New England Maker: Watts in Maine

As you know by now, I love sharing about companies and products we love on the blog and our Instagram - and most especially those made right here in New England!  I decided to start a little series to showcase some of these great New England Makers and I'm excited to share the wonderful Kylie Watts from Watts in Maine for the first interview! 

Watts in Maine: The Perfect Catch Cuff

Watts in Maine is known most for their Perfect Catch Cuff, made from brass lobster gauges. Recently they've expanded and also offer Maine and nautical inspired earrings and necklaces as well as recycled lobster tag accessories which benefit local lobstermen and their families.

Tell me a little about yourself and your business.  

Kylie Watts:  I currently work full time as an Office Manager at a pediatric dental office and do what I can after work and on the weekends with my Watts In Maine business.  My husband was born and raised on Vinalhaven Island in Maine, which serves as a huge place of inspiration for my pieces.  The idea of turning the lobster gauge into a bracelet actually came from our many visits to VH. 
I am also a born and raised Mainer!  I have a love for fashion, accessories, and jewelry. 

Kylie Watts of Watts in Maine

How did you start Watts in Maine?  Had you been making lobster cuff bracelets for a while or was this a new leap for you?

KW:  In the fall of 2014, I told my husband I wanted him to make a brass lobster measure into a bracelet.  I had mentioned it before, but we didn't follow through on it.  We bought a couple and started forming them and refining the process over a few weeks.  By November we had secured our first store, k colette, in Portland's Old Port.  I was flirting with another nautical idea before that, but it never made it out of its initial stages. 

What does a typical day look like for you?

KW:  I work from 7:15am-5:30pm at the dental office.  On my lunch break and after work I read and return business emails.  My evenings are spent printing invoices, preparing orders, updating social media, and trying to fit in normal daily living tasks. 

What is your favorite part about owning your own company?

KW:  I love having the freedom to do and create what I want.  It's so exciting!  I also love connecting with other local small businesses.  It's nice to build relationships with others who are going through similar situations/struggles.  

And least favorite part?

KW:  The financial part!  Keeping track of the business side-ew.  :)

What has been the most exciting moment for Watts in Maine since you started?

KW: I was really excited to be included in DownEast Magazine's "40 Maine Made Gifts". I couldn't wait to go to the bookstore to snag it and see it in person.

What advice do you have for people just starting out?  

KW:  Spend time building your social media following, find a mentor or someone who can show you the ropes, and build your business at your own pace.

What is your long-term goal?  Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

KW:  My long term goal is to be able to focus on my business full time and only have one job.  I'm hoping to expand upon what Watts In Maine offers and could be doing that in the very near future!  Stay Tuned :)  
I'm not sure if I want a store front down the road, or where I see the business going.  To be honest, I take it one day at a time. 

All photos courtesy of Watts in Maine.

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Do you own a New England-based business and would like to be featured in an upcoming interview?  Or would you be interested in having me style, review, and feature one of your products?  
Please drop me a note.  

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More Interviews from New England Makers:

Amazon Prime Day is Coming!

Amazon Prime Day has been announced for July 11th!  | This post contains affiliate links |

If you're not a Prime Member yet, sign up now so you don't miss all the very best deals and perks. During Prime Day (which is actually 30 hours long), Amazon will be having super sales and flash deals on tons of items from every category.

Prime Day is a great time to get a jump start on Christmas shopping, buy presents ahead of upcoming birthdays, and to get a great deal on something you've been wanting for yourself too of course.  Besides the amazing deals on Prime Day, your Prime Membership entitles you to FREE 2-day shipping on most items, a great selection of free streaming movies and tv shows, and more every single day of the year.  

We've been Prime Members for years and take advantage of the free shipping and streaming tv constantly.  Living out in the boonies, Amazon has really become a necessity for us.  We especially love Prime Day because it gives us a chance to get a jump start on gifts for the rest of the year without having to make the long trek out to the Outlets and hunt around for a deal.  

Easy Flashcard Organization Hack

Our toddler loves flash cards... well, loves dumping them all over the living room mostly.  After getting tired of constantly picking them up I decided it was time to do something about it.  

After buying some $1 packs of flashcards from Target Dollar Spot (love Dollar Spot!), I punched a hole in each one and reinforced them with hole reinforcement stickers before stringing them together with binder rings.  If you don't have binder rings, you could also use a piece of ribbon or string.  

And that was it - easy-as-can-be!  Now I don't have a couple hundred flashcards thrown all over the living room, and they're super-easy to pack for car trips and travel!  

How we Make it Work on One Income: Becoming a Stay-at-Home Mom

When we started growing our family, our original plan was to have me go back to work part-time but once I started maternity leave, I realized I just couldn't go back... breastfeeding was a HUGE challenge for me in the beginning and I didn't want to jeopardize it.  We also quickly realized it wouldn't be as practical as we first thought for my husband to shift his schedule around to watch the baby.  Daycare did not make sense financially for us and we had personal reservations of letting someone else raise our baby all day.  So after a lot of discussion we made the tough decision to have me stay home full time, which was a definitely a wake up call.  | This post contains affiliate links |

How we Make it Work on a Single Income

Now I certainly wasn't making the big bucks at my job, but suddenly loosing that income and adding a dependent definitely strained our budget - hard.  For a little background, my husband is self-employed which means that we essentially have to pay for everything 100% out of pocket ourselves - health insurance, retirement, life insurance, etc. - there is no paid time off or sick days and no "benefit perks" that come with his job.  No Christmas bonus to look forward to every year either.  We also have a mortgage and are still paying off college loans - over all it becomes a lot of expenses once you add everything up.  In order to make this work we had to cut back a lot, but it's worth it to be able to stay home with our little one.  

Here's what we did to make it work:  

BUDGET

I can’t say how important it is to have a budget and know where all your money is going. By seeing what all your bills are and how much money you have it will help you efficiently allocate your paycheck and plan for the future. {Please read my blog post on Creating and Maintaining a Monthly Budget if you’d like more information on how to create budget as well as download a Free Excel Budgeting Spreadsheet.}

Called Around to Lower Bills

Make a list of all your utilities, car insurance, home owners insurance, phone plan, etc.  Call around to each one and ask if there's anything they can do to lower your bill.  Often if you've been a customer for a while and your rates haven't been adjusted in a few years, they will be able to give you a bit of a discount.  

If they can't give you a discount on what you have, re-evaluate your current plan.  There might be something unnecessary in your plan you can drop to save some money on your bill or consider switching to another provider for cheaper service/coverage.  

Cut Cable, Limit TV Streaming Services 

Cable TV is expensive - SO expensive.  Ditch that bill and you can easily save $100+/month.  Subscribing to multiple TV streaming services (Netflix, Hulu, HBO Now, Amazon Prime, etc) also adds up fast.  We originally subscribed to several services but now just use Amazon Prime since we pay for that subscription anyways for it's shipping perks.  

One Vehicle

Having just one car won't work for every family but we decided it was something we could make happen.  With my husband working from home already, we really only "needed" a single car for errands and school drop-off... sometimes there are conflicts when we both need to be somewhere different at the same time, but we've learned to plan ahead for these conflicts and carpool or rearrange a schedule to accommodate each other.  
By having one car that means just one car payment, one insurance bill, and one set of carseats to purchase.   

Save on Health Insurance and Medical Bills

Ha.  I'll use the term "save" loosely here.  Health insurance and out of pocket medical costs are sooooo expensive these days and sadly there's not much you can do if the plans available to you are limited and you don't qualify for reduced premiums (both of these situations apply to us).  But there are some small tips we've found over the years to help save a little on our health-related bills - these include using your credit card rewards to your advantage, shopping around for care, and asking for prompt payment discounts.  
{How to Save on Health Insurance and Medical Bills is a separate blog post that goes into more detail on all the ways we save on health bills if you would like to read more.}  

No More Date Nights/Takeout

Before kids, we had date nights a lot - going out to eat, to the movies, etc.  But all that spending sure adds up fast.  Once I became a stay-at-home mom, date nights were limited to special occasions only and takeout nights have become few and far between.  

No More Personal Shopping

What do I mean no more personal shopping?  I mean no more shopping for "fun stuff" for ourselves just because we want to.  Gone are the days when we could spend all day wandering around the outlets picking up whatever we liked.  Now when we buy clothes it's justified:  it's because we actually need a new pair of sneakers or because we have a wedding to attend - no more "just because" shopping.  These days we do a lot of consignment selling and shopping, especially for baby/kid's clothes - that way we're never really spending, just "trading up" for what we want or need.  
We also don't buy books or movies anymore, we borrow them from the library instead.  

Saving on Groceries and Meal Planning

The big weekly bill you have the most control over?  Your grocery bill.  Groceries are expensive but there are lots of tricks to save that can really add up.  Meal planning is probably the biggest one - by planning out your meals for the week ahead you'll waste less and use more wisely.  You can also clip coupons and use couponing apps to save even more.  
{Saving Money on Groceries is a more detailed post on how we save on groceries using these tips and more if you would like to read more on it.}  

That Nap Time Hustle

Even though stay-at-home mom is my #1 job these days, finding something for me to do to generate some kind of income from home was important - which is how Birch Landing Home was born!  I started this little blog and Etsy Shop as a way to make a little extra money during nap time.  Birch Landing Home certainly isn't huge (yet), but it's an enjoyable outlet for me to work towards growing more.  If you have any kind of hobby you can make some side money with, definitely go for it!  Just make sure to keep good records because you need to declare this income on your taxes.  

Pay Yourself Every Month, No Matter What

This is something my Dad instilled on us from the first day we got after-school jobs.  Every month put some money in a separate emergency savings account that you don't touch.  Ideally you budget this deposit into your monthly expenses so you know you are definitely putting $X-amount-of-dollars away each month.  However even if you can't commit to a definite amount every month you still should put something - anything - in that savings account each and every month (my Dad said so, haha). 

My Extremely Hardworking Husband

It goes without saying, but all this wouldn't be possible without my extremely hardworking husband of course.  He puts in long hours every day and weekends too to make sure everything keeps rolling.  There's no way we could make this work without his dedication and resourcefulness.  

What we Should Have Done Differently

We made good headway from the beginning cutting expenses but we should have started A LOT sooner.  How soon?  Well as soon as we started trying to have a baby!  In hindsight, we really should have drastically cut all expenses way before we ever got pregnant and put my whole paycheck away into our emergency savings (or at least 60% of it since I was originally planning to go back part time).  Then we would have spent all those months really trialling and perfecting the single-income lifestyle to see what was working while creating a substantial safety cushion.  

To anyone who is considering going from two incomes to one after baby it definitely can be doable but I would recommend evaluating all your expenses early and saving as much as possible - that way, it will be a lot less scary of a leap into stay-at-home-motherhood.  Good luck and enjoy the journey!  

Thank you to my friend Michayla for inspiring me to finally write this post!  

Please note:  These tips relate to what we've learned in our own experience, but please do your own research for the best information regarding your own situation.  Use the information in this post at your own discretion and risk.  

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More Money-Saving Posts:  

• How to Make the Most Money Consigning Clothes and Household Items

• Our 9 Favorite Money Saving Apps

• How to Save on your Health Insurance & Medical Bills

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Affordable Baby Shower Gift Basket with Nûby

Sometimes it can be really hard to decide on an affordable baby shower gift for a friend, relative, or co-worker.  Maybe you waited too long and all their registry items in your price-point have already been purchased (darn!), or maybe you're like me and like to go rogue and buy fun and practical items that weren't on their registry in the first place.  In any case, you can't go wrong with gift baskets - and what better way to to fill a gift basket than with affordable, practical items from a great brand like Nûby.  
| Thank you to Nûby for providing the products to review for this post.  This post contains affiliate links |

I had a hard time narrowing down exactly what Nûby products to include in this gift basket, but after some thought I decided to choose a variety of items that would be useful throughout baby's first six months and beyond.  In the past, I've also done gift baskets in a particular theme (all bath items, or all feeding items, etc), and those are always a really fun option as well!  

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Hot Safe Bath Duck

This bath duck you can use from day one with your little one. He is BPA-free and has a super-handy heat sensor on the bottom so you know if the water temp is safe for your baby. I love that this duck is something you'll be able to use at every bath for a long time - as a temperature safety feature and as a fun bath toy.

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Nûby Natural Touch Bottle to Cup

If you've been following my blog for awhile, you know already that I am ALL about the baby products that grow with baby - if it's convertible, and you can get a lot of use out of it, that's the product I'm going to choose.  This 3-stage, BPA-free cup is good from 3+ months and converts from a bottle with a slow-flow nipple to a no-spill sippy cup as your little one gets older.  It even has detachable handles.   

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Look at Me Mirror Toy

This fun teether toy is BPA-free and recommended for babies 6+ months. It has multiple surfaces and textures to keep your little one occupied while they're teething, including cooling gel and a fun mirror to look at their reflection.

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Easy Clean Bottle and Nipple Brush

This BPA-free bottle brush will come in handy from day one as well. It has a convenient suction base so it stands up on your counter and away from coming in contact with germs on the counter top. It also has a big bristly top for scrubbing inside bottles, and a handy nipple brush stored in the base to clean bottle and sippy cup nipples.

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Teething Trends Pearl Beaded Necklace

And finally, it's always great to put something in that both mom and baby can use! This BPA-free, soft silicone necklace is fashion with a purpose - it makes a fun statement necklace for mom, but pulls double-duty as a wearable teether for your little one.

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More affordable ideas to add to a baby shower gift basket:  

• thermometer
• comb/brush set
• package of wipes
• nail clippers
• rattle
• diaper cream
• pacifier
• cute onesie
• funny bib
• board book
• receiving blanket
• baby bonnet
• photo frame

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- I received these items for review from Nûby but all opinions expressed are my own.  Please see our Disclosure Policy for more information. -   

These Nûby products can be found at various retailers including Babies 'R Us, Buy Baby Direct, Walmart, and Amazon.  

Give Back Box

Give Back Box, has started a new initiative that couldn't make it any easier to give back!  Just put your unwanted items in a participating retailer's box (Amazon is a participating one), print out a free pre-paid label, and then it gets sent to your local Goodwill as a donation.  You never even have to leave your house!  

Start tackling those New Year's Resolutions - clean out your closet and give back to your community at the same time.  It's win-win for everyone.  

You can get more info and print your your label at GiveBackBox.com

New Year, New Resolutions to Save Money

New Year means time for new Resolutions.  Usually they boil down to a lot of the same things, and a big one for us is always saving more where we can.  Every year everything gets more expensive - groceries, gas, clothes, healthcare, etc but our paychecks always seem to stay the same.  
I decided to compile some of my best blog posts on saving money and I hope it will help you jumpstart your savings too!  

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Saving on Groceries

Our 9 Favorite Money Saving Apps

Saving Money on Groceries - Rural Edition

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Budgeting

Creating and Maintaining a Monthly Budget

Making it Work on One Income

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Saving on Health Insurance & Medical Bills

How to Save on Health Insurance & Medical Bills

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Clean House, Make Money

5 Tips to Make the Most Money from Consigning Clothes and Household Items

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Save on Special Events

Easy Ways we Saved THOUSANDS on our Dream Wedding

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Instagram Best Nine

These are always fun!  Sharing my top nine Instagram posts from this past year - and it's a little bit of everything, which is quite fitting!  

You can follow me on Instagram at @birchlandinghome