Getting Your Business Ready for Christmas

Christmas is just around the corner. It’s time to make sure your business is ready for the busy season. There are a few things that should be taken care of if you have an online business with products that you are selling. This is the season that can attract potentially more purchasers than ever before. It’s good to increase your inventory and include a broader variety of designs that appeal to a wide range of consumers. Keep your store clean and uncluttered to make an online shopping experience easy and enjoyable. Start early, just like the brick and mortar stores you have to have a full store now, as people will start there shopping early. You don’t want to miss out because you waited too long to introduce your Christmas items. Encourage bulk sales, this can save the purchaser money too! If emailing offers to friends and acquaintances don’t over do it, nobody likes to be constantly getting mail from the same company. (spam, is not nice) Keep your emails concise and with a clear call to action. Christmas is a busy time of year for most people but can definitely be enjoyable and profitable for all.

Here are some fun designs I’ve been busy adding to my store. Designs by Shell

Checklist for Holiday Decorating

Well if you head to a mall or big box store you’ll already see Christmas decorations spread throughout. Even though it seems a little early to talk about decorating it’s a good time to take stock of what you already have and decide if you need to add anything to freshen up your existing decorations. Maybe you want to change or add a new color theme or add some new elements to your decor. Here’s a little video clip that might give you some simple but elegant ideas to inspire you in your holiday decorating.  Elegant Decorating for Christmas. Here is another great page with Easy Decorating Ideas!

1) Take stock of what you have. Recycle anything you don’t want or won’t be using.

2) Plan… Make a list of decor ideas if you plan to add something new, (like a wreath or swag) collect your supplies.

3) Check all light strings, buy replacement bulbs or new strings

4)  Don’t try to do it all in one day, set aside one day for the interior, one for the exterior and maybe another for decorating the Christmas tree.

5) Watch for post-holiday sales and or coupons to save money on decor items you might need.

Zazzle has recently given us a huge range of new products to design so you guessed it I’ve been busy adding new creations to many items that would make fun holiday gifts. Here’s a sampling…

Writers Workshop

This weekend has been both challenging and relaxing.  I am at a Writers Retreat/Workshop in Spencer, IN  staying at the Canyon Inn in McCormick State Park.  It's just beautiful here with all the large trees.  Most of the leaves have fallen. The silence of the woods speaks louder than thunder...

An added bonus to this beauty is all the learning and work I have been doing on the craft of writing.  I have much to learn.  I think I am drawn to writing because I am naturally a creative person, but also because I have trouble expressing myself.  With writing you can work the problem until it is right. 

 Although I don't have any people pictures at this point, I promise you I have been able to talk with my friends from Evansville.  And, it has also been great to make new friends! 

Annabelle enjoyed looking out the window today.  It was raining and both of us needed to go for a walk...  The closest we came to it, however, was looking out the window.  This is what Annabelle saw:

I love the color on our neighbor's cypress trees!

This is the Mimosa that has those beautiful pink flowers in the spring and early part of the summer.  It isn't as bright right now, but the fern-like leaves and pods make it interesting to look at.  I'm thinking we are going to have to rake those leaves into a huge pile just for Annabelle.  We'll wait until it stops raining first, though.

                                                  A Tiger Lily from my parents garden.
If this flower could speak, what would it say?  Does it appreciate the lake view from where it stands?  Does it know how beautiful it is?  Does it feel vulnerable or Tiger Fierce? 

Halloween On My Street

The Body Farm (I must share again being it's Halloween)

Body Farm


My second manuscript turned out to be a middle grade novel called Murder on Sprinkle Lake. When I first started writing this, I thought it was going to be a YA novel and had an older audience in mind. In that story there is a murder; a character is hit on the head with a heavy object. I wanted to know what the result of the hit would be like as far as blood and stuff goes. I also had questions about the condition the body would be in if found several hours later. My questions took me to the University of Tennessee where my cousin works in the Forensic Anthropology Dpt. She gave me a very interesting tour (including a room filled with boxes of skeletons all neatly organized). She told me that she could tell an awful lot just by looking at the bones. She used to assist in autopsies and explained about that. Basically, I found out that the character in my story would have been a bloody mess. When the tour inside the college was over, she took us (my husband and two of my adult children were with me) to the Body Farm. Yup the very Body Farm Patricia Cornwell went to when she was writing her book, Body Farm. If you haven't read it, you should. I happen to like her writing in general--keeps you on the edge of your seat. Anyway, the Body Farm is as creepy as it sounds. Interesting though. My cousin is doing research on what sorts of animals munch on the bodies. She wasn't the only one doing research, the FBI had a garbage can with a body in it. They were studying the decomposition rate with the lid closed being they find a lot of bodies in garbage cans I guess. Most of the bodies were pretty decomposed. I guess a gossip magazine got in there once and took pics of the bodies and put them on the internet. Nearly closed the place down. So--now the bodies are covered until they are pretty far along in decomposition. In the end I didn't use much of what I learned that day. It is tucked away in my head, however, and may come out in another story. Maybe the one I'm writing now, who knows? My current writing is for a YA audience. An agent at a conference in Ohio told me that if my protagonist is less that twelve years of age, it is a middle grade novel. This time my protagonist is sixteen.

Posted by Lola at 1:31 PM 0 comments

Saturday, August 29, 2009