Evolution of an idea

Last September Rachelle and I met for coffee to discuss our Christmas plans - for the business, not the turkey and stuffing kind!

I was excited, I had an idea.  We ordered coffee and I handed Rachelle my prototype, a hastily made bunch of cardboard strips held together with string!!!!  Luckily for me Rachelle saw past the kindergarten level construction and agreed they could be a great addition to our products.  Later that night they got their name - Tree Tags!

The idea was a customer could order personalized Christmas decorations.  These could feature whatever they liked:  Family members, dates, pets.........

These were some of our initial ideas and orders. Then we realized these could be the gift that kept on giving, as after Christmas they could be transformed into key chains, with a split ring that we included:

People loved them and we made over 70 of them between October and Christmas.  We loved the way people used their imagination, we made a Tree Tag for Makka Pakka (a character from the polpular children's program 'The Night Garden')  we did 10 'friendship' tags for 10 alumni attending a 10 year college reunion, a lady ordered 17 so all the children in her family could have one on their tree.

Then came January. 

No more tree tags :(  Or so we thought........

How wrong we were:)

No longer called Tree Tags, on Jan 10th we got an order for 3 date key rings.  Our customer wanted them like tags but with horizontal writing rather than vertical:

We loved the idea and the end result and our customer graciously allowed us to use her idea and photos of her pieces.  In fact it was when my husband was photographing those pieces that he came up with the idea of security tags:

These could have either a telephone number or email address on one side and, 'if found, contact' on the reverse.  I did agree to make him a freebie for his trouble!

The next phase of the evolution I can take credit for though....wedding and engagement tags.  The couples names or initials on one side and then their anniversary date on the other:

What's next in the development of this product?  I have no idea but I hope we shall see the Tree Tag in many more forms for a very long time to come.  What would you like to see on them?

Spring is in the Air!

Uh oh! The fact that our last blog post was titled Winter Wonderland and this one is 'Spring is in the Air' proves how long it's been since our last blog post! Work in progress!

Today the sun was shining and the boys and I spent the afternoon outside. What a relief and breath of fresh air (literally) spring is!

We spent the afternoon in the sandbox, playing football (soccer) and sorting through outdoor toys. Of course Mr. Jacob had to enjoy his first official handful of sand, which shouldn't surprise me to say that he thoroughly enjoyed it. Again a huge relief with baby number two, knowing that a handful of sand does not warrant a trip to the doctor to ease the never ending first time Mommy worry!

I always start off with the best gardening intentions and fully convince myself that one day my garden will look like this...

I'm only missing a few minor details!

I'll be back later in the week to showcase some of our personalized products for the upcoming Mother's Day (May 8th!). Time to start hinting to the men in your lives :)

Until then, I guess since it's spring the unavoidable spring cleaning must begin.

Wishing you all a wonderful week!

Winter Wonderland

Last weekend I got to do something I love, I went boarding:)

Friends of ours booked a chalet for 12 and 3 families packed all their known possessions (at least it seemed like it) and met in beautiful Big White.  It was freezing, -70 at the top of the lifts, consequently night skiing was cancelled, no worries the kids played the adults drank and the snow came drifting down.

Saturday we got the oldest kids ready for their first ski lesson, there were no ski boots small enough for Annie, (good things come in little parcels), so Daddy took her sledging and I got to go boarding with one of the other Dads.  It had warmed up a bit and the snow was still coming down and it was just amazing to be out in it.   I discovered that it is like riding a bike and I managed to not make a complete fool of myself.

Jemma looking the part with her  skiis

After a few runs we snuck down to see how the kids were getting on and relieve the other parents so they could get a few turns in.  The kids were doing great, especially as they weren't at all sure about having a lesson before they started,  we got to have a real good up close and personal  look at them as they didn't recognize us with all our kit on!

Trying the magic carpet

Pizza slice anyone?

We then found our respective spouses and told them it was their turn to do a few runs.  They looked at their hot chocolates, looked at the snow still coming down and finally looked at the plummeting thermometer and declined - RESULT.  No need to ask us twice we headed back out and nearly made it to last lift, just lack of feeling in hands and toes stopped us!!

Sunday we checked out the skating rink, it was still snowing and you couldn't see the ice, it was idyllic.

Skating at the winter wonderland

It was a fabulous weekend with friends and family and  I hope it's not another 2 years 'till we get to go again!