Selling chocolates

We decided at the last minute to make a bunch of Valentine's chocolates and sell them. It was a good chance to try out some of the things we'd learned about pricing, marketing, economies of scale, and so forth! Daisy made a flier and we just advertised them on our little neighborhood ladies GroupMe, and we thought we might get a pity order or two. We were okay with that, knowing we'd have no trouble eating them ourselves! But we ended up selling twenty-six boxes (four chocolates to a box)! We were surprised and pleased! Subtracting our costs and the amount of time it took, the earnings of the four kids who helped were…let's see…about $3.28 per hour. $13 each. Ha! Well, so it's not going to make us rich anytime soon. But we did use the money we made to do something fun together!

And it was fun making the chocolates, anyway. We pride ourselves on them being really good. As good as any we've had from professionals. We hope our customers were pleasantly surprised.

Our cost/pricing sheet…the girls did all these calculations to figure out our costs.

Caramels drying

Daisy made a tiny chocolate, of course

We made caramels (semi-sweet and milk, salted and unsalted) as well as orange cremes and raspberry cremes. The raspberries were particularly good this year (I think the freeze-dried raspberries we used were fresher than last year's). But really, they were all good. Caramels are always my favorite. We boxed them up in these cute little boxes, and put our homemade stickers on top. They looked really nice!

This was a fun project and I think we might do it again next year! We'll see!

Store Day

I was remembering way back when I was in first grade and we had a "store" day where everyone got to sell things to each other. I loved it SO much! I wasn't sure it could be as fun with just our family, but I presented the idea to the kids and they got excited about it. They spend a couple days preparing things to sell—things they made themselves and things they just wanted to get rid of. I was really impressed with how much work they put in! Then I also went to the dollar store and bought some things I thought the kids might like, and distributed those among the kids also, so that everyone would be able to sell at least something someone else wanted!

We used bunny money for the buying and selling, of course. It was good because I gave some out at the beginning so everyone would have some, but many of the kids already had a lot from other good things they'd done around the house, so they had more purchasing power.

Goldie had her own store, "Bendigo Antiques."

(Bendigo himself was not for sale)

She made peanut butter cupcakes to sell (with free samples to lure people over), but her very best thing was the adorable tiny crocheted elephant she made (on the right of the picture above). We were all wild to buy him. We would have paid four times the amount she charged. The only reason I didn't buy him myself is because Daisy sneakily beat me to it. 😡

Ted's Goods and Services

Daisy and Clementine did their store together. They had some really cute miniature items, and Daisy had made scotcheroos (they sold out quickly) and fortune-tellers in all sizes, plus many coveted items from her stash of random stuff.

My friend's daughter Harriet was staying with us for a few days, so she joined our store. She made some really cute personalized calligraphy name cards, and a few other things. Ziggy did his store with Harriet too. He made coloring pages and peanut butter graham crackers and an assortment of other things.

Junie's rainbow jello was vastly popular. I thought it was a bit expensive, so I bided my time until the end when I assumed she'd reduce her prices. Instead, when there was one jello bowl left, she raised her prices due to decreased supply! And someone else bought it even at that price, so I didn't get any. Hmmph. Cutthroat.

Gus carefully made the signs for his shop the day before, and advertised donuts, hot cocoa, and strawberry lemonade for sale! This was the first I'd heard of it, but he was so cute, and so diligent in his preparations, that I felt I had to go get a donut and some strawberry lemonade for him to actually sell!

Then I saw that he'd made the things out of paper.🥹 So he sold both!

He also made stickers on my sticker maker to sell

The tiny things (they made the rounds being bought and sold among the kids) were surprisingly detailed and cute. They were called "Mini Brands" and I don't know if they are supposed to go with dolls or what? They are in little "mystery packs" at Walmart. We couldn't believe how realistic they were!

You can open the boxes and the little foods are packaged inside just like real ones

Like this—the little individual cheese wedges! Wrapped in actual foil! With actual (fake) cheese inside!

The buying and selling took all morning (after quite a long set-up period where everyone arranged their goods and priced them, etc.). There was some bartering, some haggling, some price gouging, some clearance sales. At the end most people dropped their prices in an "everything must go" mentality, and everything did go!

Teddy's careful inventory sheet

Daisy, still gloating over her tiny Bendigo

It was such a fun day and a fun activity! We would definitely do it again!

Bunny Money Revival

Every now and then we get out our family currency, Bunny Money, as a reward system. It had been many years, but the Economics Unit is the best time to do it! We have a list of things for which one can earn bunny money. I try to choose things outside the regular family jobs (though staying for meal cleanup the whole time until it's done is always a rule, and the kids always need more reminding of it. So that's an easy 5 Bunny Dollars which still doesn't always get claimed). Singing all the verses of all the hymns in church is another easy one to get, and all the kids should get it every week, but they don't always.

"Take one of the younger kids on a nature walk" is a popular choice. It's so cute because Gus and Clementine love it so much, but somehow Gus got the idea that he should also get bunny money for being taken, and he's so cute and excited about it that we can't tell him no. So now he gets the fun of going on a walk with an older sibling, AND gets bunny money for it. Ha!

"Write 5 things you're grateful for" is one that Ziggy will often do when he wants a quick buck (ha ha). The older kids don't think he should be able to do it multiple times because it's too easy, but if any child needs more practice finding the good in life, it's him, so I let him do it all he wants!

When the kids made their own money, some of them made lists of what you could buy with the money, similar to our family list for bunny money. They were SO cute! This is Gus's:

10: Make a bilding

1: Go on a Nachr Walk

5: ICspore (explore)

8: To make a dazrt

7: You ge to go to the livbriry (library)

2: you ge to go to the stor

Ziggy's was even more complicated, and included such fun things as "raseng" (racing), "play I did it" (a game they made up), "panio lesins" (piano lessons), "ticol" (tickle), "plae sakrmint" (play sacrament…hmm…this is indeed something they play, but I'm never sure if they should), "get poosht on the prime truk," "scir 3 tims" (scare three times), "get to snugl," and "plae Kaw man" (for Gus, naturally). I don't know if anyone ever bought any of these things or indeed earned any of Ziggy's money at all, but he had fun making it!

After a time, Bunny Money always seems to lose its effectiveness, but it is fun while it lasts!