A friend had sent me the link to the Small Business Big Wishes ‘contest’ the other day, so I figured “What the hey! I may as well enter!”
I read up about things and somehow mistakenly thought the entry info said to write in 500 WORDS using emotion, WHY you wanted to win a $5000 grant for your small business.
Cool! I can do that! So I did!
Only to try and copy/paste my ‘story’ into the entry form and continually be told that I had too many CHARACTERS! After trying to change up my wording a little to make sure my word count was under 500… it dawned on me. Doh! They are asking for 500 CHARACTERS, not words!
Sheesh! How on earth would I change up my ‘story’ from 500 WORDS to 500 CHARACTERS?! How does one convey their story with emotion in just 500 characters?!
I did it, some how, and here we have my very ‘short & sweet’ contest entry. Please go vote for us, votes count towards who wins, along with our 500 CHARACTER story. 
https://www.loveourlocalbusiness.com/base/cabrand?region_id=ca&content_id=4144
However, I didn’t want my full version to go to waste so I’ll share it with you here. 
It makes much more sense in 500 words or less then it does in 500 characters. lol Possibly this will help you decide to go vote for us too! The grant would be a HUGE blessing to our business this year!
My wish for HomesteadEmporium.com is to grow!
We are a family business run by myself, Pieternella (Peggy) with each of our 7 family members helping wherever possible! Our two 13 year olds & 14 year old can be found snipping threads, our 19 year old son adds snaps to products, our 21 year old daughter lists items, my husband does post office runs, and I spend my time cutting, dyeing, and sewing fabrics as well as taking care of all the business side of things including customer service and social media. This is a true family endeavor with much success for a number of years! We create and ship organic cloth products worldwide with customers everywhere from Canada & the USA, to Japan, Greece, Norway, France, Belgium, and so much more! Worldwide, customers are using HomesteadEmporium products in their daily lives!
This past year and a half has been very difficult for our family, and has led to some difficulties continuing to run the business as best as we always have. My husband needed to move from our home on Vancouver Island to rural Saskatchewan for employment. This left myself, and our five children, to run the business, and our daily lives, without his constant help and support. After almost nine months apart, the children and I finally joined him this past spring. This was wonderful, but also a real financial burden.
Through this transition however, HomesteadEmporium.com has continued to grow steadily and has been a huge blessing to our family. Our home in BC has not yet sold, so we are paying for two homes just to keep our family together under one roof. This has put a real strain on the finances, including those of the business. Each month, every extra nickel and dime is needed for personal income. We continue to come up with ways to stretch our dollars and supplies as far as humanly possible, to keep the business running at top form each month. However, it would be wonderful to have some extra funds to buy some much needed supplies to get HomesteadEmporium.com back to it’s top creating form! As the saying goes, you need money to make money!
A $5000.00 wish grant would be such a tremendous help to keep HomesteadEmporium.com growing as we continue down this new adventure in the prairies of Saskatchewan! It would allow us to purchase extra supply of fabrics, fabric dyes, an extra sewing machine, basic supplies, and also some much needed shelving in our new in-home sewing studio! I have created a budget for those items we’ve been needing, and the total comes to 4,800.00. It seems like such a small amount compared to large businesses budgets, but at a time when every bit of income is necessary to keep the family afloat and the every day bills paid, it’s a lot to us!
We thank you greatly for considering HomesteadEmporium.com’s wish!
There you have our wish. If you haven’t already, go vote! We truly appreciate it!
https://www.loveourlocalbusiness.com/base/cabrand?region_id=ca&content_id=4144
boo!)
Here is my first comment!
