Finders Keepers Melbourne

We are so excited to have been accepted into Finders Keepers in Melbourne, yes they are finally coming to Melbourne in October. Having been fortunate enough to take part in their Sydney and Brisbane events it is so nice that we can now go to one in our home town!

Unfortunately Finders Keepers clashes with Bowerbird in Adelaide, so I will be treking off to Adeliade for the 3 days, while Angeline and Simon explore Finders Keepers!

We are going to be so busy cutting to get ready for these two mammoth events!

Your Childhood Fun

The innocence of childhood - how often do you think you just want your kids to have the simple, uncomplicated life you had when you were growing up, when you could spend hours outside creating your own adventures, skipping or building forts?

Our latest range brings this element of simple childhood into your house. It was originally designed as part of our baby butterfly (TM) range, as we thought they would look great in kids rooms, but surprisingly over half our sales are actually for Mum to keep in her room!

We currently have 6 completed designs that you will shortly see on our website, and in our stockists stores, with designs featuring girls playing ring a rosie, a brother and sister dinking each other on their bikes, two brothers playing cowboys, and a little boy out fishing...

I would love to hear your favourite childhood memories, and see if we could turn it into a design. Without a doubt my favourite past time would be lying outside on a warm day making shapes out of clouds, to this day when I am driving I will often point to a cloud and say to my husband doesn't that look like a .....

Bowerbird

We are just so fortunate to again be a part of the Bowerbird Bazaar in October this year, this massive three day event was so much fun earlier this year that we had our fingers and toes crossed that we would be lucky enough to get in again, and we have!

We are lucky that it is at the beginning of October, so all of our Life InStyle orders will have shipped, and we will have plenty of new items to show... Speaking of Life InStyle I will do a new post of this soon, we again met so many awesome retailers, and finally got to meet in person some of our loyal stockists, which was great!

If you can't drop by Bowerbird Bazaar in October, we will be back in Adelaide in November for their last Mathildas market of the year!

Hope to see you there!

Achieving your goals

When we first started our business (officially that is), we had a number of short and long term goals, some of these easier to achieve than others, and covered things from wanting to be featured in our favourite interior design magazines, to being stocked in our favourite stores to just producing work that makes people happy.

Lately we have been having a couple of months where everything has been going right, and things on our goal list have been being ticked off with ease.

A couple of our loyal followers saw our little squirel in some magazines lately, as well as a feature in House & Garden and some of our kids stuff in Comso Pregnancy. I must admit I always get a thrill when the magazines come out, and I am always down at the news agency on the day of release to see how the creations have come out!

For a little while now we have been stocked in Husk, this along with 2 other stores (we only have one to go, and we are in discussions with them at the moment!) was on our ultimate achievement list when we first started out. Carol and the team at Husk have kept us so busy lately, with requests for jumbo pieces, such as the one at the top, to our metamorphis range which we seem to have to restock all the time (not that we are complaining!). So when Carol contacted us recently to do a press release for our products in their gorgeous store, we were more than happy to be a part of it:

We have already had a some press contact us in relation to this release, and there should be a story coming out at Christmas in a magazine that was on our ultimate dream list that we never thought would happen!

We have a couple more exciting things happening over the next 6 weeks, so stay tuned, and keep working on your own goals!

Family Rules Posters

The phrase family rules to me automatically conjures up rules around making your bed, making sure your clothes are in the washing, and eating everything on your plate.

That is why I think I love this family rules poster so much, it covers much nicer rules, such as love one another, and always tell the Truth. I have one of these posters up in my office, and there are times when it just centres me and reminds me what is important during the day.

We had such a nice request for one poster to be personalised, that I think I am making the change permanent as it is a rule that I need to remember especially as the days seem to get busier and busier.

We had a lovely lady ask us to change the rule from Stay Happy, to start and end each day with a kiss. Which one do you prefer?

We also have a new poster, being the family wishes. This is the poster that we see the most emotion from, with 2 ladies at the last Mathildas market in Adelaide start crying as soon as they read the words. I really think the last line Hug me as though you will never grow up sums it all up - When was the last time you hugged your mum like that?

Birthdays at ATF

It has been a busy July already over at Almond Tree Frames, July is when our significant others have their birthdays, with Angeline's husband Chris, celebrating a big birthday on July 4th, while Simon had his on July 5th.

We have just been so busy with everything, that I almost completely forgot about poor Simon's birthday, and had to quickly run down the street to get something for him - unfortunately long gone are the days when I went to the Collingwood training (which for a Carlton supporter was a hard thing to do!) to get a jumper signed.

I had great intentions to make a fantastically colourful cake that Neivh and Shyla, oh and Simon of course, would love, here was my inspiration:

Instead we ended up with a sponge from the Cheesecake shop... Next year I promise to be more organised!

We have had a lot of incredibly exciting news lately, a number of well known magazines have approached us to do a story on our products, such as Marie Clare, Cosmo Pregnany and Inside Out, our metamorphis designs are taking designers fancy everywhere at the moment, and have been getting so much press (which we will never complain about!). We have just released the hummingbird, and feather design which sold as soon as we popped them in shops! Here is a sneak peak:

Shopping for little boys

How hard is it to shop for little boys?

Whenever I attend a market there are 100's of things that I could be my nieces, but when it comes to getting things for little finn, I find it a lot harder.

Well hopefully all my troubles are about to end, as a fantastic new website has been set up for all things boys! The incredibly talented Alana has been working on this for awhile, and I am loving the results!

http://www.boygerms.com.au/

This is a fantastic website, that features awesome goodies like the Animal Index, and toilet paper saver!

Thanks Alana for the lovely write up on our products!