Patriotic Dress - Update

I recently wrote about how My Big Helper and I made this patriotic dress for her lemonade stand.  We had lots of fun making it together, and she's excited to wear her new dress.

I got the idea from this post and I pinned it on Pinterest.  I kept thinking about it but was hesitant to try a new sewing technique since sewing is not exactly my strong suit, despite my desire to become an accomplished seamstress.

Enter:  Rachel of Better Life Bags.  Rachel sews handbags and sells them at her Etsy shop of the same name.  She takes part of the profit and uses it to give business start-up loans to people in third world countries.  She's helping them to improve their life circumstances, and I admire that so much that I keep reading her blog and looking at the pictures of her products, even though I'm not in a place to purchase one right now (perhaps sewing well enough to have my own Etsy shop should be on my bucket list).

Rachel sponsored a Pinterest challenge a few weeks ago.  She asked people to complete a project from their Pinterest page and then send her pics of the finished results.  This was the incentive I needed!  Andi and I got to work, and she now has a new dress.

Pinterest is good for more than just keeping you organized or inspiring competition or making me somewhat jealous or even sharing ideas.  It can be plain old inspiring, too.

The Pinterest challenge is still going strong, and a winner has yet to be determined.  (If you're interested in voting, you must first 'like' Better Life Bags on Facebook and you can then vote by clicking on the picture(s) you like.)  Whether this is your cup of tea or not, however, if you're in the market for a new bag - or have an occasion coming up for which you could give one - please consider Better Life Bags.

How wonderful is it when you can get a needed/desired product AND help someone else halfway around the world??

** To read more about how buying these bags benefits others, click here.

How to Run a Successful Lemonade Stand

So our Big Helper wanted to have a lemonade stand this summer.  Her daddy used to set one up in his front yard all the time, and we both wanted to see her have some measure of success with this, but who can guarantee that?  We ended up putting all of our heads together for the planning, and her stand far surpassed our expectations.  While we're certainly not business geniuses, here are a few things that (I think) helped her along the way.

- Location, location, location!  We live on a dead-end street, so setting up in our front yard would've brought in exactly zero customers.  But at the end of our dead-end street is a fairly busy road that connects to the local hospital, the high school, and several doctors' offices.  We set up the lemonade stand on that street.

- Advertise!  Our Big Girl painted a large, bright sign to hang from the edges of her table.  She used big letters and bright paint.  She also prepped a message on Facebook to go out to all of my FB friends.

Also, unbeknownst to her, I was taking pictures of the entire process and posting them on FB the morning of - both so that our families could see how hard she was working and so that maybe some of our friends would stop by and support her efforts.  People definitely commented on what she was doing, and several of my friends made it a point to stop by!

(I'm not saying that I go around hitting up my friends for money ... but if they are willing and able to buy a 50 cent cup of lemonade from my daughter to help her learn about economics .... I'm most appreciative.  And of course I'll return the favor when they set up their doughnut stands.  Just sayin'.)

- Be little.  Maybe this goes without saying, but I don't think all of those kind people would've turned their cars around to buy lemonade from my husband.  Or me.  Or any other of-job-age-holding adult.

But for a kid, people went all out.

I know I'm biased - but honestly, who can resist those faces?  It's only a few cents per person - but it adds up fast.

- Sell something to eat.  The cupcakes sold out in about 40 minutes - if that.

I wasn't expecting that, but people shared their rationale.  They couldn't hold an open cup of lemonade in their car, but they could wrap up a cupcake (my Big Girl insisted on providing napkins for just such an emergency) and they sincerely wanted to support her.  This way they could.

Others reminisced about how long it had been since they'd had a cupcake.  One construction worker tipped quite generously in his excitement over seeing them for sale.

A cup of lemonade and a snack make a nice, round cost per person - only $1! - for a snack and drink.

And for those of us female types ... who can resist chocolate??

- Be excited!  My Big Helper was very excited about her lemonade stand, but her bubbly personality doesn't bubble over until she knows you a bit - which presents a problem when greeting unknown customers.

Enter:  The exciteable, older neighbor boys.

These two guys are a few years older than our children, and they are good kids.  They were eager to sample her cupcakes and then stayed to hang out and help.

They convinced her to sit in her princessy chair and wave at oncoming cars ...

and eagerly rode their scooters home to make more signs for her stand.  They said things like, "Honk if you are thirsty" and they jumped up and down and waved near her stand.

THEIR enthusiasm made us all laugh - and kept everyone's energy level high as we sweated in the heat.

Oh - and the lemonade clerk got lots of honks and hand waves after that!

- Watch the weather.  We wanted to set up on July 4th before the fireworks, but it poured something awful.  Instead, we set up during this very hot and humid afternoon, and many people stopped by.

I'm sure that even my cute, enthusiastic daughter couldn't have sold hot chocolate on such a day, though - the weather was perfectly suited for icy lemonade.  So match your product to the event, the season, and the weather.

- End well.  When we had packed up our belongings and returned home, my husband sat down with our kidpreneur.  They counted out the money from her cash register and returned her starting change to her piggy bank.  Then they worked to disperse the money as is proper.

First, she took out her tithe to take to church the next day.

Next, she chose an amount to pay her brother for his help.

Then she set an amount to add to her savings account for educational use someday.

Finally, she took the profit that was left over - still a very large percentage - and added it to her Disney fund.  She's going to have quite the pocket money for mouse ears if she keeps this up!

Has your child run their own lemonade stand or similar business?  What steps did s/he take to make it a success??

GratiTuesday - Kidpreneurship

We're heading off to Disney World in a few months, and my husband and I have committed to planning this trip with the kids - so that the saving for the trip can be a real economics lesson for the kids.  As such, they realize that we now limit certain activities even more than we used to in the effort of saving money.  We've also given them the option of doing chores beyond their normal responsibilities for extra money to be used as pocket money when we reach Orlando.

My Big Helper quickly decided this extra chore thing wasn't for her.

I just figured she'd change her mind when we got within a few weeks of actually leaving on the trip.

Instead, she had another idea.  She asked to hold a lemonade stand.

My Big Helper sees me actively saving money.  We shop with coupons and only buy sale items.  We bypass many things because we don't really need them and wait to buy to see if the item's attractiveness remains a few days later.  She also sees us work to earn money - by selling clothes and toys at consignment sales, by holding yard sales, and by selling a few random things on Ebay.

But neither my husband nor I actually run our own business or anything.

The Big Helper, however, was adamant and talked about it for weeks.  She decided that the money she made would be added to her Disney Fund (the grandparents all pay better for chores than Mommy and Daddy do, it seems) and kept asking when we could do it.

So, this past Saturday saw us all hanging outside in the heat.  In the 90%+ humidity.  With the temperature above 90 degrees F.

But you know what?  My Big Helper sold lemonade.  And cupcakes.  Her enthusiasm drew in one set of grandparents and two neighbors.  She had cars turning around on a main street and people walking from two neighborhoods to buy from her.

Her lemonade stand was a raging success.  She made far more money than either I or her banker daddy ever dreamed she would.  (Stay tuned tomorrow for some things that I think helped her in this area.)  More importantly, however, she made a plan and followed through with it.

So today I'm grateful for a child's innocent enthusiasm.  For her willingness to work hard and step out of her comfort zone.  I'm grateful for her creativity and determination and the responsibility she's taking for her own spending money - she's certainly going above and beyond what her daddy and I expected of her.  I'm grateful for her kidpreneurship and for the friends, family members, and total strangers who stopped by and supported her in a big way.

I'm grateful for lemonade.  What a wonderful teacher it makes!

For more GratiTuesday, visit Heavenly Homemakers!

A Bucket of Water

Summer temperatures have officially arrived here in North Carolina, and heat records held for decades were expected to be broken today.  After we picked up Andi from school, we decided to break out a summer project.  We enjoyed this one last year, and it seemed like a good way to cool off when we only had a short amount of time.  Here's what you do:

Fill up a bucket of water.  Place in the middle of the driveway.  The end.

Difficult, huh?

For a few minutes, they followed me around saying, "What should we do?"

Finally, they got it.  The next time I looked over, the single bucket had turned into this:

They were pouring and creating and playing, until ...

My Little Man accidently spilled the biggest bucket while pouring it.

They quickly decided that this was a good thing, however, as they now had a mini-waterfall happening in the driveway.

The kids began to rake away the rocks to make puddles.

Eventually, they went back to creating a 'birthday cake' out of mud, rocks, and picked clover for me.  When the water was about to run out, we emptied out our buckets and put them all away for another day.

All told, the kids played for 45 minutes with just one bucket-full of water and the assorted outside toys they added.  They weren't ready to stop and would've happily played much longer if I had let them, and neither child was the slightest bit wet when they came in - although I wouldn't have minded if they had been.

The kids were creative, they worked together, and they had fun on a summer-like day.  Who needs fancy electronic gadgets??