & such were the way to go. I planned to make 1 of everything & list a ton of things with all these custom options for available sizes & to let you tell me what colors.
- I have too much anxiety over being perfect to handle custom orders as I want to ensure color of yarn is so perfect to expectation.
- I tend to highly schedule my time out with deadlines for pattern tests and gifts and if I had gotten a custom order it would through everything off since family & full-time job only allow so much time.
When I saw so many makers shops having listings as custom made, I thought I had to do this & so was my plan.
Moving forward, I may consider taking 1 custom order at a time and not through a listing. I plan to set up a form to request something custom, at which point I would access current schedule availability and give a cost/timeline quote. We can then decide together if it is still wanted or not.
My main shop focus will be ready to ship items. These will be knit wear, crochet wear, candles, t-shirts, embroidered things, cups, and whatever else I feel like (really want to include soaps, but I need to spend some serious computer time writing up processes for that first so always becomes a back burner item.
I’ve also spent quite some time worried about my Instagram feed. It’s not pretty enough, I don’t spend enough time placing things for photos, I don’t have good lighting, I need more back drop stuff, & on & on & on. I’m done with that, I am who I am & you will see it in my feed. It will be a mix of the crafty & my life. Some may look great & be well lit & planned shots, others will be a crazy last minute photo I will still probably worry is not good enough - but it will all be me, as I am, take it or leave it. I have limited time & I don’t have time enough any more to agonize over every post, life moves past & has to be enjoyed in between the Instagram feed!
Where am I at mentally/emotionally right now: let me tell you, June has been rough - is it over yet??? Can’t be over soon enough.
At the start of this week, I had in my head the start of a post for instagram around how 2019 was my year. I was going to do all the things & had started already as I had put my first knit and my first crochet patterns out into the world and even died my hair purple! It was looking like my year to focus more on being active and taking time for self-love.
Then some family stuff came up, my laptop hard drive crashed (I am so in denial right now about all the photos & data we might loose, hoping for a computer miracle from my uncle), along with forgetting the anxiety which got pretty close to a full on panic attack related to traveling home from business (had forgotten about it entirely when on a high of what I had done!).
The worst though, is how much I now know my friend & neighbor is hurting. Let me take a moment to tell you about my neighbors - they are amazing.
We moved into our house a few months after getting married, in April 2008. Most of the neighborhood has stayed the same families with a few new additions. They have been with us through some amazing highs of life, like each of our kids joining the family. And I don’t know how we would have gotten through our worst low without them. When my daughter Zoie passed, our neighbors got together and made sure we ate. Garry & I were barely thinking of taking care of ourselves or the energy needed to do things like cook. Our neighbors brought us cooked meals and prayers and love and it meant the world to us. I have never before lived somewhere where everyone was so connected and wonderful. Summers are the best, because we live almost at the corner of where two block meet and both blocks come alive in summer. All of the kids are out and playing and dogs are walked, and people are walking without dogs too. And everyone says hi.
Yesterday we heard the teenage son of one of our neighbors passed away. Having lost my own daughter doesn’t make finding the right words for someone else’s pain any easier. I want to do something to help ease their pain, but there is nothing which will.
I think it is natural as a human to look to make comparisons and at one point my brain went down the path of does the age a child is lost make any difference. Is it any easier to lose a child before they are born or a grown child? Bottom line is pain is pain. Love is love. Words cannot accurately describe the pain of loosing a child no matter how old they were or how long you were able to hold them for. And it is a life long pain, there will always be a missing piece where once was someone you loved.
I’m making my first blog post, part in being inspired to take action and part because I don’t know what else to do with myself right now. So a request to anyone who has made it this far in reading (thank you!), if you have kids, give them some extra hugs. If you don’t have kids, give those who are in your life some extra hugs. And spend some good thoughts &/or prayers on families going though grief.
I’m doing some processing myself right now, so I can’t say when I’ll be posting next, thank you for the read though and if you ever want to reach out, I’m best reached through Instagram as @ezangelcreations
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