JUICE DIET!!!!! Episode 1

Hey everyone,

In the midst of being busier than we have ever been, it seems pretty difficult for us to eat properly. I have lost 10 pounds since my second son was born but it has almost been a full year now and 10 pounds in a year is a sad set of results. Several friends of mine (and myself) decided to try a juice diet (or juice fast). Yesterday I went out and bought a juicer and I decided to buy one of the cheaper ones ($35.00) just in case I end up only doing this for the 10 day health reboot. Today ended my "Trial" day which was basically just throwing a bunch of random items into my juicer to see what would happen.

The basis for our juice diet actually comes from a documentary that is currently on Netflix called "Fat, Sick, and Almost Dead" or something like that. It is fairly boring but if you pay attention to the health details it is pretty informative.

On to the juice side of things.....

Today I tried a few things that mostly involved Apples, Carrots, Celery, and Peaches. Right now while I'm typing this I am drinking Apple, Carrot, Peach, Grape, Ginger Root, and a Pinch of Cinnamon. It is a bit heavy on the ginger root so it is fairly bitter but still not too bad. For tomorrow I bought quite a few things that consist of everything mentioned above and also Cucumbers, Spinach, Kale, Lemons, Parsley, Mint, Oranges, Grapefruit, and Bananas.

The original juice fast is suppose to be a solid 10 days of nothing but vegetable and fruit juice. I was considering only juicing for breakfast and lunch and then eating a regular meal for dinner but seeing how easy and quick it is to juice I think I am going to hit this juice diet full force.

Currently I weigh 217 pounds with my goal weight being 180 pounds. My senior year of high school (2005) I weighed 185 pounds. When I got married in 2007 I also weighed 185 pounds. After we had our first son at the end of 2009 I had jumped all the way up to 220 pounds. With a little bit of diet control I was able to reach 190 pounds but it was short lived and my weight made a new home at a solid 200 pounds. In 2012 I found myself all the way up to 230 pounds for the birth of my second son and my weight seemed to level off around my current weight of 217. Lets see if we can't knock some pounds off right??????

My reason for deciding to eat healthier and also do this diet is to try and gain more energy with my hectic lifestyle. While running a business 7 days a week with my wife, still working a full time job, and also playing Mr. Mom on my days off it seems that there isn't a whole lot of time to recover. Processed foods really put the drain on you and it seems as though the busier I get the more fast food I eat. I hope to put a stop to all this garbage entering my body. I plan on making several blog posts over the next 10 days and lets see if this "juice thing" actually works shall we? :)

Over 8 Months.....

Well, it has been over 8 months since I last blogged, apparently that is a good sign.

Our business has been blooming and we are quite busy. Running a business from home is definitely a lot of work but it's completely worth it. We (I) have several lofty goals for our busy season (through Halloween) and despite the few people who have zero faith in these goals being reached I am quite confident that we can nail those goals.

I won't post the actual goals here on my blog because some of them are a little bit confidential but one of these goals is to almost triple last years revenue in October. This goal may be a little bit high to reach but some of the measures taken and different items that we are offering should influence our income. Not to mention that about a week and a half of last October we weren't able to sell items due to some inconveniences with some of our hardware and software. So, if you take into account that the last shipping day to get items out by Halloween is the 27th and about 10 days of that our items weren't available online we only had 17 days in October to make sales. I think that with the combination of 3 more sites that our items are listed on, roughly 6 more Halloween items (including glow in the dark being added to some of our existing items) and the fact that we should have the full 27 days to make sales we should easily make over double from what we did last year.

Hopefully it happens, we are doing everything we can to make it happen despite all the negativity that is being thrown our way.

Anyways, this was my rant post that I was hoping would get some of my excitement out. We are already selling quite a few Halloween items and its only the 2nd of August :)

Thanks for reading, I will try to keep up on my blogging but I don't know if I will have the time.

Why I LOVE being a parent - Episode 6

I have been pretty sick for the last few days and it seems that I may actually be getting slightly better (maybe). For this episode I wanted to talk about a conversation I had with Korver this morning.

I filled Korvers little pepsi mug up with some root beer this morning for a treat. This is the conversation we had:

Korver: Dadda, will you drink my root beer with me?
Me: Buddy, I'm sick and I don't want you to get my germs.
Korver: You're not sick, your Dadda.
Me: (as I laugh and cough up half a lung) Well buddy, I am daddy, but I'm also sick. Can't you hear me coughing.
Korver: Don't cough, just share my drink (as he smiles huge)... you can drink the little straw.
Me: Sorry bud, I don't want you to get sick. Wait until I get better and I will share a slurpee with you.
Korver: Dadda, I have to poop

HA HA HA HA HA HA

Oh man, I love this kid. I about died.

This just goes to show, that it doesn't matter what you are talking about....... a good poop is all it takes to make you LOVE being a parent.

Why I LOVE Being a Parent - Episode 5

A super quick trip to the grocery store and we get episode 5 :)

Korver and I make a quick trip to our local Smith's store tonight and knowing that Korver absolutely LOVES "Crane Games" I grabbed a couple quarters out of my truck to throw in the machine on the way out of the store.

We get a few items and checkout and head to the exit where the crane game is sitting. I have never before seen anyone using this particular crane game before but it happens (like always) that I end up having to wait in line to give Korver a big smile. We watched the lady burn through several quarters not getting anything before I realize that she is trying to hook a "Mitt Romney Plush Toy" (kinda weird thing to have in a kids crane game). She turns and apologizes for taking so long but apparently she just HAD to have this for her dad.

Korver is getting pretty restless so I pick him up and say softly to him: "Hold on buddy, she has to get her stupid toy first"...... moments later Korver watches the crane drop (with no catch) to which Korver yells out: "Did ya get your stupid Toy?" Needless to say my face went a little red (like always) and she finally gave up to go cash out some bills to get more quarters... we hurried and spent our .50 cents (with no win) and exited the store.

This just goes to show that if you really want something important to get out to everyone, tell your kids!!! It's moments like this that I LOVE being a parent.

Why I LOVE Being a Parent - Episode 4

The other night my in-laws watched our two kids so that we could go on a quick date (to Red Lobster). The nearest Red Lobster to us is in Layton and happens to be pretty close to a Toys'R'Us. After Dinner we hit up Toys'R'Us and once inside I headed right for the Thomas Train sets (Korver has tons of them but is missing a few characters). I found this sweet track set that has a huge hill and little mechanism that pulls the trains up the hill... its pretty sweet. It was a $45.00 set and it was on sale for $35.00 so I HAD TO HAVE IT FOR KORVER.

K'Dee said: "he doesn't really need it" to which I replied: "but I will give it to him for Christmas, I'll save it". She gave me an interesting look and said: "I really doubt it will last that long". We get home and I put it on a table in my bedroom and it was still in its large bag.

Later that night we are on Skype with my brother and his family and Korver runs up to me and says: "Daddy, I need my big Thomas" and I thought he was just asking for his big Thomas pillow. He kept asking and asking and at one point was giving me a little screaming. About the time I finally realized what he was asking for he ran over to me and said: "Daddy, can I have my Big Thomas PLEEEEEASE"...... "Daddy, I said Please" and then he gave me a huge smile and pointed toward my bedroom....

..... Needless to say it was cute enough to score him a brand new toy and K'Dee looked at me and said: "I told you it wasn't going to last til Christmas".

It doesn't matter how terrible the "Terrible Twos" are.... A little smile and the word please can still make your heart melt and make you completely glad that you are a parent.

Why I LOVE Being a Parent - Episode 3

Hey everyone, it has been over a months since my last post and as many of you know we just had our second child earlier this week. For those of you who don't know we had a little boy (BIG boy actually) He was 9 lbs 12 ounces and 21 inches long. We named him Griffin Randall Wood.

Now to get on with the episode. I am writing this while Griffin is completely zonked out on my chest so I will try to not have too many grammatical errors :)

Korver (our fist son, almost 3 years old) is a little skittish around kids so naturally we were a bit worried how he was going to handle the new little one. It took some time but after a few hours he finally got warmed up to the idea that he had a little brother. He would sorta think about touching his hands and petting his head but wouldn't really have much to do with Griffin. Several hours had gone by and it was time for bed and like every night Korver started getting upset knowing that he had to retire for the night. He was making rounds giving kisses to everyone and stopped by his mommy and in the softest voice I have ever heard he said: "Can I kiss Little Brother?" It was awesome, maybe all our worrying was for nothing. Korver went to bed and was out cold in less than 3 minutes (gotta be some sort of record).

It doesn't matter how stressful things can be and it doesn't matter how tired you are but the simplest little phrase can make everyone in the room completely happy to be a parent!!!!!!

Uinta Mountains Trip July 19-22 2012

Joe and I left Brigham City and headed towards the mountains around 3 p.m. Thursday. We set up camp at Butterfly Lake and decided to just fish there for the evening. Generally I catch TONS of fish at Butterfly but wasn't really having much luck. Joe was out-catching me 4 to 1 (which sucks because he is the newby ha ha).

Friday we played around some more at Butterfly and decided to hike the short trail-less hike to Castle Lake. Again, Joe caught all the fish at Castle. We decided to head back to Butterfly and my wife, son, and my in-laws were fishing and waiting for us at Butterfly. We drove down to Pass Lake and played around a little before returning to camp to cook some dinner. After dinner they went home and Joe and I drove down to Kamas to meet my brother and bring him up to camp.

Saturday is where the story gets good. We decided to go for another small hike to Ibantik Lake. Trying to find a place to park was pretty ridiculous but after a while we finally were able to. What a crazy packed weekend. We got a pretty late start but the hike started out really well.... until we realized we took the wrong trail. We ended up at Watson Lake and realized we took the wrong trail so we hiked straight over over the "mountain" next to us and dropped down to Wall Lake. We fished there for a few minutes but decided to get on our way to Ibantik. The clouds were coming in at this point but we didn't really think it would be too horrible so we trucked on. We ran into several people that were hiking out, none of which had been all the way to Ibantik. Most of the people we talked to said they were catching lots of little bitty brookies but nothing big. We finally made it over The Notch and it had been lightly sprinkling on and off.

We hiked down passed Lovenia and the several other small lakes right there and the rain started to pick up pretty good. We started seeing lightning and hearing lots of thunder and were going to head back but decided that hiking back over The Notch wouldn't be a good idea with the lightning, not to mention we were so close to Ibantik that we decided to try our luck with some fishing.... but just before we got to the lake THIS HAPPENED:

After the hail stopped we went down to the lake (there were several tents at the lake) and we threw in some flies and some lures, none of which proved to be productive (with the rain and all we didn't think the fishing was going to be good anyways). With a break in the storm we decided to hurry and head back over The Notch. We got hit with rain pretty hard on the way out and decided to just hit it hard, needless to say we were completely soaked by the time we even got to back to Wall. From wall I made another small error and we headed down towards Trial Lake (which was the best error of the trip). We had to hike back up to the Crystal Lake Trail Head from Trial. We finally got back to the truck and drove to a camp host site and purchased a few bundles of DRY firewood. We headed back to camp and ate some dinner and cooked a sweet cobler (Cherry Apricot Cake over peaches) it was fantastic. It took us a while to get warm since we were all soaked straight to our bones, but it was completely worth it. Ibantik was quite beautiful, even if we got completely hammered by hail and rain.

Needless to say I was trying to ruin the Uintas for the two brothers with me that were first timers in the Uintas. However, they were already planning next years trip so I don't think it was completely ruined for them.

Aside from Joe catching all the fish (JERK), my constant lack of correct trail picking, and the horrible weather.... It was a great trip.

The "PLUG" Post

Hey Everyone,

Today is the day that I give a couple shout outs to a couple awesome things.

First thing on the list for the day: My older brother has created something amazing and he has put in VERY hard work to get it to where it is and I would love to see it go even further. What we are talking about here is this: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/340631149/dragonmage-warfaretm-0 <<< This link will take you to a kickstarter.com project that my brother has launched. It is a board game that he has been working on for a few years now and it is awesome. Seriously, and I am not just saying that because he is my brother. My brother has spent so much time refining, play testing, updating, and tweaking that its almost unfathomable.

If nothing else you can stop in and drop a $1 donation just to support the cause. If you don't want to drop a dollar there is also an option to just support the game with no donation amount (raising the number of supporters helps get the project on the home page). On Kickstarter you are pledging money to the cause and you will only be charged the amount if the project reaches its goal. Personally, I donated $50.00 bucks and wish I could have done more.

A $32.00 pledge gets you a copy of the game. I have purchased games before that cost $60.00 dollars and although they were great games, they weren't as good as I think this is. Thanks in advance for all your support.

Second thing on the list for the day: I have an amazing Wife. She helps keep our business running both financially and physically. She is currently over 7 months pregnant and won't stop working to push things forward. She has been working in her spare time to come up with designs to add to shirts for our Etsy.com store. www.etsy.com/shop/cheaperthanshirt Check them out, share them, "like" them (or just our etsy shop in general). She has put some great effort into our business and there are no words that I can express to show how grateful I am to have such a perfect spouse. Without her I would be broke and have a crumbling business.

Third thing on the list for the day: Lets see, actually that is it... just those two things. Seriously though, please stop in and check out what I listed above, it would make some people pretty dang happy :)

Why I LOVE Being a Parent - Episode 2

My son is about two and a half years old and LOVES to push his limits. If we tell him not to hit something with his plastic baseball bat he will get it as close to said item as he can and then look at us and laugh. Putting him in "time out" always seems pointless most of the time until we heard this:

Korver was swinging his plastic baseball bat around and hitting everything he could when he accidentally smacked himself in the head with it. He brought the larger part of his bat to eye level and said this: Bat... YOU DON'T HIT!!!! You go time out, 2 minutes.

And he set his bat on the couch and left it there.

We were laughing pretty hard, I couldn't believe it.... but then a few minutes had passed and he went and picked his bat back up and said to it: Bat!!!!! You went time out..... You don't hit.

Just when you think that everything you say goes completely unheard, you realize that there is nothing as great as being a parent.

Why I LOVE being a parent - Episode 1

I decided to start a new blog series the other day and I just didn't get around to posting anything. I had several good stories in mind for this and as soon as I sat down I couldn't think of anything to type.

Just now I decided to post what my boy just did because I thought it was pretty funny.

Earlier today Korver was attempting to work me into a "HULK" sized rage. He was starting with all the known tactics to avoid taking a nap. I was pretty patient for about two hours and then started to get a little bit upset. All of the sudden Korver threw the largest tantrum I have ever seen.... EVER. He was flailing, screaming, and throwing his head into me in a pretty violent rage. I just held him and helped him calm down. Needless to say he never took a nap (after 3 hours of trying).

About an hour and a half later he asked me for a pop-tart which I decided to give him half of. It was a chocolate pop tart and he had chocolate all over his face. About 10 minutes ago he came up and asked if he could sit on my lap and I grabbed him and helped him up. I licked my thumb and started trying to get the chocolate off his face when Korver said: Daddy, I wash your face. He then stuck his fingers in his mouth and put nice fresh slobber all over my face.

All the anger in the world can't stop you from smiling at that. I laughed pretty hard.

Little things like that is why I love being a parent.

More Socialness

So, I finally figured out how to change the "url" name of my business on facebook. (its about time).

http://www.facebook.com/CheaperThanShirt

It has been pretty fun making shirts (and other things) so far and realistically we are just starting. Everyone is coming up with some pretty cool ideas for shirts.

we have been doing graphic design work for a few years now and adding the ability to do T-Shirt printing seemed like a no brainer. It is pretty fun to see what kinds of things people come up with. We have had a few hiccups with shirt sizing but other than that everything is working out better than we had imagined. Some shirts are XL and are the same as a different brands L. Others are 3XL and are the same as others L. It makes for interesting times.

I know that I thank everyone constantly but I have to again, We have had lots of help with some little things that to most people would seem insignificant. But when building a business, every single stone adds to the structure. (and I mean that in more ways than 1).

Thanks Everybody

Socialness, Etsy, and Business

My lovely wife finally got our Etsy Store up and running and I am pretty excited about it. We don't have much in there yet but hopefully we will be able to get several more things in there soon.

Currently we only have a few T-shirts that we designed in there but hopefully by the end of the week we will have our designed tile work and glass print work in there too. If anyone is interested in visiting our store please check it out @: http://www.etsy.com/shop/CheaperThanShirt also while you are at you can always like our Facebook page @: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Alternate-Universe-LLC/346698512063630

Thanks to everyone who has helped us up to this point, we have some pretty awesome family and friends.

Eat Your Words Episode 3

This story takes place over about a two week period....

We had gotten several 12 packs of soda for quite cheap (since my wife coupons). We probably had about 3 different flavors open. Korver (who is 2.5 years old now) loves rolling things across the kitchen floor. He was getting out all the cans and rolling them all across the kitchen.

I kept telling Korver to put them all back and he would just reply with: "No daddy, I roll it".

I repeated a couple times telling him that he needed to put them away or he would go to time out. He still wouldn't listen and finally I put him in time out. When time out was finished I asked him why he was in time out and the reply was: "I roll the pop".

This went on for a good duration of the day including soda cans getting thrown and it ended up to be quite the battle. I had to rearrange things in the kitchen so I could put them in a different place that wasn't so accessible.

Fast forwarding two weeks to this very morning I was thinking to myself: "I wish we still had some soda, I don't want to go anywhere right now".

Literally five minutes later Korver had a Mt. Dew Voltage and he was rolling it across the floor.... I have no idea where he got it..... WE HAVE BEEN OUT OF SODA FOR A WEEK (so I thought... apparently we had one more somewhere).

So, I guess you can say that sometimes you just need to EAT YOUR WORDS and enjoy a SODA :)

Printer Update

We have been running our T-Shirt printer quite a bit since we finally got it going. We have also ruined quite a few shirts trying to test things and make sure everything is working out right :)

This printer will print Photo quality images on any color of background. The prints on black shirts look amazing. We have just about perfected printing on White shirts but we still need a little practice on black shirts. Its pretty fun to use. The best part is that we can print single units and there are no fees so its pretty affordable for anyone to buy singles or large orders.

We also started printing on canvas boards and are getting some great results. We used some nice images we took in the Uinta Mountains and they turned out awesome.

Anyways, I'll keep updating the progress with the printer... We are going to be working on some new ways to use it :)

New T-Shirt Printer

Hey Everyone,

We have finally received out new T-Shirt Printer. We got it all set up this week and it is ready to start printing. We are waiting for a pretty large order of shirts to come in before we fire it up. That way we have plenty of stock to play with in case we mess a few up when it gets going.

We have had our Graphic Design business running for about a year and a half now and this will be a pretty welcome addition to our business. It's going to take a little more time but the plan is to have a store front a year from now.

Our business has taken quite a large jump in potential, now its just time to make it a reality.

You never know when an Idiot will strike - Episode 7

Hey everyone, its been a while since I have really used my blog but I was buying lottery tickets for the mega millions the other day and encountered a real winner in line with me.... (by the way, the lottery was up to 640 million for those of you who didn't hear).

This isn't going to be exactly quoted but here goes:

Story: We are in Preston Idaho at the northern end of town waiting in line to buy tickets

Lady: Oh!! I need this soooooo bad..... I really need to win this.
Random Bearded Guy:  Well lady, I think we all need this. If we didn't we wouldn't be here.
Me: Yeah, good luck though the odds are somewhere around 1:700,000,000 (which was a guess).
Lady: Well, I didn't know if I was even going to make it up here without blowing a tire so I had to put new tires on my car so that I could drive up here to buy tickets.
Me: Where did you drive from?
Lady: West Jordan..... (there was a long pause as the bearded guy and I stared at her stupidly)
Lady: Yeah, My husband left me about a month ago and I really need to win this. I spent so much money to get here that I can't afford to not win.

(by the way, West Jordon to Preston is about 2.5 hours or so.... give or take several minutes)

At this point there were probably about 10 people leaning out of line to see who this person was.

The bearded guy continued to make fun of her for the next 10 minutes, the best part is that I don't think she got it.

This just goes to show the exact reason why we don't have a lottery in Utah. Too many people are this stupid and would rather spend a thousand dollars on tires so that they can gamble rather than using that to feed their kids. (and by the way she had her two kids with her).

I think gambling can really positively affect a state.. If Utah had a lottery and worked it like Idaho or Wyoming does, I think it would greatly impact our school system like it does in those states. On the other hand, there are way too many people that would rather take a chance on gambling than feed their family. Oh well, I hope you liked the story :)

Business Starting Up

The new printer should be here within the next few weeks. For those of you that haven't heard what it is here is a little more info.

This printer is primarily designed to print on t-shirts. It can print a full color photograph on any color shirt (including black). It actually uses a white ink as a base coat and then goes back over with the color ink. Its a pretty sweet deal. Along side printing on shirts and about any fabric it can also print on Tile, Glass, Canvas, and just about anything we can fit under the print head.

We will have it in our possession by the end of March (its already paid off before we have it). We are pretty excited to get things going.

We are expanding our graphic design business because we feel that getting into the textile printing in such a fashion will also increase our graphic design volume. By advertising for shirts and the like we are quite confident that we will get other business as well.

The best part about all of this is that by purchasing this machine we will also have the ability to utilize certain crowdfunding arenas and craft sales websites with a bit of an edge. We can't wait to get this thing.

A new Printer on its way

Hey everyone, sorry that I haven't been posting as much lately.... We have been trying to get out business running and that has taken away from any "adventure time" that we have.

We have a very unique opportunity thanks to a local business in which I once worked as a graphic designer.

We are purchasing a Direct-to-Garment Printer (A.K.A. Textile printer or Digital Apparel Printer). We will shortly have the ability to print on a wide range of textile items and also metals and glass. We will be starting out mostly producing T-shirts. With this device we will be able to bypass Set up fees and screen fees which screen printers are always charging and we will be able to use full photo quality prints. We can do all of this on any color of shirt including black.

Thanks to this local company mentioned above, they are letting us set up shop in their back room and will also be helping us market our products to get started.

We are quite blessed to have this opportunity and are very excited to get things running.

More to come as soon as possible.

Delays in Blog Posts

Hey everyone, I haven't been as active blogging lately as I would have liked. The holidays, work, and family can definitely keep you busy.

We are currently working on some more art projects.... Funding is a little short at the moment but we will keep you updated.

Right now we are working on our "Save the Care Bears" Project. More info to come on this soon. Care Bears are cold, hungry, and alone.... Help save them.

Check out our updates

We have posted some updates to our project on Indiegogo.com

Go check out our story and who will benefit from your donations.

Our main goal is to lower costs for school students and teams/clubs.

Any amount that is donated will influence this goal.