A desperate request for help

Dear Gather Friends,

As some of you may have noticed I have been rather scarce on Gather lately.  If I have been here at all, it has been very brief.  I'd like to explain some of it, but the reason for this post is also a request for help.

We have only lived in Idaho since May of 2006.  We relocated here to help my mother after my younger brother passed away.  My other siblings all lived here already, but mymother has pretty much burned her bridges where they are concerned, and my husband and I are the only ones left willing to live next door to her to help take care of herproperties, which are in very rough condition.  My husband gave up a very good paying job to do this, and financially it has been a major strain on us since we moved here. 

My husband worked for several companies before finding the one he most recently worked for.  All of them had either shut down or been shut down by the county or state.  Well at the beginning of December the company he works for, laid off their entire crew.  (They laid off all their men just before Christmas, but they had built a 5000 sq. ft. addition on their 5000 sq ft house, purchased a half million dollar motor home in Sept., and made several other expensive purchases right up to the point that they cried poverty and laidthe men off).

When my husband filed his unemployment, the person handling his account had neglected to do a few things(we still haven't been able to understand what the supervisor was saying), and we have not received a single check from unemployment yet.  We have been without an income since the last week of November.

We were already struggling because of the expense of repairing our water system, and a few other major unexpected home and auto repairs.  Needless to say, we were not expecting, nor did we have much of a Christmas this year.  The only one we did for was our daughter, and that was extremely limited. Fortunately for us she is old enough to understand, and was even sweet enough to tell us that we could skip it for this year. 

On the Monday before Christmas we got a call from my Father-in-law, notifying us that my husbands brother had passed away that morning.  He was only 49, and though his health had been bad, this was totally unexepected. We explained to dad that financially we could not get to Kentucky for this, but he said there would be no services, he was just going to be cremated on Christmas Eve, so we would not have to feel like we let the family down.  It was hard on all of us, and our daughter took it very hard because this uncle had lived with us off and on since she was born.  Uncle "Wally" loved her and spent lots of time with her over the years.  This was just another incident among many just in December that have about brought me to my knees.  I won't bore you with details of the others, and I definately wouldn't consider that my problems are any worse than those faced by some of my Gather friends.

I am writing this to request any and all ideas for legitimately making money online, or other ideas for creating some desperately needed income.    Because my business is creating and selling jewelry and photo items, my business has dropped of significantly.  Obviously this economy has not left many with money for non-necessities.  The job market here is almost non-existant, we have been unable to find jobs.

I am desperate now, my husbands layoff, then inability to get the unemployment started in a more timely manner, has put us into a financial position we may not recover from and  because of all this, if I do not come up with at least $2000 by Feb. 1st, my husband, daughter and I will lose everything we own. 

Our belongings are all still in storage units in MA.  We did not take it with us immediately when we left, as we were unsure of what we would have for space.  At that point I had not made the decision as to whether I would move into my mothers other house, but if we did (which we did do)  we would be going from a very large
11 room home on 10 acres, into a very small 2 bedroom with just a yard.  Once we made the decision to stay in her other house to be close to her, we intended to make a trip back and get our things.  Well because of fuel prices, and the costof either renting a truck on our own or hiring a moving company, we were not able to do this. 
We have gotten behind on the payments to the storage company, because of all the financial hits we have taken for the past several months, and if I cannot come up with the money, our things will be sold.  I have family heirlooms, and many irriplacable items stored in these units.  My husband owned a wrecking yard and garage, and all his tools are in there (which explains why he hasn't started up his own business here).  Even my daughter has heirloom items that cannot ever be replaced. 

If any of you have any ideas as to websites where I may promote my jewelry, photography, and craft items, as well as other ideas, I would be ever so grateful. 

If I lose all of this now, it will be the final straw for me.  I have lost everything on 2 other occasions in my life (through no fault of our own) and I am in no frame of mind

to deal with losing everything we own this time.  It is incomprehensible to me to lose over $60,000 worth of belongings for a bill of just over $2000.  We have a friend who will go in and remove our things from the units, as soon as they are paid current, and they will be stored in a large building they own, until weather permits us to make the
trip to pick up the things.

Please help in any way you can.

Thank you all for reading this, I have no place left to turn.  Several family members are struggling almost as much as we are, including my mother, so we cannot turn to them now.