Handmade Family: Past, Present and Future. Part 3.

Hi all! Mr Handmade here with Part 3 of Handmade Family's Past, Present and Future. Amy and I have been talking lately about our goals for the coming year. It's important to pay attention to what we're doing now of course, but having something to look forward to and something to work towards is how we will grow. Both as partners and as a business and family.
One of the big goals is to get our website, www.handmadefamily.com in working order. Late last year, we started making headway on this front. Deciding what kind of content we were after, and what features we would like to include. The things that ended up being most important were to have an integrated blog, an online storefront, and galleries to show our work. It still needs a lot of work. Mainly, I need to take a ton of pictures and get the galleries set up...speaking of pictures, that leads me to my second goal. Keeping this blog updated with content regularly.

I think I promise myself this every year, but this year I swear it's going to stick! My plan is about trying to keep it simpler and to commit to certain concepts. The first thing is that I am officially letting go of my other blogs, "Penny Candy and Shady Characters", and "Take Care and Be Good". I'm consolidating them into this one so that I won't fall back into the "I feel bad about not updating there, so I won't update here either" trap. Second, on Mondays I will update with a weekly photo roundup of 5 photos from the previous week. I am committing to this, but not to writing anything about the photos. :) On Fridays I will post artwork, either something that I drew during the week or something the kids did. I also plan on reviving the Daily Life Comic Diary. I miss doing it, so will add it to the Friday posts as I can. These two posts will be constant, and both Amy and I will post real articles about projects, events, the community and the handmade lifestyle as we can...hopefully pretty regularly :)

Amy's major goals are to get our inventory tracking under control and to organize what items we have where. Selling in three shops, plus our website, etsy and shows has made keeping track of inventory kind of tricky, but she's been logging everything and it has already become soooo much easier to find where things are, and to know what needs to be made. It's also really helping us to see what our big sellers are. That'll really help us to get ahead of things for the holidays this year.
Finally, we are doing more shows this year. I'm already getting an ear full about the number of shows I have us booked for. We're going to be busy! Related to this is my goal of having new products to offer at shows every quarter. This is probably the most unrealistic of them, because of juggling freelance work and family, not to mention working the shop and shows. We have several ideas for things I'd like to make, and put more inspiration on my pinterest board every day, so we'll see how it goes.

It doesn't look like a whole lot as I look up and scroll through this post, but I have a feeling that I've committed my self to a lot of changes and a lot of work. You know what though? I'm looking forward to it, and that's one of the greatest things about being in this business. I know it's the end of March, but we'd still love to hear some of your goals for the upcoming year! Let us know in the comments, and as always thanks for stopping by!

Until next time, take care and be good.
Your friend,
Jeffrey