baby's room

i've had the baby's room done for a couple weeks now but have been waiting for a sunny day to take some photos. since it doesn't seem like we're going to get one of those for awhile, i settled for taking pictures today. they're not the best, but they'll have to do.

i made all of the bedding, the curtains, and matching accessories. so here it is.....

false alarm

i ended up in the hospital again yesterday morning! i was up all night long with contractions. by 4:00 in the morning i couldn't lay there anymore because they were coming on so fast. so i got up and called the hospital and the dr. on call at about 5:30 or 6:00. they asked me to wait until 8:00 when my dr. got in so that i could go to the clinic and get checked there first. ugh....i wasn't sure if i could make it that long, but i hung in there and called as the clock turned to 8:00 exactly! i then found out that my dr. was actually in a meeting at the hospital and that she wouldn't be back to the clinic until at least 9:00!! so they sent me to the hospital and we monitored the contractions and the baby until she got out of her meeting and could come and check me.

of course after i arrived at the hospital my contractions slowed down quite a bit. i wasn't sure why as they had kept me up all. night. long. go figure. anyway, she checked me and i was only dialated to 1 and a half, and with my contractions slowing down she decided to send me home. she did want to check me for a bladder infection because sometimes that can cause contractions to worsen or come on early like mine had.

i went home and called the clinic later in the day to get my test results back. no infection, but it came back that i was dehydrated. dehydration is a major cause of contractions like mine too, so they told me to liquify and rest up for the day. after thinking about it, i think it may have been the dehyration that caused the whole episode. i was up all night not eating or drinking anything. then right before we went to the hospital, i had a little snack and a glass of milk. i'm wondering if that glass of milk is what caused the contractions to slow back down by the time we reached the hospital. it all makes sense now knowing that dehyration was probably the cause.

so lots of liquids for me now! it's definitely not my strong suit. i've never been a good drinker of my water.

i'm still alive....and pregnant

it seems like i'm saying it all the time, but man, where has the time gone? i can't believe it's been 18 days since i posted something! oops!

anyway, just wanted to check in and let anyone know whose actually still reading that i'm still alive....and more importantly, still pregnant. i'm now about 36 1/2 weeks, so i'm safe to have the baby anytime and not have to worry about being shipped down to milwaukee because our hospital doesn't have an icu for the baby if he needed it. chances are he'd be big and strong enough to manage without it.

i don't think i've mentioned it before, but we're also having some insurance issues with my hubby's new job, so if i don't have this baby before september 1st, it's going to cost us a fortune! i've been talking to the drs. and insurance about everything to try and figure it all out. i'm honestly at the point of not caring anymore. nobody can give me a straight answer, and the more people i talk to, the worse it gets. so starting august 25th or so, i'm going to start doing a ton of jumping jacks! :)

hopefully i'll be posting again soon with some new baby news!

my favorite kind of nuts

so after my rotton day yesterday, we decided to get out of the house and go out for an ice cream treat. we went to a certain place that mixes in your toppings of choice and mixes it together on a very cold stone. (hehe)

anyway, i ordered something with pecans in it and the guy behind the counter was very obviously new. when we got to the pecan part he just kind of stared at all the nuts in horror. he finally asked which ones were pecans and i helped him out. this was his response to me:

"sorry, i'm just not so great with my nuts!"

haha! that totally made my day! leave it to the ice cream guy to cheer me up!

stick a fork in me

i'm. so. done.

i'm beyond the ready-to-have-this-baby-point. the constant painful contractions are killing me. it's like being in labor all. day. long.

every. day.

it's way too hot.

i'm cranky all the time.

my back is killing me.

i have too much work to do for the business.

i have too many things i want to get done around the house.

wha. wha. wha.

and then i feel guilty for feeling this way because this baby is such a miracle for us. ugh. can't i just be done already?

a little scare

i ended up in the hospital yesterday afternoon. i was sitting at my computer working when i realized that my contractions were coming pretty frequently. (i've been having them for quite some time, so it's nothing new) they were coming so regularly that i decided to head over to the couch and kick back and relax for a little bit while i timed how far apart they were. it turns out they were coming pretty regularly....between 3 and 4 minutes apart. after watching them for about 45 minutes, i called my dr. and told her the situation. she asked me to come in right away to get checked out.

so i go to the clinic and while i wasn't really dialated that much, she suggested i go to the hospital to get some iv fluids and a shot of trabutaline/terbutaline (i can't seem to find the official spelling online) if needed.

i get to the hospital and they pump some major fluids in my arm and hook me up to all the monitors so they can monitor my contractions as well as the baby. even after pouring an entire bag of fluids in my arm, the contractions were still 3-4 minutes apart. so along came the shot of terbutaline. after more monitoring after the shot, they had slowed to 7 minutes apart. they still weren't satisfied, so along came another bag of fluids and another shot. after more monitoring, it showed that i had only had 1 or 2 contractions over the course of the final hour. at that point they were satisfied that they were slowed down enough to send me home. this all happened over about a 5 hour period.

that's the reader's digest version of the story. i'm trying to lay a little lower today. i'm still experiencing a lot of contractions, but hopefully it won't turn into anything like yesterday.

"new" goodies!

so they're not exactly "new", but i've finally gotten around to uploading our adorable magnets to shades of violet. they were actually released at the national stationery show this year and have been a hit ever since. they're available in oodles of ways and in 4 different themes: fruits, veggies, sweet treats, and little creatures. go check them out and let me know what you think!

business feature

my little business was featured in our local newspaper on sunday. right on the front page of the business section! i've copied and pasted below. (as well as hidden/changed some pertinent personal information)

Saying it with Greeting Cards
Local woman designs, sells greeting cards

By Nicole Strittmater
Press correspondent

Armed with glue, sparkles and beads, Lori Dunbar carefully bent over one of her signature greeting cards Tuesday to add the finishing touches.

Simplistic in design, the card featured a small graphic among a clean, white background. As she strategically applied the sparkles and beads to the graphic, the card was complete and ready for sale.

A graphic designer, Dunbar, 30, of [Wisconsin] is the owner and designer of Marzipan, Inc., a stationery business she created back in 2001 that sells an assortment of hand-made stationery, gift tags, thank you notes, announcement cards, greeting cards and more—all designed from her home.

Today, Dunbar has about 50 sales representatives working for her all over the country, and her designs can be found in 576 stores in the U.S., as well as some in Canada, Indonesia, the United Kingdom, Germany, Bermuda and Central America.

When Dunbar sat back and thought about her nation-wide business success, she could only say three words.

"It's pretty cool," she said with a laugh.

But Dunbar said this wasn't something she ever thought she was going to have.

"I can't say that it was ever a goal really, but … now looking back, I definitely see that I've always had that little entrepreneur side of me."

Dunbar said Marzipan Inc. started almost by accident; she stumbled upon her interest for this arena of business while designing and creating her own wedding invitations in 2001.

"I just found that I loved the process of making it so much," Dunbar said. "I just loved everything about it."

So, Dunbar said she toyed with the idea of making wedding invitations professionally, but upon considering the limited cliental, she opted for a broader business: stationery.

That Christmas, she said she made each of her family members a pack of greeting cards to see what they thought, and the responses were unanimous.

"Everybody loved them," she said, adding that she soon took them to different stores to see if anyone was interested. "Everybody I took them to really liked them and started buying them, and stores started buying them."

From there, the business took flight.

Dunbar designs all of the items from her home and then sends them to a printing vendor, In Person, LLC, out of Milwaukee.

Once the printed products are shipped to her house, her assistant Genie [XXXXXX], 34, of [XXXXXX], with the occasional help from Dunbar, embellishes them. Two out-of-the-office employees in Wisconsin also help with the embellishment.

From there, samples are sent to the sales representatives, who present them to stores.

Sarah B Fine Stationery in Madison is one of 16 stores in Wisconsin carrying Dunbar's greeting cards.

As owner Jan Corradini recalled some of the designs, she said the cards do very well.

"We need to get more of them. That's how popular they are," Corradini said. "That's a great company … We love them. They're simple. They have a little bit of glitter which I love; they're kind of understated, but they're really nice."

Of the cities carrying the line in Wisconsin, Dunbar said unfortunately [XXXXXX] isn't one of them. She said the market just isn't there due to higher prices, ranging anywhere from $1.20 for a single gift tag to $16 for a boxed set of six magnets and six note cards.

The greeting cards, for example, go for $5 each, which is something she said many people in [XXXXXX] may not be willing to pay. Previously, she said a [XXXXXX] store sold her products, but never re-ordered, because there was no demand for them.

Whereas in California, her largest market, she said $5 seems like a deal.

California alone has about 10 sales representatives, and currently 156 stores carry the line.

"There are areas around the country that are obviously more densely populated with my products than others," Dunbar said.

But because her products can't be found everywhere, she said people in areas without her products would write to her. This presented her with a problem, since, being a wholesaler, it wasn't possible.

Dunbar found a way to fix that, though.

In 2006, after her success in the wholesale market, Marzipan Inc. partnered with Shades of Violet, LLC, an online retailer of stationery products produced by Marzipan Inc., to provide online sales. This is the only online retailer with the rights to sell Dunbar's products.

"It's nice to have it available to everybody," Dunbar said. "People who lived in areas who couldn't get my products now could."

[Genie] said she is having a great time being a part of the business.

"Oh, I think they're awesome. I can't wait for us to be huge, huge, huge!" she said with a laugh. "I wouldn't trade this job for anything."

Dunbar agreed.

"It's great, because it allows me to stay home," she said. And with her 2-year-old son, [little dude], at home and another one on the way, she said it's definitely nice to have a flexible schedule.

She said walking into a store and seeing her products for sale and knowing that people are buying them makes it all worth it.

"It's a pretty neat feeling."

slacker

i didn't realize it had been so long since i downloaded my pictures off of my camera! wow. here are some of the things we've been up to lately:


the little dude and daddy enjoying the view at the milwaukee county zoo a few weekends ago.


some "playing" bears.


building castles in the sand at the local beach on the fourth of july. (and by "building" i mean flinging sand around with his shovel)


we took the dude to a new waterpark in town. he's such a little chicken. he would stick his hand out to get wet, but that's about as far as he would go. he got pretty wet in the end, but still wouldn't actually run through the water.




and me in all my 30 week hugeness!

2 half

the little dude officially turned "2 half" at the beginning of june. as i'm a little behind, it took me awhile to take his photos...and then of course to actually post them! above is my favorite of the bunch!

oh where does the time go?

i would really like to blog more than i do, but it seems that time keeps slipping away from me and the next thing i know it's been two weeks!

last friday was our last day of this session of cooking school. here are some of my favorite photos from this round.


the little dude sporting his apron.


waiting patiently to eat his chocolate covered strawberries with sprinkles.


making spotted rice. a mixture of rice and a variety of veggies. (i ended up eating this for my lunch.)


taking a nibble of his "mini tacos" : tortilla chips with refried beans, olives, and cheese.


attempting to peel his first hard boiled egg. (mostly because i'm a horrible mom who didn't make eggs for easter!!)


taking a nibble of his freshly made egg salad sandwich.

of course the little dude enjoyed this session as much as the first. unfortunately it will be quite some time before the next session as they don't do them in the summer. bummer. i'll have to hear him ask for "cooking school" and "art school" every day this summer. we'll have to try and find some other replacement until they start again.

bawling like a baby

if you can watch this whole video without crying (or at least tearing up), there's something seriously wrong with you!

coming up for air!

after returning from the nationaln stationery show, i buried myself in my office for a couple weeks. i'm finally coming back up for a little, much needed, air! what's happened over the last 2 weeks? well, it looks like my super sweet friend leslie tagged me for a list of 7 interesting things about myself. i figure since i need to discuss what's happened over the last 2 weeks that i'd make it 7 things that have happened since then instead. so here it is!

1. the little dude is still doing well with being potty trained! no accidents in probably 2 weeks now! he even wakes up dry after his naps and in the mornings!! we're still doing pull-ups (or spiderman underwear as he knows them by) at night and naptime, but he's in full-blown big boy undies all day long. i think that we'd be safe getting rid of the pull-ups too, but i'm too chicken to actually do it. (i'm not a huge fan of washing sheets!)

2. i've been in contact with the certain large children's hospital from the nss about their custom project several times now. i got a response to the formal quote i sent them with an e-mail containing some images they want me to use......i assume that's a good sign that they want to go forward! i'm really excited about the possibilities of this job! we still haven't discussed quantities so i don't know exactly how large of a project it may be, but even at the smallest quantities quoted, it's a rather large job.

3. the little dude and i have started cooking school again. he's such a freak for school! (in a good way) he asks me every day if it's "cooking school" day. poor guy. too bad it's only once a week! the first week we made cinnamon & sugar bread, hand squeezed lemonade, ants on a log, granola, fruit and yogurt parfaits, and fruit loop necklaces! phew.....and that's all in 1 hour!

4. i've started having some pretty serious braxton hicks contractions. i don't remember them being this intense with the little dude. i'm honesly a little nervous that they're this painful and frequent already. part of me wants to call the dr., but i know she'll probably just tell me it's normal and not to worry. my biggest fear is being put on bed rest, so many it's best not to let her know. (ok, i'm only half kidding there....so don't comment that i'm a horrible mother who's putting herself first. if i had to do bed rest for the sake of the little bean, i'd do so in a heartbeat)

5. the hubby is very close to getting a new job in the town we live!! right now he commutes about 2 1/2 hours every day! so this would be a huge deal for us. not only in time, but also in the $400 we spend every month in gas! (and that's with him carpooling!) he had his second interview yesterday and it sounds like it's in the bag. now we just have to wait for a formal offer and see where we go from there. keep your fingers crossed!

6. we chose a name fo the little bean. (ok, so this actually happened right before i left for the nss, but it's still something new) i think we're both happy with it. it meets our reuqirements of not being in the top 100 most popular baby names as well. first and middle name alike. as usual, the name will remain a secret until he's born. we don't need everyone's opinions. we know not everyone will like the names we choose.

7. i made record time with my new card release. i was supposed to have 12 new designs to release on june 1st. (i release quarterly and these are my deadlines so that i stay on track) however, with the nss, i got a little behind and didn't even start designing until june 3rd or so! oops. i ended up getting all of the new designs done in less than a week, and i must say they're not just crap either! i'm actually pretty excited about most of them. they're now off to my product embellishers who are working furiously to get prototypes done to send out to my reps so they can start selling up a storm!

the best part

price of 10' x 10' booth for the nss: $2000 and change
price of electricity for said booth: $99
price of hotel stay: approx $200/night

coming home to a potty trained 2 year old son: priceless!!

thanks hubby and mom! i owe you bigtime!

home again

i've been away for the last week attending the national stationery show in new york. i wrote a post in the airport on the way there to mention my departure, but then the internet in our hotel didn't really work, so i didn't have a chance to post it until the day before i left....which is kinda silly.

so here i am. back home again.

it's was a good trip, but extremely exhausting. i don't think i'd want to do the show any more pregnant than i already am. set-up day was torture. by the time i got to the hotel i could hardly roll over in bed because my hips ached so bad. not fun. the rest of the show was much easier. i tried to sit as much as possible to save my feet and it worked pretty well.

the show itself was, i think, busier than last year. there seemed to be much more traffic than usual. i'd say we did just as good as last year, maybe a tad bit better. we also have a contact with a certain huge children's hosiptal. they want us to do some custom work for them which could easily add up to 5 digits!!! it would certainly make this trip worth while. i need to get some numbers together for them and then we'll go from there. it sounds very, very promising.

i also got some photos of my booth this year.....unlike last year where i forgot to take a final photo after it was done!


this is what your booth looks like when you first get to the show. blank canvas!



here's our final booth after about 8 hours of work.





and some side views.

now i need to go lock myself in my office for the next month or so to get started on all these orders!!

obligatory photo

the whole "second chid" syndrom is already in full effect at our house. by this time i already had 4 or so photos of myself along my pregnancy journey. this time....well....not so much. i'm at 21 weeks, over half way there, and we just now took our first photo*! sorry kiddo! so, here i am, in all my pregnancy huge-ness! i swear i'm twice as big as i was with the little dude at this point. no laughing!

*no, we don't have a big grey backdrop in our house! it's actually one of the walls in our livingroom that i had to stop decorating mid-redo when we found out we were pregnant! i think we're going to put my grandparent's family cradle there when the little guy arrives.

it's a . . .

well, we’re almost to the halfway point! we had our ultrasound yesterday and have included some of the pictures above.

we also found out that we’ll be having a little brother for the little dude! (although he’s not too convinced!) if you ask him, he still says: “baby brother, sister”. (and no, there aren’t 2 in there!) he’s also informed me that we need to name his baby brother “doctor baby”.

the new little bean is quite the mover and shaker and it was tough for the technician to get any decent pictures. she must have tried for 15 or 20 minutes at the end just to get a good image to give us, but gave up as he decided to turn his back to the "camera".

art school

tuesday was a sad day as it was our last day of art school. the little dude loves it so much and will miss it terribly, i'm sure. i took the camera on tuesday to take a few shots of what goes on at school. i should have taken it a different day as the projects were limited since we wouldn't have time for anything to dry and take home. normally there are many, many more "wet" projects.


face painting. of course it had to be "mick*y mous* cl*bhouse", so mommy drew on some classic ears.


top: getting ready to do a full-body tracing. top right: the little dude adding "features" to his face.
bottom: my little lefty at the easel doing a collaborative painting. bottom left: again, contributing his part to the group project.


top: "cutting" play-doh* and driving "dumper trucks" through it for fun!
bottom: looking at some grass throug the magnifying glass.


ending the day with his favorite parachute! he freaking LOVES this thing.

easter

this year was the first time that the little dude really understood what easter was all about. for weeks before if you asked him what the easter bunny was going to bring, he would say "num n nums" (m&m's). he was pretty excited about the whole thing. we wrote a note to the easter bunny and left it by his basket before bed. the easter bunny even hid the little dude's basket for the first time! i think he may have to hide it a little better next year because he found it pretty quickly.

here are some photos of the little dude digging into his stash of num n nums.



we went to my aunt and uncle's house for a gathering with our extended family. we always have an easter egg hunt. it's the first time he really enjoyed that too. he got to collect 7 eggs with tons of goodies inside. i love the photo on the left with his squishy excited face! too funny.



overall, we had a blast. it's so much fun when the kiddos start to understand all the holidays. oh, and the little dude got to wear his big brother shirt that i posted about. everyone loved it and now the entire family knows our news! too bad i don't have a photo of him in it without his jacket on! oopps!

modishoppe

i've been a real slacker in posting about this, and i feel horrible. the whole preparation for the national stationery show is really kicking my butt! i can't believe it's been almost 2 weeks since i've posted anything!


anyway, i'm excited to announce that marzipan inc. has partnered with another online retailer! modishoppe is now open for business and you can find a few of our things there! go check it out. it's full of great stuff!