Determination and Perseverance

For the last 12 months I have been working my home based scrapbooking, card making & paper crafting business with a goal in mind. As an Independent Consultant with Close To My Heart in Canada, I needed to earn 31,000 points to earn a trip for two to Puerto Vallarta.

My family and I live in a village of 30 people in Southern Manitoba, just 5 miles north of the North Dakota, USA border. I am challenged with the fact that come Summer in our farming community, anything other than farming & gardening takes a backseat for 3 months which mean little to no sales. The image below shows a white semi circle which represents the area in which I permitted to work while the pink shaded area represents the area in which I am prohibited to work. I am limited to assisting customers and team members only within Canada. Am I going to let that detour me?

No I will find a way to make my business work. If I can do it, so can you~ No excuses.
 
I am coming upon my 10th year as a Close To My Heart Independent Consultant. 

When I joined CTMH 10 years ago, building a business was not my goal. My "WHY" at that time was since we moved from Alberta to Manitoba, I wanted to meet some new friends with common interests and get a discount on my crafting products. Once my maternity leave was over, I was to return to work as a dental office manager. My pay would only yield me $300 a month after paying for childcare care, fuel and expenses. So then my "WHY" changed to earning some money. If I could sell just $1,000 a month in products, I would earn the $300 and get to work from home and raise my own kids. 

An added blessing for me is that I am able to make my own work schedule around that of my family. I am able to go on the school field trips, I can volunteer for cooking hot lunches and I can put my kids after school activities and sports. 

Four years ago, I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and fibromyalgia. If I had to work for someone else, I don't know that I could keep hold of a job. With CTMH, when I am having bad days, I can work from my bed. Last week my back went out & I worked from my hospital bed. This JOB offers me the flexibility I need. For that I am so blessed. My "WHY" now includes making money to pay for my children's activities while being able to fully participate in the school events and work as little or as much as my health permits.

Many of you asked me a question the other day. "How did you earn 8,195 incentive trip points in just a month?" So the other night when I went to bed I gave the question a lot of thought. Before I fell asleep I still didn't have the answer but the next morning when I woke up it came to me. It wasn't just ME who earned this trip. It was every single one of YOU who earned it with me. YOU made it happen. So I thought about why would you all want to do this for me. So my final answer is BUILDING LASTING RELATIONSHIPS and NEVER GIVING UP. That is how I earned this trip. Over the last 10 years that I have been with CTMH I have made life long friends with customers, fellow consultants and team members. YOU all wanted to see me succeed so that is why I earned this trip. You all went above and beyond to lift me up because you felt that I deserved this. 

When people would ask if I thought I would earn this trip I would reply, "No, I don't think I will but I'm not going to give up on trying." A few days before the cut off date to earn the points, I had officially earned this trip. I will be taking my 12 year old son, Chase with me to Puerto Vallarta. 

I thank you all so very much for believing in me and helping me reach my goals. If you would like to join my growing CTMH Team, I would be more than happy to help you get started. Simply click the following link to my website to get started. 

http://brandy.closetomyheart.ca/ctmh/what-we-do/be-a-consultant.aspx

My Favourite New Products

Welcome to our August Blog Hop featuring Our Favorite New Products from the NEW Annual Inspirations catalog.  To purchase any of the items seen in our blog hop today, contact your local consultant to place an order.

We hope that you will take the time to leave comments on our posts, as we love to get feedback from our viewers....whether it was something that you really liked or some new technique that was used that you would like to learn how to do....by leaving us comments, we get to hear what you like, and what you want to see. Thank you… now on to our hop! 

If you have just hopped onto my blog, you can start here as this is a circular hop, but if you want to follow us across Canada then please start at the beginning and join Michelle at My Creations with Michelle. If you came from Dat's My Style with Donna then you are in the right place!

I love how elegant & versatile this paper pack is! It comes with 12 sheets, 2 each of 6 designs. The coordinating Uptown Compliments pack is perfect for your layout titles and embellishments too!!

To make the bicycle, I used the new Cricut Flower Market Cartridge. I love how you set the dial size just once & everything is cut in proportion for you.

The sunflowers on this next layout were also cut with the Flower Market Cartridge. I love the simplicity of black, white & grey and that you can add add any colour you want and it just pops off the page.

Your next stop on the Cross Canada Hop is Jan's Work of Heart .

If you get lost along the way, you can head to Michelle's Blog, My Creations with Michelle, as she has the complete blog list.

Thanks for hopping along with us - we hope we were able to inspire you to get creative using some of the designs, products and techniques seen along the way. We hope you will join us again next month when we will be featuring projects with a Back to School theme.  So mark September 15th on your calendars and hop along with us.

Cardstock Creations Blog Hop

Welcome to our March Blog Hop featuring Cardstock Creations. To purchase any of the items seen in our blog hop today, contact your local consultant to place an order.

We hope that you will take the time to leave comments on our posts, as we love to get feedback from our viewers....whether it was something that you really liked or some new technique that was used that you would like to learn how to do....by leaving us comments, we get to hear what you like, and what you want to see. Thank you… now on to our hop!

If you have just hopped onto my blog, you can start here as this is a circular hop, but if you want to follow us across Canada then please start at the beginning and join Michelle at My Creations with Michelle. If you came from Cheryl Simpson's blog, Scrapbooking with Cheryl then you are in the right place!

To make this wreath, I used the Artiste Cricut Cartridge from Close To My Heart. The flowers are from page 54 using accent 2 & the "f" key. The 12 large flowers were cut at 8" while the 24 smaller flower were cut at 3". I used our quilling tool & Liquid Glass to make the flowers and hot glue to adhere the flowers to the 12" wooden wreath.

Your next stop on the Cross Canada Hop is Scrapbooking with Kirsten Jade .
If you get lost along the way, you can head to Michelle S Blog, My Creations with Michelle , as she has the complete blog list.

Thanks for hopping along with us - we hope we were able to inspire you to get creative using some of the designs, products and techniques seen along the way. We hope you will join us again next month when we will feature Spring is in the Air. So mark April 15th on your calendars and hop along with us.

Studio J

For those of you who LOVE using Studio J, make sure to get your artwork completed & purchased before the end of April as CTMH will no longer be supporting this product. It's unfortunate that over the past 7 years that there has not been enough use of the program to continue to make it a viable product for our company. It's a wise business decision but disappointing to us at the same time. I wish more people had gotten on board with using the program to have had it be able to continue but C'est la vie. meanwhile, I will continue to get as much done as I can. I love using the program for my photo printing of all those odd sizes for layouts~ Hope you do too!