Henry's Dog-Gone Party

We've been keeping our adorable grand-dog, Henry, for the past 17 months (not that we're counting). During this time, Henry has become a big part of our family and needlework biz. He comes to work with us every day in the L*K office...

after he reads the morning paper with Alan...

He cheers on our favorite teams...

and he hangs out with our friends!

But, alas, it's time for Henry to return to KC and take up residence in our daughter Ali's new loft. Henry has made alot of friends during his stay in Wichita, so we invited a bunch of his "people friends" to our house for a Dog-Gone Party! I had a good time making this little invite on my computer. In case you can't read the fine print, is says to "COME on over, SIT a bit, STAY and chat, and get a TREAT". So after the invites were mailed, I needed to make  some dog-themed treats!

My creative guru friend Glenna came over to help me decorate sugar cookies. I baked the cutout cookies in dog-friendly shapes...bones, dog houses, fire hydrants and pawprints. We found a cute photo on Etsy of some doggy cookies we used as a guide, and we got to work. Glenna did the hard part...mixed up all the colored frostings, put it in pastry bags and bottles, and reminded me how to frost cookies. Lots of messy fingers and laughs later, we had some dog-gone beautiful cookies!

When the big night came, I crowded the table with everything doggy I could find. We had a couple giant bowls of puppy chow, which I personally find absolutely irresistible. Hmm...maybe I should go grab a handful of the leftovers right now?! I served it in NEW doggie bowls from the dollar store, which were really cute and cheap! I also baked some really yummy gingerbread bones, which looked a lot like real doggie treats.

We also ate a lot of tiny hot dogs, I mean Pigs in a Blanket! 

Henry had a fabulous time partying with his friends....the very young (Ellie was clever enough to keep her chips out of Henry's reach)....

and the slightly older crowd.

In the end, it all comes down to FAMILY, doesn't it? Here is my favorite pic of 4 generations of our family. From left, me, daughter Ali, my Mom, and Henry with his tuxedo tie in the middle. Henry, you're "movin' on up", but there's always a home for you here in Ta Town!

Bring on the Belles!

It's been one of THOSE weeks! A zillion things on my calendar, I'm running to and fro, and somehow fitting urgent work in the oddly timed spaces in between!

And still, it's been a great, productive week! At L*K, we're busy readying for next week's BIG holiday product release. The piles of inventory are getting larger and I'll be setting up our little assembly line to pack orders later this afternoon. Can you spot the upcoming products? That's a tower of Boxers in the back, chartpaks in the middle and embellishment packs for Tiny Tidings XVII and Santa '12 in front.

I'm definitely not taking any pics of the new products cluttering our family room and kitchen. Assembly happens and it's not always pretty! There's a lot of back and forth between the house and the office. 

Yesterday I visited the printer to do a final press check on the 6 Snow Belles. Here's a pic of the happy printer showing the whole press sheet. I'm fortunate to have the same pressman on most of my jobs, and he says I'm the only one who takes his picture! Look closely and you can see all 6 Snow Belles, and their matching bookmarks running across the top of the press sheet. Today the Belles are chillin' out in the bindery, getting cut (ouch) and folded (oh!) and stacked into boxes. I'm expecting a late afternoon delivery!

Here's a closeup of the Belle's border and logo. I added a lacy border top and bottom on all the Snow Belle designs, just so you can tell the guys from the gals at a glance!

Have a great weekend, everyone! I think we've got a bit of SNOW in our weekend plans!

Lizzie to the rescue!!!

In our July 20 post we talked about the mysterious "missing" freebies in the recently released Part 2 of the Very Scary Mystery Sampler. DON"T panic!  We solved our own little "mystery" and fixed the situation before it got to shops and all of you!

Way back in 1996 when I began Lizzie*Kate (and named it after our daughters), we kept the kids busy with L*K assembly. I remember that very first summer, recruiting the neighborhood kids to sack charts and donating money to their little clubhouse fund. Then they got older, and L*K grew, and...hmmmm....we're still sacking those charts! Sarah "Lizzie" and Ali"Kate" grew up and moved away - darn! The pic above shows the girls in our old back room - hard to believe that every chart had it's own big box back then...and all we had was chartpaks (no Snippets, Flip-its, Quick-its and all that)!

So when I realized we had a bonafide "cross stitch emergency" on our hands last week, I called Sarah "Lizzie" to rescue us. The giant boxes of charts were arriving at Norden in Chicago, and conveniently, Sarah and husband Jeff moved to the windy city 3 weeks ago!

Sarah made the 45 minute drive to Schaumburg to pick up the charts and freebies (I shipped them as soon as I realized the omission) and took them home to reassemble. Her normally semi-social cat Penny took a real interest in this new activity. She usually restricts her artistic endeavors to walking through Sarah's still-wet old paints. 

Many hours and lots of driving time later...mission accomplished! Here's a pic of Sarah and Katy Fong at Norden, smiling after we averted disaster. Check out the bins of corrected charts and beautiful carrot linen behind them. It's hard to remember, but many years ago Sarah and Katy were some of the "kids" running around Needlework Market, trying to help in their parent's booths.

Here's a cute pic I took at my LNS, Heart's Desire in Wichita. I told Debbie she could display the finished model, if she was able to securely hide the unreleased portions. She concocted this little display on her checkout counter, posting brown paper over the mystery parts with the ominous message..."To the person who dares to peek...you have been warned!"  Debbie hasn't caught anyone peeking under the brown paper...yet. Today she should receive Part 2 in the mail...time to unveil a little more!

Snowy WINNER!

And the frosty winner is...
6 SNOW BELLES!!!

Thanks to all of you who voted, and special thanks to all who entered fun, creative names for these blustery snowbabes. We truly enjoyed reading ALL of the contest entries!

With over a thousand voted tallied, the name "Snow Belles" won by a landslide...or should we say "avalanche"?! I'm glad you all decided this one for us, because we definitely couldn't make up our minds.

We're out of town today, so pardon the brief early morning post. I promised I would announce the winner today, but writing at 5:30 AM, I'm keeping it short! Happy Weekend!

NAME THE SNOW GALS CONTEST – PART 2

You girls ROCK!  I asked you to submit names for the new Snow Girl Flip-it series, and you buried me in awesome “snowy” names! What a fluffy, chilly, drifty, wintry, frosty, sassy, fluffabulous, glacial, shivery, bodacious bunch of suggestions!  I’m so glad I asked for your help because you all thought of the “coolest” ideas, stuff I would never have considered.

As the entries poured in, I was:

*thrilled and grateful for your participation

*amazed at your creativity

*worried how I would ever narrow the list to the top 5!

Before I list the options we selected, with the help of some kind friends, let me share a few of the fun ideas (just in case you don’t have time to read all 185+ comments, which I did…THREE times!).

There were “royal” ideas….N’ice Princesses, N’ice Queens, Snow Whites, Snow Princesses, Crystal Queens and Snow Whites (she seems like royalty to me)

Some groovy names that sound like “female singing groups”…Frostettes, Snowettes, Snowelles (cue the music to Walking in a Winter Wonderland!)

I’m calling this category the “Suggestive” snowgirl names…Showgirl Snowgirls, Sultry Snowbabes, Frozen Hotties, Snowmates of the 6 Fat Men (true!), Snow Divas, Ice Hotties, Desperate Snowwomen, Snow Dolls, Melting Madams, Sexy Snow Sisters, Snow Harem (is it getting hot in here?)

And while we’re talking about feminine assets, these “curvaceous” names cracked me up…Stacked Sisters, Triple F Women, Blizzard Bosom Buddies, Plump Maids of Snow (PMS), Chunky Chicks, Full Figured Lasses, Curvy Snowwomen, Stout Snowgirls, Plus Size Snowgals and Bouncing Bountiful Beauties!

And to add a little “class” to this contest, some “French” names…6 Beautes des Neiges, Snow Beautes and Snow MaDames (ooooolala…love all of you blog readers from outside the US!)

I mustn’t forget a few “funny” names that made us laugh over and over…Frigid Femmes, Not a Snowbelles Chance in Hail, and (submitted by a blog reader’s husband) 6 What No Balls? Belles! Now that’s a devoted husband who participates in the L*K blog contest!

If your name wasn’t listed above, don’t despair! We read and appreciated every entry. A few of the names seemed like great “slogans or catchphrases”, so you may see them again…Sugar and spice and everything ice, Snow Girls just wanna have fun, sNo gals like Snow gals and Snowy Gang of Chill-ville!

Alas, it's time to move to Part 1 on the contest, because we're busy in pre-publishing production and we NEED A NAME! We gotta get these freezing gals printed before they melt, and before the 6 Fat Men give up on companions!

To vote, just click on the survey below. Voting will begin today and conclude on Friday, July 27, 11:59 PM Central Time. Please, one vote per email address only.  Winner will be announced  Saturday, July 28 on this blog.

Be a jolly, happy soul and VOTE today!

Part 2 - another "missing" mystery?!

Our summer of mystery continues...and we seem to be encountering "mysterious disappearances"...once AGAIN! Remember last month when we shipped our giant boxes of Part 1 to our distributor, and one box arrived mysteriously half empty and 20 pounds lighter than when it left our office? Well, we blamed that one on UPS. (Evidently they agreed with us, because they are paying our claim - next time we insure for more $$.)

BUT THIS TIME....embarassingly enough...we have no one to blame but ourselves for this shocking disappearance. I'm sitting in my office this morning, happily contemplating this blog post, shooting a few appropriate pics, when I decide to photograph the freebie from Very Scary Part 2. That's when I (all in rapid succession) take a huge gulp of air, utter a naughty word, and nearly faint from shock. I (we) totally forgot to include the FREEBIE pattern with all the Part 2 patterns we've been shipping the past 3 days.

The cover is there (check it our above), the pattern for Part 2 is there (yes!), there's no color key or stitch guide (those were included with Part 1 and you all kept them!), but the promised freebie is AWOL....yikes!!!

Thankfully, we shipped Norden a few days early (inappropriate pat on back), so there is time to solve this mystery and avert this cross stitch emergency. We're printing the freebie today, delivering to UPS to ship late this afternoon. Here's the sad part, though. Now the busy gang at Norden gets to insert all of those freebies - now that's a SCARY job!

And we should know it's a big job...we just sacked them the first time! Our faithful helper Carmen (who was planning to work extra this week to prepare the shipment) got stranded with her son's soccer team at an out-of-state tournament, when a relative became ill. She couldn't make it back to Kansas, so we popped a few movies in the DVR and turned out family room into assembly central. (That Bourne trilogy really makes you work fast!)

Here's a pic of the much-discussed SPOOKY freebie chart, stitched on that beautiful carrot linen from our friends at Weeks Dye Works. We put it in a groovy black frame from East Side Mouldings, but there's a zillion scary ways to finish this one!

Ah...the joys of owning your own business...never a dull moment, because they just keep coming. We truly appreciate your business, and thanks for playing along with all the craziness! I think I feel a strong chocolate craving coming on....

My fowl, bonvine and porcine friends!

We did it again! We braved 100 degree temps to visit the county fair! Hey, what's a fair without stiflying temps and the accompanying odors?!

We made the most important stop first and ate at the Cheney Methodist Church kitchen! There's no AC, but  the giant water cooler (extra points to those who know what this is!) and fans kept the air moving. And nothing was getting in the way of us getting our chicken and noodles, taco salad, watermelon and PIE!!

Even on the last evening of the fair, those talented cooks had 12 kinds of pie for us to select. What a difficult choice, but my friend Marlys was really happy with her coconut meringue!

Then on to the animal barns where we admired the award winning cows. Several of my fellow fair-goers were 4Hers in their childhood, so they told wonderful (and sometimes terrifying) stories of showing their cows. Marlys loves to tell about her artful cow tail styling...yes, they rat and coiff the cow tails. Imagine sitting at the rear end of a giant cow practicing your hairstyle techniques!

This goat was super motivated to get to his neighbor's hay. Check out the goat babies laying side by side on the ground below.

It was so hot that evening, the poor pigs were in distress. Lots were wearing the latest fair fashions - water soaked towels. Every farm kid knows that pigs can't sweat! As we walked through the hog barn, I kept thinking about that famous pig "Arnold" from the Green Acres TV show. Boy, Arnold never squealed as loud as some of these 4H pigs!

Speaking of cosmetology, wonder how long this chicken worked on her hairdo? This brings to mind one of my favorite songs from Grease..."Beauty School Dropout"!

Finally, we whizzed through the project barns, but a whole table full of SNOW people caught my eye! I'm not sure what the assignment was, but there were a bunch of wooden snow people. And this little gal was a snow LADY!  Hmmmm...maybe she heard about our upcoming snow girl designs. Love her little braids!

Several bottles of water later, we headed for the cars and the trip back to civilization...I mean, town. Walking to the cars, we passed the outside grandstand show, which was absolutely packed. We couldn't believe our eyes...it was a combine demolition derby. Helmet wearing cowboys were maneuvering their modified combines deftly around the arena, playing bumper combines! And clearly, everyone who paid to get in (not us!) was having a great, sweaty time!