FLU!

EEWW!  ICKKK!  After a very full weekend, I woke up Saturday night with an unexpected visitor - the stomach flu!  Isn't is strange how you have absolutely no warning that this plague is going to strike?! We had a houseful of friends over that evening to watch a basketball game and movie, happily chatted and snacked the night away...and BOOM!  Suddenly I'm on the quick-weight-loss diet!

After spending the entire day Sunday on the sofa (with rapid trips to the bathroom) I'm finally on the road to recovery.  The aches are subsiding, I've nibbled at a few saltines, and life is good. And, I hope to catch up on reading for my monthly book club.

What can I learn from 48 hours with the flu?  I've been thinking about this (when you're too achy to sleep, you have time to think!).  I have more empathy with my favorite aunt who is bravely fighting colo-rectal cancer and is recovering from aggressive chemo/radiation therapy.  She is an amazing lady, but I know she feels terrible!  I have just a glimpse of understanding how my friends feel who suffer with chronic fatigue syndrome.  And the list goes on and on...

So, here's to making lemons out of lemonade and hoping to feel more like my normal self tomorrow!  And...thanks in advance to my friend Saundra who is bringing chicken and noodles tomorrow. I vow to have an appetite...and regain any weight I lost in tis experience!

What a relief it is!

The new designs are out the door!  Actually, Alan is busy delivering shipping bins to the post office, and the UPS boxes are stacked on the driveway waiting for our daily UPS pickup.  Thankfully the weather is gorgeous today - in the 40s and sunny!  We hit our goal to ship today (whoopeee!), so new L*K designs are whizzing their way to needlework shops around the world.  Many thanks to our loyal stitchers everywhere!

With a little help from our friends...

About 6 times a year, things get absolutely CRAZY at Lizzie*Kate! When we release new products, we ship new designs to all of our participating needlework shops on the same day! That means printing & assembling enough products to ship hundreds of shops all at once...and it requires alot of planning, coordination, luck and nearly every inch of office space.  Sometimes everything runs smoothly, but more often than not...something unexpected happens.  This January several "unexpected" things happened...the printing press broke down (we're talking about a million dollar BIG printer), a frame got stuck in a snowstorm in North Carolina...you get the picture.  In order to meet our promised ship date for our shops we had to scramble and get a "little help from our friends".

We always hang out with friends on Friday night, so this Friday we invited everyone to our house for Mexi-food, movie and L*K assembly!  Our friends were FANTASTIC! Because they haven't assembled thousands of Flip-its before, they think this is pretty fun stuff (or at least they don't complain)!  We set up tables in our family room and happily worked our way through a movie...and gluing embellishments on thousands of Halloween Rules Double Flips and sacking the 100 Years From Now chartpak.  Linda spent her evening beginning assembly on the new ABCs of Parenting kits, with threads that arrived only that afternoon. We finished the evening with fabulous sopapilla dessert from our friend Connie and carried bins and boxes full of fresh inventory to the office. 

What a productive evening!  We had lots of other stuff already finished, but this was a big help.  Then Alan and Linda spent the weekend packing orders. (It seems to go more smoothly on weekends when the phone isn't constantly ringing.)  Now it's Sunday evening and I'm taking a break to sit down and rest my back (and do this blog!) while Alan is working on credit cards for more order processing.  We're about 2/3s through packing, so we will meet our Tuesday shipping date. THANK YOU, FABULOUS FRIENDS!!

Spring-y Preview!

Who needs a little spring??  Here's a sneak peek of our new Spring Alphabet design. Every alpha better has a different font and decorative sampler-ish borders, with little spring motifs sandwiched in between.  Spring fever is invading our office! The chartpak includes the design, as well as tiny purple buttons and an antique-gold dragonfly charm.  Check for availability in your local needlework shop before the end of the month.

We're busy assembling all the new designs for our product release next week.  In fact, things are CRAZY in the L*K office this week as we try to pull all the details together. A couple designs are sacked and ready for boxing.  A couple other things are...well...not quite ready!  Here's are some buttons ready to attach to the new Halloween Rules Double Flips.  The ones in the plastic tote are sacked (in tiny 1" x 1" zip bags!).  The buttons in top of photo are "stripped" onto adhesive Glu-Dots. When the printing arrives, we'll pull them off the strips, one by one, and attach to the printing.  Our part-time helper Carmen will be busy...and so will we!

Snow Day!

Woo-hoo! It's our first snow of the season and we're excited!  Our little Wichita world is covered with about 4" of the white stuff.  Alan got right to work shoveling the driveway in front of L*K world headquarters.  It may be a "snow day", but we're still working!  

One of the joys of working from home is the short commute.  Here's the path from our back patio to the warm, welcoming L*K office.  It's hard to believe it was 60 degrees only 4 days ago...and the upstairs office windows were wide open!

The path to our faithful (and usually overflowing) mailbox is a little snowy, but the mail must go out!!!

Oops! Stitch Count incorrect on Halloween Rules

One quick change on the Halloween Rules border.  The stitch count is actually 93 W x 366 H.  We have reposted the FREE chart at the link here:

http://www.lizziekate.com/HalloweenRulesBorder.pdf

More Halloween???

YIKES!  Who knew everyone would have so many questions about our Halloween Rules sneak peek!  But we're not complaining...thanks for the interest!  In response, we are posting an advance link so all of you can download (and begin stitching, if you want!) the FREE border for our upcoming Halloween Rules series.  Also included is the supply list and complete instructions for combining the 12 (yet to be released) designs into one fabulous Halloween how-to banner!  http://www.lizziekate.com/HalloweenRulesBorder.pdf  (By the way, this prints most clearly on legal sized paper).

Fear not...we haven't forgotten what time of year it really is. Stay tuned for a sneak peek on our very special Valentine's day/any day kiss-themed Snippet!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN?

Halloween? Really??  Sometimes at L*K we forget what time of year it actually is...we're always working 6-9 months ahead of calendar time. But we know that NOW is the RIGHT time to start our 2011 Halloween Rules Double Flip series!

Here's a photo teaser to rev your spooky self!  This is the very top (the FREE BORDER!) of the Halloween Rules series, which we stitched together in one banner. There will be 12 individual designs in all, grouped into 6 Double Flips.  We're still working on graphics/printing, but we plan to have the first few parts of this series in your local needlework shops by the end of January...along with alot of other new goodies for 2011!

Check back this month for more previews of coming new releases!  Happy New Year!