No, I haven't fallen off the planet...just on vacation with my family for the holiday week. Our first cross-country road trip was a success (well, we didn't cross the ENTIRE country. Â Just 14 hours of it). Â So I am on a blogging hiatus until I get home next weekend. Â Happy turkey day tomorrow for all U.S. readers! Enjoy the holidays, and wish us an uneventful trip home! Wishing you all the best holiday memories too! We're off to make some pies!Â
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xoxo
sarah jane
"Brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want something badly enough. They are there to keep out the other people."
~Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture
Thinking a lot about this lately. Walls. How hard do I want to climb/push/chisel my way through? Why do they come, and when do they go down? Profound thought from Randy Pausch. Can't say I have read the book, but now I am going to. Found this from my sister-in-law and had to post it. Gives me hope that brick walls only come down to the determined, faithful, persistent and passionate. What is on the other side is worth the waiting.
Found a new favorite vintage kids online store. Bianca and Family. Dreaming of redoing Addie and Ian's room, and getting a whole lot of inspiration!
More updates on the newsfront: Sarah Jane is in Paris...again! L'affiche Modern (English translation is "the modern poster") is a French fine art print e-shop with work from graphic artists, photographers and children's illustrators. Their prints are for adults and children a like, and they are now selling 4 of my prints on fine art poster paper! I am thrilled! The company contacted me a while ago, and everything has finally gone through! (Sending contracts and proofs from Paris and back does take some time!). I love their designs! And I love that I don't have to package and ship anything I sell! This is so the way to go! You may remember Lilipinso & co. who is also distributing some other pieces of mine...also located in France. I may just need to be making a trip out there sometime...any excuse I can get, right? Check out the site here.
When I first heard about Stephanie Neilson (the plane crash, the blog, and her amazing family) I immediately noticed a few things. Besides how overcome and impressed I was with her family, I noticed their amazing family pictures they had taken only 3 weeks before the crash. I was smitten by how the photography completely captured the love this family had for each other.
By searching through Nie Nie's archives, I found the info I had been searching for. Wendy of Blue Lily Photography was the talent behind the lens, she lived in California and she was coming to Utah in October. I couldn't have felt more lucky. This woman is gold. She is magic even. She had exactly 1/2 hour with our family in the Orchards (she was only in town a few days and had over 35 families to shoot), which frankly I was terrified about (it can take me 1/2 hour to try and get my kids in the car! how could she capture my family in 1/2 hour!)
But like I mentioned before: Wendy is Magic. She LOVES kids and LOVES people and has a gift. These are just a FEW of the pictures I love. I am having the hardest time deciding my favorites!
If you are ever in the market for family pictures, find out her travel schedule. And get a slot FAST! She is quite the popular gal. Check out her blog here. Thanks so much Wendy! We love you to pieces!
In this day an age, we are split doing many things. No longer does the woman stay at home all day with the kids, she is homeschooling; or teaching music lessons from her home; or has a daycare; or she is a soccer coach; or even has a side business. Sometimes I forget all this since it seems times have changed all so slowly. (what? it isn't 1952 anymore?) And yet, we still want to dedicate ALL of our time to one thing inparticular. In my case, I want to be COMPLETELY 100% at home, or I want to dedicate an ENTIRE DAY to my art. I have talked about this before: times are different now. We are required to have split focus. I don't believe that this requires a frantic, A.D.D approach to life. Quite the opposite. It requires us to be FULLY present in what we are doing in the moment. I have found that true satisfaction with a job or task you are doing is to be completely aware of that task (i.e. not coming up with your next blog post while you are feeding your children dinner...just feed your kids dinner, and enjoy the experience!)
Since our lives are scattered between so many things, being present is even more important. And also that much more difficult. Take being in a yoga class for instance. What is the main focus? Listening to your breath. The simplest most basic of functions can be one of the hardest to become aware of. Yet when we do allow our minds to only sense what it going on in ONLY that second, there is an incredible sense of wholeness and fullness.
Same thing applies to our multi-tasking. We must be living in the present in every task we are accomplishing to achieve that same sense of wholeness and wellness. And again...one of the most challenging things to accomplish. But during dinner I was thinking about the crisis of going to the post office yesterday and forgetting it was Veterans day which means my customers will get their packages a DAY late. By dwelling on that, dinner was a chore rather than a moment to connect! (I did realize my flaw early on, and completely enjoyed my husbands made-from-scratch lasagna...yummy:)...and seeing my daughters new found love of mozzarella cheese). But my point is, just because we multi-task doesn't mean we have to think about all things all the time. Quite the opposite. We must think about one thing at a time, and trust that will be enough.
I didn't think this post would be as long as it is: but my thoughts this morning were prompted by a blog post I read from a retailer of mine in the UK, Livy & Me. She admitted to going into teaching full time this year, and wanted to tell her customers (she is the owner of Livy & Me: unique baby gifts) that her store would still be going strong. She also referenced a site that caught my attention: Business run by humans: a site deticated to REAL LIFE PEOPLE running REAL LIFE BUSINESSES (which is most of us I think).
People aren't going to get a recording when they call you, they aren't going to get a template email...they are going to get YOU. And YOU is a busy multi-tasker full with many other facets of your life: something that you should be proud of...not stressed about. It also causes problems...like a few weeks ago when I was really sick, and spent the afternoon in the hospital...business slowed down a bit. And I had an upset customer. But once she knew I was REAL, and REAL LIFE happens, things were cool.
Being real for your customers is as important as being real for your spouse, or kids, or friends. So in a sense, what we do all day DOES fall under one umbrella: Being REAL. And oh, what a gift that is! And it can infact be a wonderful experience...but only when we take it one at a time, and live completely in the moment of what we are doing NOW. NOW is REAL. So, enjoy the now, and you will enjoy it ALL!
Happy thoughts and love!
xoxo
Sarah Jane
{Sorry! no pictures today! my picture insert button is asleep or something...guess that makes me real!}
This weekend, I was introduced to some great new ways to keep in touch on line. Though I have heard of Twitter for a while, I really wasn't all that interested in finding out about yet ANOTHER way to kill time on the computer. Getting on the computer is hard enough around these parts! But after learning how it works, I have found it is even less time consuming than email, or blogging...and a great way to keep people informed about what is going on in your life...on your website...or blog. I am mostly going to be using it to keep you up on conversations that revolve around my studio, but I also want to keep in touch with you! With how busy we all are and yet how much we still want to keep up with each other, twitter is the best answer! Learn more about it here:
So, sign up, and FOLLOW ME (username: sarahjanestudio) And I will follow you back!
Sending happy tweets.
xoxo
Sarah Jane
This past weekend I was the luckiest duck. I was able to attend the first Startup Princess Retreat in Park City Utah at the Zermott Resort, and oh! What a blast! It was a small group of no more than 35 people, and honestly, felt like one big sleepover. Such amazing energy and charisma in this group: a fantastic mesh of fun personalities. I miss you ladies already!
Topic of the weekend? Social networking and marketing to women. Guest speakers came from all over:
Holly Buchanan: co-author of the Soccer Mom Myth, and founder of Marketing to Women Online; from Richmond, VA: fabulous presenter and got us all thinking about how we present our businesses to every type of woman.
Barbara Jones: Founder of the One2One network offering products that match your business in order to get feeback and increase your own social networking. Such an amazing background in the music industry, and such a doll! This woman is Gold!
Janet Meiners: SEO guru and writer of Newspapergirl; Such great info on how to get people to find you on the web.
(gwen with Kelly Anderson: founder of Startup Princess)
Gwen Bell: Social networking queen (voted one of the top 50 most influential people in social media); Member of the Kirtsy Team, twitter expert and social enthusiast. This woman has done it all. If you ever get a chance to meet this woman, do! www.gwenbell.com
(Me with Gabrielle...she has the greatest hair!)
Gabrielle Blair: Design mom and co-founder of Kirtsy. Need I say more? Just a doll! Shared her story about starting her blog and kirtsy and gave some fantastic tips on blogging. She is a gold mine of info and resources!
And all these women were just so open and shared advice with us one on one the whole weekend! We went from professional acquaintances to great friends in just an instant.
And those who attended shared nearly just as much. We had time to get to know each other and share ideas too. I met some awesome women with some amazing companies! I hope to be sharing more about them in the coming weeks, as well as some great info I gleaned from the weekend.
And especially, a HUGE thanks to my husband who watched the kids (fed them Baskin robbins, KFC and spent the day at the children's museum) while I was with the girls. He is the BEST dad!
Biggest benefits: being in a close knit group with women just like me: social, creative, wanting to share their ideas with others. We were all just a bunch of humanistics, concerned mostly about building good relationships, which is what this whole blogging world is really all about!
Thanks ladies for an incredible weekend! Can't wait to share more about what I learned! If you missed this weekend, I hear through the grapevine another is being planned for January! Get on board!