Poll: Family ties key to youth happiness

Poll: Family ties key to youth happiness - Yahoo! News (AP)

Interesting, important, and, especially if you're a mom, encouraging survey done by the Associated Press and, yes, MTV.

IMHO, these two together - AP and MTV - could come up with a pretty good overview of what's going on with today's youth.

Hey, some good news (for a change). : )

Keep cool.

Stopping By & Update

Hope all are keeping cool!

The "limited time" "Buy 3 Shirts, Get 1 Free" CafePress promotion is over now.

I have been hard at work re-organizing my CafePress premium stores, as you may notice, also adding new graphics and merch. Been busy putting together Back-to-School Features as well (which I had better complete RSN!).

I've been in the process of marking down my Value T-Shirts.

My Value T-Shirt mark-down is for two reasons:

1. CafePress will be increasing its price for printing on a second side later this month. What this means is that either we shopkeepers can pass along the price increase to you guys (!), we can cut our mark-up (!!), or we can remove the graphics on the second side (a ton of extra work on top of an already heavy workload at the busiest part of the online retail year). I most likely will do the first and third: pass along the mark-up, plus start removing some - but not all! - of the second graphics. What this means is that all my merch printed on two sides will be slightly more expensive, but you'll start to be seeing prices drop as I remove the second graphics from many items. BTW, I have many, many items (most?) which have only one graphic, so they will not be affected in any way, price or otherwise. So....to make a long story shorter, my offering the Value tees at a lower price, may compensate a little for the increased price of the two-graphic items. (I'm giving it a shot for now, anyway. Running it up the flag pole; seeing if it will fly.)
2. The economy. It's getting a little ugly out there. The stock market has been like a roller-coaster this year - you have to hang on tight, and it's starting to get a little sick and nauseating. Then there's all those "sub-slime" (thank you for this apt word, Jim Cramer) and otherwise screwed-up mortgages and other "creative" financing/credit crunch. Gasoline prices, higher food prices... It's not a time to expect people to want to throw around their cash. It's a time where someone might be more interested in spending $9.99 for a tee she really likes and can afford, while, perhaps, the more expensive shirts have to be passed up (especially those with that added two-graphic CafePress mark-up!). The more flush among you won't care, but I do have sympathy for those who are uncomfortable shelling out more than $9.99 for a T-shirt at this time.

Telling you far more than I should, it's good news/bad news for me when I sell stickers, buttons, magnets, Value Tees, and the like. Good news in that I made a sale and that someone has appreciated and is now enjoying my stuff. But a little disappointing in that I'm making only $1 or two on the sale. (The more expensive items bring me $5 or more...)

Anyway, I'm way long, too long here. Just updating you, and wishing you well. Keep cool!