Welcome to the World Demetrio Belasko!

Born into this world on December 29th, 2008 at 11:33am. Weighing 8lbs 1oz. (only 7lbs 5.5oz upon his discharge yesterday however).
He was born by c-section and amazingly I feel pretty good.
Little Dante is not at all happy however. And I was so sad… I looked so forward to comming home to see him yesterday.. all I thought of was him and cried each day because I am silly like that. I was so worried that he would not understand why I was gone.
So I came home yesterday and Dante did not care to see me at all. In fact, he looked at me.. then turned his head away and drank his afternoon bottle. (but not after taking a moment to pause and glare at his new baby brother)..
Im sure it will get better. I hope so anyhow.
Demetrio means “to love the earth” in Spanish and Belasko means “little raven” in Basque.
Thats all for now, little one is squeaking away… I will put up some pictures a bit later.

These are the final hours…

before #5 arrives. And sheesh, Im so nervous. going under the knife, even though this is the 5th c section (6th abdominal surgery) and you would think I would be ok with it by now… I am still so scared. The spinal, the catheter, the drainage tube in the abdomen, hoping that the baby comes out crying, healthy and well… hoping I don’t bleed to death on the table… lol. Ok, no really, Im serious….
Im looking forward to meeting our newest addition and finding out whether it is a boy or girl. Truthfully, even though I REALLY wanted to know, I am actually super glad we didn’t find out.
This is our last.
I closed down the store until the 15th of January to give myself time to heal before worrying about making stuff and shipping etc….
Well, just wanted to give a quick update, little D, as usual is attacking my hands while I am trying to type… he REALLY wants to type on the comp, so when Im typing, he grabs my hands and tries to move them so that HE can type. ITs really cute, if not slightly annoying.. LOL
Ohhhh I am going to miss him so much while Im gone.

Blessed Solstice…

Bad witch. I did really nothing at all today for Solstice. My lil guy was crabby as heck…my hubby was tired from a long snowy busride back from Kelowna…

The snow is kind of depressing me. Family will most likely not come out for Christmas if the weather keeps up as it has… and the worst of it being, if the weather does not improve, I may not have anyone here to watch little D while we go have this new baby on the 29th.

Good news is that the store is doing well. More stuff uploaded. Ive made a few sales.

UGH! Little D is up crying!!! He never does that anymore… guess I better go check it out!

Finally

The store is done. I am still uploading more items to it, but now it is online, running and all is working. Ive made three batches of massage oil, two different batches of soaps, two different salves (foot massage salve with lavender, mint and rosemary as well as all purpose healing salve with calendula, chickweed and comfrey) .. there are some BEAUTIFUL hand dipped tapers from Kootenay Candles, and incense, and more is being added all the time. www.terraspiritessentials.ca

Earthy Delights Soap

All Natural Healing Salve

Baby Shower

Well, it was a very nice turnout. It was great to have my friends and family over. And it’s amazing how many very nice thoughtful gifts one can receive even with being on Team Green and not knowing the gender.
I was given lots of diapers, (exactly what I asked for) as well as gift certificates for Superstore and some really sweet neutral items of clothing, receiving blankets, and lots of othet well needed things.
And lots of food! Yum! Glad I didnt have to check my blood sugar yesterday! LOL
The Family pitched in to buy us a Quattro Tour Duo stroller and Safe Seat. I was really excited to drag them out of their boxes and look at them. They are very nice.
22 Days left til baby arrives!

Well, It’s Been Busy…

It is amazing how much time (and patience) starting up this business is taking.
First of all I’ve been having a nightmare of a time with a webhosting company that I had read GREAT things about.
They advertised in their package that they offer Plesk Sitebuilder, osCommerce, SSL certificates (for $15/year) and a bunch of other included, bundled things. They also said that anyone can make a great online storefront in just minutes.
So, I was working on my site at www.terraspiritessentials.ca (the home page looked great) and when building the actual Eshop, I felt it was lacking the customizing I wanted for multiple item shipping etc. So, I asked tech support if osCommerce was available to use. They said yes, and said they would get it installed for me. Yay! Sounded great. In the meantime I noticed that neither my blog OR my Eshop was showing up through my site. The pages just came up ‘internal error’. So, I put the Eshop on invisible for the time being, seeing as how my items were not ready for sale anyhow, and went about my merryw ay investigating the osCommmerce application.
Well.. that just stumped me. What can I say, I am a noob. I really do not have a clue how to go about doing all that needs to be done to make the site look good.
And about the same time, it seemed my site actually stopped showing up altogether. Kind of cruddy seeing as how I had already been working on business card and label designs through a friend of mine. (thanks again Stephenie!)
Another thing that was annoying me was that when anyone arrived at my website – BEFORE it disappeared – , you would get a blank white page for a moment saying “you are now being re-directed”, and the page that came up would be www.terraspiritessentials.ca/site/home.aspx… (did the word SITE really need to be in there? And being redirected made some people feel that it could be a hijack sort of attempt).
So, back to last night. My site was gone. Yay. And NOW I was ready to start selling my merchandise. GAH!
So, trouble ticket after trouble ticket and no response.
This morning, I check my site and it was up! I was so happy to see it, lol… So I went to my control panel to open my Plesk Sitebuilder to work on my store (even my blog was showing up, so I had faith all was well)…. and lo and behold, my Sitebuilder had been deactivated.
Hmm…
So I trouble ticketed again, asking where sitebuilder went. AFter all, in my trouble ticket the night before I told them I did NOT want to use the osCommerce, that I was too crunched for time to worry about its set up, and thanks for letting me run it, but I would stick to my Sitebuilder.
Well, I get a message back saying ‘Sorry, you wanted osCommerce installed and you can not have that AND Sitebuilder’ EVEN though right on the package it says both are ‘included’….
So, now… my site is up and running, looks good, but I can not add anything to the store, or even activate it.
And I paid for this. I cant get the money back for the domain. Nor can I get the 15/ back for the SSL certificate that I found out only today would ONLY work if I used osCommerce.
WHY arent these things mentioned?
It COULD have said ‘SSL certificate and dedicated server available to osCommerce users’… and it could have said there was a choice to publish the site via osCommerce OR Plesk… but no, it clearly says in the info for the beginning site that BOTH are included.
In my trouble ticket, I apologized for the inconvenience and said that I had thought by reading the site that because it said both were included, that I could use both. It did not say I could use only one or the other, if it DID, I would not have opted for osCommerce over the Sitebuilder, as NOOBS like me RELY on things like sitebuilder to do all the work for us. (though I said it kinder than that)
I got a not so nice reply back saying ‘Nor does it say you CAN use them both. If you are not happy with our service , ask for a refund’
HUH? a Refund on a non refundable SSL certificate and a domain name that will now have NO SITE to point at? Especially when most often there is a period of time that you MUST remain at the purchasing hosts site before transfer is allowed? And here I am, 25 days away from having a new baby and Im supposed to worry about finding a new host…. with NO money left.
GRRRR. NOT impressed with Cirrus Hosting.

Anyhow.. HAPPIER stuff.
I made a half dozen tins of Baby/Child Salve. Good for anyone really.
Organic infused oils (infused the oils tonight myself) of Calendula, Comfrey Root, Comfrey Leaf, St. John’s Wort, Lavender essential oil . (all those ingredients are organic), in a base of extra virgin olive oil, beeswax and Vitamin E.

Also, the beeswax candles are available now. All the colours of the elements for the witches out there. 7″ hand dipped tapered candles, 6.00/pair. There are some handmade aromatherapy tea lights as well. And Incense from Surya and Swagat. You can check out some of the items at my freewebs store which i luckily left running…. www.terraspiritessentials.com

Crossing my fingers that tomorrow my site is working again.
Oh! and it’s my babyshower on Saturday

I am tired.

That’s about it. And mildly overwhelmed. It seems that every few moments I am thinking of something else that I HADNT thought about when starting my business.

Labels, packaging… how to GET my logo on my labels… shipping, oh and of course, my webstore has been down most of the day and last night.

Yes, it is only through webs.com, but sheesh. It is such an EASY way to make a store look nice.

So I bit the bullet and registered with an eCommerce hosting site. And now there are files to figure out, and to upload, and shopping carts to manually configure. All this would not be so bad, except that I have no idea what I am doing.

And of course, it all costs so much. Not compared to opening an actual physical store of course. But I am beginning to think I have bit off a bit more than I can chew.

Or maybe I just need to sit back and stop worrying. Just do my best.

Busy week ahead. Non stress test on Tuesday, ultra-sound and pre-surgical stuff on Wednesday, and Dr. appt on Thursday. Non-stress… hahahaha.. well, at least they are talking about baby , NOT me. I would fail for sure.

But I am happy. Just tired.

Time to go clean the living room.. and do some dishes, oh yeah, and let the cats in, fold some laundry. But hey, it’s still early, only just past 11:30.

Busy in a non-busy way…

Well, I have been busy shopping for all the merchandise I need to make Terra Spirit Essentials a reality.

soooo just hoping I can get it together and uploaded to the webstore. (www.terraspiritessentials.com)

Also, I cancelled my Webs. site for Pagans of the Upper Fraser Valley and instead re-directed my terraspirit.org domain to point at the Fraser Valley Pagan Fellowship site. I was not satisfied with Webs. for that sort of service. The pages can look quite nice, yes… but it’s just not necessary.

WordPress has everything we need, and combined with yahoo egroups, it is very functional.

Well, the finger poking is going quite well. Though I notice my sugars are much better in the earlier part of the day. Probably because I’m more active then. I go for a walk daily.

Hubby will be back in the studio soon, when his work schedule allows it.

Terra Spirit Essentials!

Is finally going to be up and running… one day. Not sure when… lol

I have ordered almost all the merchandise I need to sell. Now I just have to choose my platform. Go with eBay? Seems the easiest method, with possibley using a gateway site also so that it is picked up by google. (I own a domain name that is currently attached to a free site)

So, soaps, salves, Jin Sticks incense, massage oils, and 100% pure beeswax candles.

I’m hoping everything comes in at least a week or so before the end of December so that I can make up alot of things before baby gets here.

I went to the diabetic clinic yesterday for my gestational diabetes. Picked up my glucose meter and so far in the 12 times I have had to test, my sugars have been good. Less than five, or at five, before a meal and about 6.8 after meals…

Hoping this can keep up and that it will mean I can avoid insulin.

Started my fetal non-stress testing as well. That will be weekly until this little one is born.

So, all is well around here.

Pagans in Chilliwack

I received an email from a teacher at a local college here, MTI. She is teaching a class of youth workers and they decided that they wanted to learn about Paganism as part of a multi-faith project. I was asked if any members of the Fraser Valley Pagan Fellowship would like to come speak to them, and answer questions.

So, myself, Willie and Stephenie decided to go in. We had a very nice time. The students and teacher were friendly and receptive and we had a very easy time sharing information with them. It was nice to get a chance to help dispalay Paganism, and Wicca in general in a bit of a better light. I think generally that it is quite misunderstood.

Dr. appt for me today. I’m sure she will be quite irritated that I have not made it into the diabetic clinic yet. I don’t go in until Thursday the 20th. But, I am sure she will be happy with my weight. I havent gained any in two + weeks, and I’m hoping my blood pressure is agreeable also.