2014 Freebie Holiday Gift Tags!

Hey friends! I have another freebie Holiday Gift tag this year for you. I loved wrapping my presents for my family and sticking these cute little dudes on them. Puts a fun little touch on them, without going all crazy (I'm not a very good wrapper...)

Just download the template (right click-->save as, and then open up in Acrobat. The print quality is better printing from Acrobat versus your web browser for some reason.) Get some white card stock and print away! I just cut them out and taped them onto my packages, but you can also use a hole-punch on the top to attach a festive string to tie to packages. 

If you end up using these, I would love to see! Share with me via instagram or twitter or just link in the comments below. Also, feel free to pin these (and please link it back to me)! 

***I hate to even mention this, but you know, internet. These are for personal use only, not for resale. Thank you!

Holiday Sale Time!

Hey Friends! Just wanted to pop in and let you know I'm having a Black Friday/Small Business Saturday/Cyber Monday sale this weekend in my shop. You can take 20% off your purchase by using coupon code THANKS20 at checkout.  Sale starts now and lasts until Monday night at midnight EST.  Thank you all so, so much for everything this past year, and I hope this holiday season is a good one for you! 

xoxo,

Michelle

Stella!

Taken the morning after her birth. 

So, on September 27th at 5:50pm, Nik and I welcomed our little Stella into the world! She weighed in at a whopping 9lb, 3oz and 23 inches long. I was in labor for almost 14 hours and the last 4 were spent pushing (!!!) her out. I managed to go completely drug-free, due to my insane stubborn-ness, and definitely had a great birthing experience (despite the very very long 4 hours of pushing.) Guys, she is so insanely adorable! She cracks me up with all of her many faces that she makes at us, and I love her little cuddle sessions we have after nursing. She will be 4 weeks old tomorrow (!!!) and I don't even know where the time has went, seriously. It's so fun to notice little changes in her daily. She has already started to make some ooo and ahhh noises in the most angelic little voice, and her big tooth-less grins make me melt. Babies!

We are still figuring out the whole "leaving the house with a newborn" thing, so we mostly have just been adjusting to a family of three in the confines of our own home. I hope to venture out more soon! We are all doing great though. Breastfeeding is going way better than I ever could have hoped, I finally made the switch from using disposable diapers to cloth (she is finally fitting into the size of diapers that I bought before she was born), and she sleeps relatively well (at night she usually gives me a 3-4 hour stretch, followed by little 2-3 hours stretches.)

I opened my shop back up this week, but it is still kind of an adjustment trying to find work-time during the day. Figuring things out day by day. :)

Some photos!

First stroller ride!

I've been wearing her a lot in my Sollybaby wrap. She snoozes in it.

Looking at me.

Wiggle-worm!

C'mon Baby Sale!

Hello! It's getting close to "go time" here with this baby girl (due in 8 days, eeep!), so I decided to have a last-minute sale before I shut down my shop for maternity leave. From now until Sunday night (9/14/2014), use coupon code CMONBABY to save 20% off your purchase in my Etsy shop. ($10 minimum purchase.) I'll be closing up my shop next week and will reopen it later on in September or early October. Woo! (and really, c'mon baby! I want to meet you!)

I have loooooaaaads of new prints and cards in the shop, as well as my new 2015 calendar. If you had your eye on something, now is the time to snap it up.  A little peek at some of my new illustrations and cards below!

Thanks so much!
xoxo,
Michelle

Painting the Roses Red

Prompt: Tree

I've been on a kick to paint more these days. I don't do it enough, it's one of my favorite things to do, and I want to get back in the habit of doing something artsy "just for fun" daily. I bought a block of watercolor paper, some new brushes, and I'm not stopping until the block is full. It just so happens that Spoonflower is having a 30-day drawing challenge right now, so I have been hopping on their prompts and going to town with my paints. Cosmic alignment or something. Anyways, here is a glimpse of what I have been painting, and you can follow along via instagram (and maybe I'll post a few more here in a week or so.) 

Wheee!

Mountains

Cactus

Landscape, Lemons, and Arrow

Bits & Pieces

Leftover flowers from the baby shower last weekend!

Sneak-peek at an illustration that will be in next year's calendar

Sooo, sorry about that extended absence. I'm not quite sure where time has gone recently. Each week, I briefly think "hmm, I should blog," and then I forget that thought again until the next week. Life is busy and good! I'm up to my waist in planning new holiday things for my shop, while simultaneously trying to put together a nursery (and other rooms of the house...slowly...), and trying to have a little fun too. With baby girl due soon (9 weeks to go, eep!) it feels like every weekend is spent on one project or another. September is usually the start of the holiday season for my shop, so it will be interesting to see how that will go this year. I plan to shut down my shop for 3-4 weeks when she is born, to get our bearings, and will hopefully be able to open again sometime in October. That's the plan anyways! 

I've weirdly had zero regrets about moving so far. It's definitely a different change of pace in upstate NY compared to Brooklyn, but we've adjusted pretty quickly. The only thing that really makes me sad-faced is not being able to just walk anywhere at anytime. There really isn't anything walkable from my house, in terms of coffee shops or restaurants, just residential neighborhoods. But hey, everything is a pretty quick 10-20 minute drive, so it isn't that bad. 

My family threw me a baby shower this past weekend and a fun time was had. I'm usually one to shy away from events that put me at the center of attention, but it was a pretty laid back picnic with close family. NO STUPID GAMES! Hehe. 

Okay, promise to share more tidbits soon. xoxo. -Michelle

Dill Flowers from my little deck garden.

The start of the nursery...

Ambition Panda

Let's talk about ambition. Diving in. Shooting for the stars. I'm well past my college years, but I've always found it important to still have a big goal in mind to achieve, even though it gets a bit harder when you need to figure that out by yourself (rather than achieve a certain grade or pass certain tests to graduate.) Moving to NYC, finding a job that had SOMETHING to do with my degree in Illustration, starting my own business, getting into certain big craft fairs, traveling to foreign lands, expanding my business, starting a family, saving for a house. These are many of the things that I have strived for and for the most part, succeeded in! People have different levels of importance in their lives, whether it be job or family or friends or seeing the world, and there is no one way to live a life. I think balance is key, but others throw themselves into one area of their life. So what are the goals that are currently taking up space in the back of my head everyday? Mine are mostly family-oriented, for obvious pregnant reasons, but expanding my business even further is taking up a big chunk too. The National Stationery Show (NSS) just happened in NYC and it has been a huge goal of mine to show at it for years now. I admit, I'm a little disappointed in myself that I haven't made it happen yet, but that only fuels me to make sure it happens next year. What are some of your big (or little! I want to crochet an afghan this year too!) goals? How do you go about making them happen? I have one big mega-list of life goals that I keep near my desk to remind me.

My pal Jenipher Lyn wrote a book recently, called How Being Stubborn, Depressed, and Unpopular Saved My Life, and this my contribution to her book launch blog party! We're already on week 5, Ambition a.k.a. Diving In, but you can catch up on her blog!

New Father's Day Cards!

No, I Will NOT Pull Your Finger Dad

To the Coolest Dad

Father's Day is coming soon! June 15th to be exact. I have two new cards up in my shop, along with a few others from year's past, to choose from. No procrastinating! 

New Chapter

So, if you follow me over on twitter or instagram, you might have already gathered that Nik and I have picked up and left Brooklyn for good! We have lived there for over a decade now, so it was a not an easy decision. It was a really long drawn-out process over the last few years of deciding where to move to (we considered Portland, Maine and Hudson, NY as the other top contenders), but in the end we both went back to our roots in Rochester, NY. I grew up in a small town 30ish minutes from there, and we both went to college at RIT (and that's where we met!)  My family still lives here and Nik's parents are only two hours away (soo much closer than from NYC,) and with a baby on the way, we knew we wanted to be closer to everyone. So! Rochester it is! We came up here one weekend in March, looked at a million houses, and found "the one." Definitely luck that we managed to find a house we loved in one weekend, and that our offer was accepted. These past few months have been a bit of a whirlwind with house/mortgage stuff, but we finally made the move up here last week. Still unpacking/organizing, but I will share photos soon! It's a biiiig change going from the hustle-bustle of Brooklyn and the tiny apartment living, to a much smaller city with a big house to fill. I imagine the adjustment period is going to last awhile as we try to get back into some sort of normal routine. We're both working from home now too, which isn't a change for me, but definitely one for Nik. So far so good! 

A few days ago, I escaped from unpacking and trying to organize things, and went out to Highland Park with my camera. Lilacs are my favorite and the Lilac Festival was always my favorite growing up and in college, so I had to go see them! They are *almost* in full bloom, but still so pretty!!

No color correction used! Mega pink!

Birthday Adventures

Hello! Nik and I went on a little adventure yesterday, birthday adventures to be exact! We took the tram (!) over to Roosevelt Island, and spent a few hours wandering the island. It's mostly residential with parks, and an abandoned, kinda-spooky old smallpox hospital. Fun! Spring finally showed it's face, so it was nice soaking up some sunshine. 

Nik took me to Hangawi for dinner afterwards, and we splurged for the Emperor's Tasting Menu. Insanity! Course after course came out and it was so fun. It's not a super-fancy place, but they have so many subtle, nice touches to everything and the food was just so PRETTY (and super-delicious!) He, of course, embarrassed me by having the staff come out and sing "happy birthday" to me, complete with a big gong. My face was bright red and the whole restaurant was singing, clapping, and staring. Just wait until his birthday, I say...

Queens

Obligatory selfie on the tram crossing over to the island.

Pretty floating candles outside Hangawi

Pretty chocolate-y things from Lagusta's Luscious that Nik got me. Berry box is ceramic!

Birthday brunch.