A Smurf-tastic find

This is a slightly different type of post for us but we thought some of you with kids might enjoy it.

This week our little guy has sparked some interest in the new Smurfs movie. Any child of the 80s will remember the beloved cartoon series that featured these little blue creatures.

I thought how fun it will be to share with him the fun we had watching the Smurfs. I was able to show him a few episodes on On-Demand which he seemed to like for a 30 yr old show.

I remember when I was younger my mother would take me to the local gift shop where they had this huge display of Smurf figures in the window and I would be in awe of the variety of Smurfs they had and how hard it was to choose the one I like best.

Today I took a ride over to my parents house to search in their basement to see if I could find my old Smurf stash. Two hours later I came across this blue storage box in the far corner of the basement covered in dust and lo and behold it was my Smurf collection!

I had forgotten how MANY I had collected way back then (approx 168 figurines!) ....and that I had all the villages too. What can I say, I was a collector even back then!! I'm so glad I kept them and that I can share them with my kids today.


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Holiday themed Smurfs! How appropriate that they are some of my favorites!



Anybody else want to fess up of their enjoyment of these tiny blue people? C'mon I know you are humming the theme song now....

Oh, and I also found a few record albums too....anybody kmow how I can explain those to the 6-year old? He was very perplexed!

-Paul

Things we LOVE! SUMMER edition

I'm sure you all can relate....Remember when you were kids and how long summer days felt? Hanging at the playground and swimming at the local pool all day. The months felt like forever back then.

Now two months seems like two weeks! We can't believe we are already planning back to school shopping for the kids. Everything is going by so fast. Even though here at the studio, its warm outside and we can smell the fresh cut grass... we are thinking of the coming holidays, crafts shows and winter months ahead.

So today got us thinking about things we love about these warm SUMMER days and how we should enjoy and appreciate them more. So we created another edition of Things we LOVE! Summer edition.


• We LOVE being able to work all day without shoes. We haven't seen socks all summer:)

• We LOVE the after dinner walks with the kids even though our two year old can't decide if she wants to walk, be carried, or ride in her wagon for our strolls.

• We LOVE going to the local farmers market and picking up fresh fruit and vegetables. We had the best sugar snap peas yesterday. Yummy!

• We LOVE exploring new museums, playgrounds and trips into Boston with the kids.

• We LOVE regrouping and planning new things for our second half of the year for Swirly Designs.

• We LOVE getting emails with new and exciting opportunities.

• We LOVE that our first Patriotic ornament collection was so well received even with all the website issues we had.

• We LOVE the mindless summer tv shows like Designs Star, The Next Food Network Star, Big Brother and Rosanne's Nuts.
** Disclaimer: Lianne wants to make it clear that she doesn't love the last two shows, those are Paul's guilty pleasures ;-))

Comment and share with us some of the things you LOVE about the simple things this summer.

And remember to stop and enjoy every moment this summer!

Whooo loves ya!

One of our favorite collectors Meagan, made a comment on our Facebook page a few weeks ago about how she enjoys our little Seasonal Swirly Owl ornament designs. So we thought it might be a fun post to look back at our many Swirly owl designs we created over the years.

It all started with our very first owl ornament design (above) we created back in 2008 for our Halloween collection. We knew we wanted a spooky owl in our collection, and even though our owl wasn't really spooky, the challenge was to design him in our swirly style: whimsical and unique... while keeping him recognizable as an owl. So we kept the color palette to tones of browns with big yellow glittery eyes. Then on a more recent Halloween collection we even created one batch of owls with glow in the dark eyes...super cool!

Our little Swirly Owl has been a big hit with everyone for years and now has been making appearances in our other collections. It has become one of the few series of designs we have created.


This Swirly Snow Owl is from our Holiday 2010. Sitting on top of an evergreen tree all warm and cozy with his red felt scarf.


This was a custom piece for another collector who buys a bunch of ornaments for all her employees for Christmas.


Our Valentine's Owl flew in with tones of reds & pinks celebrating the day of love with a yummy box of candies.


Our Spring owl in bloom.


.....and our most recent addition was our patriotic owl waving our flag proudly.

It was a hoot looking back at our past designs:) Since we only make a limited amount of each design we are so glad we remember to take pictures of our ornaments collections before they fly off to their new homes.

Look who stopped by the studio today

We were greeted today at the studio by some feather friends... Mr. & Mrs Turkey and their two little turklets (what are baby turkeys called anyways?)!

They must have gotten wind that we were busy working on our new fall ornament collection and stopped by to check up on our progress.




We by no means live in the country or even farmland to witness this odd site. So to see these large birds just causally walking around our yard is just a little weird.





They even left us a little, well actually rather large, gift. I think they were mad that we weren't making more Thanksgiving designs. Yes, we're sorry but we had to post actual turkey poop. Gross I know!

Gotta love the turkeys! Come back in a few weeks to see the final designs.
Gobble Gobble!

Fun Fireworks

Happy Fourth everyone!Hope it was a fun one. We thought we would share some of these fun shots we took of the fireworks over the 4th with the kids. They are not great shots..for some reason I couldn't get good shots this year. Honestly, I was trying to keep my terrified 2-year old from running off, she wasn't crazy about the fireworks. But the funny light effects are kinda cool.

We know we have been a little lazy with the blog lately, but we are hoping to get back in the swing of things very soon. We are now sketching away for our new Halloween/Autumn collection and we will share more on the fun ideas we come up with you soon. In the mean time you can checkout our last years collection of posts we did in July 2010 about creating a collection in 31 days.

Have a nice weekend!