Lily takes pictures

Lily loves to take pictures.
She especially loves to take self portraits.

I think she's pleased with how it turned out.

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I think I lost the links on my side bar :(

Helping

Today I woke up really sick.

Ella: Mom, I'm going to help you work today, because you are sick and you need to lay down.
Me: Thanks Ella. I'm okay.
Ella: But how can I help you?
Me: I guess you can put bar-codes on our stamps.
Ella: Okay!

She did such a great job putting the right bar-code on the right stamp in the correct corner. She even missed her favorite T.V. Show (Rescue Hero's) to help me.

Thank You Ella!

Ella fell off her scooter today.

Ella: Mom, I broke my bum and I need crutches.

Luckily we didn't have to invest in any crutches. You can see in the picture above that we had some crutches that work just fine. Ella can NOT go anywhere without her crutch. If the crutch is stolen (by Lily) Ella instantly & dramatically falls to the ground. I wonder what will happen tomorrow morning when she has to go to school.

Cleaning our new house

We had a bunch of garbage, wood, sawdust, and debris that needed to be cleaned up at our new house today. Lily loved helping me sweep the sawdust up (although she swept it out of the pile instead of into the pile.)


Lily also loved throwing the Styrofoam pieces into the pile out the window. She had a great time! Ella did not have a great time. When we finally went home, Ella offered to help me with the dishes & laundry (which she never offers to do.) She was so happy to be home doing laundry, she commented on how much she'd rather do laundry than be out building a house. It's a good thing she wasn't born last time we built a house... because compared to then, this time around has been so much easier.

Cookies

Lily got to go to 2 Valentine Parties in one day. First she went to preschool and made a cute valentine craft & decorated cookies with her friends. Later, Emily invited Lily & Ella over to decorate some heart cookies as well. The kids had fun & played great together. It was a nice relaxing break. Thanks Emily!

I'm a eat you

Me: Lily, come get in the tub.
Lily: No! I'm a eat you!

Me: Lily, where did you find that Binky? Bring it to me. You don't need a Binky.
Lily: No! I'm a eat you!

Lily doesn't say she's going to eat me to be funny or to be cute (although it is both). She does it because she is angry and she literally wants to eat me... which makes it even cuter.

The perfect Valentine

Sorry for all the Etsy posts. Tyler and I should be caught up with work later this week... but until then, nothing interesting is going on other than work... and searching through Etsy while waiting for computer functions to happen.

I found this perfect Valentine gift today & thought I'd share it. It's currently "On Hold" so if you plan on getting it for your Valentine, you may have to put up a fight for it. $99

I LOVE Etsy

I love Etsy! For so many reasons. Too many reasons to list. So... as I wait for files to save, upload to servers, print, & etc. I find myself on Etsy. I love seeing all the unique & beautiful handmade goods. I love that you can buy something origional that can't be found at the store. I love that you can support stay at home mom's who like to make things. I could go on & on. But one of my favorite things about Etsy are all the weird things you can find.


For example, you can buy these toilet tea-lights. They are perfect if you plan on throwing a potty-training party! I'd like to see you find something like this at Target.

Or this smoking squid pin that would probably match every outfit hanging in my closet. Even Anthropology doesn't sell anything this unique.

I'm not sure what this is. But I guess it doesn't matter since it's SOLD anyhow.

If I were to purchase this dancing dog portrait for my wall (at $300). I could count on being the only person in my neighborhood to hang such a piece of artwork.

I actually think this headpiece is pretty cute. But I'm not sure where I'd wear it. The library perhaps?

Don't show up at a baby shower again fearing that you may be giving a duplicate gift. This Baby sculpture is one of a kind. Not found at Babies-R-Us. Only $45.

My kids would LOVE me if I had a shirt like this. Too bad it's already been sold.

I can think of numerous occasions when I would need to wear this bald eagle hat.
(Also great for bad hair days.)

A Smoking Dora Pony adorning a horn? Who wouldn't pay $70 for a mutilated toy?

Wouldn't this look fabulous on my doorstep? It's a total steel at $17 + shipping. I think I'd have to re-paint the toenails pink though.

This is seriously the second coolest Christmas card ever!!!

Did I mention that I LOVE Etsy?

CHA

We are back from CHA. I didn't think anything could be crazier than getting ready for & packing for CHA while babysitting neighbor kids. I was wrong. Coming home to a weeks worth of Vinyl orders plus an abundance of Stamp orders from the show is much crazier. Even after working from 7am until 1am everyday except Sunday... we still haven't caught up. You can't really see how many packages we ship each day because the packages that we haven't printed shipping labels for yet are still hiding behind the desk. The picture above depicts a daily occurance since we've been home.
The drive to and from California was the most relaxing time we've had in a very long time. No one was crying and we enjoyed listening to books on tape.
Somehow Tyler fit our entire booth, all our promotional materials, & our luggage into our tiny little Jetta.

The show was fun. I got to see a lot of friends I used to work with (at least 10 of them.) It was fun to catch up. We made lots of orders, learned a lot, and talked to lots of media. We are happy we went and think it was just the kick start that our stamp company needed.
Everyone (including Elizabeth Kartchner, who you can watch on Studio 5 tomorrow) loved all the stamped samples that Emily made. Thanks Emily!

We didn't do much after the show ended each night. We had just enough time to grab some dinner. Afterward, we tried to keep up with emails from customers. By the time we finished answering as many emails as we could on our hotels low speed internet, it was nearly midnight.

Tyler had a birthday while we were gone... we will celebrate after we get caught up.

We missed Ella & Lily and were very happy to see them when we got home.

We appreciate My mom, Trisha, Emily, & Tyler's parents for watching our kids while we were gone.
Thank you to everyone who has helped us. Starting a new business, and trying to make it successful is a lot more work than we had anticipated, and we couldn't have done it without everyone's help.