Love Others Box

Wow!  Thank you guys so much for your response to my announcement last week.  I’m truly grateful and blown away. And I’m so excited to be back today to tell you more about it.

For quite some time now, running Faithfully Made has been a hassle.  Most of you know that I also work full time at a day job, and coming home and working for a few hours more every night can be exhausting.  When I went to Making Things Happen last spring, I thought I was going to walk away feeling like Faithfully Made was exactly what I needed to be doing. And I thought that I would know all of a sudden HOW to make it happen.  Neither of those things happen.  I was more confused when I left MTH than when I arrived. 

This past fall, things that people were saying at MTH started to make a lot more sense.  Like the question of “What fires you up??”  At the conference, I had a hard time answering that.  And it made me feel inadequate.  I couldn’t think of anything about Faithfully Made that really excited my heart.  And I couldn’t find a “why” or a purpose for running this business.  Besides my desire to be a work at home mom, running Faithfully Made did nothing for my heart.  But the past few months, Love Others Box has been on my heart.  And I would be thinking about it while driving home from work and my heart would be overflowing with joy. 

That’s when I realized that what fires me up about life is making other people happy.

Whatever it may be.  Smiling at them in the grocery store line. Holding umbrellas when it is raining outside.  Sending them fun mail so they know you are thinking about them.  That is the stuff makes my heart happy.  And that is what I want to spend my life doing.  Loving other people and helping others love people well. 

And that is exactly what Love Others Box is about.  Sending love to another’s mailbox.  Letting them know that you are thinking about them.  In the cutest possible way, of course.

We all love to receive snail mail.  Well, maybe not the bills, but the fun snail mail, like notecards from friends and a thinking of you package.  But sometimes sending that thoughtful gift to your closest friend can be a lot of work. You have to go to the store to purchase the gift, get packaging supplies, and then go to the post office to mail it out.  Often times, that gift never gets sent because it can be to much effort overall. That is where I want to help!

With Love Others Box, all you have to do is pick the gift you like, and I'll send it and do all the work for you!  And of course, you can treat yourself with a gift too if you'd like!  We all deserve a little something special for ourselves too sometimes!  

So, please join me on May 27th to see the goodies that will be in these boxes!  And to order one for your bestest girlfriend (or yourself!).

Abundance of Knowledge

The internet is an amazing thing.  These days, we have an abundance of knowledge right at our fingertips.  Anytime you want to know something, all you have to do is google it and the answer is there within a few seconds.  I’m not sure we fully understand how amazing that is.

Being a small business owner, in the process of starting a new business, this overload of information has been so helpful. There are hundreds of articles about launching a business, how to use Instagram to its fullest potential, how to brand and build a website. I mean, type any of those into Pinterest and you will be overwhelmed with the response. 

And this is great.  Any questions I have can be easily answered with Google or Pinterest, and I can learn from the best.  Reading articles from people that have been there before me is a good way to not make the same mistakes and do things differently.

But there is this huge downfall as well.  It makes me NOT do the actual work.  I keep thinking that I have more to learn.  All I do is read articles, or browse other peoples Pinterest and Instagram pages.  I want all the information before I branch out and do something myself.  And that doesn’t work.  I have to make the mistakes myself, and then learn from them. I have to try and fail, so that I know how to make my business better.  It’s so much easier to plan to do something, and learn how to do something, than it is to actually DO it.

So on that note, I’d like to announce that my new business, Love Others Box, will be launching on May 27^th.  (Man, even typing that out was super scary!)  I want to be able to help you show people your thinking of them.  This business fits perfectly with my heart.  I’ll be back on Monday to give you more details and I am so excited to share this little piece of my heart with you.

PS: I hope you enjoyed some photos from Notre Dame!  It was so beautiful to finally see this cathedral from the Disney movie I've seen so many times!

Be BRAVE!

Sometimes I think this blog will forever plague me.  I think that I will never quite figure out how to blog regularly, or how to know exactly what would be good content for this little space of mine. So instead of writing something that isn’t good, I just don’t write at all.  And I’m a big fan of “Progress over Perfection”.  If you are struggling with something, that is the first thing I will tell you.  Yet for this instance, progress is never made because I feel like my writing isn’t good enough to be read.

At the beginning of the year, I decided to choose a word of the year.  I prayed over it and thought about what would be an appropriate word to describe what I was hoping for this year.  While singing in church one Sunday morning, I realized my word is BRAVE!  I want to be brave in all my actions.  Sending an email to someone I’d like to collaborate with, going to a bible study with no one that I know, getting an actual business license.   These things scare me to death.  And somehow, remembering my word has given me the courage to get it all started.

But I haven’t blogged about it.  I haven't done the thing that takes the most courage, and told the world what my word for 2015 will be. 

So here it this: THIS YEAR I AM GOING TO BE BRAVE!

What if I fail??  What if I’m not always brave in everything??  -- That will be ok. At least I had the courage to try something big and scary.  Something that sets my heart on fire and gets me excited about life. And now I’m taking the courage to tell the world about it. And I'm going to continue to give myself a LOT of grace and keep blogging.  Even if it is only once every 2 months. 

If you are struggling with not getting something done, I do suggest you always remember “Progress over Perfection”.  Sometimes it helps to get something out there, so you can improve it and move forward.  Don’t let the fear stop you.  Whatever it is you want to do in life, remember to be brave!  And if you ever need some encouragement, feel free to send me an email!  I’d love to send you something back with lots of exclamation points and excitement!

Monogrammed Clutches are HERE!!!

I am so excited about this!  It has been in the works for a while now, but these last few weeks I've been working hard to make this happen.  Monogrammed Fold Over Clutches are now available in the Etsy shop.

As a Thank You, blog readers will get 20% off all orders for the next week, with the discount code MADE20.  I hope you guys love them as much as I do!!

And that adorable "Today I am Thankful" journal is available at this Etsy site.  I really enjoy mine!

#socialmediafreeweekend

Y’all.  March flew by.  I read a few blogs regularly and used to always wonder why they didn’t blog more often.  I thought, “It can’t really take that long.  They should post every few days.”  How wrong I was!  This blogging thing is way more difficult than I ever imagined. 

March was a crazy month for me.  My family went through some tough times and I appreciate all the prayers everyone sent up.  I didn’t complete many of my goals I set and I’m realizing that’s ok.  I just attended the Making Things Happen Conference and found that I need to focus more on what matters most.  I’ll post more later about the conference, once I’ve soaked up all the information that was given out, but it was a great two days and I’m so glad I went.

This weekend I’m applying one small lesson and I’m going to do social media free weekends.  I tried this a couple of times last year and loved it.  But then I got back into the habit of spending more time on Instagram than with Phil.  So this weekend, I’m actually going to delete the apps from my phone to make this easier! (But I’m sure deleting them tonight will be tough)  If you would like to join me and many other MTH alumni in not using social media this weekend, just hashtag #socialmediafreeweekend and leave a comment below.  I'd love for you to join me!  

And I’ll do a weekend recap here on Monday to share all my big plans this weekend and have my April goals ready.  They will be a week late, as usual, and that’s ok too!  

So, y’all go out and have a wonderful weekend.  And don’t forget to focus on what matters most!

-Faith

March Goals

Y'all, February was not as intentional and goal oriented as I would have liked.  I didn’t fill out my Powersheets for last month and I could definitely tell.  Earlier this week, I completed the sheets for March and have my tending list sitting on my kitchen counter.  It is a daily reminder of all my goals so I can’t let them slide under the rug!

March is also time for the Making Things Happen Conference.  I am SOOOO excited to be attending with Elaina.  This conference is meant to fire you up and get you excited about the road ahead, while teaching you about goal planning and making the most of your time.  Then day 2 is all about branding your business!  Can’t wait to meet all the lovely ladies and soak up a ton of information.

Here are my March Goals:

Add three new postings to Etsy*

Get the Christmas stuff out of the Craft Room*

Read Numbers* and Deuteronomy

Spend time with Papaw

Write a blog post once a week

Clean out my closet and give clothes away

Find out more information about Bible Studies at church
Have FUN at MTH2014

*did not complete in February

I'd love to hear all about your March goals.  Feel free to leave a few in the comments and we can keep each other accountable!