Mom, disabled, began making her daughters beloved hair bows to save money. Friends said mom was good at it and should sell them. Mom deliberated. Mom had always wanted to do something to make a positive impact on the world. But, becoming disabled had pretty well scrapped all of her plans. After discovering she actually liked making bows and that they were pretty easy for her, mom decided to sell the bows for charity. But, she also wanted to be there for her children and provide them with valuable experiences to improves their chances at adult success. But, what kid wants to work for free???

For Marlyanne, the answer was simple. She gets her choice of every five non custom hair bows created. In addition, we named the shop after her (she's the only girl, so no objections were raised), and she got business cards and permission to tell everyone she meets that her mom sells hair bows. She was tickled pink!!

For the boys, the reward is college savings, and smaller chores requirements. They also get to choose HOW they are involved in the business so long as it's a real time investment and educational for them. Marlyanne gets college savings, too, of course.

For Reese, well, we don't know what he gets yet as he has not made any demands to date. He did request a steady diet of wooden clothes pins, but it was unanimously determined that this would not be a beneficial reward for his hard work and patience. We are strongly considering vaccinations and neutering. He is not find of the idea, but democracy, you know. Also being considered is a unending supply of beggin' strips and knuckle bones.

Dad gets additional time on the xbox, a less bored wife, and well, supposedly a more cooperative family, but all that is probably still debatable. Losing the expense of buying hair bows from someone else, as well as a semi-monthly bag of Reese's peanut butter cups seem to keep him sufficiently appeased.

Amy gets half off all products for all of her support and someone to hang out with.

What do I get? Well, I get to give all of the above, plus feel like less of a useless person and more like a contributing member of society. I get to do things I like and be creative and shop for supplies. I get to be closer to my children, play with my dog, visit my friend, save money for my children, provide bows for my daughter, and contribute to a worthy cause.

All of this is really nothing to sneer at. And maybe one day, this will mean that I don't have to live on disability anymore.

Our pricing and financial structure is to be updated annually, in order to provide opportunity for real success to be capitalized upon, but we will ALWAYS donate a portion of our proceeds to charity and we will always be saving money for college, if not for these three children then for our future grandchildren, etc.