Mean Monsters

Lily: I told my baby doll that a monster is going to bite her head and poke her eyes out.
Me: Why? That's so scary.
Lily: Because I don't want her to fall asleep.

Lily's bold Interior Design skills

Ella has been enthusiastic about decorating for several years now. You can't come to our house without seeing her artwork or designs displayed throughout. Lily's desire to decorate is starting to grow as well... but on a whole new level. Ella has begged me several times to hang shelves that she's made at the Home Depot. Lily on the other hand just goes ahead and hangs the shelves up herself. The shelf shown above was hung by Lily. I'm scared to see how she adhered it so well to the wall. I doubt that at the age of 3 I would have been able to securely hang such a heavy item to my wall.

My favorite part of CHA

Can you believe it took us over 5 hours to set up our booth? According to the show rules, it's only supposed to take 1 hour, but since we are a small company, nobody (but us) cared that it took so long. The hardest part was getting the heavy floor & buffet up to the 3rd level, and carrying it through the entire floor back to our space. I was really nervous after trying for over an hour to get the floor put together and it wasn't working. After a few hours of trying, we gave up and decided to tape it together with duct tape. It actually didn't look too bad and we got several compliments on our flooring.

(The white stripes are the duct tape.)

People enjoyed using our mustache, glasses, & chalkboard photo-props. Hopefully they post the pictures to their face-book accounts & help us get our name out.

Tyler and I were invited to a Cricut party on Saturday night. We had no idea what it would be like, but it turned out to be pretty fun. We made flip-books of ourselves, then we got to watch some of the stars from “So you think you can dance” perform live. It was very entertaining.

You might think the Cricut party was my favorite part of the show, and although I enjoyed it very much, my favorite part of the show had to be when a little old lady came up to me and told me she had something for me. She then dug through her purse. After a minute of digging, she handed me two large handfuls of loose buttons. Since they wouldn't fit in my pockets, and since I had no where to put them, I just stood there for a long time. My hands were filled with buttons, and I tried not to drop them all over the place, as I talked with potential customers. It was pretty awesome.

I also loved seeing some old friends I used to work with at Stampin' Up!

It's nice to be home. Tyler and I missed the kids. Now we just need to figure out how to catch up on all the work we missed while we were gone. If anyone needs a part time job for a week...

Headed to the craft show

Ella lost her 3rd tooth this month. It's significant because it's her first space. The other teeth grew in behind the previous teeth she lost, so this is the first time she's had an open space in her mouth. She is very excited about it.

I haven't been blogging because January is by far the craziest month at our house. We have been busy getting ready for the big craft show.
Here's a picture of our flooring. Earlier this month I was very worried about how we were going to come up with $350 to rent carpet at the show. Yes, it costs $350 to RENT their cheapest grade carpet. Yes, it is mandatory to have flooring at the show. If you show up without flooring, they will actually charge you over $400 to rent their carpet.

Anyhow, we are really excited because we found this flooring at IKEA for just under $50. Since it was so old and scratched, we decided to paint it a fun Aqua/Green color. It looks new & shiny & most importantly we saved $300 on our booth flooring.


We have a big booth this year. Since we signed up for the show last summer we were able to get a very large booth for the same price as our small booth last year.


We made part of our booth into a photo opp. I also made some mustaches on sticks to help us promote & introduce our new mustache stamp set at the show.


I have to admit I've been really nervous about this show. We aren't in the new section this year, which means we will be next to large companies such as Martha Stewart, Hero Arts, & American Crafts. Hopefully customers can look past their big fancy booths that they spend tens of thousands of dollars to decorate, to my simple $30 budget booth. They will. Right? right?
Cross your fingers that we can attract some good customers this year. I'm not feeling too confident about my booth design this year. It would have been nice to have a slightly larger budget, or at least more time to create a better design out of some garbage.

Oh well, it's done now. Wish us luck. We're going to need it.

Winter Time Fashion; by Lily

Just because it's freezing cold & snowy outside, doesn't mean that you have to give up on shorts and flip-flops in the winter. Over the Christmas break I learned more about colors & matching. I've incorporated my new color matching skills into my everyday life. Today I decided I'd go with a black and sparkly hot pink color combo. My tights keep my legs and feet warm while wearing shorts & flip-flops. Unfortunatly the only flip-flops I could find were lime green. No problem though... I just found this pink short sleeved hoodie, that happens to have a lime green butterfly inside the hood. Perfectly matched! Perfectly warm! and Perfectly stylish. This was a great outfit to wear while running business errands with my mom.

e-i-e-i-o

Lily: Where are we going?
Me: We are going to meet some friends at McDonald's for lunch.
Lily: Okay.

{ a little later }

Lily: e-i-e-i-o. I want to see the pigs first. AND, I want to see the horses, and the cows.
Me: Really?
Lily: Yep. e-i-e-i-o.

{ after we pulled into the parking lot of McDonald's }

Lily: Can we see the pigs first?
Me: Huh?
Lily: I want to see the pigs first. Is this the farm?

Christmas Holiday

Tyler picked up this buffet table for me from the classified section on KSL.com. I finished re-doing it just in time for the Christmas Eve party we hosted.

Somehow we were able to fit 27 people in our kitchen for dinner.

Ella finally got a pogo stick for Christmas. She's been asking for one every Christmas and birthday since she was three. I always try talking her out of it, but this one was on sale for a very decent price. Lily had fun playing with it too.

We spent the evening with Tyler's family. Everyone had a nice Christmas.

Dance Recital 2010

Deleting text so Ella doesn't read it one day.

The Nutcracker

Somehow I forgot to blog about the childrens Nutcracker we went to last month. Our whole family loves going every year. Although Lily loved the performance, she was very upset after-wards that she didn't get to eat any nuts or crackers during the show.

Getting ready for her 1st dance recital tomorrow

Lily lives for her dance classes. She'd take a dance class every day of the week if I could afford it. I swore I'd never put a hair accessory on my kids head that was bigger than their head. Oh well.

Highlights

It's been a while. Some of the highlights from the past month include, Thanksgiving, Decorating the Retirement home for Christmas, & Lily's Birthday.

Lots of Events

This week has been eventful. Wednesday night I cleaned the Temple. Thursday night I went to Harry Potter with a bunch of friends. I even wore a Harry Potter shirt to the event. Thanks Katie.
Friday I was invited to a Copic event witch was very neat. After the event I hurried home to get ready for a Chocolate Spa birthday Party my friend Wendy put together for our friend Rebecca. (I offered to host it my house.)


Lots of friend showed up. We ate chocolate, soaked our feet in a blend of milk, lavender, lemon, & peppermint, and enjoyed everyone's company. Happy Birthday Rebecca!

Now I should probably make up for lots of lost work. It was worth it.