Twenty Ten: A Year of Planning

Happy New Year everyone!

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season - mine was amazingly blissful, thanks for asking. It's been hard to put an end to my winter wonderland shenanigans; but I've been feeling awfully bad for not connecting with all of you. So, as of this chilly January eve, I am officially back "on", back to the blog, back to the shop, and down to business.

I've got some exciting ideas swimming round in my head for Elan Vital Anthology: both the shop - and the blog. The past several days I've been sketching like mad for some great new products to make and list (I hope you all like butterflies!); I've also been thinking a lot about what direction to take with my craft, and how much emphasis to put on my Etsy shop. There's a lot up in the air, and it's time to put the pen to paper, crunch some numbers, and pencil in some dates!

While all I really want to do is spend some time with my newest endeavor: quilting; my first priority has got to be...bookkeeping. Ugh. For a decade prior to Marley's birth and subsequentially starting this little business, I was a full-charge bookkeeper, staff accountant, and tax preparer. This work wasn't completely awful: it paid well (have I mentioned I have a shopping problem?), was challenging in the same way puzzles are, and I was able to glean a lot about business from many successful and unsuccessful entrepreneurs. I knew when I became an entrepreneur that I would be doing the books, that I wanted to keep my finger on the pulse of the financials, that it would be one of the last tasks I'd feel comfortable outsourcing. And yet, a year and a half out of my day job - this is the LAST thing I want to do. I was completely awful about it in 2009 - in fact, I have a photo for you all to see the "files" I will be working from for the next few nights:

Fortunately, I treated myself to Quickbooks Pro 2010, being that this was the primary software I used for accounting over the past ten years, I just couldn't settle for a free online version. If you have a good accountant, then you might not need the bells and whistles either - but if you keep track of inventory, cash and credit, payables - you really owe it to yourself to take the plunge. If you don't want to or can't do your own bookkeeping, there is a great Etsy Seller, Holly at Accounting Spot, who could be a great help to you.

I can't wait to hurry up and finish this bookkeeping and get to the good stuff.