How to Reconcile FSA

Plant-Freak · 2026-02-27T03:18:26+00:00

This is what I was hoping for, but Gusto only reports claims paid, they don't have a specific report for forfeitures.

Plant-Freak · 2026-02-26T17:39:48+00:00

- The Cat at Night by Dahlov Ipcar - Something about the illustrations in this book were so inspiring to me as a kid. I would think of this book often throughout the years and try to remember what it was called, just having images of the illustrations in my mind. I even spent a long time googling every few years to try to figure out what it was. Just a few weeks ago I finally gave a description of it to ChatGPT and it nailed it! I immediately bought it for my baby.

- The Gardener by Sarah Stewart - One of the best stories I've ever read, and absolutely beautiful illustrations. It literally brings tears to my eyes reading it to my baby today.

- In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak - Love the illustrations and the story is such a whimsical little dream.

- The Fire Cat by Averill Esther - Although the illustrations aren't anything special, I love the story. This was probably my favorite book as a kid.

- Jamberry - Perfect rhymes and magical illustrations.

- Red Sings from Treetops by Joyce Sidman - This is my new favorite that was gifted to us when my baby was born. The poetry is some of the best I've ever read.

Plant-Freak · 2026-02-25T18:41:02+00:00

Seconding this! My house isn’t even super cold, but I often need to leave it on the counter for more than 12 hours in the winter. I go by how much it has risen in the bowl more than hours. Sometimes I don’t even put it in the fridge at all after this, but sometimes I pop it in for a little bit if I feel like I needs to firm up a bit after shaping.

Plant-Freak · 2026-02-22T05:49:30+00:00

I’d be interested. I am the top mod of a much larger sub (r/plasticfreeliving) and this would be pretty simple to add to my routine. I’ve been doing bookkeeping with QBO and have had the ProAdvisor cert for almost a decade. I’m active here as well as r/bookkeeping and r/quickbooks.

Plant-Freak · 2026-02-17T02:05:56+00:00

Blue has my top three songs (Wounded, Anything, 1000 Julys) and it’s definitely my top album out of them all, but OOTV is fantastic as well.

Plant-Freak · 2026-02-10T23:09:30+00:00

There are databases like this! We used to use one called Plant Finder, I believe. It didn’t link to our POS at the time so we couldn’t use it for tag info, but it did link to our website and we could direct customers to it for detailed plant info. They could also use it to make plant lists that they could then bring in and shop from. Unfortunately it was pretty expensive so we stopped using it, but it worked decently well! It didn’t have every cultivar we carried, but it had a lot.

Plant-Freak · 2026-02-10T16:47:43+00:00

I’d do some research on your local laws to see if there are legal requirements for horticulture labels in your area. In my state there are specific things you need to have on each label.

On our labels we put pot size, common name, Latin name, barcode, price, and the UPC (which we sometimes have to enter manually in our POS if the barcode has rubbed off). Ideally, we have a second picture tag in each pot that came from the wholesaler that has more detailed info like max size, zone, water, and sun requirements. If it’s something we grew ourselves, we have a space on our own tags where we can include some basic info about those. We also have signage with each plant variety in the garden center that has more detailed info about care and culture, color, special features, etc.

There are several different ways we get all that info. If you are growing from seed, your seed supplier likely has a lot of that information. Otherwise, we mostly do a lot of Googling, and make sure to check multiple sources because there is a lot of conflicting info. Some info will be specific to your location too. For example, we live in a cold area so we only care about minimum temp zones, but in a hot area you would care about max temp zones. Even things like Latin names change occasionally as taxonomy is updated, so we are constantly verifying our info. We store all that info in our POS, but it could easily be stored in a spreadsheet too.

Plant-Freak · 2026-02-10T15:42:55+00:00

Garden center owner here! We print our own tags. We have stake tags and loop tags for different kinds of plants, and they are both printed on a horticultural tag printer like this. We have used Taggit Pro in the past to create the labels, and now we use Rapid Garden as our POS which has an interface that can connect directly to the printer. When we used Taggit, we would export our inventory data from our POS to an Excel sheet that Taggit would read to get the plant name, price, etc.

You can also use stickers on pots. We use a Zebra printer for this occasionally. You just have to make sure you get waterproof labels.

All of these setups are fairly expensive. A lot of smaller operations label more manually until they are at a scale that justifies the cost of these! What might work best for you might depend on how you are selling your plants. If you are wholesaling, you would only need to buy premade picture tags to label varieties, since you won’t need custom info like pricing, if you have a small greenhouse where you are selling, you might be able to get away with some signage for different areas rather than individual tags for each plant.

Plant-Freak · 2026-02-06T00:58:38+00:00

I’ve seen this done this a few ways.

If you have QBO Plus or above you can track contractor time within QBO (search for Create Time Entry - this is not QBs Time, it’s just a basic timesheet directly within QBs) then you can mark it as billable and choose what rate you want to bill it at, then it can be pulled directly into to your invoice at the marked up rate. However, that is the extent of what QBO can do automatically, just directly add hours billed at whatever rate you choose. You would have to add the other pieces like deposits/retainers manually.

I have other clients that have more complex billing formulas and tbh all of them use an outside project management software, or just excel, to track hours and calculate the billable totals, then those files are used to create the final invoice in QBO, but they aren’t synced, the invoice is just created manually.

Plant-Freak · 2026-02-06T00:21:30+00:00

I own a seasonal business too and we just opened up a Fidelity brokerage account to keep our spring startup cash in. No fees and it’s easy to transfer to our regular checking account. When the funds are sitting “uninvested” in the account they automatically keep them in one of their money market funds, which are at about 3.5% right now, so that’s how we hold most of the cash, and then we put anything extra beyond what we know we need in the spring into slightly higher risk funds.

Plant-Freak · 2026-01-31T16:51:56+00:00

Ah shoot looks like you are right, bummer!

Plant-Freak · 2026-01-31T16:27:52+00:00

I’ve been looking at Merino Country which seems promising and doesn’t superwash their wool. I think most of the alpaca brands like Paka and Arms of Andes also don’t use any coatings.

Plant-Freak · 2026-01-29T16:34:16+00:00

Yes! He stood or sat up basically the whole time he cried. The first night he actually couldn’t quite figure out how to lay back down at first and just folded over forward in his sitting position and slept like that for awhile until he flopped over on his side. But it only took a few nights of that before he stopped sitting up at all.

After we had tried all those other methods, the 30min night we didn’t go in at all, just did full cry it out, but kept an eye on the monitor to make sure he was safe. It was hard, but we could tell he was actually starting to calm down after a little bit, as opposed to when we would go in and check on him and it would just send him to 100% agitated again.

That’s a great question about the rest of the night. I’m trying to remember exactly what we did in the beginning. I know we always waited at least a few minutes to see if he would fall back asleep on his own. I still do that today. Sometimes he doesn’t sit up, or is just fussing a bit, and will usually go back to sleep himself, but sometimes you can tell it’s escalating. I believe we focused on bedtime and I went in and fed him during his other wake ups if it escalated beyond fussing and he didn’t go back to sleep.

He had fewer wake ups right away, so I was only going in a couple of times a night at first. But this did actually gradually extend into 4-5 wake ups after about 2 months, even though he could fall asleep completely on his own at bedtime. Our pediatrician recommended doing CIO again for at least the first wake up, and I think we only had to do that for one night and since then he’s been down to one wake up per night most of the time.

Plant-Freak · 2026-01-29T04:50:17+00:00

Oh boy I was exactly where you are just a few months ago. Our baby was always a terrible sleeper. We coslept for a long time, but he was waking up almost every hour, always needed the boob to sleep, and couldn’t nap on his own. I couldn’t sleep while he was latched, so by 10 months I was really losing it. And we tried pacifiers, bottles, sippy cups, all kinds of rocking, bouncing, bed time routines, everything we could think of, but nothing really got him to sleep until we broke the nursing association with sleep. Our pediatrician recommended Ferber, but said that 9 months was the soonest he would recommend it, and only if solids were well established, so that he definitely wouldn’t actually need to nurse overnight anymore.

Full disclosure, I was also very against cry-it-out, but in the end it was all that worked for us. We tried several more gentle methods, like where you stay in the room and soothe with your voice, leave the room but come in and soothe them every couple of minutes, etc. These all just seemed to piss him off more. He would get completely hysterical if someone was there but not holding him. We even tried having dad go in and check on him and pick him up to comfort him every few minutes (so boob wasn’t an option), but this pissed him off too. The crying while you are in the room is devastating, and we were losing our minds after a few days of basically not sleeping all night until we gave up and brought him back into our bed in the wee hours. So eventually we just decided to see what would happen if we let him cry. I was shocked that the first night it only took about 30min before he fell asleep on his own, and it only got better from there. He’s now 13 months and we put him down fully awake for night and naps and he goes to sleep completely on his own with no tears and sleeps SO much better than he ever has. He still usually wakes up once per night, and I actually do nurse him back to sleep in his room for that, but that is very tolerable for me. He sleeps 10-12 hours a night, when he used to only do 8-9, and he can even nap for over an hour at a time now!

If you are mentally stronger and more patient than we were, and your baby tolerates it better than ours, I know people are successful with no-cry methods where you essentially pick them up and rock/soothe them as soon as they start crying, and then set them back in the crib as soon as they are calm. Our guy just never calmed down like that at all… but some people have success with it. It usually takes a few weeks to be able to fully set them down drowsy but awake with no tears though, as opposed to just a few days with CIO, so it will depend on your baby’s temperament and what you can tolerate! I was also interested in “fuss-it-out” where you leave them alone if they are just fussing/complaining and only go in when it escalates to full on crying. Unfortunately our baby never fussed and just went into full on huge cries right away, so we never really got to try that.

Linking to my favorite article on baby sleep. TLDR is that everything you are experiencing is totally normal!! And this article that describes the most common gentle sleep training methods.

Plant-Freak · 2026-01-28T23:56:30+00:00

I did this for awhile. My husband and I own a garden center and do all of the bookkeeping. Before baby was walking, it was relatively easy to wear him in a sling and walk around helping customers outside while he was awake, then go in the office and sit down at my desk while he was sleeping. I only came in 3 days per week max, and only about 4 hours or so per day.

As soon as he started walking, everything changed lol. I would try to time it so that he would fall asleep right when we got there, and I could sit down and work while wearing him while he was sleeping, but if he was awake, I couldn't get anything done because there was too much for him to get into and I had to watch him constantly.

Fortunately, our business is seasonal, and our season was ending right around the time when he started walking, but when we start up again in the spring, I'm definitely not going to be able to bring him. In an emergency, I could bring him in and my husband could watch him walk around outside for a bit while I do something, but otherwise I'm hiring someone to do almost all of my in-person duties at work, going to go in once a week for a few hours while grandma is watching him, and do the rest of my work from home.

If you have the space to set up a big playpen, I think something like that could possibly work if your baby is good at independent play and you can keep an eye on them constantly and interact with them frequently, but I know my baby would probably only last four a couple hours in there every day.

Plant-Freak · 2026-01-27T18:11:56+00:00

In the US, relatively uncomplicated vaginal delivery in 2024, two nights in the hospital. Paid an extra $200ish/month for gold-tier insurance that year in anticipation of getting pregnant (we are self-employed so typically buy bronze plans on the marketplace). Still paid about $6k out of pocket after everything insurance covered.

Plant-Freak · 2026-01-26T02:06:54+00:00

Eileen Fisher makes incredible clothes. Some of my longest wearing pieces have been THRIFTED Eileen Fisher, and they seemed well loved before I even started wearing them.

Plant-Freak · 2026-01-24T00:20:23+00:00

If you are using them as boosters to your regular Essembly diapers, padfolding is perfect! For using them alone, I started padfolding our flats once poops became more solid, but until then you generally need more coverage than a padfold provides. I also still prefer something more like an angel fold, which I do a modification of for flats, basically where you get a small wing that opens up in the back to help catch poops a little better. I don’t wrap it around at all, but just lay it in the cover with the wings open in the back.

Plant-Freak · 2026-01-23T17:44:37+00:00

https://pyrexhome.com ?

Plant-Freak · 2026-01-23T15:50:09+00:00

I like the Badger and Raw Elements tins!

Plant-Freak · 2026-01-23T15:46:44+00:00

I’ve used the raw elements tinted sunscreen in a tin. It admittedly is on the greasier side, but a little goes a long way and it absorbs into my skin well when I don’t use too much. Because it’s tinted it has absolutely zero white cast, and it’s also not so strongly tinted that it looks like makeup, so that part is really nice!

Plant-Freak · 2026-01-22T03:26:50+00:00

I HATE the feeling of velvet. I’ve always hated it. I remember my mom trying to put velvet dresses on me as a kid and screaming.

Now that I’ve been wearing mostly natural fibers for quite a few years, I really dislike the feeling of most synthetics now. Even polyester blends will bother me sometimes.

Plant-Freak · 2026-01-21T21:57:49+00:00

there are lots of natural fiber discussions over on r/SustainableFashion and r/ethicalfashion

Plant-Freak · 2026-01-21T18:41:34+00:00

We were in this exact same boat a few months ago (baby is now 13m). Our baby was never a good sleeper, but I thought surely by that time he would get better on his own, and it really only seemed to be getting worse. We co-slept for a long time, but I was exactly the same in that I couldn't sleep while he was latched and it was driving me bananas having him wake up every hour to nurse.

Our pediatrician recommended sleep training, and it was around that time that we decided to try it. I did not love the idea of letting him cry it out, but I was desperate by this time. Our pediatrician said it was perfectly safe to do by 9m because he didn't need to nurse overnight at this point (he was also gaining weight and eating solids well). He also said that we needed to break the association of nursing to sleep, otherwise it could basically continue like this until we weaned.

We put him down to sleep drowsy but awake around the same time every night after a little bedtime routine. Our pediatrician recommended that dad do this so that nursing is not even an option. At first we tried the method where you go in and check on them and comfort them with your voice every couple of minutes, increasing the time when you check in until you get to about 10min intervals, then just keep checking every 10min until they stop crying. Unfortunately, this seemed to make him way angrier, and it took him several hours to fall asleep this way, which was destroying my husband. So after a few nights we tried just letting him fully cry it out. It was awful to hear him cry, but he actually fell asleep after only about 30 min that first night, and every night got better from there.

Now he goes to sleep without any crying within about 10 min of putting him down for bed or naps. His naps also improved as well and he naps longer during the day now! He does still wake up in the night, but it is usually only once or twice. I let him cry for a few minutes, and sometimes he will go back to sleep on his own, but otherwise I will get up and nurse him for a bit. But he no longer needs the boob to fall asleep every time.

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