Everybody's Working for [Thanksgiving] Weekend...

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving and is enjoying the long weekend. I hope your Friday wasn't too Black.

As for us, we had our first Thanksgiving with just the two of us. We enjoyed some homemade cinnamon rolls and some great coffee as we watched the parade and then set the turkey a-roasting. There was much eating, as I imagine there was for everyone on Thanksgiving, and we will be enjoying leftovers for some time to come. (Gobbleritos, anyone?)

In a little stroke of brilliance, Kelly suggested that we check out Michaels' pre-Black Friday sale on Thursday night, and I bought them out of the frames I use for my 10x10 prints. We were in and out in like 20 minutes, probably saw less crowds than an average weekend, and saved about 75%.

And then... the orders started flowing in. We spent all of Friday on my business. I ran out of frames and trekked all over the valley looking for more. Kelly played customer service rep for me while I was out, and helped me pack orders. We put in a massive print order, which didn't arrive in time to ship. So, this morning we finally hit the post office and shipped... 14 packages! (I have five more that need to go out too).

Here's the part of it that looks really cool. I transferred my earnings out of my Paypal account, and the amount I made this week in sales is about what I see on each of my bi-weekly paychecks from my day job. That makes working from home seem very, very attainable. It was exciting, very much so.

Here's the Debbie Downer part... I spent $200 at the post office today. And about that much in printing and packing materials. And north of $100 on frames. Just as seeing all the money come in was hugely exciting, seeing a huge chunk of it go back out again was sort of deflating.

I know that I have a 30-40% profit margin on my items so over half that money was bound to disappear, but I got a little carried away seeing my Paypal account fill up. It's still hugely gratifying to see so much success flooding into my shop, and it does make working from home seem closer. I just also learned the number one rule of business... gotta spend money to make money. :)

In other news, I finally sold some of the Harry Potter pieces that took me SO. LONG. to finish, so I'm really excited about that.. and I finally sold one of my Pulp Fiction prints, too. That means the only item I have yet to sell is my Elf print, which I only posted yesterday.

Anyhow, I finally got to see what gets the retail world all riled up about Black Friday. Hopefully, Cyber Monday is good to me too.

Now, with a little over a week left until I really need to start thinking of myself as "in my thirties" (as opposed to just "thirty"), I'm pretty sure that week is going to fly by, along with the rest of 2011... Who's got big plans to finish out the last month of this decade?