Bella and Max

Organizing Workshops!!!

As you all may or may not know, I am not the most organized person out there.  It's not that I never was, but with all that I have going on with my life things get a little hectic and I would say I have lost some of my organizing skills over the years.  So was I ever happy when Maulitta came to the rescue!

Bella and Max, in conjunction with the Village Bean, are going to offer organizing workshops with Maulitta Brown (Personal Organizer and owner of Clear Intentions) or busy women and moms.  There will be a series of three workshops and you will receives a discount if you sign up for all three classes. 

You better believe I'll be there! This is one of my New Year's resolutions!

Workshops by Maulitta Brown, Professional Organizer & Productivity Trainer

 

Clear the Clutter and Create a Space You Love - January 7, 2010

Learn the simple SEE IT, MAP IT, DO IT© and S.T.A.C.K.S© process to get organized today.  In this workshop we will learn about clutter and how to conquer it once and for all!  We will also talk about creating a home that you truly love and enjoy spending time in.  Clutter keeps us stuck in the past, when what we really want is to live in the present and create space for the future.  This class is great for those who are overwhelmed by their stuff and don’t know where to start. 

60 minutes                 © 2001-2006 Clear & SIMPLE, Inc.  All Rights Reserved.

Class Fee $25

 

Secrets of Organized Moms - January 14, 2010

Whether you have 1 child or 6, whether you work outside the home or in the home, maintaining order in today’s busy lifestyle is a full time job.  We will discuss ways to stay organized, create routines that work for you, meal planning and how to handle all of those school papers. 

60 Minutes

Class Fee $25

 

Paper Management 101 - January 21, 2010

We have so much paper coming at us from all directions.  Work papers, personal papers, children’s papers; it is hard to stay on top of it all.  Come to this class to learn how to set up some simple filing systems to reduce your paper piles. 

60 Minutes

Class Fee $25   *If you take this class and decide you want to do the hands-on workshop, your class fee will be credited to the $99

 

A separate class that will be offered at a later date will be with a special filing system (a three hour class)..... you will need to have take Paper Management 101, but again, you'll get a discount if you do!

Filing Made Simple! Hands-On Workshop           **Special Offer for Bella and Max/Village Bean Clients**

In this fun, hands-on workshop you will learn to think about your paper in a different way with the Freedom Filer Self-Purging Home Filing System.  Imagine having a system that you don’t have to spend hours sorting through each year at tax time.  You will:

§ Learn what to do with all the paper that comes into your space.

§ Learn how to set up an action system and how to use it.

§ Create a permanent filing solution for all of your files.

§ Finally understand which documents to keep and which to toss. 

§ Leave with a system that is ready to take home and start filing!

§ What to bring: 100 hanging files and a container to carry your kit home in.

Workshop fee $99 (Includes Freedom Filer Kit $50 value)

**This 3 hour workshop fee is normally $150

 

Pre-Register by December 23 and pay only $25 or

pay $30 at the door

Pre-Register and pay only $65 for all 3 classes!

 

Filing Made Simple Hands-On Workshop is offered separately at the special rate of $99 for Bella and Max and Village Bean clients. 

 

Seating will be limited, call the shop (425.488.8200) or email me to soon to make your reservation!  We will host 20 people at the Village Bean with seating beginning around 8:45 am so that you can get your coffees and morning treats prior to the 9:00 start time.  Click here to see the Village Beans menu (no outside food or drink is allowed).

the plan

Holy Guacamole, am I a bad blogger or what?  Don't answer that.  I just looked at my stats (which I should be doing everyday but don't) and I am sad/happy to see that there are still a bunch of people who stop by each day only to see the same old outdated post sitting at the top of my blog. 

I feel a little overwhelmed..... blog, facebook, twitter, store, salon, kids, husband, website.... things, life.  There is a lot to keep up with.  I haven't even changed the photos on our blog or website to reflect the new store and we moved in March!  Yikes!

So here's the plan.  I am re-doing the darn thing.  Today.  The blog.  I am going to organize it, categorize it, re-photo-ize it.  The thing is I want it to look like this (Heather Bailey) or like this (Beerleaguer) or like this (OhJoy!).... which, by the way are all featured on the typepad homepage and should be able to be accomplished somehow.  But do I need to be a programmer?  And how do I get a good twitter background page?  I need a good twitter background page too.  And my website, my poor little ol' website.  If it wereFarmville it would have wilted and closed down a long time ago.  Poor website.

I start each day with the best intentions.  To get a lot done (I usually do) but I can't get enough done.  I need help.  I need to release some of this and let someone help me. 

But today, I will get the blog fixed up... and the website fixed a little and photos changed.  I will.

We are nominated For Best in Western Washington! Twice!

It's that time of year again.  Not only are a bunch of kids going back to school (mine starts tomorrow!).  It has been a busy summer, thus the non-blogging taking place lately.  We've moved, hired a third stylist (yes, you can get in easier!) and just plain lots of stuff to do.

But I'm blogging at 6:30 this morning because it is the annual King 5 evening magazine Best in Western Washington voting time.  Someone kindly nominated us last year three weeks into it and we came in second place.  This year we are out of the gates running.  We would love a first place one of these days... seems we always get second place.  BUT, that's ok, it is great to just be nominated and great to still be doing ok a year later!

Hopefully if you voted last year you won't have to re-register.  You can just go in and vote.  Thanks last year to everyone who went through that whole process with us!  My fingers are crossed that since you did it will make it easier for you this year,

Here's the links, Best Children's Cut and Best Children's Clothing I think these links will work.  I hope they do.  If not, will someone please let me know :)

We've recieved TWO nominations from Nickelodeon's Parents' Picks Award!

Please vote...Please vote... Please vote.... you can vote once a day until July 15th!

For Haircut
in Seattle

For Kids Clothing Store
in Seattle

Our First Bad Review

Wah-wah-wah...

Yep, we got our first bad review.  It upset me all day. I don't think anyone likes to read or hear bad things about them, at least I don't, and it can turn my world upside down.  I work so hard and try to provide great customer service and so do the people who work at the shop, so I think that's what made it harder to take.  I wasn't there the day this happened (figures) so I don't really know what happened and now that the salon is on the same floor I probably would have heard and seen  the situation transpire had I been. So here is what the woman wrote.....

One star out of five

3/16/2009

My husband took my 2-year-old daughter to this salon for a bang trim.  Her bangs look AWFUL.  I guarantee you I could do a better job at home even with my carpal tunnel.  And they charge $6 for this "service."  If I knew how to attach a picture to this I would.  Her bangs are lop-sided and blunt like the woman put a rice bowl on her head to guide the cut and then veered off course.  It's simply AWFUL and it will grow out but the hairdresser cut way farther back than just the bang area and that will take a very long time to grow out.  I am so disappointed.

She goes on to review another place (a restaurant) and also gives it one star the next day and slams it and a girl by name.  Then she reviews another kids salon few days later to praise them and say how they fixed her two-year old daughter's hair.  Those are her three reviews.  On a website that doesn't allow response, which stinks because I think her reviews deserve a response.  Here is mine:

I'm sorry that you had a bad experience at our salon when your husband brought your daughter in.  Our stylists have many years of experience working with children (one has 20+ years and one over 10 years).  The stylists at Bella and Max strive to communicate with parents to get all the information they need in order for your child to get the haircut that you want.  We provide over 300 haircuts per month on average and rarely (if ever) do we hear negative feedback, it is quite opposite in fact.  We have many return customers and referrals from happy parents. 

We charge for bang trims because sometimes a child comes in just for that service and has not been in before or that is all the parent requests or their children are growing their hair out and that is all they ever get.  As a business we have to charge for services that we provide in order to pay the people who are working and cutting hair.  Just as you and /or your husband collect a paycheck for the work you do, so do the people who cut hair and that is how they earn their living and how we pay rent, utilities etc.  Six dollars is not unreasonable for a bang trim and if you call around, it is one of the less expensive actually.

We provide movies, toys to play with in their laps and after their haircut they get a sucker or prize from a treasure chest as well as a free ride on the Country Village train.  The stylists also really work with the smaller children to explain what they are doing, to make them comfortable and soothe them if they are scared.... which is totally what you should expect from a salon specializing in children.

Again, I am sorry you felt like you did not receive the bang trim to your satisfaction.  We stand behind our work and products at Bella and Max and we would have been happy to try and correct anything that you might have felt wrong, had you contacted us to state your dissatisfaction, as we would do that for anyone. Instead you went on a website and wrote that it was going "to take a very long time to grow out", but then you went on to say another salon fixed it within a week. 

By the way, we do not use "rice bowls" as guides and being half Asian, I take offense... Brandy from Snohomish.

7 reasons it is hard to move a store

1. Painting slat wall is time consuming a difficult.  Especially if you're like me and trying to look at it at all different angles in an empty space.  Side, top, bottom.... you forget that stuff is going to be on them and you won't notice it anyway.

2. Moving stuff stinks.  Especially moving little things and heavy things.  There are a lot of things and they have to go somewhere.  Which leads me to 3.......

3. Putting things away.  Where do you put it?  Configuring space, changing things up and making it all fit.

4. Changing your address.  Remembering who to tell.  Especially important, utility and government related people.  You have to tell them.

5. People don't know where you are.  I've plastered the old space with signs and apparently people are still a little confused.  Being in a spot for two years and then moving 100 feet away is still confusing to some.  Even I am confused when I drive by the spot.  Two big orange "For Lease" signs and no lights or window displays... looks like our ship sunk.

6. Good news, people are coming in that had no idea where we were before.  That's good news.

7. VERIZON.  Forgive me if you work for them, but sheesh.  The phone was moved quickly and the girl was nice enough to warn me to transfer my service to my cell phone Wednesday night so I could get calls.  But it took like five calls to get to a nice helpful person to start with.  They won't transfer your internet until phone lines are established, so a work order has to be issued after the phone line is installed.  Which makes no sense, why not do it all at once?  Anyway, no internet = no credit card processing.  No credit card processing = well, you can imagine.  And please, what really is the difference  between DSL and FIOS?  I would have gone with Comcast but it takes 10 days to transfer phone numbers if you want to keep your number and I didn't want to change that too. 

Yikes, there it is.  I would have done a 10 list  but really moving isn't all that bad.  Number 7 is still driving me up a wall though and I wish I could do something else.  Anyway.......

It is a great space and we have heard a ton of great compliments from people who had been to the old space.  It feels comfortable now and sort of home-like.  It feels right.

We've moved the store!

It's 5:30 in the morning, how I didn't sleep in longer I have no idea, considering we moved an entire Children's Boutique and Hair Salon in one day... and set most of it up!

We are now in the old toy store location and it is looking pretty cute.  I think having the salon and store on one floor is going to be great.  It seems full to me, but it must just have to do with getting everything into one space, sizing the salon "wasted space" out and just plain being somewhere different.  Losing the storage space didn't make as big of difference as I thought so who knows!

Stop by.... we are about 100 feet towards the park, by Red Rooster Tea House.   I'll post photos as soon as I can find my camera!

Thanks Alison, Katy and Carl or jumping in and helping with all the hard work!

If you don't have something nice to say.....

then don't day it at all.  That should be my motto.  Sometimes it is so hard to not write what I want to write.  Like the whole sales tax thingy.  But it was what I was feeling and so I vented it on my blog.  I know most kid store blogs write about featured products, sales, new stuff (and I do that) I just can't do that everyday.  Sorry. 

ANYWAY!  We are moving the store today.  TODAY... ack.  We are still "open" but moving stuff over to the new space and by tomorrow morning we will open at our new location, over where the toy store used to be, by the tea house.  The whole moving over smoothly, not sure how that's going to go.  Verizon is going to come over sometime during the day to hook up the phones.  Until then I will transfer calls to my cell phone so that we can still receive calls and make hair appointments.  I am hoping for business as usual, but we'll see.  I don't think the credit card machine will work so I may have to manually run them, which won't be fun and really time consuming / expensive.

Oh, and we won't have internet service until Monday.  Yup, Monday.  That means all emails and store orders will have to take place when I wake up at 6:00 in the morning or when I get home at around 7:30 in the evening.  Sorry for the inconvenience.  Thank you Verizon for that one.

We are almost ready to move!

We are almost ready.  Painting has been a chore, slat-wall is my enemy.  We are shooting for next Sunday night, after the salon closes, to move everything.  The logistics of getting the phone and internet service (to process credit cards) is finding to be the most daunting.  I'm worried that the transition won't go smoothly.  Any ideas on how to do that without losing service for a day... or days?

Layaway at Bella and Max

We know times are different these days and a little tougher for some.  We want to try and make things easier for our customers and we now offer layaway both in our store and online.  We've had layaway in the store for about a month now and it's been fabulous!  Our customers have been able to put a deposit down and know they will get the clothing they what on a schedule that works for them.  Online just put in layaway in the coupon code on checkout and you will be charged a 50% deposit, we'll work out a payment plan that works for you within the next month - two months.