Feeling better

Good evening Friends ~ I want to thank all of you for your encouraging comments and emails lately. Being a widow has it’s moving forward times and it’s grieving times. The past couple of months, I’ve been feeling rather down for several reasons, but yesterday afternoon I felt a sense of peace and energy envelope me. I thought about it and wondered if people were praying for me right then. I know I am being prayed for by my church family, my physical family and my online family. I just can’t explain exactly how I felt but I felt motivated to pick up my life and move ahead. Each day is a gift and I want to live each one in the now, not dwell on the past, or even worry about the future, just live today as it comes to me. Jesus is my strength and He has promised to always be with me and I believe that, I’ve just been a tad depressed lately and lost my focus.

After my wave of motivation, I totally cleaned up the kitchen last night, I woke up around 4:30 this morning and got right up, ready to go for the day. I remembered a dream I had last night about two kisses between my dear husband and myself and smiled and felt joy. Short sweet dreams are gifts.

This morning I decided to go to Walmart for a few groceries and some nail polish. I saw colors on a friend of mine the other night and told her I like the colors, but hadn’t been brave enough to try them, yet. So, I came home with 4 colors and here they are on my hand.

Left to right ~ Grease Lightening, Blue Me Away, Jazzy Jade and Re-teal Therapy. These are all by Sally Hansen, so non-expensive. I wanted a color my friend had by ELF called Skinny Jeans, but can’t find it anywhere, even online. I don’t think it is made anymore.

These colors make me feel happy and artistic. These are my natural nails. Pretty soon they will need trimming but this is how they look today. I decided to paint them all on so as to get a feel for how they look.

While at Walmart I saw a floor lamp that caught my eye, for $10.94. I’ve been needing a good floor lamp for my bedroom.  This is perfect. The top light as a 3-way bulb, and the reading light has lower wattage light, energy efficient. I bought an LED 3-way bulb and when I tried it in three different lamps, it does NOT work, so I’ll be taking that back. I have an older bulb in it right now. Here’s a photo from the box picture. It is perfect for what I wanted and the price was right.

For supper tonight I fixed grits, and an omelet made with some left-overs and cheese and toasted Italian bread with butter & Pineapple Sage jelly. The jelly was one of 6 varieties won in a give away from Lemon Verbena Lady on her blog last year.

Below is a photo of the heart shaped bread slices, which made me when I realized what I was seeing as I was spreading the butter.

Now I am comfortably full, kitchen is cleaned up and I’m feeling ready to get horizontal and read before falling asleep.

May you all have pleasant weekends. I pray that we will all seek to see the good in each day, even in the midst of bad happenings.

Love, hugs & prayers ~ FlowerLady

First of the Eighth month

Wow, where is this year zipping off too? It is hard to believe that it is August already. It is hot and humid here, but from what I’ve seen online, it’s not as hot as some of you are having it. I do live about 3 miles from the ocean though, and that makes a lot of difference. My husband and I really noticed this living in Spain while he was in the US Navy. We’d go off for a ride and as soon as we headed inland it would become hotter, although in Spain it was a ‘dry’ heat, not humid at all. Every time on the trip back to our apt., there was one place in the road where the temperature changed, and we would feel the cool breezes once again. We lived on the beach while in Spain, $75 a month rent, 1970-1973.

Some of you with hotter temps will soon see an end to them, whereas down here in s.e. FL we still have August and September to get through, and they can be brutal.

This morning I did not know what I was going to do, but when I stepped outside and took a quick walk around, I decided to mow. It was something I’d not done in at least a couple of weeks, not having much rain, there’s no need. But, it did need it now and it felt good to be doing it. I really like my electric lawn mower. It’s so much quieter, easier to handle and doesn’t put out heat and polution like the old mower did. Every time I mow I enjoy the scent of the freshly mown grass.  There should be a way to bottle that scent, maybe for an air-freshner, an incense stick, a candle?

Anyway, here’s my driveway after  mowing. Off to the left where the driveway veers off, is another area that was mowed, and then behind me in the photo, is the little lawn out by the front sidewalk and the rest of the driveway.

I’ve been working on some needlework pieces. One I forgot to take a picture of before I gave it away. It was a heart with a newlywed couples names on it and some peachy roses.

I just finished up another heart yesterday afternoon. The embroidered butterfly and flowers I had created from a photograph of mine, done in 2010. It’s been sitting in a drawer. This will be a gift to the young lady who I recently met. She works at Butterfly World, being a tour guide there, and writes up info, etc. She has a degree in horticulture and is a lepodopterist. She and her husband are a sweet young couple who go to the church I attend.

I couldn’t find the right frame in my stash, so decided to mount it to some lovely fabric I picked up recently. I also made a little name tag with the name of the butterfly embroidered on it and sewed that on. The flower that the butterfly is on is Hamelia Paten or Firebush.  All sorts of butterflies and bees love these flowers.

Next are pics of two different yarns, such luscious colors. I’ll show later, what I create with them.

Next is a gorgeous orchid that bloomed last week. It has several more buds on it but only one is open right now. I don’t know the name of this orchid.

View from the backside.

Zoomed in. Isn’t it amazing?

Side view.

Front view.

Still don’t have the sales tax stuff figured out. Will email Celestina about it as she volunteered to help me from TX.  I heard back from the Small Business Assc. today and they basically sent me links to websites I’d already been too. Sheesh! Something that seems like it should be simple, is turning into a bit of a nightmare. I’ll keep you posted. I’m not going to stress, I want to enjoy the simple pleasures and the beauty in each and every day that I am blessed with.

May you all feel the love of God as you go about your daily lives. He loves us all.

Love, hugs & prayers ~ FlowerLady

Thank you

Thank you Lady Hawthorne and everyone else who has given some tips and encouraged me with this issue.

It sounds so easy for all of you living in states other than FL. I went to the website for getting a sales tax id and below is a pic of the requirements for a sole proprietor to have before registering to collect sales tax here in FL. For ‘Pete’s sake’.

This is depressing to say the least! Etsy doesn’t give out a 1099K for the IRS unless you have $20,000 in sales or 200 sales in a year. I would need to keep records, which wouldn’t be hard to do.

What I really need to figure out is what is the ‘easy-peasy’ way to get a sales tax id# here in FL.

Hopefully this will be figured out sometime soon. If not, I give up. It won’t be the end of the world, just the end of my shop, unless I just don’t sell to people who live in Florida. I don’t even know if that is possible, but it is a thought.

Later ~ Have a great weekend ~ FlowerLady

I am getting more flustered

 

Hi Folks ~ I went to my bank this morning to see about opening a DBA account for my Etsy shop. I have to have a fictitious name certificate before I can open an account, which costs $50, I just checked online. There will be a bank fee of $17 a mo. unless I have a certain amount that will stay in the account. SIGH!

To get a sales tax # doesn’t sound hard, but I think I will have to get the certificate mentioned above first.

From what I can figure out from online is that I also need a business license even for an online store. I will be sole proprietor.

My mind is reeling! I wish I had someone to talk with and walk me through this. I am not good at figuring out this kind of stuff.  DH was, I’m ‘FlowerLady’, he took care of all of geek/business stuff while I took care of home, gardens, worked for 17 years at my job, and create my needleworks.

I’m wondering if it is even worth it.

I’ll take a break again from thinking about all of this, in other words, procrastinate some more, and pray about it too.

I did read on Etsy that in order to do business there, you really do need the business license and the tax #. I think there are a lot of sellers who don’t realize this. We are led to believe we can just start selling on Etsy.

Other than that, I am thankful today for, flowers, shade, a.c. food to eat, a nice bed to nap/sleep in, bills are paid and my feet aren’t hurting.

This is a short little post to vent my somewhat frustrated feelings.

I’d appreciate prayers and any feedback with this issue. ~ FlowerLady

***

Indecision becomes decision with time.
Author Unknown

Do not plant your dreams in the field of indecision,
where nothing ever grows but the weeds of "what-if."
Dodinsky

Everything is something you decide to do,
and there is nothing you have to do.
Denis Waitley

***

I love to create! Right now I’ve been working on things that are to give to others rather than things that are for sale. This was the last piece I created for my Etsy shop and it is sitting, waiting for my shop to open up again.