Colonial Williamsburg and our Hope is the Thing With Feathers Tote

Last week was a LONG week here with sick kids, lots of doctor's appointments and very little sleep. Fortunately our weekend was much better! On Saturday we celebrated the engagement of Quinn and Lindsey and Sunday afternoon we spent down in Colonial Williamsburg. We spend a lot of time down there but I haven't brought my camera lately. I brought it Sunday, though, and got a few shots. It was a beautiful day and finally felt like autumn! I love this time of year.



 
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I still don't have a shot of BOTH the girls that I like. Lillie was actually smiling for the camera which she hasn't wanted to do in months so I got quite excited that I might get a good photo of them. Well, of course Lola decided she wanted nothing to do with that:






Oh well! SOMEDAY I will get a shot where they both look semi-happy!
Lola just wanted to suck on her little fist and snuggle with her Daddy.









 We also have a new tote available in our shop! 
It has our signature design - our birdcage logo and the first line of one of my favorite poems,  
"Hope is the thing with feathers..." by Emily Dickinson.


It is just $7.95!







I hope you all have a wonderful Tuesday!

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Colonial Williamsburg and our Hope is the Thing With Feathers Tote

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Five Months

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Well, our little Lola Wren is five months old today! I can't believe how time flies. I feel like we just found out we were pregnant. She is such a sweet little thing and I love her so much. She looks much bigger in photos but really she is so tiny and petite. I imagined she would just be a little mini Lillie but it is amazing how different they already are from their coloring and build to their personalities. As Lillie has already informed me though, they are best friends. I tried to take some photos of her yesterday but she is such a wiggle worm it was quite hard. I had to be in super close so I could have one hand on her so she wouldn't roll off the daybed out on the porch. I had planned on doing a photoshop tutorial on how to make the eyes pop but somehow when I went to load the step by step I was missing a few of them, and my sweet little Lola is going bananas right now so it will have to wait for another day.



She always gets this little wrinkled brow that is so cute.
The clip is from Joyfolie from when Lillie was little. I just clipped it onto some elastic lace that I glued together to make a headband because she doesn't have quite enough hair yet to keep the clip in.


Also we just listed our first batch of Christmas pillows for sale in our shop today:



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And don't forget to scroll down to enter to win our "give thanks" pillow!
Have a wonderful Thursday!

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Five Months

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A Few Pictures of Lola Wren at Dana's

Here are a few photos of little Miss Lola that I took at Dana's apartment after shooting some of the pictures from yesterday's post. Jason got her this cute little hat. It is still a wee bit big =)


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She kind of looks like a little boy in this picture =)... I think it is because she looks so much like my cousin, Cathy's, little boy Luke, in this picture! The second I saw it I thought that and as soon as I showed my mom and siblings they said the same thing! 







 


Also, our Annistyn Scarf in Black is back in stock!



I hope you all have a wonderful Friday!

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A Few Pictures of Lola Wren at Dana's

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A Few Personal Touches to Lola's Nursery and Poppy Row

One of the first things we did when we got back home from being gone most of the summer was personalize Lola Wren's room a bit. When I last showed you all the nursery she hadn't arrived yet so the frames all had photos of Lillie in them. Once we got back I switched all of those out for pictures of Lorelei and added a few other touches to make it "her" room. 


 


 





 





I can't wait until Lola is a little bigger and she can wear this hat like Lillie did.









Her little bunny is wearing her tiny little newborn version of the Lorelei tutu.



And of course the best thing that has been added to her nursery is Miss Lorelei herself! 
(Well, actually she's still so tiny and Jason has been hogging her room these past couple of weeks so she's sleeping in her bassinet, but in a few more weeks she will be moving into her crib.)
 


And now I want to introduce you to our first sponsor:





Poppy Row is a family business, run by Britt and her mother Sandy. They sell beautiful hair pieces several of which I am eyeing for Lillie and Lola. Here is a little bit of what they have to say about their creations:


We have been selling our colorful handmade floral headbands and hats for babies, women and children since the summer of 2010. Together, we each bring a little of our personal style to our products – designs which combine the best of thoughtful construction and spontaneous beauty!

Our accessories are sophisticated and novel, created for the satisfaction and pleasure of the confident lady whether she's 1 or 100, crafted with a delicious mix of difference and vintage charm. When we begin designing, we are attracted to fresh combinations of color, shape and fabric texture. We often think back to the bold, luxurious, feminine designs of the Roaring 20s, and to the bright, charming, joy-inspiring accessories of the 1960s.

We take great pride in our work, and know that you'll love how that pride shows in our products. We are proud always to pay loving attention to every detail, from the specific combination of blooms and rhinestones to the soft organic comfort of headband edges.

Our products are inspired by the fashion sense and confident beauty of our daughters, sisters and friends, and we hope they will bring the same joy to you, our customers, too.



We are so excited to have them! Here are a few of my favorite pieces from their shop:








I hope you all are having a wonderful Tuesday!

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A Few Personal Touches to Lola's Nursery and Poppy Row

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Gymnastics, Opening Day, and Shipping

Whew! The last 48 hours around here have been a bit of a whirlwind! It has been fun, exciting and a little bit crazy. We are so grateful to all of you! We appreciate all of your kind e-mails and support so much.



We had considerably more sales than we had anticipated and will be hard at work getting everything shipped on out to you all although it may take a few days. We are sold out of quite a few items and are getting low on several others. Although we will be replenishing many of them it may be several weeks before they are back in stock. We also were excited to offer a huge CLEARANCE section that has items that are between 25% and 75% off their original prices.



Also, I thought I would take a few minutes to answer some of the questions we got today:



First, we had a couple of customers have trouble checking out. They were using Windows 7 so we are hoping that it was just some glitch with that and not our site although we are looking into it to see if there is anything we can do to make the checking out process easier for those of you using Windows 7. We have contacted our host and they have looked into it as well. So far we haven't been able to duplicate the problem so we are hoping they were just random isolated incidents but we will continue to look into it.



Second, we had some questions about our increase in shipping prices. This one has been both tricky and frustrating. The way our new site works is different than Etsy. Our shipping charges are based on the dollar amount you spend not the individual item or the amount of items you purchase. That makes it so that you can purchase one item, like a hat, and get charged the same amount as if you bought a tutu or several clearance items. Obviously this can be a bit frustrating if you are purchasing a small item like a hat or onesie versus if you are purchasing a sweatshirt or tutu. We are toying with a bunch of ways to fix this but haven't found a solution yet that works completely and doesn't cause new problems. We did increase the range for the most inexpensive shipping option to include all of the hats so the shipping prices on the hats have gone down! I have been absolutely thrilled with the transition to our new website. I thought we might have quite a bit more trouble with the switch-over so this one small thing doesn't seem too bad as long as we can eventually figure it out. Until we do we are going to leave things as they are, but please know we are trying our best to get this figured out so that we can charge less shipping on our smaller items, and at least for now the shipping on the hats is better.



Third, ahhh - international shipping. For the past two years this has been one of the single most frustrating things for us. When we first opened Dear Lillie we offered First Class International Shipping. We charged as little as $4 to ship to Canada and not a whole lot more to ship everywhere else. Then we started having packages get lost! When you ship International First Class the post office will give you a customs number but they really can't track it for you. This led to quite a few headaches trying to locate packages and if a customer said they didn't receive it we would always send them another one. I started dreading seeing an international address on an order because often it meant I would be sending out two of the same item to a customer and therefore was often losing money on those sales. Finally, after a particularly frustrating stretch of packages getting lost we decided to stop shipping first class and just ship using International Priority Mail. You can click here to see the pricing on that. Based on the weight of our packages and the destination it generally costs us between $21 and $39 to ship internationally. Because of that we charge $24.95. Even though that number seems ridiculous we still often end up losing money on the shipping of international packages. I know this is very frustrating for our international customers if you just want to purchase a $9.95 item you certainly don't want to spend $24.95 to have it shipped. We completely understand that and find it extremely frustrating as well. We want to be able to go back to shipping First Class but it just makes us so nervous after the experiences we have had with it. We love all of our wonderful international customers and want to make sure you are able to purchase what you want without the crazy shipping charges. Jason and I have been discussing it and if we do decide to offer that option again will let you all know.



Okay, enough on that! Fortunately shipping has really been the only issue we had today which is such a relief!



I had hoped to have a decorating post ready for today but thanks to Irene and not having power for almost five days I am quite a bit behind, as usual. So instead I thought I would share a couple pictures of Lillie. She had her first gymnastics class on Wednesday! I was so depressed because I didn't get to take her to it. Lola had an important doctor's appointment that morning and even though I tried to get Lillie into another time slot I wasn't able to. Instead good ol' Uncle Jason came to the rescue and brought her. She loved it so much that she didn't want to leave when it was over...(and thanks to that I don't know if Jason will ever want to take her again - haha). I, however, cannot wait to take her next week!





 Here she is in her new little leotard and headband she stole from Dana:
























No pictures, Mommy! 












 












Along with bringing Lillie to gymnastics Jason has even been helping out with Lola. I was trying to shoot some product photos the other day which was hard with her in the Bjorn so he offered to take her. When she is really fussy putting her in the Bjorn is often the only way to calm her so he got stuck putting her in it. Now before you think, "Awwww, what a sweet uncle" let me just inform you he spent the entire time muttering, "this is NOT what I signed up for..." and "this was NOT in my job description." =)
























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I hope you all have a wonderful Friday and a fabulous Labor Day Weekend! And thanks again for making yesterday so exciting for us! We truly appreciate you all so much!

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Gymnastics, Opening Day, and Shipping

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Good-Bye Moose Mountain

(Jamie's favorite book is Gone with the Wind, and one of the days that we were shooting tutus, as we were picking up to head back up to the house we VERY quickly tried to take a shot inspired by it).








For the past three years, while Jon is gone for the month of July recruiting, I have packed up and gone to New Hampshire to spend the month with my family. This year, because of Lola's health issues, we actually packed up a little earlier than normal and ended up spending close to seven weeks up there!  I couldn't possibly put into words how grateful I am to my parents and siblings for putting up with us for all that time and for all of their help. It was so hard to leave - I am pretty sure Lillie and Lola now think that "Moose Mountain" (or "Moose Mount" as Lillie now calls it) is their home. As much as I will miss being there, it is so nice to be able to be with Jon again. We are out visiting with his family right now and will be headed back home at the end of this week. In the meantime, I thought I would post some of my favorite pictures from our time in NH (some have been posted before and a few are new) and say a huge thank you to my wonderful family!








This is the house my mom grew up in and where we took the pictures of Dani and Mike. It was built by my great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather in the late 1700's. (I think I have the right amount of greats, but maybe not...)



 








Lillie playing in the dirt









Lillie and Duke













Lorelei









Lillie running away while we were taking tutu pictures









Lillie and Auntie Dana









Mike and Dani












Daisies Lillie picked for Mimi







 












 Lillie












Lola and Mimi

















 Auntie Dana and Lillie












Aunt Jamie and Lillie












Uncle Jason and Lola









Uncle "Dutch" and Lillie

















Lillie









Lillie












Lillie "helping" Bri down at the farm

















Lillie playing at the farm









Lillie sipping some lemonade at Burdick's









Papa and Lola













Lillie and Papa on the porch watching for deer, geese, turkeys, etc.







































Lillie and Dana at the farm









Mimi and Lola













Lillie riding her bike













Lillie and Duke (or maybe Harley)













Our little Lola Wren









Auntie Jamie and Lillie at the library













Lillie and her new best friend, Evelyn









Lillie and Duke









Me and Lola












Jamie














I hope that you all have a wonderful Tuesday!

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Good-Bye Moose Mountain

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