Freak out

Me: Who's going to sleep all night?
Ty & Ella: Me.
Lily: Not me.
Me: Why not Lily?
Lily: Because I'm going to freak out in the night.
Ty: Why? How are you going to freak out?
Lily: Really loud. I'm going to freak out really loud tonight.

At least she's honest.

St. Patricks Day'

Despite my telling Ella last year that Leprechauns are pretend, she has been looking forward to finding one all year. She was thrilled when she woke up on Thursday to find prints through out the house. The leprechaun had brought her and Lily a little golden key that does magic things. For example, it's supposed to help Ella do her homework calmly each night. (If I'm already lying about a leprechaun, I might as well lie about a magic key. Right?)

Lily celebrated St. Patrick's day by painting our kitchen table green. Luckily for me, it came off... well, most of it.

We finished off the day with Green pancakes, and Green smoothies.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

3 parties in one day

First, my friend Wendy's son was baptized, followed by a luncheon at her house, then there was a baby shower celebration for my cousin Marcie, then off to a dinner making party at Susan's house.
It was a fun day... for me... I have to tell Tyler thanks for working hard all day while simultaneously watching the kids so I could have a day off. Thank you Tyler!

horses have wings

Lily: What? Horses have wings? Do they mom?
Me: No... they only have wings in Barbie movies. Real horses don't have wings.
Lily: But the baby monkey that is growing in my tummy has wings. Does it mom?
Me: huh?
Lily: I think the baby monkey that is growing in my tummy has wings, and the elephant too.

We've Been Busy

We've been busy lately. Tyler's been busy working & getting our taxes ready for the accountant. (I think with all our businesses & freelance projects, we spend way more time getting taxes ready than a normal family spends actually doing their taxes. Thank goodness we hire our taxes out. I can't imagine how long it would actually take us to do our own taxes.)

I've been busy designing new products & trying to figure out how to make more time in our lives for all of the enjoyable things.

Ella’s been busy with school her Chinese class. Just recently her teacher has started giving Chinese spelling tests to the students. It's a lot of work for all of us.

Lily is the busiest of all though. She's been busy building her interior design portfolio. You can see her work throughout our entire house.


She's also been busy cooking & trying new recipes. One of her favorites was “Pepperoni-Mint -Chocolate-Chip-Ice Cream” She ate it all, and wanted more.

She spends most of her time dancing. It doesn't matter if any music is playing or not. She dances. She dances while she eats, she dances while she decorates the house, She dances while she cooks, she dances at the store.

She’s multi-talented, she has a lot of energy, and she’s for hire. For only a few pennies a day, she’ll entertain you while simultaneously decorating your home. She can also make an awesome Raspberry-chocolate-milk-lemonade to quench your thirst. Let me know if you’re interested!

A Valentine Family Tradition

Since I was small, I've always loved Valentines Day. Even more than Christmas. You might think it's weird for a young kid to love Valentines Day so much, but my family had a very fun tradition. Each year my moms brothers & sisters would leave elaborate Valentine gifts on our doorstep. In return we also spent months preparing & making over-the-top Valentine gifts for them. It was fun to sneak around their doors, spending several minutes setting up an adorable display, then hiding so we wouldn't be caught after ringing their doorbell. I remember having all our Valentines we got set up on the kitchen counter and admiring the beautiful sparkly pieces of art for several days after wards. Each valentine was very clever with a lot of detail.

Our family has carried on the tradition. All though our Valentines to one another aren't as elaborate as I remember them being growing up (at least the Valentines we give out). It's still a fun tradition. I hope to be able to make more time next year for this fun tradition. Thanks Mom, Trisha, & Call Family for the cute gifts. We love them.

Why you should think twice before commiting to a major tradeshow

Tyler asked me what I wanted for Valentines day.

Truthfully, all I want is a day to do laundry, clean the house, do some dishes, give my kids a much needed bath, read to them, run errands, unpack from our trip to California (I know... we've been home for two weeks, but our suitcases are still left untouched.) Take Lily to the Library (she begs to go there several times a day), take Lily to dance class, cook dinner. Well at least try to cook, we all no I'm not a cook, but it would be nice to eat something other than hot dogs, crackers, & raw vegetables for every meal. Maybe we could even squeeze in a little time to make & deliver some valentines to family members?

So that's what I'm going to do. My valentines gift is to be a stay-at-home mom for a day. Well, at least until I put my kids to bed that night, then it's back to work. I have to say that I'm honestly looking forward to all the work that goes into being a good mom tomorrow. Thanks Tyler!

Don't ever sign up for a major trade show while you have young kids to care for, unless you have enough money to hire help.
That advice is my Valentines Gift to all of you. Happy Valentines Day!

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.