Happy Monday

Today was my 4th Monday of not having my daycare kids here…oddly enough though, it was the FIRST one that I have not had somewhere to go since I closed. I did get up this morning and head out for my walk and then spent some time enjoying coffee with the King outside at the picnic table before getting social media posts scheduled for my clients and some things done around the house. It was nice to be able to stay home all day long. My kids liked it too.  You see, for the past 3 weeks, they have had to eat sandwiches for lunch everyday…not that there is anything wrong with that but my kids are used to a nice home cooked meal at lunch time. Today I made them chicken alfredo and they were happy.

We will have this whole week to get everything ready for when we start our full school schedule next week.  I plan on sharing our school activities right here so be sure to check them out.

Now, I am working on my grocery list by checking My Memphis Mommy to see where I can get my best deals this week. Happy savings!!

Week in Review

My last day of being a childcare provider was last Friday and you would think that would mean my days would be more relaxed but this has been the absolute busiest past 7 days that I have ever had in my life! I really had planned on posting about each day individually but the truth is, when I actually was able to sit down and use my computer each day, I was working on stuff for my clients and when I finished, I just wanted to turn it off and relax. So…here is my week in review!

Let’s start with Saturday.  A friend of mine and I took our boys & her nephew to the Fox 13 Weather Camp at the Agricenter in Memphis. The boys had a great time learning about how the weather people do the report using a green screen. They were able to meet some of the meteorologists from Fox 13, learn about air quality, make tornadoes in plastic bottles and launch weather balloons with their information tied on them so people who find them can report in and they can find out where their balloon went. It was really a fun, educational day and I look forward to seeing what they do next year.

Sunday we went to church and then I met with the Junior Auxiliary of Tipton County Fall Frenzy committee to work on the plans for this year’s event. After that, my family headed up to Covington to enjoy a luau with Genesis Church.

I debated on whether or not to tell you about my Monday but decided that yes, it is important information that someone might need to know.  I had a mammogram…yes, I actually am sharing this with the world.  Why?  Because even though I am “young” at 36, I did find a lump in my right breast in November and have been getting seen since to make sure everything is okay.  So far, so good. I go back next week to get the report from the Dr.  My point in telling you all of this is to remind you to check yourself and if you notice anything that doesn’t seem right, get it checked out by a Dr.

Monday evening was my Junior Auxiliary board meeting and it was hot in the JA room because the air unit has a hard time keeping the room cool so I was anxious to get home. On my way home, I stopped to visit K & D to see how their first day of school was. They excitedly told me about everything!  I came home and noticed my house didn’t feel cool inside…guess what??!  The main AC unit’s capacitor was bad so we had no air…great! Thankfully I AM married to an AC repairman so I knew it wouldn’t be long before he would fix it.

Since I am normally home during the day, I am listed as the “emergency” back up for some of my family members and friends kids and Tuesday, on the 2nd full day of school, I got a call to go pick up one of the kids.  It was my 15 yr old niece. Since our house was so hot, I didn’t think she would be comfortable so I took her home and left her there…her mom (my sister) got home soon afterwards to take care of her.  My husband got home around 2:30 to fix our air but even after he got it fixed, it took a little while for the unit to cool the house down.

Tuesday evening I went to the NACE Memphis monthly meeting which was held at the Racquet Club.  I really enjoy going to these because I get to network with the people who are at the top in the event planning business and by getting to know them better am able to learn how I can help promote NACE and their members.  When I got home, the house was nice and cool.

I had to leave my house at 7 am Wednesday morning to get to the UT College of Dentistry for new patient orientation to see if it is something that can help my 16 year old daughter’s TMD. After talking to the lady about it, I don’t think they will be able to help her so I am looking at other options. I felt like I pretty much wasted a few hours, money to park and the gas to get there but hey, at least now I know how the UT Dental program works in case I do ever need it.

On Thursday I had to take my middle child back to the pediatrician to have his blood pressure checked. They were on their second week of using a new digital charting system (I don’t know what it is called) so it took them a bit longer than normal.  The Dr is really sweet and apologized.  I am sure they are all just as frustrated as the parents are with the back log but once they get used to everything, it is going to be great!  I am sure when we have to go back in 6 weeks for his recheck, things will be much smoother.

That afternoon, I met with some of the ladies who are helping lead Tipton County Home Educators to make some plans for the new year. We are so excited about some of the things that we have planned!  I am sure my kids are going to enjoy them as much as I will.

Today my boys entered their art projects in the Memphis-Area Home Education Association‘s Art Contest.  On the way there, we dropped off some homemade pimento cheese to my dad because he has been wanting some and I made some for our lunch so I decided to share.  After we dropped off the art, we had a couple of hours to kill so we headed over to Bartlett Lanes and used our Kids Bowl Free coupons to play two games. Then we went back to the art contest to see the entries and pick up their artwork. There were a lot of amazing pieces of art there. Both of my boys received participant ribbons and they both said that now that they have seen some of the other entries, they will know more on what to do for next year…and amazingly, my daughter said she wanted to enter next year too!

Well, I hope you enjoyed reading about my week.  Be sure to go read my guest post over at Hip Homeschool Moms and share with your friends. It is all about how you have to find out what works for you and your family.

Next week, I plan on working on getting everything ready for our new school year. We are using Illuminations this year and I am very excited about it.  I will be blogging about the projects we get to do throughout the year.  If you are doing ILM 3, I would love to see how your family uses the program as well.  Be sure you join the Illuminations Year 3 Yahoo list and share with the members there too.

That is all for now.  Have a blessed weekend!

No Connection

I think it is kind of ironic what I am about to tell you about…I have had no connection lately.  Christie Jarvis Connects has not been connected! It’s true! My internet connection at home has been absolutely terrible and I have been having to do the best I can to get what I needed done using my Droid or if I really HAD to do something using the computer, taking advantage of my daughter’s Palm Pixie built in mobile hot spot.  My Verizon wireless broadband has not been working as well as it should since one of the storms we had in May.  I called Verizon about it and was told that there were no known issues and that I just live too far from the tower…well, I haven’t moved so that can’t be it. They finally called me back today to tell me that yes, in fact, the tower WAS knocked out by that storm in May and that was the reason I was not getting full signal anymore…HALLELUJAH! Since I kind of need to have a computer with Internet to actually DO my job well, I am very glad that they are working on this issue and will hopefully have it resolved soon.  I have still been able to update mine and my paying clients’ pages through the Hootsuite app on my Droid but as far as being able to get on my computer and work on projects…well, let me tell ya, it was bad.  My kids would walk in and I would be holding my computer up in the air like I was trying to offer it to God so I could get a little signal. It was worse than dial up! Hopefully I will be back up and running at full force soon. Thanks for sticking by me! This hasn’t stopped me from growing my business. I have taken on 2 new amazing clients in just the past few days that are so excited about working with me…the feeling is mutual.I know that everything happens for a reason and I hope that this little bump in the road that has slowed me down a little was just to prepare me for some mighty things to come!

Facebook Profile vs Fan Page

Yes, there is a difference and every time I see someone using a “personal profile” page as a business page, it makes me want to message them and tell them that they need to be careful because it is against Facebook terms to use a profile as a business.  They can come in and shut your page down and what happens to all of those friends you had?  THEY ARE GONE!  You would have to rebuild your contact list…that’s no good for your business is it?

What IS good for your business is a fan page that is updated regularly with plenty of interaction with your followers.  I hate seeing a business Facebook page that has not had any activity on it or has people asking questions and the business isn’t answering…looks like bad business to me!  I move on.

Want your business to be found by search engines??  Yeah, having a Facebook FAN page (not profile) will help with that! It’s because Fan pages are indexed by search engines. Profiles are not. As a business, you WANT people to find you, right???

What about when your business really takes off and everyone wants to be your “friend”??  Did you know that a personal page only allows you to have 5000 friends?  Well, that kind of limits your business growth now doesn’t it?

You can have ONE profile, yet manage many Facebook business pages…I manage a large number of them myself.

So, lesson here is this…if you want to grow a business, then act like a business and get a business page.

While you are on Facebook, be sure to join my Christie Jarvis Connects page where I share various tips I find.  It may be about saving money, fun educational ideas, recipes, events…ya never know what connections you will find!

Social Media Bandwagon

One of the things that I enjoy doing as a virtual assistant is help businesses jump on the social media bandwagon.  Often, the business owner really wants to get into the  world of Facebook, Twitter, blogging, etc, but just doesn’t have the time to dedicate to it so I get to do it for them.  I get to use the gift God gave me to connect and network which allows my clients to spend their time on their business! I can honestly say that I really love what I do.

If you are in business and would like to get on board with social networking but are not sure how to get started, let’s talk!

Facebook Pages for Business

Did you know that Facebook Terms of Service states “Profiles represent individuals and must be held under an individual name, while Pages allow an organization, business, celebrity, or band to maintain a professional presence on Facebook.”?
If you set up your business as a “friends page” and your profile gets shut down by Facebook for violating this rule, your friends list will vanish with it. How sad! That won’t be very good for your business now will it?

Besides, a personal profile only allows you to have 5000 friends…what if your business grows WAY past that?  You are stuck…

Don’t let this happen to your business!  Maintaining a business profile page may not be something you have time to do so what can you do?  Aha!  Hire a social media assistant  (like me!) to do it for you.   I will set up your page and will even connect it with other social media networks and your blog to help you reach more customers.

Contact me for more information!

Now Accepting Credit Cards

I have had the capability to accept Visa and Mastercard for over a year but haven’t really pursued this option. I have had a few business owners ask me about this recently so I decided to go for it.

I will be sending invoices out with a link to pay online or you can contact me to make your payment.

I am looking into offering auto pay and accepting other forms of payment after the first of the year.

Thank you for being a part of my life and my business.  May you be blessed as much as you have blessed me!