Can I get your advice, please?

Busy, busy, busy!  I don't know about the rest of you, but when the days start getting longer, the work load seems to get heavier.  A lot of it is self imposed work like gardening and sewing, and other things, like potty training, have nothing to do with the season, but it always gets busier for us every spring.

Yes, my little two year old is being potty trained.

 You'd think by now I'd have this potty training thing down to an art and we could shave a year or so off the diaper wearing phase, but I figure I'll just keep her outside in a dress without a diaper and let her figure things out and if she's trained by the time she's five or six I'm doing alright.

Speaking of lofty goals, I'm considering selling stuff on Etsy.  It turns out that even though I have a cool, blue 1950's oven, I still just can't get into cooking, so I figure I'll sell stuff on Etsy, become a multi dollaraire and hire a personal chef.  So far, I've made three pounds of soap from scratch and two pennant style banners.  That ought to be enough, right?

Seriously though, I am looking into Etsy and would love to hear what any of you have to share about it.  What works, what doesn't..."don't waste your time"...whatever you have to say, I want to know.  Here's why, every month, several of the women in my family get together for what we call "craft day" and everyone brings whatever craft they're working on and we craft.  Except me.  I bring my children and I talk a lot.  Anyway, we recently decided to put our craftiness to good use and try to raise money to help a particular person who could really use the money.  Without saying too much, she is someone very dear who, as we say around here, has a tough row to hoe and we'd like to help her as much as we can by giving her some cold, hard cash.  Money doesn't make life perfect, but it can help smooth it out sometimes.  The group is very talented (like my mom) and we all have a heart to help so we're investigating ways to sell our wares as a group for her.  Do any of you sell on Etsy with a friend?  How does that work out?  Is it practical? 

Now, speaking of hoeing tough rows, my garden is complete!  Have I ever even mentioned that I was working on that?  Our dirt is made up of mostly rocks, so we had some topsoil brought in and Jeff fenced it in.  At our last house, we had some river bottom dirt hauled in that was incredible.  Zero rocks and zero weeds.  It was extremely dark brown and very easy to work with and the plants seemed to grow well enough in it.  This years dirt has some organic matter and a lot of worms so I hope that's a sign of good dirt.  I only found one or two rocks but weeds are popping up here and there already. >:[  Thank goodness for the hula hoe!

I took on gardening like everything else I do and studied up for at least an hour before I declared myself an expert and then jumped in with both feet.  This is only my second year at gardening and I still know very little about it so we made this years garden even bigger than last years.  What I lack in know-how I make up for with determination and delegation and grand ideas.  "Kids!  Go water my garden.  NOW!"  See how that works?   "Jeff!  Those trees are blocking sunlight from my garden!"  "Now let's plant an orchard there."

So do you all have any gardening plans or tips?

Don't forget to let me know your thoughts on Etsy, pretty please.

Thanks!