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Monday, November 11, 2019

Baseball outfit!

This super cute outfit was not only fun to make but I love the fabric!!!

A client of ours who is a regular ordered outfits from online, only 1/2 of what she ordered arrived. She sent me photos of what she had ordered, of course I couldn't get exact fabric or do it exact because I didn't make the outfit in the photo.

I was able to find super cute fabric and make the outfit as close as possible!!!


Normally if I used a pattern for my outfit I would post it but with this one I had to create my own patterns as the material isn't 2 way or 4 way stretch like most of the patterns I could find required.

The hats took trial and error about 3 times to get them the right size and the pants were easier because they are just  like the shorts I make but only longer lol.




Friday, November 8, 2019

Recipe: Cheeseburger Rounds


With the decline of my ability to even function properly until a few days ago, my cooking went out the window. I have wanted to try this recipe since the day I seen it on facebook. Its a video that came across my facebook news feed. My only issue was I had to keep pausing it to make sure I had the ingredients right so I am going to break it down for you but you should watch the video too.





Recipe:

1lbs hamburger
1tbs worecestershire sauce
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup onion
Shredded cheese
3 slices of bacon
1 cans of biscuit dough (I used Pillsbury, yes those weird hard like squares are supposed to be in I checked!)
Melt butter
Pickles (sliced from the round end)
Ketchup
Mustard

Directions:

1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees

2)  Cook bacon

3)  Cook hamburger in bacon grease,
    ---Add onion, salt, pepper, worecestershire sauce

4)  Separate your dough and squish it flat
    ---add a bit of bacon, hamburger mixture, cheese, pickle
    ---add a small amount of mustard and ketchup (too much will make it hard to close up)

5)  Close up bun and kind of roll it to make it round. Brush on butter



6)  Line baking sheet with parchment paper

7) Bake for 20 mins. Flip at 10 mins or they will burn!!!



These were good, next time I am going to do them as bacon, mushroom, swiss.
SO many ideas!!!

This is the video recipe

Tuesday, November 5, 2019

Small business: burn out

As most of you know I run a small business and have for many years and before that I ran a bakery that was so popular that even 4 years closing it fully I still get messages to make cakes. (Which is just fine by me because I still enjoy doing it).

M&B Creative Creations have been officially in business for just over 5 years. I don't run it alone but the past 2 years I have mainly ran it alone as my business partner was going through her own things and instead of telling her straight out that I can't do it alone I tried to do it all on my own.

I am the type of person who believes that they need to take care of everyone, always been the strong one and never ever ask for help because it shows weakness.

Now I will add a little bit that as a women it seems that it is harder to ask for help because some how in societies eyes we are supposed to be able to to do it all on our own and asking for help means weakness. If it were a man he would be able to delegate without questions. As a women on the other hand, some how that isn't allowed. Some how if we delegate or ask for help we are considered lesser of a women, well guess what FUCK OFF! We are one person just like any man is. We can't do it all and those women who act like they can do it all, life is perfect and they are okay are just liars. How do I know? Because I am that women. I am that women who has it all together, who never needs help, who never asks for anything, who of course will help you even though her plate is slowly cracking. Who then gets sick, or goes off the deep end for a short time, picks it all back up and moves right along doing it again. This needs to stop, we are killing ourselves, we are killing each other.

End of women's lib rant.

I suffered burn out this past few months, I tried to push through it. My business partner lost her little sister suddenly so I pushed on because I had to. It got to the point where I didn't want to look at business page which turned into I wouldn't look at it. It started out as tired all the time (which is pretty normal for someone with my medical issues) to not being able to get out of bed at all and I don't mean the its cold, I am tired, I don't wanna get out of bed. Actually not able to get out of bed physically.

I was not okay, I stopped cleaning, cooking, eating, self care. That's right I showered as little as possible! Yup I said it!!! My child lived off easy things like cut fruit and veggies okay towards the end it wasn't even cut we would get the container out of the fridge and go to town, popcorn and anything in a package that I could hand him was his food. His dad would make him dinner and he would eat that. Unfortunately dinner on his dads standards and my standards are different but guess what he was fed!

As most of you know I homeschool well when you suffer burn out most of homeschool goes out the window. You do the bare minimum this means, work sheets and field trips with the homeschool group of course, because well I had to keep the act up that everything was okay.

Am I okay now? No, this is going to be a slow process of climbing out of the dark place I ended up. It is going to be healing. It isn't, this time, going to be just going back to the way things were, this is going to be healing my mind and body (well what I can heal of my body lol). This is going to be admitting I can't do it all.

I didn't have business hours. I felt that I needed to respond to every client right away including at 3am when they message. I felt like if I didn't I would loose a potential client. This isn't right. Clients who think I have to answer in 3 seconds are out to lunch. I don't expect other businesses to get back to me right away so why I am answering and putting that kind of always being "open" pressure on myself.

I am human I sleep!

Burn out is hard, burn out isn't pretty and its scary as hell.

No one talks about this in the small business world. You are not weak for not being able to do it all.

I would stay up until 4am working on clients orders to make sure they were finished. This isn't happening anymore.

I am going to have business hours because I need to have time to shut down. I need to be closed. I am not the business, I am the owner, I am human! I need to treat myself like I do the business and have hours for me too!!!

Many business owners will not admit this happens, this one of the reason so many close down because you just can't do it long term. We can not run on all cylinders 24/7 long term. Its not possible!!!

What changed for me?

This weekend is what changed for me! I did an event with my business partner which hasn't happened in a long time for the past few years what events I do are done alone (usually with Connely's help) or not at all. I talked to other business people I haven't had a chance to talk to in sooo very long! I talked to my business partner that I haven't had a change to talk to in a long time either, like really talk to.

We set hours for this week and yes they will change each week based on what is going on for us but these are hours that we will work TOGETHER again as a team. I made myself tentative goals for each day to tackle 1 thing at a time instead of seeing it all and freaking out.

Time and personal awareness are the only things that are going help me heal this time. No more doing everything for everyone and I don't mean just business wise either. Time to delegate! Time to shut off! Time to heal!

As a small business, as a women, as mom, as a freaking HUMAN we need to support each other! We need to ask for help. We DON'T need to be everything to everyone 24/7/365!!!!!

Burn out sucks and yes it took its tole on my business but I made an honest post about it on our facebook page the other day. No it is not something many businesses would do, it is not something that many people would do and yes I might loose clients but that's okay, it is time for business people to start being honest!!!


Friday, November 1, 2019

Cookies

Yes its considered homeschool. Lets look at why.

Things they learn:

Measurements (Math)
Science
Patience
Fine motor skills
Cooking skills
and probably many more things that I just can't think of at the moment.

Today was the first time in Blaines little life he begged me from the moment he woke up to bake cookies. He hates getting messy, has a hard time focusing on one task and well has the attention span of a wet noodle (Yes I say that with LOVE).

Two days ago he found some cookies cutters I had gotten on sale at Micheals and was planning on using just for fondant.

I haven't made shaped cookies in so long, not for Christmas or anything. I used to make them all time but the past few years I have had no interest in them. (A lot has changed because of the brain injuries)

Because of the many many many years of baking for clients I am a bit of a control freak in my kitchen between no dogs, special clothes, hand washing etc. Well when it comes to children in the kitchen everything changes and tends to go out the window.

It took a lot of self talk to remind myself these are not for clients and that its okay if they are not perfect or not the way I would do it. JUST HAVE FUN AND ENJOY THE MOMENT!

The butter didn't get quite mixed as well as I would have in the mixer so I worked on that while I just mixed it in when I rolled out the dough. They turned out awesome! Although a little miss shapened (which apparently isn't a real word but I am going to use it anyway.)

He was excited and actually ate 1/2 of one. Which is huge for him because well he will tell you he hates cookies other than oreos but who doesn't love oreos.

He had a blast and loved every moment of it, other then the few times he got flour on himself and he had to run to the bathroom to wash his hands (we have a sink in the kitchen but he has to wash his hands in the bathroom).

I know these things seem like normal everyday things but for a mom with a child who has ASD they are huge. Will it happen again, who knows but at least we have one memory of making cookies together.

And this afternoon we will taking our pumpkins to the animal farm because the animals there love them and I need out for a little bit!