What a beautiful day we are having here in New York - I actually have on a t-shirt and capris! My husband power washed the back deck and we have been doing some spring cleaning around the house (indoors and outdoors). I did get a little bit of scrapbooking started today too. I am waiting for it to dry before I can really get more into it. The sad part is that they are pictures from like 4 years ago! I don't scrap chronologically so I guess it might be ok, lol. Before we changed the layout of the Craft Table we had a couple of project ideas up here. I am going to list them here again so everyone can check them out...

-- There are SO many different ways that you can use rag balls in your primitive or country decor. You can use smaller ones in canning jars or in any glass container. Mix in a few sewing items (spools, needles, measure tape, etc.) and place near your sewing area. You can can also scent them and tuck them into area that need to be freshened up a little bit. I like to put a couple in a basket pf prim needfuls in the bathroom and it keeps the room smelling wonderful. When the scent starts to fade I just spray them again with a refresher oil and I am good to go for a long time. -- I have ragballs coordinated with the seasons and I tuck them into baskets, with candles and pretty much anywhere you can think of. For Christmas I have little ones that I have made into ornaments and I hang them from my tree. It creates such a handmade and heartfelt look to anything. They are very simple to create and I like mine to be as messy as they can be so I just tear my strips of fabric and allow them to fray a little bit.

As I sit here listening to Prim Talk Radio from earlier this morning it's lightly sprinkling out and I cannot believe how fast this year is going. Little House Mercantile has been open since the middle of January and the response has been amazing. The marketplace has grown faster than I could have ever imagined and I do want to thank you all for making it what it is. Friday's are usually my husband and I's "date night". We had plans to go out and see a movie, but we decided to go tomorrow evening instead so here I sit. Some life I have , huh? Either that or I am getting old!

Speaking of Prim Talk Radio, if you haven't stopped by Angie's website I would suggest stopping by. She has a wonderful show each Friday and it is filled with chatting, guest speakers, project ideas and SO much more! LHM is actually the main sponsor for the show and I am glad that I grabbed the main spot when it became available 3 months ago. Angie and I have been talking lately about me coming on and doing an interview with her and since I work outside of the home during the mornings it is not going to be a live interview, but a recorded one. I will certainly let you all know when it is going to be on so stay tuned. Until then I would suggest stopping by Prim Talk Radio.

I also want to let you all know that we have a wonderful prim home featured in our gallery. We just added it this evening and it belongs to such a sweet lady - Heidi from Gainers Creek Crafts. Her home is so charming and she even has her own store too! You can view her many photos (there is almost 40!) here. Thank you to Heidi for sharing your home with us.

I think that Spring has finally arrived here in western New York. It was almost 60* outside and nice and sunny. As my husband and I took our dogs for a walk this evening, it was nice not to have to step over piles of snow and most of all - I didn't have to wear a jacket! I was beginning to wonder if Old Man Winter was taking up residence here. This is the time of year I start coming out of my shell and I start feeling more like myself everyday. I get my "creative spark" back and I start wanting to do things around the house - fun stuff and the not-so-fun stuff too. It's still a little muddy just yet to be outside cleaning up the yard and certainly not the time to be digging in the dirt. Maybe in a couple of weeks things will dry out a little bit. Usually by now we have decided what plants we are going to grow this year in our 20' x 14' vegetable garden but this year I think we are going to scale things down and just do the basics - tomatoes, cucumbers, peas and peppers. We have a green house in our basement where we start our seedlings and get then ready to plant in the ground around the middle of May. It's actually pretty neat and made of simple materials such as PVP pipe and a clear plastic shrink wrap that holds all the moisture in. We have heat lamps over it and a mister that comes on periodically to water them all. Since I am in garden mode right now I thought I would leave you with some tips & hints for your own gardens.

• Raised Garden Beds - We have raised beds not only for our veggie garden but also in my regular flower beds. Our yard doesn't flood often so we don't have to worry about that much, but raised beds have other great benefits. It allows for wonderful drainage for the plants, plus it allows us to train the plants to stay within it's own box. (We like to call it the Cucumber Corral)
• Invest in a good watering system - We turn our watering system on around 7-8pm daily and let it mist the plants for about 1 to 1 1/2 hours each night. It has adjustable heads so when the plants get larger, the water still covers the entire area.
• Keep out weeds by using a black material (found at most home stores) and cut holes in it and plant your seedling in it. We then take mulch (usually saw dust from my husband's wood shop) and place that on top of the material. This helps keep out the weeds AND holds in moisture.
• We don't feed our plants anything at all - you really shouldn't have to if you use good soil, water enough and often and also it's healthier for you and your family.

Here is a photo of our garden from a few years ago - we now have a nice wooden fence around it and have changed the beds to run in the other direction. This was a few weeks after we first planted everything - it gets to be VERY full as the summer goes on. The building to the left is my husband's work shop. (Just incase you were wondering, lol.)

Have you ever had the feeling like no one visits your website, looks at your products, or even thinks about ordering from you? We all feel that way sometimes - when the orders are slow you start wondering if your "15 minutes of online fame" have vanished. Which is certainly not true since the next week you could have more orders than you can keep up with. As some of you might know - I am the head designer for a large company in their web development and marketing department. I deal with what seems like a never ending budget and can spend as much as we need, just as long as we are making money. Running my own business is quite different - I have to watch my bottom line and really plan on how to spend my money when it comes to marketing. No matter how much you have to spend on marketing - it MUST be done if you want to be around longer than the average "15 minutes". I have a ton of ideas on how to get your business out there - costing you little to no money at all. Just spend a little time on marketing each week and it will pay off in the end. Here are just a few ideas...

Search Engines: This is SO important - millions of people use search engines each day and it's FREE to get your site listed in their directory. Of course you pay for sponsored ads, but organic (the regular listings that come up) is where you can save a lot of money. Making the search engines like you better is called SEO (search engine optimization) and in the next coming days I will be posting a full length article about SEO. If already know what it is - great! All I can say is that with a few simple changes to your website, layout and content you can help your site along.

Link Exchanges: This is a terrific way of driving traffic to your website. It is not only good for SEO but it is a great way to allow visitors to find your website from other websites. Whether it be a reciprocal link or a one way link you can't really go wrong. Way back at the beginning of search engines (we speak as if it was 20-30 years ago, lol) it didn't matter who you exchanged links with, but that has changed. You only want to exchange links with websites that are similar in content to your own. If you only sell craft supplies you wouldn't want to exchange links with a snow boarding website. It doesn't make sense if you think about it - why would someone at a snow boarding website want to visit a website about craft supplies?

Plug Boards: These are the neatest way of getting your website out there. It is a little "board" that you can place on your website and can find them on tons of other websites too. You fill out your website address and where you can find your button and it shows up on their website. As more people place their button on the board, the older ones disappear to make room for newer ones. The best thing to do is make a list of websites that have plug boards and visit them often to see where your button is located. Make sure you follow all rules for each website - some require that you have a plug board of your own or that your website content be similar to their own. You can find plug buttons all over the place and probably at your favorite graphic designers website. if you are looking for a plug board provider we recommend WAHM Plug Board. You can find them here.

I am always willing to give basic marketing help to others out there, so if you have any questions please feel free to leave me a comment or email me directly. Who knows, your question may end up being a topic for the day!

Happy April 1st to you all! I just want to start off by saying that it is a great joy of mine to see SO many wonderful visitors to Little House Mercantile and to The Craft Table. It certainly has been A LOT of work, but I feel that it has been well worth it. I do hope that over the next coming months you will enjoy coming by to read this blog. We will try to update it a couple of times a week, but I do for see it being only once a week for a little while.

I am a avid net surfer and am always coming across wonderful websites, crafts, ideas and more to share. Originally, Becki & Gerri were supposed to be here with me, but due to some personal problems they won't be joining me for some time. Until they return, I guess you all are stuck with me! (That's not so bad now is it?) Each week I will be featuring a website for you all to check out. It's "Jules' Pick-of-the-Week" and it will be a website that I feel is worth a mention. You never know what I might share with you from week to week.

I am also a graphic designer so I will sometimes have free graphics for you to use as well and maybe a contest for free websets and such too. Make sure you stop by and check out our blog and see what new things we have for you. Please leave a comment so I can stop by and visit you.

From me to you
Feel free to use this but you may not take credit for it or alter it in anyway.