Happy New Year!!

So it is 2008 and I have so many things that I want to do. I sit here late at night, because it seems to be the only time I have to myself! My kids keep me very busy and Ella is almost a year and really keeping me on my toes. It is so hard to imagine that it has been almost a year since I had her, but when I look at my son who is 3.5 years I really realize how quickly time does go. One of the main reasons why I try to make my family my number one priority... I don't want to look back and wish that I spent more time with them and less time being the big business mom. With all this time talk I decided that I am not going to put New Years Resolutions on myself, I don't want to feel bad when I don't do them. I have many things business wise and personally that I want to do, and I hope to do them, but I am not going to be hard on myself if I didn't do it because I was having fun playing with my kids!

Do you know one thing that I love about my business? It is that most of my customers are just like me. I can sit down and have a conversation with any of them and at some point we will both agree on something major about our lives. I also love working with babies, kids and families. I love seeing a baby that I created a birth announcement grow up. I am so lucky to have so many wonderful returning customers that I get the chance to see these babies grow up and turn a year, two years and so on! I promise that this month there will be a program put in place to reward them.

So I really should get to sleep now, I have been dealing with my wonderful baby girl who doesn't like to sleep and after 4 years of horrible sleep I am beyond tired, I am exhausted. Most days I am lucky that I can actually function! It has made me start to try that good old sleep training with her, I am such a wimp that I make it so gentle on them (I did it with my son) so I know it will take a while but it will be so worth it in the end. I can't have a 16 year old still sleeping in my bed every night... can I?!

It's been a long time...

Okay I know I promised to keep up to date on my blog but it has been a crazy couple of months. I have been dealing with a lot of personal stuff (maybe one day I might share more as it is very normal for new moms) and really trying to focus on my 2 kids. This takes all my free time to work on only designing and doesn't leave a lot left to do anything else - note my website that desperately needs a slight update! I know that many of you can understand how hard it is to balance everything we deal with as moms. After becoming a mom just over 3 years ago I have had a hard time dealing with not being able to do everything. Owning my own business certainly doesn't make it any easier, but I love running Grace Announcements. I am just still working on finding my new groove with my 2 kids, my husband, my home and my customers. I know that the most important thing in my life is my 2 kids, Kal and Ella are the most important thing to me and I don't want to wake up one day and realize I missed them grow up. I became a mompreneur to be home with them and have to remind myself that I am not going to let a day go by where I don't spend quality time with each of them. I am so lucky to have such a supporting family that helps out so much with the business that I am able to do close to it all. I know that I might not be able to ever "do it all" but I can certainly do my best!

Business has been great, we are full swing into the holiday season and I am just focusing on getting my great designs out to my customers. I am looking forward to spending the holidays with my family. So please bare with me over the next month as I will continue to be super busy producing great new designs for the holiday season. Hopefully I will find a moment to share some of them here, but know that if you haven't heard from me that it means I might be having fun playing construction site with my son!

The start of school...

So my son started preschool last week (above is a picture from the drive that first morning), it has been a long time coming and not really what I expected! I hoped that the 3 hours a day he was gone would be a great time to work but I still have my daughter at home. She still keeps me busy and really misses having him around. When we pick him up at lunch she is happy to see him, all smiles like she always is! The other big problem is he has decided that he no longer naps, so I don't have that quiet time in the afternoon anymore. I can honestly say that I am looking forward to when my daughter is a little older and I can have some "me time" it really has been a long time coming. I know that I devote my day to them and work around them. For the most part that works, life is a constant struggle and always changing. I just keep rolling with the punches!!

What's Up?!

Okay so as always I am insanely busy! Between my family (which always comes first) and Grace Announcements I have little free time. Luckily I get to spend a lot of time enjoying the summer outside since that is where my son wants to be all the time. Sometimes we come inside at 10pm after being outside all day. He just loves it so much and I know how short our summers are and how quickly we will be hibernating inside for the winter.

So I am working on some new designs for the 2007 Holiday Season, and very excited about them. I have some great inspiration and really look forward to sharing them soon, please check back often as I hope to get them online by September 1st. But don't hold me to that! August is a very busy month for me. My first born is about to turn 3. He starts preschool in September and we are both very excited about that! My baby girl was 6 months old yesterday, she is getting ready to keep me on my toes - she is starting to move. WOW where has the time gone?!!

An amazing photo shoot!

I do a lot of design work for an amazing photographer, Jen van der Vecht who also took some photos of my family and I just have to share these because I am so happy with how they turned out! I remember the day I picked them up. As I looked over the proofs I gasped at how beautiful they were (my husband kept telling me to stop because he was driving and it kept freaking him out!) she really captured my babies. I am not sure with you but I find that sometimes I take pictures of my kids, especially my baby girl and I find they don't really look like her, they don't seem to capture the real her. They were taken outside at her studio in King City, the area is so beautiful and really works well. My son had fun getting comfortable which was great because he wanted nothing to do with all the fuss at first... typical toddler! So we started with my girl and I, we got some great photos. I am actually happy with how I looked in them, I hate having photos of myself taken! So I wanted to share some with you, this is only a small sample of some of my favorites, but I figured that you would not want to look through around 30 photos!!! So if you like them be sure to contact Jen. You can visit her website for more information, oh and if you do contact her be sure to tell her I sent you!

My days need to be longer!

Okay so whenever I think to myself that I might actually get a chance to get to my long "to-do list" 100 other things always come up... isn't it always that way? I really think that if I just missed sleeping I would be much better off time wise, but I am not sure how many days I could go like that. Gosh my beautiful little baby girl does a good job keeping me up at night and after a couple bad nights I am ready to spend a week in bed sleeping!! I am one of those people that needs 8 hours of sleep a night. So here I sit sleep deprived and trying to type something that makes sense! I think the one good thing is that almost everyone who reads this understands.

I have been contacted many times over the last year about dealer/wholesale inquiries so I have finally started to put together an official package for people interested in offering Grace Announcements Designs. I am excited about that and how my business has been shaped over the last year. My wonderful customers are to thank for that! They are what hold me here. The crazy temper tantrums, the teething baby, sleepless nights and piles of laundry sometimes make me wonder if I need to take a step back from my crazy life... but I never could... I love what I do way to much to ever stop creating amazing memories for my wonderful customers! And they always seem to send me that wonderful heartfelt thank you emails on those really hard days.... it is like they know!!

The Grace Announcements family has grown!

I finally had a few free moments to come and share the wonderful news with all of you. My baby girl has arrived. On February 13th at 9:33am, Ella Claire was born weighing 6lbs 4oz. We are all doing well, adjusting to things and just taking it one day at a time.

As far as orders, I am taking it one day at a time as well. If you are interested in placing an order please feel free to email me and I will let you know when I can complete a proof for you.