August | 2015 | Savannah & Co.

After starting my business last November, I have been fortunate to find these amazing resources for free, or low cost that have been instrumental in my success as a creative small business owner. I hope you will find them helpful too!

WordPress
If you have been on my blog, I am using WordPress. A free site that hosts blogs and I have transformed mine into my website as well. For a small yearly fee of $18 I was able to have my own domain web address (or you can keep the .wordpress domain). With many templates to use, pick the theme that fits your business best.

Picmonkey
Free photo editing- HELLO! All those photo collages, text on photos and editing is done in Picmonkey. Completely free and user-friendly, you can’t go wrong here! Your edited photos integrate easily into many other programs. View my journey to Bardstown, KY where I used Picmonkey!

Paper Street Press
About a year ago, when me and the hubs bought our first home I stumbled across Paper Street Press on Etsy. I wanted a custom return address stamp and they have the best prices and designs. We even have the state of Kentucky on our stamp. I highly recommend this shop and I just ordered a custom logo stamp to stamp my bags and purchases to create brand identity.

VistaPrint
I have ordered my business cards and postcards to promote my business through VistaPrint. They always seem to have a sale going on and print quality is top notch. I discovered VistaPrint when wedding planning a few years ago and wondered why I hadn’t used it since! You can choose to have them send you a pack with free paper samples beforehand.

Afterlight
I just recently downloaded this 99 cent app on my Iphone. It allows photo editing directly from your phone and additional features than Instagram or other apps I have used. You can create photo overlays, shapes, numbers, wallpaper and pretty much any other feature you would want to add to your photos before posting to social media. This will come in handy for giveaways and Instagram for sure!

Bloglovin’
This website gives you the option of following all of your favorite bloggers in one place. Just like when you sign up for Pinterest, it pulls topics of interest so you can customize which blogs you follow. Pretty sure this site has changed my life! And make sure to follow Career Girl Daily! She has lots of tips for small businesses and entrepreneurs.

Wave
Accounting, invoicing, payments, you name it! This is the best FREE resource out there (in my opinion) for small businesses. Before Wave, I was using a good ole’ Excel sheet that was cumbersome and I had to enter the data multiple places. Wave is cloud based and user-friendly. I am solely a Mac user, and would compare it to the difference between Mac and PC. A must have for keeping track of your expenses. The free software comes with reports to keep track of everything from your income statement to balance sheet. You can pay monthly for quicker online help, but the user guides usually can help you just as well.

There you have it! Hope you enjoy a productive, yet relaxing weekend! You can visit me at the Lexington Farmer’s Market this weekend!

Thanks for stopping by!
Kim

Saturday mornings are the best! Sleeping in, drinking coffee and petting my dog. Visiting the local farmer’s market is also on my top things to do list. The market variety ranges from honey, flowers, dog treats, bbq, fruits & veggies, and includes an artist market as well. I will be one of the vendors next week, so be sure to come shop!

Another opportunity I had was to meet up with a relative for the first time! Lots of community this morning and Blue had a great time meeting new friends.

Here is a little diary in pictures of our adventure this morning:

Here we are on the way. Blue is not sure where we are going!

Blue met a redtick hound and pretty sure he was in love!

I was tempted to purchase the painting in the background here of Keeneland by local artist, Enrique Gonzalez. He has a lot of equestrian art and other local attraction paintings. Blue and I were trying to find some shade!

I met Glenda from Earnest Art and was drawn in by her work. She was selling her son’s watercolor work and she mentioned he is on his third deployment. I was so glad I could support him and their family by buying these beautiful notecards with his original work.

And we made our way home! Time to get home, eat lunch and get to work on some new creations for my booth set up next week at the Lexington Farmer’s Market! Hope you can stop by and shop!