Family

Tonight I had my aunt Syd & cousin Marcie over. I put them straight to work. They helped me put together notebooks & stickers on promotional material. They even tended my kids while Tyler and I ran up for a Stake Interview. It was really nice to have the extra help. I'm really feeling way less overwhelmed. The best part was hanging out with them & the fact that they were so nice to give up a night to help me out with nothing in return. You guys are the best! Thanks so much for your help. We should hang out again... but next time, let's do something better than work.

Our living room for the next week & 1/2

I know this isn't the best picture, it was taken at midnight, and all 12 light bulbs in our living room are burnt out. Despite the washed out picture... here's what part of our booth will look like! I still need to work on the layout, and finish cutting some of the images better, but this is what our potential customers will see. (It looks better in person.) We have 2 more walls just like this to put up. Those walls will hold all our products and card/scrapbook samples.
Ella has actually taken charge of the look for this booth, telling me where to put different images, cutting out images of her own & adding Velcro to them so she can put them where she wants. She also demands that I put sequins aligning our "Logo Sign" which isn't such a bad Idea, I might just do that. I'm hoping by next year she's old enough to take over this whole project by herself. I know she'd be willing ;)
Tyler and I are feeling pretty proud about this booth and the great deals we got thanks to EBAY!
When we were first looking at booths, we were finding that the cheapest booths were about $2,500 for one wall. To get graphics made to put on the wall were another $2,000. We got all 3 walls for WAY less than $1,000 TOTAL, and making the graphics ourselves cost us about $75.
Now I'm going to soak my bleeding & cracked hands (from cutting for 2 days straight) in Vaseline and wear some gloves to bed.

Ella's bus driver has a dog

Do you remember back a few months ago, when Ella got lost? It turned out she had just stayed on the school bus, never getting off. We asked her all about it at the time, but she always ignored us and wouldn't give us any clues about what happened. Yesterday, out of the blue, she finally started talking about her experience on the school bus. Without my questioning, she told me that the bus driver had gone to her home, locked the bus, and went into her house. Luckily she locked the bus, because it was at that time that Ella attempted to leave the school bus, but was unable to get the door open. After the school had called the bus driver to have her check the bus a 2nd time, Ella was finally found. Apparently the bus driver invited Ella into her house. The bus driver also had a cute little dog that jumped up onto Ella to play with her. Mystery solved.

Valentine Cards- Paypal Button Fixed, sorry!

I wanted to get some valentine cards printed for Ella to hand out to her school class... of course, you can't just have a few cards professionally printed... you have to order a whole bunch, so I'm offering my extra cards at cost to my blog readers, friends, & family. You can buy a set of 24 cards for $2.50, which is about 10 cents per card. You will receive: 24 Cards. 12 Elephant Valentine Cards & 12 Fairy Princess Cards (unless you'd like different amounts of each kind, just let me know.
Each card is 4" x 3" (inches).
Envelopes are not included.
Valentine cards are professionally printed on a heavy matte card stock.
The back of the cards are blank for you to write your message, or attach candy to.
If you would like to pick them up from me to save on shipping, let me know and I will refund your shipping cost.

Anyhow, I don't plan on turning my blog into a shopping infomercial, but I thought if you don't have a daughter who is set on handing out Hannah Montana Valentines this year, and you want to hand out cards that can't be found in the stores... I'd be happy to sell you my extras.

(You can purchase by clicking this "Add to Cart" button.

*Don't feel obligated, I know some friends were interested in getting a few, so I thought I'd post it on my blog in case anyone else was interested too.

-OR- you can enter to win some for free on my other blog.

No digging yet

Our house is coming along nicely. It's coming along slower than we had hoped for, but so much easier to build than our last house. I haven't had to dig any holes! Tyler has had more than his share of problems though. For example... they dug our hole wrong, but luckily Tyler got them to fix it (so that we didn't have to fix it by hand this time.) They laid the foundation forms wrong. Tyler spent almost 2 full days measuring to find the problem. They poured our foundation wrong, so we don't get a cute little curve on the outside of our house that we had planned (but oh well... stuff like that happens.)
Our temporary power box needed a new Circut Breaker... Home Depot & Lowes didn't carry one that would fit & pass code, Luckily Tyler knows how to make a circuit breaker. He was able to make one that fit & passed code. We also needed a certain size tube that we couldn't find anywhere! After searching the city, we finally decided to dumpster dive for one, then Tyler cut it to fit what we needed.
Today we headed over to the house to get some exact measurements so that our trusses will fit just right. Ella & Lily were excited to see their new bedrooms. It was fun for me to walk through the house and see what it will really look like. Tyler designed the plan almost 4 years ago... so I was curious to see how close it fit my imagination. We are getting great deals on some of the finishing touches & we can't wait to invite you all over once our house is finally done.
Tyler thinks it will be done in March. I am not as optimistic as he, and will be hoping for April or early May.

Peppermints in a row

Previously Lily put a sticky peppermint candy on my desk to dry.

Ella: Mom, I can't get this candy unstuck from your desk. Did Lily do this?
Me: Yes.
Ella: I hope we can get it unstuck, because it isn't very cute.
Me: Me too.
Ella: Actually, I have a better idea. I know how we can make it cute. What if you give me lots of peppermint candies, and I can lick them all then stick one here, and here, and here, and here, and here, so they all line up in a row. Would that be way cute? Can I have a peppermint candy?

2010

Tyler's parents, my mom, & Trisha have all helped watch our kids earlier this week so we could get ready for the trade show. Thank You ALL! Tonight we took a break from work and went to a Hawaiian New Years Eve party at our neighbors house. We only stayed until 9PM since Ella was tired and was ready to go to bed at 5:30PM. We had a great time eating dinner & playing games. We have some really fun neighbors. We are so glad we moved here and that we will stay in this ward when we move to our new house.

side note: Yes, as you can tell from my picture, Lily has obviously had access to my camera.

meeeeeee

Lily: Who dabba cana la too fana? (short pause as her hand shoots up into the air)
Lily: Meeeeeee!

Repeat several times in a row.

We don't know what Lily is asking, but we do know that she wants us to raise our hand in agreement and shout "meeeee" with her. Hopefully we aren't agreeing to anything too absurd.

Christmas 2009

I thought it was weird this morning that Ella was wondering around the house without asking to open presents. Finally after a while, she asked, "Did Santa Claus come last night?" Somehow she missed the presents that were practically sitting in the middle of our family room.

We had a great time at Nana & Papa's house for a late lunch.

Lily took her clothes off every time someone opened an article of clothing in hopes that she could wear the clothing herself.

A day or two ago I wished upon Facebook for a bicycle mustache. Thanks to Tyler's brother, Ryan, my silly wish was granted.

Cherese brought an array of fashionable shoes with her from Las Vegas. The girls had fun putting on a fashion show wearing her shoes.

Lily was reunited with her fun friend.

Ella & Lily are so lucky to have so many fun cousins to play with.
Merry Christmas!

Christmas Eve Party

Emily & Justin hosted our Christmas Eve party this year. The theme was "Christmas Caroling." Emily made cute customized place settings that looked like each of us, and held yummy candies.

The girls loved watching Ryan dance.

We made our annual Christmas Eve book. We each made a page with a "new" Christmas Carol. Some were cute, others were very silly. Our white elephant gift exchange was fun as usual. Thanks for a fun night everyone!

Lily got socks, we got a new ornament

Lily got a pair of socks for her birthday. A few days later we found this handmade ornament hanging on our tree.

Following the rules & achieving the impossible

Right now it seems more impossible than achievable but we are determined to achieve the impossible. It's time for us to REALLY start getting ready for a trade show we are attending. We’ve been trying to get ready for it for months, but there is still a lot to do. We have 101 press kits to write & put together, 500 promotional notebooks to make, 1,500 catalogs to design & put together, postcards to design(10,000), put together & print order forms, 6 new stamp sets to design, have produced, & package, New business cards to design, booth flooring to find & order, 50+ card samples to make, and an entire booth to design, book a hotel, figure out kids schedules & babysitters.
So, my list above seems overwhelming, but possibly doable. (We have about 20ish days to get it all done.)
Here’s the impossible part:
While reading the 144 rule page for the convention we are attending, we discovered the following;
Items above (Including our entire booth walls) must all fit on one wheeled 3 feet by 4 feet pushcart, 8 pieces or less can sit in cart, weighing less than 200 pounds, we may use only one trip from our car to booth area, we must use an approved qualifying vehicle to deliver our booth materials, we MUST set up in less than 30 min. Only ONE person may set up... no tools can be used for set up. So, what happens if we exceed our time limit? We must pay a union worker $250 an hour to finish setting our booth up for us, paying the minimum of 1 hours time. What happens if we exceed our weight limit for our booth materials? If it weighs more than 200 lbs, we must hire a forklift & 2 union members to bring our items in costing us another $417, plus then we can no longer set up our own booth, we have to pay the union worker!
Does this make anyone besides me nervous? Has anyone ever done a trade show before that can give us any pointers? Our walls alone take at least 10 minutes each to set up. We have 3 walls, plus some sort of flooring (we haven't figured that part out yet.) We are very nervous about the 200 pound limit. So... as I'm busily working on my list of “things to finish for the show” creating promotional products & etc. I not only need to weigh it all, but I somehow have to figure out how to fit it into 5 boxes that can fit next to our 3 large display boards on the 3 x 4 pushcart.
As you can tell by my posts lately... I'm very needy right now. Help? Suggestions? Anyone done this kind of a show before?
Between getting ready for the show, building a house, running the businesses, and church/service/daycare/cookery this month... Tyler and I are ready to be declared officially insane.