M.I.A.

Just in case you have been wondering where I've been, I thought maybe I'd post a brief update.

Fall has come and gone, Christmas has come and gone. the past few months have literally just flown by here in our studio, it's been crazy. November saw over 50 orders and that kept me busy clear into mid December. Now that things are on the mellow side again, I've been hanging with the family and catching up on all the neglected housework that piled up while I was busy getting all of my orders out. The tree is down, the house is starting to look like a family lives here and not a pack of rabid wolves, and we are back to being home most nights.

We are officially on vacation until the 12th of January or so. This gives me time to get the studio re-organized and also I have some fun new things in order for the new year. These won't be available on the hipmelon.com website, but they will be available on Etsy.com. I've been looking for a fun and innovative way to use up some of the scrap fabric that is left over after I size the slings and have come up with a couple of fun ideas. I also have another project up my sleeve that should be a lot of fun to share with everyone.

Well, that's about it for now. Just a quick update. I promise to be a bit more diligent in posting through the new year!!

All the best to you all and happy 2009!!

Pieces Of Me

Warning, this entry is somewhat photo heavy. LOL.

No, I'm not going to break out in a bad lip sync of some Ashley Simpson song. As much as I like Ashely...sort of...I'm not a great singer. In fact I am a terrible singer. Back on topic...Pieces of me. Today I took my children to the local park. Well, one of many local parks, but when you say "The Park" there is usually little question as to where exactly you are referring to. On the last Sunday of September there is a province wide celebration called BC River's Day. It gives the public an opportunity to celebrate this province's spectacular river heritage. From city streams to wilderness whitewater, British Columbians enjoy a wealth of free-flowing rivers. This year marked the 200th anniversary of Simon Fraser's exploration and discovery of the Fraser River. We try to attend every year, and thus far it has never been disappointing.

This year was no exception. My kids thoroughly enjoyed the fish painting. In our city, and I think in many others across at least BC, maybe even Canada wide, you will find random "schools of fish" attached to chain link fences. These fish are put there as a reminder that everything that goes into city storm drains ends up in our streams, rivers and oceans and is potentially consumed by fish. Each of the fish in these fence schools has been painted by a child at a River's Day festival in their community.







Once we finished painting the fish, we moved on to fishing. For real live fish. They had a large (by large I mean very large) soft sided backyard pool set up in the park filled with Rainbow Trout. The kids each got a five minute turn to try and catch a fish. They really loved it. My son got a few good bites and my daughter even caught one, but it was too floppy and slipped off of the hook and back into the water. It was for the better though, because had we actually caught one, the kids would have made me bring it home for dinner. Quite frankly, as much as I love fish, I did not feel like cooking a 2lb trout for dinner. Never fear fish lovers, any fish that remained at the end of the day long celebration were released into a local lake, as that was where they were intended for anyway.

One of the great highlights of the festival, is that they always have a moderately well known Canadian Country artist play a free concert in the park's bandshell. Two years ago it was Aaron Pritchett, this year it was Jaydee Bixby. He looks a bit young, and well, he is at 18 years old, but he really put on a great show. The kid can really rock it out, and my kids danced until they dropped. It was a fabulous day and I am so glad that we took in yet another great River's Day celebration. I look forward to next year. I might add, the kids crashed within moments of hitting their respective pillows tonight. I take that as a sign that they had a ton of fun.

















And now. Just because I love my kids, here are a couple photos of them enjoying the afternoon.





And because you are probably not wondering ;o) My camera is a Pentax *istDL and I had an old manual focus 300mm lens on for all of the photos of Jaydee, and the one of my daughter dancing. I had the kit 18-55mm on for the fish photos and the one of my son sitting on the train tracks. I'm ready for a new camera. I'm making room for a Pentax k20D, hopefully before the end of the year.

Twitter

Do you Twitter? I do!! You can keep up with our day in and day out happenings at HipMelon by following us on Twitter. Just click the link on the right side bar that says "follow me on twitter"

Hope you are all having a great weekend. I need to cut fabric. LOTS of fabric.

So Much To Do, Yet Really, So Little Time

I've come to a conclusion about my life in the last month. I would make a terrible single parent. It seems that I depend on my husband not only for support, but for that extra push of motivation that I need to make it through the day. He's been away for almost two weeks, before that I was away for a week, and before that he was away for two weeks. Out of the past six weeks or so, we have spent about seven days together. I am so looking forward to him coming home, probably tomorrow.

While he has been gone, things have been a buzzing here in the studio. I've bought a ton of new fabric. Some will be released as soon as it arrives, and some I am saving for spring...if I can hold on that long. The buying of the fabric is really one of my favourite parts of HipMelon. Well, that and the fantastic feedback. I have also taken on the maintenance of the website all on my own. It was a huge task to learn. I'm about 90% HTML illiterate, meaning I need at least the bare bones of a template of some sort and I know enough to change the background and do a few little things to make something acceptable. Up until last week I had never really worked with an FTP program or changed images. I spent about 14 hours literally muddling through the files, and with the help of my amazing webmaster I was able to figure out where to put the new photos and how to update the site all on my own. I'm eternally slow at it though. I still have 5 more slings to add. Three will be added very soon. Two more once my new fabric arrives since there are two that I want to release right away, and one spot is staying empty for the time being in hopes of being filled up with something very special in the near future. Top secret though. More on that later.

I hear my children doing something that I'm sure they shouldn't be. That's my cue. See you next time!!

Looking for something Nifty for Christmas?

If you're anything like me, you are always looking for a fun way to send out your holiday cards. It's the one thing (ok, one of the many things) I cringe over doing every year. Well, fear no more, my friend Amy at www.toteandtee.com makes the funnest t's for kids. Her specialty...or should I say one of her specialities, is her Naughty and Nice t's. In the past she has typically charged between $35 & $40 for these fantastically, worth every penny t-shirts as she appliqués each letter by hand. This year however, she has gotten innovative in her quest to keep up with the demand for these super fabulous t's and she has had them professionally printed, saving her time, and YOU...Money!! She is now selling them for $24 (US). I encourage you to stop by her website and check them out. The hardest part will be deciding who gets the naughty T-shirt and who gets the nice T-shirt... In my house we would just buy two naughty t's and forget the nice one altogether. Get Your Naughty and/or Nice T HERE.

Aaaand We're Home

Holy Smokes. Well, we are back from the Vancouver Gift Show and we survived it. I learned a few things. Well.....One MAJOR thing. When you make a hotel reservation at the Sandman On Georgia St, just because they tell you they are giving you the Penthouse suite, doesn't mean it's REALLLLLY a Penthouse suite. The view was amazing, we were on the 14th floor, however it was the smallest Penthouse Suite known to humankind. It couldn't have been more than 300ft. You had to squeeze into the chair at the desk because it was so close to the bed. My bedroom at home is larger than the suite was, and that's not saying much because I think I might have the worlds smallest master suite. All that said, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend the Sandman on Georgia. The service there was amazing, right down to the one too many run ins with Michael, the cute guest service attendant. Every time we stepped out of our room it seemed he was standing there. By the 5th time in one day we began to make a joke of it. It really was quite funny.

We got into BC Place to set up on Friday morning. We arrived to find our rods and curtains set up, which was great since it said in the show notes that this would be our responsibility. The display company did make one mistake though. We asked for white curtains and they gave us black. It ended up being a great mistake though, we were much happier with the black than we would have been with the white.
























Now the big project is learning how to maintain the website myself. Eeek. Wish me luck, I'm already 2 days late getting some changes made. I should know better than to try to learn something like this on a deadline.

Down To The Wire

So, now the countdown is one. We leave in 5 days. HOLY SMOKES, only five days and yet there is still so so much to do. Being that this is our first show, you could say we are definitely greenhorns. We are pretty excited though, we know we have a great product with HipMelon and we can't wait to see it succeed on a larger scale.

That's about all there is for today. I'll either post in panic the day before we leave when I'm wondering what the heck I've gotten myself into, or you will hear about it when we get back, abound with pictures and an update on how we did!!

Cheers!