With the economy growing worse every day, it’s increasingly common to hear about people not only working a regular full-time job (if they’re lucky enough to still have one) but also looking for home-based businesses they can run in their spare time.

Well, here’s an idea: why not throw a boutique party? You know, like the Avon parties of old, only featuring apparel and accessories instead? It’s surprisingly simple to do, assuming you’ve got a bit of money to invest up front.

1. Plan the date Simply come up with a list of friends who’d likely be interested in attending and pick the date of your party. If your list consists mostly of mommies, go for weekends so they actually have the time to get away from the kids. Then be sure to encourage your invitees to invite their own friends to attend, too.

2. Select your wares: As we all now, the ultimate rule in shopping is to never, ever pay retail. That goes for a boutique party, too. Here’s where providers of wholesale apparel come in: their fashionable merchandise comes in reasonably-priced bundles of 6 containing an assortment of sizes (usually 2 small, 2 medium, and 2 large) for as low as $30.00. That’s $5 out of your pocket for each blouse, but since you’re throwing the party to make money you’d obviously want to mark the price up a bit.

3. Accessorize: Want to expand your appeal? Offer an assortment of wholesale jewelry, too. With attractive, layered-look beaded necklaces going for $12 for a pack of twelve, that’s just a buck a pop out of your pocket which means you can mark them up as much or as little as you like.

4. Lay out a nice spread: Don’t just offer piles of shirts; display them attractively — perhaps paired with accessories — just like you really are running a boutique. Yes, that means you’ll want to have a bathroom or two set aside for those who want to try things on. But don’t limit your spread to stuff for sale, either; these are guests, after all. Put on some music, offer a nice variety of appetizers and beverages, and encourage people to linger and mingle since that will increase the likelihood they’ll buy something.

5. Treat it like a side-business: If you’re smart about it, your opportunity to make money doesn’t stop when the sale is made. Print yourself some business cards and encourage everyone to take a few. Draw up a nifty tag with your phone number and attach it to each item. Do the same with paper shopping bags. You’ll get your name out and, if you’re lucky, you’ll be invited to throw other boutique parties at someone else’s house where they can do the cooking and cleaning while you just rake in the cash.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

As if I didn’t already find President Obama annoying enough, the man interrupted my daily TMZ viewing to announce he’d signed the economic stimulus bill.

My first impression: just twenty-nine days in office and his hair already noticeably more gray. Guess losing sleep wondering how to keep all of the promises made to different voter blocs with competing interests will do that to a person.

Then I felt bad for being so superficial, so I tried paying attention. After noticing that he was stumbling far more in this speech than ever before, I couldn’t help wonder if maybe even he was having a hard time buying the line of B.S. coming out of his mouth.

In case you are one of those fortunate enough to be employed — and therefore unable to watch either TMZ or the Obama show during the day — the gist of the speech was:

Blah, blah, blah. This here plan isn’t going to fix everything. Blah, blah, blah. Don’t expect miracles. In fact, we’re not sure if it’s going to fix a damn thing at all. Blah, blah, blah. Oh, we’re already working on a second stimulus bill because we realize this one is fucked up. Blah, blah, blah. Also, anyone who doesn’t agree with me is a weenie engaging in partisan politics.

Or something like that.

Meanwhile, the Dow Jones closed -297.81, a sign that businesses aren’t buying Obama’s blather, either.

Which just goes to show that you can put frosting on a pile of shit but it is still a pile of shit.

The WTF Snuggie blanket works!

Sure, it’s ugly as all get-out, and it’s not likely to heat up your sex life. And, yes, it’s basically a backwards robe, but it’s long enough to cover my 6′ tall husband’s legs and feet without being so bulky that shorties like me feel engulfed.

I *heart* my Snuggie blanket with sleeves, and so does VH1. Even more: we *heart* how it’s let us shave heating costs.

But that doesn’t keep us from chuckling at this video.

I stopped today at one of those little boutique stores that’s cropping up everywhere these days. You know the kind: a place that’s only slightly bigger than a walk-in closet, run by some entrepreneurial soul who — whether through choice or job layoff — decided they’d go into business for themselves. Strike it rich. Make a buck. All without having to sit in a cubicle wearing a tie.

The proprietor of this particular place was clearly a 30-something kid who believes he should have been born at least two decades earlier so he’d have been in on that whole “Summer of Love” and Woodstock thing. At least then his tie-dyed shirt would have been “in”.

Patchouli scented the air. In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida shook the walls and rattled the New Age crystals in their nice, brightly polished display case. Someone had used a Sharpie to draw peace symbols in the twin circles of the Mastercard logo adhered to his cash register.

Everywhere — absolutely everywhere — huddled displays of artisan-quality stuff. It was piled on shelves, and on top of the stuff that was piled onto the shelves. It stood in stacks on the floor, sprawled over the check-out table, and rose up in leaning towers of goods along the walls.

Interesting stuff. The kind of stuff I’d ordinarily want to spend hours picking through: herb-flavored cooking oils and home-grown potpourri; cottage-milled soaps and beeswax candles; handmade papers embedded with flower petals and one massive glass jar after another filled with organic, hand-mixed teas. The kind of stuff which, because I know the love that’s gone into it, I’d ordinarily be willing to spend a small fortune on.

Yet it all looked like crap.

Oh, it wasn’t dusty, which I suppose should be surprising in light of how jumbled and cluttered the place was. But despite all of the care that had clearly gone into fashioning each item the place offered for sale, the packaging was so much of an after-thought that I started to doubt whether everything was really as unique and carefully crafted as I thought.

Look, if you’re going to try selling artisan-quality items, what you’re selling isn’t so much that you’re capable of doing something, but that you’re capable of doing it better than your buyer could do on their own. Take herbal tea, for instance. I can grow herbs (or buy them at the Farmer’s Market). I can dry them, I can chop them, and I can combine them into a tea. That does not make me an artisan. It’s the skill involved in the making of the product that’s for sale. My tea will taste all right, but it won’t be remarkable. I expect remarkable stuff if I’m paying an artisan’s prices.

But if you want me or anyone else to pay artisan prices for your goods, make them look better than mine would. Don’t dump the tea into a Ziplock bag which you’ve written the price on with a Sharpie. Take the time to find quality packaging — recycled is always a plus — and make it look professional. Stickers don’t cost a fortune, and yet a high-quality, four-color label that’s been die-cut and carefully affixed to your product can often itself convince a customer that you really are an artist, and not just some out of work slacker trying to drum up beer money in his spare time.

I’ll never know whether those canisters of herbal tea contained the perfect blend or not. There just wasn’t much to tempt me into trying them at the prices the store was asking, not when they clearly didn’t have enough pride in their merchandise to display it attractively and to give it appealing yet professional packaging. Still, maybe I’ll get back there someday if only to listen to Iron Butterfly and breathe in some patchouli.

For everyone disappointed by the news that there will not be a second stimulus check coming this month, it’s probably tempting to take heart in Obama’s promised tax cut ($500 for individuals, $1000 for couples).

Except that a tax cut won’t make much of an impact on the nation’s economy, much less an individual’s wallet.

Over the year, this translates to an addition $44 each month, per person, or about $22 in the average paycheck.

Twenty-two dollars per month. Do you feel economically recovered now?

Thanks, Ron and Matt for a wonderfully profitable year!

I have to admit, I got quite the chuckle out of the Americans in Paris video that’s going viral on the net. Seriously, what couple hasn’t experienced some kind of distraction in the midst of what should be a terribly passionate kiss?

On the other hand, the video revived my travel jones. It’s been over two decades since I last visited Paris, and just seeing it in the background was enough to ensure I’ll be renewing my passport this month. I’d always promised the Venomous Daughter that the two of us would take trip to Europe when she turned 18 (an age when, I hope, she’ll actually be a fun traveling companion). With that day just six months away, it’s now time to get serious. Not that I’m suddenly feeling cash-flush, mind you. It’s just that I figure if I start scrimping and saving now there’s a chance we’ll be able to afford that trip as promised.

The folks at LastMinuteTravel.com are making that easier, as they can make anyone’s travel plans easier, by offering last minute prices in advance. How do they do it? That’s not my business. But let’s just say their air travel and hotel package rates are so low that treating my daughter to a 2-week trip Paris in June to celebrate her high school graduation will actually cost less than the car she’s been pestering me for. And, unlike the car, I get to enjoy Paris with her!

Oooh, la la.

Pssst. I did something radical today: I bought stock. Quite a bit of it, for quite a low price.

Via Reddit:

If you bought $1000 of stock a year ago, you would now have:
$91.28 if you bought Washington Mutual
$37.50 if you bought Neomagic
$21.29 if you bought Freddie Mac
$20.79 if you bought Fannie Mae

But, if you had purchased $1,000 worth of beer one year ago, drank all the beer, then turned in the cans for the recycling REFUND… You would have $… 214.00 in cash.

So the best investment advice is to drink heavily and recycle.

It’s called the 401-Keg Plan.

As any woman who has gained weight can tell you, shopping for clothes is depressing. There are few things I dread more than needing a new outfit, except perhaps having a root canal or another child.

See, women’s clothing — and by that I mean females over 35 who aren’t still trying to dress as if they aren’t — comes in two flavors: attractive and fashionable clothes for the slender, and hideous baggy things in polyester for those who are not. (As if polyester for people prone to sweating a lot makes sense, right?)

As someone who loves fashion, I find myself staring at the awful stuff for larger-sized women and shuddering. Ergo, I usually plead a migraine rather than put myself through buying the kind of clothes most stores sell for women whose hips attest to too much time spent at a computer (and fridge).

Then again, until now I hadn’t seen the plus-size clothing at Bodacious Boutique. Founded in Dallas-Ft. Worth back in 2004 by Paula Guthrie, the boutique offers many of the same styles the skinny girls get to wear but cut to flatter a larger figure.

Take their plus-size swimsuits, for instance. Oh, sure, there are the standard bathing suits with a “who’re you trying to fool” skirt attached. But they also offer many attractive, flattering styles that come sans skirts (and some caftans for those of you who can’t stand being that bare).

There’s a surprisingly large assortment of designers, including Vikki Vi whose wrinkle-free clothes are indispensable for travel, and even selections of wearable art and flax clothing. Although prices aren’t always easy to locate when you click on an item (look in the right corner of the pink bar above the photo), you’ll find they’re surprisingly reasonable.

And you know what that means, don’t you? That’s right: skinny girls don’t get to have all of the fashion fun anymore!

Electric Venom (as well as I Think Therefore I Blog) will be participating in Blog Action Day 2008, a day on which participating bloggers, podcasters and videocasters collectively exercise their ability to focus global discussion on globally important topic.

In 2008, the Blog Action Day theme is Poverty. Bloggers are free to interpret this as they see fit. We invite bloggers to examine poverty from their own blog topics and perspectives, to look at it from the macro and micro, as a global condition and a local issue, and to bring their own ideas, views and opinions on the subject.

The site provides a list of post ideas for those wondering how to fit the topic into the context of their blog and resources for those interested in learning more (though some on the right may find the resources a bit too biased). Once written, you’ll be asked to insert a snippet of code into your post to help organizers locate and promote participating entries. And, of course, there are all sorts of pretty, shiny banners.

I’m in. Are you?

If the resurgence of hip-hugger jeans and platform shoes wasn’t enough to leave us all feeling that everything old is new again, now there’s another blast from the past about to return: stagflation. Those of us who survived the 70s remember all too well that peculiar combination of inflation combined with economic stagnation triggered by the oil price spike, and how smart investors fled the stock market, preferring to buy gold instead.

Fed Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is hoping to keep the surge in oil prices from sparking stagflation which could cripple the economy for years.

“Maintaining confidence in the Fed’s commitment to price stability remains a top priority as the central bank navigates the current complex situation,” he said in a speech earlier this month.

But few Fed watchers count on him to back up that talk with action anytime soon.

Most expect the Fed to sustain its overnight ultra-low borrowing rate of 2 percent at its policy meeting this week.

Despite what the woman with the annoying fake-British accent assures us in commercials, those who buy gold don’t always turn into overnight millionaires (and they don’t always listen to Beethoven, either). When it comes to gold as an investment the trick is to understand that gold moves in the opposite direction of currency: you buy it when the dollar’s low and sell it when the dollar’s high.

What’s curious, however, is that even as the dollar has steadied in anticipation of the Fed’s meeting, Fidelity International announced today that we’ve entered a period of global stagflation. Their recommendation? Ditch equities and buy gold and government bonds.

Or so an “urgent” email alert from our investment company urged me this morning.

My response: buy it with what? Between losing half of our home’s equity in the past six months and the price of everything else going up, the only way we can possibly afford gold is if one of us gets a cavity that needs to be filled. Which reminds me… VH is due for a dental appointment.

I just saved even more money than I planned.

See, a while back we switched from Southwestern Bell to Time Warner digital phone service. We were sick of picking up our land line phone and receiving an earful of static, or dialing a number only to have it somehow misrouted by Ma Bell. (Yes, that actually happened on a number of occasions.) That wasn’t too big a deal: we both have cell phones and pretty much use them exclusively.

What finally led us to make the change, though, was the realization we were paying over $30 per month just to have the land line that our home security system requires. Meanwhile, as TWC cable customers we were eligible to add Time Warner digital phone to our service plan for just $5 more per month. Hey, we like saving money as much as anyone, and we’ve heard some pretty good reports about their service. So making the switch was a no-brainer.

Or so we thought.

A few days after changing over — while keeping the same number — our home security provider sent out a notice to all of its customers saying they couldn’t guarantee their system would work on digital phone lines. Therefore, their notice read, they can’t be held responsible if the alarm system malfunctions.

Bull.

What the notice failed to explain is that it’s the security company’s choice to keep their system from working reliably for customers with VoIP or digital phone. They just need to install a cellular unit to transmit signal regardless of power-outages. And unlike a landline, which is easily cut by a determined thief, those cell units can’t be easily disabled.

Naturally, I called to ask why they hadn’t explained this to customers, many of whom would be happy to pay a small additional amount because they’d still save more after switching. Their response? They didn’t want to be liable in the event the cellular unit goes out, too. What, like they’d be liable if SW Bell went out?

As it turns out, we made two switches this month: first to Time Warner digital phone and then to another (bigger) security provider who offered the cell unit as part of its package, which costs less per month than our old company charged.

So, thank you, to my old security company. Your resistance to change didn’t just save me the $25 when I switched phone providers, but another $30 when I switched security providers, too. That, sad to say, is the best service you’ve ever done us.

In an effort to rapidly boost our flagging economy, the federal government will be sending out the first stimulus checks four days early. So, for those of you who kited your tax payments, this is probably good news.

For some, well, it’s still a waiting game for those who view such things as “rebates” rather than ploys. If you’re in that group, well, you’re probably praying your check will be here in time to take advantage of the discounts retailers are offering.

And you are the precise reason why the government thinks this is such a good idea.

For others — and this includes the Venomous Household — it feels like a shady back-room deal. We wrote a hefty check to the IRS and now they’re writing one to us a bit later. Oddly enough, the amounts aren’t that different.

That makes our decision about how to spend our stimulus check pretty simple: it’s already spent. We paid it once toward a debt with the IRS and when we get that money back, well, we’ll pay it toward another debt… most likely our highest-interest credit card.

Yes, we’re aware that’s not what the idea was behind the whole thing. But then again, we don’t actually understand the fine economic distinction between receiving money from the IRS after having paid them nearly the same amount and, say, “robbing Peter to pay Paul”.

Sure, we’d like to spend that money on a nice big HDTV or a family vacation or even a new tile floor for our kitchen. But, really, isn’t that kind of “screw the budget, I want stuff!” thinking what led to the supposed “mortgage crisis” in the first place?

How about you? What will you be spending your money they shouldn’t have made you pay “stimulus check” on?

Until recently, I’d completely stopped listening to television news. I get my news via RSS feeds and the occasional visit to Google News, the beauty of which means that I’ve only had to endure the news that interests me. Has Hillary said something stupid lately? I couldn’t tell you — I don’t pay attention to her if I can help it. Did Obama do something idiotic? I’d never know it — I don’t read much about him these days. For all I know, Libya could become part of Russia and I’d be the last one to find out… if I cared.

Then I bought my new treadmill with the thought of using it while getting a better butt blogging — something I’m determined to do by high summer — and suddenly I’m finding myself listening to television news nearly non-stop.

I remember now why I stopped.

When the media isn’t talking about the number of defaulted home loans they’re talking about the number of number of defaulted credit cards. The housing market is going to hell in a hand-basket. I got that. Didn’t you, oh, about five months ago?

Thing is, until recently I’d thought the problems were limited to the U.S. After all, isn’t that what the media’s preaching: that foreclosures and the “mortgage crisis” are all the result of bad federal regulation? After all, even John McCain is saying calling for legislation designed to help homeowners struggling to make payments to their home loan lenders. Isn’t that proof there’s a problem in our country?

Not so fast.

The housing market is cooling in Canada. Ditto with Scotland and England, too. Heck, even China’s housing market is struggling. I don’t know about you, but to me that’s seeming more of a pandemic — rather than a domestic — issue.

Granted, I’m not an economist. I get bored with numbers (heck, I just got bored typing the word “numbers”), so I can’t profess to understand the intricacies of worldwide financial dependencies. But I do know this: about four years ago VH and I were able to obtain a 4.3% home loan on the nicest house we could afford following the old rule that mortgage payments or rent should be equal to one-fourth of your monthly income. Then we made a 25% down-payment using the funds from the sale of our previous home.

We locked our new mortgage in with fixed payments on a 15-year note and rearranged the rest of our budget accordingly: the mortgage gets paid first, and everything else (aside from my internet connection and hosting fees) goes into the “hope we have enough” pile. Every single month we pay at least $200 extra toward our principle, because we figured that once our home is paid off we’ll have that much more to pay other bills, none of which will pull the roof from over our head simply because we didn’t pay more than the minimum monthly payment.

As a result, we’ve now paid off half of our initial mortgage. That equity, we’ve always figured, is our rainy-day savings: it’s something we can draw on — even if we don’t want to — should life run amok and we really need extra cash.

So, ultimately, I guess I’m saying that I’m having a hard time understanding thinking of the foreclosure crisis as a crisis in the system, as a paradigm for voting, or as something that requires yet more federal involvement. If it’s not limited to our country, and it’s something that people who took the “safe” path of investing in their own homes have managed to avoid, then is it really a crisis?

Or is it just a lack of poor planning on the part of too many people who wanted to live large without having the patience to wait until they could afford to do so?

UPDATE: Meanwhile, as Truthful Lending explains, the feds response to the poor planning entails authorizing the “the quasi-governmental agencies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to lessen their qualification requirements and allow more homeowners to refinance into conforming loans”, with the result that these agencies take on higher-risk notes so that the gub’ment benefits when those higher-risk borrowers do default. Can you say, “All your houses will belong to Them?” No??? Well, bend over and grab your ankles and see if that doesn’t help your pronunciation, folks.