Not Just A 9.00 - 5.00

I have spent the majority of this weekend sat at the table in the dining room, working relentlessly away. In fact, I've spent all day today sat here too. Though I did manage to squeeze in half an hour to progress my latest layout before I started the hard slog on Saturday, which I suppose was a bonus.

I have spent many hours over the weekend producing the artwork for the humungous run of stamps that Colin needs to do. At the last count I had done 52 individual pieces of artwork, but we've had more orders today so I have some more to do. Thank God the stamp listings on Ebay are finished! I have forbidden Colin to list any more until these are all made, invoiced and sent. I also spent a couple of hours on Saturday uploading a load of new stuff, including more 7gypsies stuff and some gorgeous Daisy D's Attic Heirloom collection packs. It might sound like not quite a hefty task, but doing artwork and uploading products took me all day and into the wee small hours on Saturday night. Yesterday was spent finishing the artwork and then retrieving copious amounts of paperwork from various places in the house so that I could make a start on the VAT return. There is currently a mountain of papers here on the table that I have sorted through, and I've done really well today - I just really need to find myself some sort of effective filing system to finish the job off properly, otherwise I'll never be able to find anything.

So ... the VAT return is over halfway done - I just need to add all the extra bits and pieces that I don't have invoices for, like courier costs, stuff sent by parcel post, franking machine credits and all the internet advertising etc.

I have an appointment with the accountant in the morning to drop off the last bits and pieces for our tax return - I'm a bit pissed off with him because he was so rude to me. He's had the accounts for three weeks or more and only now is he telling me that he doesn't have the sales figures for the last tax year (even though I definitely put them in with everything else). He ranted and raved about how it's not good enough - well pardon me, but I was under the impression that we are paying him to sort it all out for us - and at least the bulk of the work was done. At least now that we're having to do a VAT return every quarter he'll be able to have all the accounts paperwork over the summer, and he won't be able to complain.

I can't wait to get all this paperwork out of the way!

If anyone out there is naive enough to think that running a scrapping site is an easy task, let me assure you it's not! I suppose it wouldn't be so bad if this was ALL I did, but as I also have a full-time job it means that I don't have any spare time. As it is, I could probably do well over 40 hours a week even if I didn't have a job as well. The reams of paperwork are a constant headache!

Anyway, I blogged quite some time ago about us giving ourselves until the New Year to decide how the business is going to progress in 2006; and finally last night we made time for a little chat about it, and I think we have made the important decisions that needed to be made. It's going to be a good scrappy year for us, which is the main thing - and although I'm sick to death of having no time to just sit and scrap whenever I want to (actually, time to do ANYTHING would be a bonus!), I am happy to work twice as hard this year to get things where I want them to be - and once that happens then things will get a lot easier round here.