Cans shown here are large fruit cans. A smaller veggie/beans/tomato can would be a great pencil cup.

These are the only supplies you need! If you’d like to use my ribbon, one ball should do it. This large can took me about 15 yards to cover.

Starting at one end, start wrapping the ribbon around the can.

As you wrap around, cover the starting end so it’s not visible.

Continue wrapping around the can, pushing it up a bit as you go to fill in any gaps.

When you come to the end of a strip, hold your finger under the ribbon as you wrap one last time around. Then tuck the end under this slack. Pull tight to secure.

Continue wrapping to the end and repeat the tuck when you’re finished.

There you go! A nice decorative can to hold anything you want.

Here mine are in use on the back of my stove. On the wall, my chocolate pancakes recipe print, which I refer to often.

But there are a couple of things that many of you may not know… about chargebacks. A chargeback is when someone disputes an order in some way and Paypal gives them their (your) money back–without your consent.

There are two primary instances in which you’ll see a chargeback

Package Not Received

In this instance, the buyer claims not to have received the package. This is happening quite frequently these days as a scam. A person buys something and has it sent to an address other than their main (confirmed) paypal address. You send it, they receive it, then put in a claim with paypal saying they didn’t.

Purchase Not Authorized

This one is actually a bit worse. In this case the customer isn’t saying they didn’t get the package. They’re saying they didn’t order it in the first place. Imagine a scenario in which a woman buys a scarf on her husband’s paypal account. She receives the package and he goes nuts about where she got the money for such a scarf. Mad at his wife, he tells paypal he didn’t authorize the transaction. You, scarf-maker, lose. Paypal can take the money back from you and as far as I’m aware, there’s nothing saying a package has to be returned to you before they do it.

What Paypal Does

Paypal immediately puts a hold on the amount of the transaction–they remove this amount from your account and hold it until the issue is resolved. No matter if you’re in the right, they will hold the money just to be sure. Then, you have to prove your case. Over the next 30 days or so paypal will decide your fate. Meanwhile your cash is in limbo.

I first heard about this last year with a horror story of a guy who sold a laptop on eBay (A LAPTOP!). He accepted the $2000+ payment, shipped the laptop and had a nice rest of the month, maybe bought a new laptop to replace the sold one, or took his family to disneyland, who knows, but he spent the money.

Some time later the customer filed a claim with paypal claiming the package never showed. And as far as Paypal is concerned in a case like this, he might as well have not shipped the package at all if he didn’t send it to the CORRECT address–one that has been confirmed by paypal. Incidentally, most international addresses can’t be confirmed.

No confirmation of shipment will do. You could have a polaroid of the customer holding your package and Paypal will side with the buyer. This guy was out a laptop AND $2000!

I know, crazy, right? But one look around the paypal forums and I found even more cases like this. This is a not-so-new scam for people to get free stuff. If they’re willing to part with a little cash now and send an innocent email to request some other address (their mom, neighbor, friend) they can get the product now and get their money back from Paypal later.

How to protect yourself from chargebacks

You can’t stop someone from filing a claim, but you can ensure paypal is on your side if they do.

Before you ship

Make sure you look at the ship box on the paypal invoice. It’s not enough to see “ok to ship” — make note of your seller protection status and follow paypal’s recommendations if it doesn’t say “Elligible”.

After facing a similar claim to the woman and her scarf scenario, I now make a habit of sending a quick email to these customers to say, could they please confirm that they did in fact place the order and that the shipping address is correct. If the order is over my comfort zone for a chargeback (more than my business can afford to lose), I’ll ship the package with signature confirmation as well, but often that’s an inconvenience to the customer, so I only do it if I feel I really have to.

Most important: ship only to the address paypal gives you

Here’s a screenshot of the Seller Protection FAQ section that talks about this:

Ship to ANY address other than the one listed on the PAYPAL invoice and the customer can put a claim in with Paypal to get their money back, whether they receive the package or not.

This is really quite common, particularly on Etsy where customers are allowed to enter a shipping address from within Etsy separately from their paypal address. I get these requests a lot to “please ship to etsy address”. I can not do it.

It’s a headache for my customer too. If they really need something shipped elsewhere I have to refund their purchase and they have to place their order again. With Etsy it’s not SO bad because I can just mark the invoice “unpaid” and they can just go through the payment process again (not the whole order), but it’s still a pain.

And yet, I can’t budge. The day I do, will be the day someone spends hundreds of dollars and files a chargeback claim–and then I’m out of business. As enjoyable as this work is, it’s not worth dealing with fraudulent people.

So take care of yourselves because we’re all kind of in this alone (and yet together). But we don’t have an accounting department handle these things and with Christmas around the corner, we all could pay a little more attention to paypal policies!

Recently I’ve noticed a lot of friends doing the “Babywise” system….but I just get a bad feeling about the whole thing. I was just curious what your take is on Babywise, as well as if there are any alternative books you would recommend. I have a number of friends who are due soon and would love to be able to offer them another Biblical early parenting book that is more focused on grace without turning into complete permissiveness.

My thoughts on new motherhood

To tell the truth I hadn’t heard of Babywise before you wrote. But I think in general many women, especially first time moms, get so nervous and frazzled over their first pregnancy, they’ll turn anywhere for help. Sadly there are also a lot of people preying on these women to sell books and other unnecessary “must-haves” like some fancy stroller gadget or a baby gate for the TV (really? you can’t teach your child not to touch the TV?). :)

I strongly urge all new moms I know to relax and give their instinct a chance to kick in. God designed women with a spectacular gut instinct toward our children. We get a taste of it before children and call it “women’s intuition” but it’s so much stronger with our kids. It’s why we get offended when someone tries to tell us how to raise them. We just KNOW what’s right for ours and no one else does.

But if a woman doesn’t trust that instinct, doesn’t trust God to have designed it in her, she will go looking for advice from all kinds of people who can never know what’s right for her kids. So no matter how credentialed a person is, how many countless hours spent researching infants, NO ONE can love and nurture her newborn the way she can if she can just relax and go for it!

I was NOT a kid person when I had my first, but within a few days after my daughter was born it all sort of fell into place and I used the baby books to block the draft under her bedroom door that winter. ;) I have a friend too, who is very “Monica Gellar”, bought every book on babies, hired professionals to baby-proof her home, went the full 9 yards, and when that babe came home she said it all went out the window. None of that stuff made a difference. She just knew what needed to be done.

Now of course, it’s wise to get advise now and then because instinct doesn’t cover everything, but that advice should come from other moms who’ve been there, preferably moms you know – friends, sisters, your own mom, etc.

So I can’t speak to Babywise specifically, but in general I don’t think it’s worth the trouble or expense to follow something like this. From what little I’ve read this morning, it seems to go against the natural order of things to withhold feeding (or sleep for that matter) from an infant for any reason.

With my twins, EVERYONE told me “you HAVE to get them on the same schedule” but my little girls are complete opposites. They just WOULD NOT eat or sleep at the same time and it felt wrong to push them. It was a nightmare for me, but I don’t think forcing them to eat or sleep differently would make them more obedient to me now or in 10 years. And even if there were some proof it did work, it’s not worth the trouble to me. It sounds like a lot of headache that’s not worth the payoff.

Obedience is so much sweeter when it’s a learned behavior acted out from the heart of a child who genuinely wants to do what’s right. I don’t believe you can get that any other way than through firm loving discipline in toddlerhood. And I think it’s sad if we as a society have so lost faith in God’s design and ourselves to do the job right, that we start making up new ideas to force our children into being “convenient kids” (children who don’t make us work too hard).

I don’t think a 13-year-old who talks back is the result of over-indulgent feedings as an infant. It’s more likely the result of having been allowed to talk back at some point in the past because mom or dad was just too tired to punish him that day. It happens. Parenting is HARD WORK! AJ is at at age now too where she’s starting to test us again and it’s a marathon some days to stay on top of her and make sure she’s treating her sisters kindly and turning off the light in her room when she leaves. But it’s not because I fed her when she was hungry. :)

I recommend the Bible…

I’m sorry I can’t recommend a biblical new baby book other than the Bible. :) That’s just my favorite one. I have yet to find any useful counsel in any other digital or printed resource that didn’t originally come from the Bible anyway. Of course it’s not easy reading a lot of the time, but if you can, try to find one written for moms, with footnotes and devotional readings, or at least one with a topical index with a section on parenting.

…and being alone.

I also recommend getting away regularly, away from the baby. When the twins came I was SO OVERWHELMED, so I told my husband I needed a few hours one day a week to just go be alone for awhile. I’d go get a cup of coffee, read a book, or sometimes grocery shop, but always alone. It was during these times when I would see things more clearly and often reconnect with God in a way I couldn’t with a newborn (or two) demanding my complete attention. It also opened my ears to hear what God might have been trying to get through to me in the chaos at home.

So I hope this helps some of you too, and if you have thoughts on new motherhood or Babywise in particular, I’d be interested to hear. I don’t know anything about Babywise, so it would be great to hear what you think! Also, any books to recommend? I don’t read “self-help” types of books, so I’d love to hear of resources you think are helpful too.

I feel like I’ve been stingy with the blog posts lately, so I spent some time over the weekend putting this project idea together for you. I hope you have endless crocheting ahead of you!

Make these soft coasters with my cotton twine (or a lightweight yarn). You’ll need about 10-15 yards total for each one. The two-color coasters in the photo above were made with a mini spool for the inside color and half of a regular spool for the outer color.

If you know how to crochet already, you may be able to follow along with the photos below, but I’ll type up some instructions–with links to a how-to for each stitch–for beginners too. I’m pretty useless without pictures, so I hope this helps! Let me know if anything is unclear.

Starting the round

1. Chain 6.
2. Slip stitch in the first chain to make a ring.
3. Double-crochet into the ring 15 times, slst into 3rd chain of first dc, chain 3

Two more rounds

4. dc in the first dc, ch 1, { dc in the next dc, chain 1 }, repeat { } 16 times, slst into 3rd chain of first dc, chain 3
5. 2 dc in the first space, { dc in the next dc, 2 dc in the next sp }, repeat { } 15 times,
     slst into 3rd chain of first dc, chain 1

Finishing off

6. sc around, slst in the first sc, tie off
7. weave the end in toward the middle and tie to the beginning tail, in the back

Other options

Keep going for a hot pad or large doily

1. after step 5, ch 2 more, dc all the way around, slst in the 3rd chain of the first dc, ch 3
2. repeat step 4 around slst in the 3rd chain of the first dc, ch 3
3. repeat step 5, omitting the dc in the dc (2 dc in each space only)
4. finish off as steps 6-7

Add color!

To make multiple colors, stop one color at the slip stitch, leave a few inches and cut the string. Then begin the ch 3 with the next color. When finished tie the two colored ends together and weave the ends into a row of the same color, just for an inch or so. Trim the extra.

Do a few of these and wrap them up with some coffee, tea, cocoa, and a mug for a nice cool weather gift (it’s coming)!

First, get to know your personal settings

The most valuable thing you can do for yourself is just spend some time looking through all of the options in your profile. There are a lot of things you can do there, from adding the addresses of friends and family to send gifts to them, or setting your business name to appear on transactions instead of your name.

Go to PROFILE –> More Options

Go item by item down the lists to get to know all of your options. You’ll be delighted at what you find!

Payment Receiving Preferences

This is an area you’ll want to visit if you’re selling online. Go to your profile options as described above and look for Payment Receiving Preferences in the right column.

Here are some things you might want to do here:

1. Block payments in other currencies
2. Block eChecks – because these take a week or two to process, it can be hard on you as a seller waiting for payment to come in.
3. Block users under 18
4. You can also turn off the “notes to seller” here if you like.
5. Change the credit card statement name that appears to your customers.

Ship instantly to a any address (not an order)

Want to ship a package to Mom, but she didn’t order something from you? Or maybe you’re not a seller, but would like to ship easily? Go directly to a blank ship page.

BOOKMARK THIS LINK and ship anytime using your paypal account to pay for it.

https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_ship-now

Custom Payment Pages

This is the page people see when they’re checking out with paypal. They’ll see this coming from Etsy, Big Cartel, or any other site that ends up at paypal.

Go to your profile area as before (PROFILE –> More Options) and choose Custom Payment Pages under the selling preferences column on the right.

Now click the OPTIONS tab.

Here you can offer gift wrap, gift messages, gift receipt, a quick survey to see how they found you, and even a one-click newletter signup. You’ll have to manually add them to your email list, but this one little checkbox may get someone to sign up who might never have known you had a newsletter.

Buy and sell gift certificates

This is so far the BEST solution for online gift certificates I’ve seen! It’s so easy, both for my customers and for me. You no longer have to create a listing for each dollar amount and then keep track of how many gifts are floating around out there waiting to be redeemed.

How it works

1. Jill buys a gift certificate for her sister Sally for $25.00.
2. You and Sally get an email notifying you of the gift.
3. Sally has until she dies to use it (it doesn’t expire until she does). :)
4. You see two balances in your paypal account: balance with the $25 and available balance without the $25.
5. Sally redeems her gift certificate.
6. You now receive $25 from Paypal and your balances are adjusted.

I LOVE that I don’t actually see any money until the gift is redeemed. Can you imagine someone buying $1000 gift and waiting 5 years to use it? Probably wouldn’t happen, but ouch if it did. I don’t know about you, but I’d have spent it in 5 years and then I’d be out of luck when it comes time to fill a $1000 order!

As a buyer I love this too because it’s SO easy. You can either print the gift to give in person or send it via email, on a date in the future too! Awesome.

How to set it up

1. Click on the Merchant Services tab.
2. Under the section Create Buttons choose Gift Certificate.
3. Set up your gift certificate button the way you want and click CREATE BUTTON.
4. Copy and paste the code into your website’s code where you want the button to appear.

That’s all. Paypal does all the rest!