Live Sale Start to Finish

        I am scary organized. That really may have been one of the best compliments I have ever gotten (I think it was from Jennifer Buxton). Yesterday at school I realized not only was I all caught up on grading, but I was also planned out in all 4 of my subjects through Friday. Most are about halfway planned through next week. I also have some more ideas gathered to figure out what to do for the next plans. For most of the classes I have a good mix of stuff from a book, worksheets (that go with the stuff from the book), power points, coloring activities, and so on. Everyone likes variety. And art and learning together help you remember. Anyway, school is going pretty well and I in a good mental space. I'm going to keep aiming to find a good mix of different kind of assignments. Not only is it interesting for the kids, it's interesting for me. 

      In other ways I am scary organized, lets talk about my Black Friday Live sale. So the sale was on Friday, and ran for 2 hours and 25ish minutes I think. After I turned off the camera I resisted doing any more work. It could wait. 

     Saturday I did all of the invoicing. Elecktra helped me out by weighing and measuring all of the packages. That is the step that gets them ready for postage. It is a really useful step. After the invoicing I resisted doing any more work. 

      People had started paying their invoices as soon as I sent them out so by Sunday morning I had a good chunk of them ready for postage. Which meant they were ready for sorting. I alphabetize the bags throughout the sale to make sorting claims easier and I alphabetize packages to make it easier to locate them for labeling. I always start with whoever paid their invoice first and work up from there. But before I could get to printing, this mess...

     Needed to be turned into this. Nice even rows of packages in easy to locate alphabetical order. It really made things very easy. Once I was set up I stood in my room checking packages and printing them. Elecktra grabbed each label as it came off the printer, that made it so I could finish one at a time, eliminating the danger of mixing up labels, and sped up the process for me. It was really efficient. So with a chunk of work on Sunday, some help from Elecktra, and sticker labels (worth every penny in saved time!) I had 32 packages ready to bring to the post office. They went out on Monday. 

     A couple more invoices have been paid since then, but I have decided I need to have less stress so I have not gotten them shipped just yet. I will likely do that tomorrow. I do still have a small number of packages waiting to be paid for. Or waiting for me to make an extra doll to go in them. But from start to finish I did the sale on Friday, invoices on Saturday, shipping labels on Sunday, and handed off to the post office on Monday. I am pretty impressed with my restraint. I have in fact done a sale and invoicing all in one day and then everything else the next day. I think I can be content to work just a tiny bit slower. 

      To wrap up I just wanted to share a fun pair of photos that shows it is not just Breyer's shippers that send stuff in incredibly oversized boxes. This looks like I put in a massive Ulta order. 

     But this is what was in the box. For size reference, that is a mascara primer on top of the two boxes of makeup erasers. This stack of stuff is maybe 8x6x5. That box was ginormous! There was also almost nothing in it for packing material. Very reminiscent of this summer's Breyerfest shipments. 

     I have some stragglers but mostly my last live sale of the year is wrapped up. I have been doing some holiday shopping, for myself and for others, and school is going pretty well. Though today a kid actually said that I just do it for the money. That may have been the most foolish thing that I have heard this week.