moving blogs...

we are moving! check me out here (including my archives)

http://mayaroad.typepad.com/mr/

we are back...

ok, can i just say how awesome my trip to detroit was? truly, it was so much fun hanging out with cass, kate, debbie, laura (and mike, ken and erin). even though the trip was only 48 hours, i enjoyed every moment we spent at paper tales. the store that cass has put together is BEAUTIFUL. i actually found all these interesting papers and embellishments that i had not seen in other stores i had been to before so of course i shopped shopped shopped.





and it is hard for me to not get a smile on my face when i see an 8 ft wall of maya road stuff:

and noah loved the fact that he could roam around the store and check out the play area with erin:

and the students there were so awesome. i am so lucky i got to stop and chat and hang out with each of them:

i even picked up some new UTEE techniques from some of the teachers at paper tales! so cool.

and baby noah and david got to sightsee around detroit with ken and erin as their guides. check out noah and erin here. erin is such a cutie pie!

if you are in the detroit area, you need to head to paper tales. beautiful store. beautiful people. beautiful projects.

i am back at work now. project wise, i am working on a skulls onesie for baby noah. i am not one to fork over $24.99 for a cute designer onesie for noah so i whipped out my drawing pad, some felt and embroidery floss and buttons. i will have to take a photo of the onesie when i am done.

something to think about...

thank you for everyone who posted on my last entry - it made me smile to know that all of you all have something to be thankful for!

i wanted to post this here just in case you want to do something nice for someone. we have donated a bunch of our maya road journey kits and some chipboards to a benefit for jen <-- click here to read about this.

jen isn't someone i know personally but i know her from some of her work as a scrapbooker and her posts on some message boards. her son passed away a little while ago form cancer but even in the darkness, i admired that she had such strength and hope for her child. i don't know if i would have the strength she did if i lost my baby noah and it makes me a bit emotional to think about it.

we usually don't talk a lot about things we donate to as a company but we did donate a number of our things for an auction with 100% of the proceeds benefiting jen's family

you can see the auctions here:

auction for jen

and if you can find it in your heart to bid on them, that would be awesome.

we are off to paper tales tomorrow for me to teach and hang out! 85% packed and 15% more to go! i have 20 planters i have to pack and get on the plane for my class and those things weigh a TON each!

a celebration RAK...

... for 1 healthy year for baby noah and baby jonathan


... for moving almost everything into our new w/h


... for the tremendous growth we have this year


... for God's blessing upon our lives


... for getting back into the running game


... for me getting my @#$@# mouth back under control (most of the time - still working on it)








here is a small RAK i have to give away. lots of pretty ribbons, some items left over from some of my kits from last year. some chipboards. some maya road papers (yes the only ones we have ever made that is in our journey album kit). all in a cool storage box.

i have a couple more things not in the photos - some cool stamps and labels and such.

if you want to win this, please do the following:

1. post here

2. tell me what you have to celebrate today

RAK entries close on monday! so good luck!

one small peek at the w/h

ok, here are 2 small peeks at the w/h. not everything is put away yet but it is looking very sweet. there is a photo of where we store the goodies:

(i wouldn't advise diving into this b/c it would HURT like the dickens).

and here is where we do the pick and pack and ship:

and remember this, just a couple of years ago, deb and i were packing orders out of our garages! even when i was 4 months pregnant, i was packing orders out of my garage. trust me, this wouldn't fit in our garages now - LOL.

so for that, thank you for your support of us. it means a lot. and we have lots more goodies planned!

you've come a long way baby.

wow, talk about a trip down memory lane. i found this photo from over 10 years ago (back in my raver-ish days) and rather than banish it back to a pile in my desk i decided to scrap it. you can't see very well the photos but i did have a fire engine red streak of hair. this was after a late rave night of staying up til 4am then heading to class at 8 am. the boy in the photo is jeff. he was my best friend in college. jeff sat behind me in high school psychology class and that is how we met. we went to the prom together and suffered through 4 years of college together. we even did our last chemical engineering project together in school.

i can look back at this photo with such fond memories. jeff and i will reconnect once in a while and catch up. there was a point where we drifted apart. it bothered me so much. but now i realize we had to do that. i was moving on in my life and so was he but we were going in different directions.

things are different now. we don't talk and see each other daily like we used to but we are at points in our lives where the conversation, even after a long pause gets easy again. i hope to bring baby noah to meet jeff and his partner very soon. we talk about mortgages, bills, food and getting older (LOL).

but i wouldn't have traded the past me for anything b/c it made me who i am now. and i am so happy to see where jeff is now in his life!

so if you find some photos lying around in a drawer, don't leave them there! do a LO about it! it will look so much better sitting on a page rather than left back in the drawer to be forgotten.

it was 2 years ago...

so it was over 2 years ago that i created this album. i just found these photos the other day as i was flipping through picasa at my stuff. who would have known transparencies would be so "in" 2 years later (LOL)

i still love these pages where i stamped and used rubons to create divider pages. in fact, for a class i am teaching this weekend, we will be sorta doing the same stuff but with some different supplies.

and you can see that i had created this album freehand and it was sort of the inspiration for some of our most popular albums to date!

it is time for me to "update" this album. i am going to be making one with some new photos of our home now that mr. noah has joined our family. lots more toys. a bit more messes but a whole lot more love!

we are off to swim lessons tonight with noah. swim trunks? check. swim diapers? check. towels. check. i think we are good to go!

in the meantime our new w/h looks so AWESOME! double the packing space.triple the storage. more than 4 docks for loading and unloading. and even toys for baby noah when he pops in for a visit! i should take some photos this week.

"you run fast for someone with flat feet"

someone told me that once. i guess us flat fat feeters are supposed to go SLOW... just a quick note before i head off to B&N and then later tonight work on my summer CHA projects (with our new samples - and they kick butt let me tell you).

i got up at 6 am today and did my 6 mile run in a little over 54 minutes. so i am getting faster and i can't wait for the half marathon.

no i won't back down...

well i did it, i signed up for the half marathon in september. after forking over my 75 buckaroos, there is no turning back now. i had to do this to make sure i was serious about my training. i have only 3.5 months til i have to run this 13.1 mile distance.

if you are into racing, you will know what this all means to me. i don't get nervous about lots of things but i get knots in my stomach before races like this. i get antsy and pissy. i want to just get started the day of the race.

sometimes people will ask me "well how long is this marathon" - and well i get taken aback b/c the length of a marathon never changes - it is always 26.2 miles. and the half is always 13.1 miles. you might not thing that 0.1 or 0.2 miles matters but it does especially if you are at the point when your body is about to give out. i have come close to passing out the last 0.1 miles.

but i am doing this for me. so that i can get back into some sort of shape. i miss the days i would go run 22 miles, shower, then play flag football for 2 hours and soccer for 1.5 hours the next day. those days are long behind me.

but during my runs, i have to be extra careful b/c of this:

i found this photo the other day while cleaning out a drawer. this was from 9 years ago (Feb to be exact) when i played a fateful soccer game and tore a bunch of ligaments in my ankle - was out of work and on crutches.

if i only knew then what i know now. my ankle haunts me. i was thinking about this the other day. i will never be 100% on that ankle. and i probably won't be even 80% ever. i think about my ankle each time i run b/c i have the tendency to twist my ankle if i don't watch how i land.

don't get me wrong, i have run my fastest times ever even with this ankle but i know and have been told that one day i might need to get that puppy fixed. i am cool with that. there is no need for me to live in fear. i am not one to live in fear. so til that day comes, i will make do with what i have. life is too short to sweat it.

and with that my goal for is set. i will get up that day. i will get antsy. i will be wearing my funny looking running shorts that have all the pockets in the butt side and they will be filled with runner's energy packs. and with God's grace, i will run my half marathon in a really slow time. and baby noah and david will be cheering me on. then i will finish and we will celebrate by going to the beach.

i am back

well we made it home. i start officially the hard core work today while baby noah is off playing. also we need to get all of our suitcases emptied. david and i used to have this BAD habit of letting our suitcase stay unpacked for weeks and weeks but now we are trying to get everything unpacked in the 2 days after we are back. 3 suitcases down and 1 more to go. we also decided that we need to travel with less. it is amazing how a little dude can need so much stuff!

noah had a great time with his grandparents and uncles and aunt. they adore him so much. you can just tell by how their faces light up when they see him. it makes me happy that he brings so much joy to them. he is very outgoing and flirts with everyone he knows.

last night i decided i needed to do a LO so this is the one i created.

simple yet totally easy to create in less than 30 mins.

before i left i also decided to see if i could do a LO with more than 1 photo and i actually fit 4 photos on here! i usually don't crop my photos but this time i wanted to capture a specific feel:

someone asked me in an earlier post what i read for inspiration. to be honest, i read a lot of different things- business week, wall street journal, teen vogue (they have a cool DIY clothing item each issue), newsweek, runner's world, vanity fair, CRAFT, adorn, real simple and of course i partake of the usual scrapbooking magazines too. my feeling is that i am only on this earth for a short time, i need to feed my mind and explore my world to see what is out there.

ok i need to get back to work. my marathon training has been slacking so i need to get back on track with that too.

oh yeah, before i forget, we got some samples of our NEW stuff for CHA summer and i am so super excited about it. we will probably start showing you some goodies in about 1 month!

this kid knows how to party...

just a few photos from noah's party yesterday.

we have been blessed with a kid who is so easy going and happy to be around people.

more soon! have a great day!

hard to believe...

hard to believe that 1 year ago, i was waddling my way to my last week of pregnancy. hard to believe that i stopped running for a week because my doctor told me that baby noah would be here if i didn't slow down and i still had a list a mile long before he was due to arrive.

and it is hard to believe that noah will be one year old in a couple of days.

we are visiting his grandparents right now. on the plane ride our neighbor passenger asked if this was noah's first plane ride. and i was thinking about it, this kid has probably flown / drove (well he didn't drive but we did drive nonstop from dallas to chicago to CHA summer last year and back) - well noah should be hitting close to 30,000 miles now in travel. that is pretty amazing for being less than 1 year old. he is used to flying now. and after our monstrous 27 hour trip to asia, well these small state side ones are a breeze!

here he is visiting the dogs and his grandparents (he was ok with the dogs til one started licking him and then he was upset but after a couple of hours, he was ok with them and has started chasing them around the house).

i love these photos of him. if only i had his shiny hair and good skin - sigh.

and if you can believe it i snuck me some scrapbook supplies in my bag to work on a couple of things while we are here. i just need to pull everything out to get some LOs done!

and i found this photo that my MIL took at our last CHA - show - this is totally how we feel EVERY DAY after the show - even all the maya roadies get tired!

happy monday

today was a good day - i started off this week on a good foot literally as i actually went for a run tonight. unfortunately about 10 mins into the run, a rainshower blew in but i still finished my run - i just looked like a sad wet dog when i was done. i haven't run in the rain for a long time but it felt really nice to do so!





remember a couple of posts back where i talked about making some stickers with your journaling stamps? here is the LO i used mine on:

a perfect splash of color for this LO to commemorate noah's first steps for me!

so a couple of weeks ago, i was talking about the importance of supply chain and i have a bit of time tonight to chat a little bit about it as it is a vast topic.

i was at IKEA a couple of weeks ago with some of the MR design team gals and we were just looking at all the great stuff you could do with like 371 sq ft of living space (and you start to think hey my family of 3 could live somewhere like that - LOL) anyhow i am getting off subject.

they had this piece of furniture - i think it was a book case or something and they were advertisting that they could lower the price to the consumer b/c they had found a way to have the pieces fit together so that the book case took up only half the space it needed to in order to be shipped here so they could pass the savings onto the consumer. half the space might not seem like that big a deal but it is!

think of it this way, let's say that ikea could only fit 100 (i am just picking a nice round number here) of these bookcases in a container before. so they have the 1 container that cost them say $1000 to ship and all the time, labor and money costs for the paperwork to get here. then they have to truck the 100 bookcases in the container to a store and warehouse the 100 bookcases. each of these steps cost money. NOW, with the redesign so that the bookcase can be packed flatter, they can fit 200 bookcases per container. THINK of how many steps in the process they have cut their costs on!

here is a scenario - say they used to have to ship 50 of these containers out, now it is only 25! they only have to do paperwork for 25! they only have to have half the storage and warehouse space for it. it is brillant! think of the costs they saved on that they can pass onto the consumer!

and in ways, this is sort of how we are running MR. we aren't making things flatter but you can bet your darnest we try to pack the container as full as we can. and to help us accomplish this, we often times will have a couple of dozen of our products in the container at a time.

here is the thing that we are always challenged with "net replenishment lead time". by definition, this is the amount of time that is needed to "refill" something once you place your order for that item. so say we figure that we need some of our 4" binders (as those are pretty popular lately) - and side note, the definition of "need" is challenging too and something i will discuss later as i talk about safety stocks, etc in a future entry. anyhow, i say we need to order 4" binders. well if you add up the time it takes for the factory to make it, package it, and get it on the container and it is shipped, through customs and in our w/h, we are talking about 8- 12 week cycles here.

then you need to take into account the other item we are trying to reorder at the same time to get on the container to get shipped here b/c we want to be like ikea and keep our costs down. but deb does a great job on it. she handles all of that. i just push the easy button (LOL).

that is one of the challenges. i don't think some people without an intimate knowledge of supply chain understand that. they just get mad that things aren't in stock. my philosophy is if we ALWAYS have everything in stock, we have too much inventory. that is a lot of cost to be carrying all the time in terms of stock.

so in this way we want to be like ikea b/c it helps us keep our cost down (Even though we don't have the ikea scale of volume on our side).

hope you all have a great week!

some scenes from today and a RAK winner...

wow who knew that a party for a mere 1 year old boy could take so much out of me?

we had a beautiful day today for noah's party. here are a couple of photos of the fun:

i must say i am really proud of my cake! but we all had fun and that was the best part of it!

and we did pick a RAK winner from my last RAK giveaway. the winner is:

WendyGibson

and since i haven't gotten to her question yet, i thought i would answer it here.

Do you ever feel overwhelmed with all that you do? If so how do you deal with it?

wendy, this is a great question - yes i have days too. days that i feel like for every 2 steps forward i take, i take 10 steps back. days when it seems like all we have are people unhappy with x,y, and z or we have a deadline that is coming up.

on those days, i try to take a step back. say a prayer for what great blessings we have and go out for a run. life often times is about perspective and it is only i that can change my perspective. then i get back into it and tackle the issue at hand and everything is cool again.

so wendy, please email me at info at mayaroad.com!

i will try to answer my questions this week!

the day started off sucky.

well i think we are pretty much set for noah's party tomorrow. i decided at the last moment to go ahead and purchase a cake at COSTCO and i decorated the cake with a race track made from crushed oreos. i then added a green infield and piped "greenery" around the track. i even included some lifesaver "bumpers" around the infield. and i am proud to say that i made the happy birthday sign with some scrapbook supplies i had for the cake too!

all i need to add tomorrow are the cars and the mr. potato head holding the checkered flag. i will be sure to get lots of pictures tomorrow.

so here is the part that sucked. i got up at 6:15 am. at precisely 7:03 am i started running 4 miles and it pained me so b/c this was the SLOWEST 4 miles i have ever logged. being somewhat of a type A personality, i am ultra competitive - lots of times with myself.

the 4 mile run today is to categorize us in the "group" you are supposed to run with for the marathon training program. and just so you know, when i was in my prime, i was in the second fastest group - green B1 (with blue A being the fastest group). and with my time today i will probably be in the yellow C3 which is right next to the red group which is slowest.

while the run was physically taxing, i think it was more taxing on my pride than anything. sigh. but you know what i have to start somewhere and at least i am getting back into this.

can't wait for tomorrow, i hope noah has a wonderful BD! will share lots of pictures when we are done!

happy friday to ya'll

i hope everyone has had a great week. we are gearing up here for noah's first BD shindig so that has been keeping me sorta busy. i know in the past that people have asked me what i do with my mini albums and such. well i decided that i would display some of them for noah's party. this way people can see how he has grown in the last year. i mixed it up with photos and put them all on our mantle like this:

this is a wonderful way for people to share in what you do.

ok i will pick the RAK winner but i might have to wait til sunday after noah's big party. there is a lot for me to do as i am also now signed up for "early half marathon training" which means at 6 am tomorrow i will be heading out to do a 5k time trial. ugh. but i need to get back into it.

i do want to answer some more questions so let me continue down the list:

• Which do you LOVE designing more - new goodies for Maya Road or layouts for your design team work? i think quite honestly i love the layouts the most. the new goodies are fun but really very stressful too. it isn't like deb and i have a slew of helpers that we just say "hey here is a concept of what we want in the colors we want" and volia we show up at the tradeshow and it is there. no, if only you all knew the gory details. it would make your toes curl a bit. but i love making and coming up with new goodies too but just not all the stuff that comes with it.
• Question for you is your thoughts on the publishing end of the scrapbooking craft. In other words, do you think publishing is on the decline with the magazines in different states of flux? Do you think most magazines are disenchanted with some scrappers that have "attitude" and are sticking to layouts from Manufacturer Design Teams to fill content and correspond with ads? wow, this one i could write pages about. i mean there are arguments both ways about this.

1. the magazines are a business. they need to do stuff that makes sense as a business. that means making money

2. if they have their own inhouse design team with people that met their deadlines and produce quality work, then it only makes sense to go with that.

3. at the same time, you could be missing out on someone with mad crazy talent out there if you limit yourself.

4. some of it is luck and timing - i will sometimes see 2 galleries of 2 people that to me have equal amounts of talent - one will turn out to be a huge name but the other will not - is it for lack of submitting? is it for connections? i don't know but some of it DOES have to be being at the right place at the right time.

• What is your secret to juggling baby, career, MR and also finding time to do things for yourself like run? you also forgot that i LOVE LOVE LOVE sleeping - i really don't function well without 8 hours a night! you know deb and i talked about this. and to be quite honest, we are both workaholics. i mean i LOVE my Maya Road job. that is fun to me. almost like not working. but you know what MR has also provided me? the ability to work on most days from home. that in turn means i get to see baby noah a lot. i am also blessed b/c God has worked everything out for me. my friend who lives down the street watches noah about 5 hours a day. then i get him and we hang out and then he goes down for a nap and i get to work again. then we hang out as a family most nights and when he goes to bed, i get back to work.

i don't run as much as i should but i am about to change that.

i am also blessed b/c the warehouse people LOVE noah. they ask for him to come visit.

• Is Noah going to have a brother or sister anytime in the near future? L, you are funny! LOL. um not anytime soon. but david and i are going to start looking at our journey to adopting a baby girl from China seriously in the next 6 months or so.

Ok that is all I have time for today but have a wonderful weekend and I will be checking back in with a winner soon!

PS I still need the last RAK winner to email me; if I don't get an email back in the next couple of days, I will choose someone else to replace that winner.

happy wednesday

wow, i have a lot i want to say today. so let me get started!

i had posted a couple of weeks ago about using our stamps in cool ways - have you thought of making your own "labels" by stamping onto clear mailing labels or even self adhesive cardstock?

here is what i did the other day. i stamped one of our foundations journaling stamps onto a piece of DCWV adhesive cardstock. i used the ranger ink for crispness and voila this is what i got:

now when i need a label, i just cut out and stick and go! so easy. clear images are HOT right now so try using them on transparencies or even the self adhesive mailing labels and you are good to go!

next we are moving our w/h next week. the good news is the place is bigger but the bad news is that we have to move. and i think that i just might have to put noah to work - check out how he is doing with these sets of fibers i had brought home- he is bagging them like a PRO!

and today, jonathan (and his parents) stopped by on their way back to cali. they got to hang out with us for about 2 hours. it is funny b/c you can finally notice that the kiddos are deliberately trying to check each other out rather than have it be a random occurance. here jonathan inspects noah's toes:

and thanks to everyone for their questions. i don't think i will have time to answer them all in one post so i am going to start here and get through some of them and tackle some more each day til i am done. i will post the RAK winner on FRIDAY.

but here goes on the questions and answers:

• What/where do you turn to for inspiration when you are creating new products? deb and i look everywhere for inspiration - online, in magazine, in clothing, on bottles and even in our heads. in fact, i just handed deb a program from my church b/c i LOVED the colors that were on the bulletin! \
• I would love to know how you keep coming up with new ideas for new products - And are you going to expand your lines to make different things - eg: papers? there were a couple of questions on papers - at this time, we have no immediate plans for papers (so all you paper companies out there can rest easy - kidding) - seriously though, paper is not our core strength and we don't have plans for it to be. we do plan on doing some different things with our lines. sometimes it is a matter of the number of hours we have in a day and the cost to do things.
• My question: What is the crazierst idea you have had for MR that hasn't made it to production?? (ie when you guys were mucking around or being silly ;-) this one makes me laugh. b/c there are still some things on our list. i can't divluge all of our craziest things as one day they might make it to production with tweeking. we did have our hubbies offer to model underware woven from our fibers/ribbons at the tradeshow but i think that we want people to BUY our stuff not run from our booth in horror!
• Do you wish Noah will scrap when he grows up? if he wants to. david and i hope to cultivate in him a passion for what he wants to do. he does have TREMENDOUS interest in my supplies right now.
• do you listen to music when you run, and what would be/is on your iPod? actually this is an interesting question. i used to listen to my walkman when i ran (CDs tended to skip) since i ran outside a lot, david asked me to be more aware of my surroundings and NOT listen to music so i could pay attention to traffic, etc and i have not run with music since like 1999. also now noah and i tend to run together so i try to enjoy it with him. on my IPOD is a lot of different music from TECHNO (sasha and digweed) to R& B (mary J blige) to folk music (nancy griffith (sp")) to 80s music
• How long have you been scrapping for? i was talking to deb the other day, and she was at my parents house cleaning out some old stuff and she found a scrapbook i put together in 1986! so at least since then. but seriously scrapping not til about 2000.
• Now that you and D are mothers, are you going to have baby-inspired chipboard and ribbons? LOL - well we have some things that are suitable for babies but at this time no specific baby ribbons, etc!
• I live in Durban, South Africa where can I purchase your awesome MR product from in our country? we do have customers in South Africa. you can email us at info@mayaroad.com and we will try to find you one.
• my question is what do you do to unwind after a very stressful day or week? i run, watch some TV, chill out with david and baby noah and consume massive amounts of m&ms.
• what inspires you when you create your layouts? Do you read all the idea books or buy magazines? i buy a lot less magazines than i used to. i used to buy them all but now i find that i buy only the ones that are more my style. to be honest, one of the things that drives me to create is some challenges i issue myself. for example, i keep a stack of stickers, embellishments, rubons that i have started using but having finished using in a pile that i hold together with a clothespin. my challenge to myself often times it to work that pile down so i can start opening a new pack (yeah crazy i know). or i will try to pull out this crazy piece of patterned paper that would seem impossible to use but i make myself try different things with it to make a LO work (cut it down? add plain cardstock? try a B/W photo?)
• My daughters name is Maya which is why I started buying your products, but I want to know if you create your personal items with only MR products or are you an equal opportunity creative spirit? i have to say that i am an equal opportunity creative spirit. i would say if you too my stack of LOs, and you took an average of how many % is MR stuff used in there, it would be about 25% of each LO/project.
• Q: What got you started with all this running and do you think about when you run? you know sometimes i think about this and to be honest, there were 2 reasons that i started running. the first was to lose the 20 lbs i put on in college and get into shape and the second was that some boy broke my heart in college and rather than sit around and mope about it, i decided to show him (LOL). well that turned into me running b/c it made me feel better. and then i started getting fast and winning races and now i am back to the huffing and puffing with baby noah.

ok that is all i have for now so have a great night! i am off to do a LO using some of those labels i made with our stamps!

happy mother's day!

i hope all the moms had a great day!

i got 4 great gifts today:

• i played the best soccer today that i have in the entire season.
• david made me a mother's day layout - i will have to post it this week.
• david and i got to go on a date night date.

and the BIGGIE:

• baby noah took his FIRST unassisted-non-couch-holding steps! we are so proud of him. what a great present for him to give me!
  

i also got the chance to create the following things for noah's BD party next week:



this is a quick and easy album i got ready for noah using some page protectors, 5 pieces of patterned paper, a sheet of stickers, some rubons and chipboard letters! this way when the party is in full swing, i can be busy taking photos and as quickly as the photos are developed, i can create him an album in less than 1/2 hour!

next, we have more pinwheels i made from left over paeprs i had that will either line the lawn or i will put as a centerpiece.

and finally what is a party without favors? noah has suddenly shown a SLIGHT interest in TV and the one show he will watch for more than 10 mins is The Backyardigans! david and i have become fans too of the cute music and the creativity of all the characters. so each kiddo will leave with some Backyardigan goodies tied to a canister of bubbles with a decorated tag.

i can't wait for the party! i am sure noah will have a blast and so will we!

thanks for all the great questions so far. i look forward to more of them! i love that they are thought provoking for me! just remember you have 48 more hours to enter for the RAK by asking me a question!

happy mother's day!

wow, tomorrow will be my first mother's day! i am being swept up by what this year has brought me. last year this time, i was waddling around in the 100 F texas heat and so ready to meet our new baby. my feet hurt, baby noah was kicking up a storm and i was just frantically getting everything i could get done before he arrived!


and now here i am a year later with a baby that could be no more perfect for david and i than he already is (God knows what He is doing - LOL). even with the sleepless nights and all i wouldn't trade this year for anything else!


we are going to have a small celebration here for him next week with some friends. i hate waiting til the last minute so the little party favors have been finished already (can you believe i used some scrapbooking supplies to complete those - LOL). i just need to figure out what i want to do for his cake and work on the food this coming week.



last night i decided i needed to scrapbook - i had found this polaroid photo lying around the house and just as i was about to throw it away, i decided it would be perfect layout material.

i am about to sign up for my 7th half marathon. it will be coming up in september which seems so far away but also is a lot closer than i think. it did feel good to do a layout about me rather than baby noah (not that he isn't the perfect subject - LOL).

which brings me to my latest RAK:

lots of Maya Road yummies! so i will be sending this bag of eye candy to someone. here is what you need to do.

i want to see you post a question here for me. it has been a while since i have asked what you all like to read about. i know i still need to post on inventory and what that means to us but i want to hear what you all are interested in knowing about. i will try to answer some this week. post here in the next 3 days for a chance to win this stash but you have to ask me a question!

and i will leave you with this. CHA is around the corner so on friday i got a sample of one our new Maya Road tins (that MR goodies will be coming in). and all i have to say is i am in love....

what could be better than:

bubbles:

and grass:

noah had a big day yesterday playing all day (even learned to climb the stairs).

and i can admit that i do use the flash indoors. i also use the automatic settings on my SLR and well i am just starting to remember what when to use what aperture (LOL) but it doesn't matter b/c to me the memories are still the same.

i will be posting another challenge this weekend for you all! so watch for it!

busy day...

Ok, so i stayed up til about 2 am last night. But i got a lot done. It has been a busy day today. Let me share what we got to do today (besides shipping orders):

1. So Noah's first BD is coming up. And well I was inspired today to try and get all up in the crafty and create some things for Noah's birthday party. It must have been the Martha Stewart watching (I taped the show b/c Lisa was on today as one of the winners! Congrats Lisa for winning in Martha's SBing contest!)

I decided to make these pinwheels to see if I could do it with some patterned paper and some brads. I think it turned out pretty cool and I might make some to skewer fruit or put on Noah's BD straws.

I also sent out all the invites. They turned out pretty darn cute! I am proud to say that I created the invite in Adobe and well it turned out pretty darn awesome. So much so that I might have to venture out of my comfort zone and try HYBRID scrapbooking (including computer journaling - gasp).

2. David finally finished with his Chinese 101 class for this semster! YAY! He had an exam today so to celebrate, I bought him his favorite snacks. The grapefruit is a joke about being Chinese.

We sometimes watch King of the Hill . This is a hilarious show to us b/c we have lived in a town of less than 20,000 people in West Texas and a lot of the characters in the show remind us of the time we lived in that tiny town!

In one episode, Hank's Asian neighbor, Khan, told Hank that he disciplined his kid by not giving the child dessert. And Hank was like "so what, do you take away her orange after dinner?" Which is the joke between David and I as he makes fun of the fact that my family does in fact have oranges after dinner as dessert. Hey if you can't laugh at yourself, who can you laugh at?


3. And then I left my room for a minute and guess who I found in the blossom trim?

And the RAK winner. Thanks for sharing all the nice things you all have done for other ppl. It always makes me smile to see the comments there to know that there are kind, decent people out in the world. David picked this so if you didn't win, you can take it up with him:

Marilyn in TX - congrats you won! Email me at: info @ mayaroad.com to claim your prize!

I will post soon about supply chain - need to get some time to wrap my arms around the mega posting I would need to do!

creation

well it has been what i consider a slow week this week (even though we are still shipping a lot of orders). so with that, i have been working on some classes. this is a peek at one that i created for paper tales when i go visit them in june.

a bunch of fresh flower pens in bring colors and lots of maya road goodies! i love this pen set and it will sit on my desk after i am done teaching the class.

you all still have a bit to sign up for the RAK below! so make sure you do so.

and coming up later this week, i will talk about the challenges of supply chain management for a business like ours. i had a nice conversation today with a customer as we chatted about safety stock inventory, committed inventory, order lead time, etc. these are all things that i am familiar with long before i came full time to Maya Road but it is important to understand for us as a manufacturer, retailers and end consumers. if you are ever thinking about starting your business and you carry any sort of item in inventory, it is important to know some basic concepts.

happy NSD (and cinco de mayo)

man what a DAY!

noah and i started off our day with a run. i like to get out and just get my thoughts in order before i do classes and running helps me do that. we enjoyed a bit of dodging the rain by the time we got home.

i got the chance to teach a class of 40 wonderful ladies celebrating NSD at the Scrapbook Pad! that is a beautiful store and i got the chance to hang out and show them all some cool things to do with our journey tins! lisa was so kind to help me with my class. we had such a wonderful time.

halfway through my class, baby noah came by to say hello and he brought with him his cousin - jonathan - and deb and david! deb and her family are headed east to see all of jonathan's grandparents for a bit and take a bit of rest. they stopped in dallas to stretch their legs. jonathan had never been to our house before so guess what he and noah decided they wanted to play with:


i can already imagine in a couple of years they will replace the hangers with some trucks and cars and zoom them around the house - LOL!

and of course to celebrate this day, here is a RAK (with about $25 worth of goodies here) - from some of my favorite MR goodies (coaster albums, ribbons, rubons and sheers to some other cute things that always seem to find their way onto my LOs). how do you win?

easy - this one requires only 2 things -no layouts to do, no things to sort or purge. here are the 2 things i want to see (and you have til this TUESDAY to do so).

1. post here and tell me you want this stuff.

2. do something nice for someone - it can be as SIMPLE as emailing someone a thank you for something they did or paying the toll for the person behind you, sending out a RAK or just writing a letter to someone who means something to you. it is anything. just something. i will assume that if you post here that you want this stuff, you will be doing that nice something for someone.

and that is it!

have a great rest of the weekend and i will post again soon. i still need to nurse my soccer injury before my game tomorrow!

happy friday!

noah and i are off to the w/h to get some orders completed then we are headed to a playgroup. i am not sure what to expect but i am giving it a try for noah!

be sure to check back tomorrow - i have put together a RAK in honor of NSD!

C

11 months

when did this boy get so big (and CUTE)??? sigh...

2 of the craziest guys i know...

so there are days i wonder where baby noah gets his craziness. david and i are rather chill people and noah at times gets all crazy and loud.

so there is one major source that i can think of - my dad - bong. this is a photo of bong and baby noah during one of their first meetings.

my dad has a funny sense of humor. lots of people don't realize that he has an english name but in the end, he decided he liked bong better.

for those of you who have never met bong, if you are a fan of the office - bong is like the asian version of dwight. he believes in conspiracy theories, lots of locks on doors (even the garage door) and doesn't believe in wasting good printer ink on photo paper (yeah i know). at one point, he and his brothers were obsessed about growing peonies in their gardens and would talk about it for hours each night.

when bong was introduced to jess' hubby at memory trends, bong said to him "hello, i am bong, james bong" - so it is that type of humor. and even though baby noah is only 11 months old and can't really say anything, i can see that sort of bong glimmer in his eyes sometimes.

deb and i have learned our lesson about calling our dad up to tell him that we are sending him something (say for example photos) of his grandsons. we just let it arrive as a surprise. why? because if we call the day we send something, he will call us and ask when it will arrive and if we have a tracking number and what if he has to go out in the afternoon when the mail arrives.

but it is all good - LOL. we just know where noah gets it from now.

pooped

well it has been a fast weekend, we had all the texas maya road gals here - jess was here to visit us and get her baby noah fix and in the last 3 days, i have done the following:

1. ate tex-mex 2x
2. gone to the warehouse
3. got kits packed for NSD (I am teaching at the scrapbook pad next weekend) - actually jess did most of the work
4. met up with aubrey, lisa, heather for a make and take crop
5. set up for a garage sale of dented MR stuff
6. went to ikea to get some great ideas for offices
7. did make and takes at the scrapbook pad
8. ate a lot of dark chocolate m&ms
9. dropped jess off at the airport
10. went to church
11. picked up some baby proofing stuff for tiny explorer noah
12. played a mean game of soccer (my knees are all grass burned but i did manage to stop an 18 year old boy from scoring a goal)

so more later this week. we have a busy week ahead for us!

RAK winner

thanks to everyone who participated in the challenge - the winner is :Tiffany congrats - please email me at info @ mayaroad.com ! thank you all so much for playing and sharing these awesome moments with me. i so enjoyed seeing all of the LOs!

more soon!

who i am today...

you know i was thinking about the fact that i haven't told you all a lot about how i was growing up. i look at who i am today and i am a totally different person than i was in high school and college.



deb and i had a fairly normal childhood growing up. i will say living in the south was a bit hard in the town we lived in as we were constantly asked if we were related to the 3 otherasian kids in school and of course everyone tried to "speak chinese" by making these stupid noises . i also got asked a lot if i knew karate (and thinking back, i should have taken karate so i could kick some people's butts so they would STOP ASKING).



but like many teenagers, i was looking for who i was meant to be- not quite comfortable in my skin and trying to navigate those dangerous teenage waters. school wasn't hard. i graduated at the top of my class but i would give myself a barely passing grade on the social aspect of my life which is hard when you are trying to fit in.



i found this photo in my stash the other day. it brought back a flood of memories about my those years (and i am sure for deb too but with a different perspective). this photo was taken in 1992 (with some of our childhood friends). i had just finished my first quarter in college.

one thing that stuck out in my mind is this story which i haven't thought about in a long time - when i was a senior in high school.

at our high school, they had these "pageants" - which was not supposed to be about how you looked - and how they sold it to us was it was supposed to be an overall who represents the school the best " in beauty, academics and extra curricular activities" . truthfully today i think they were just trying to get the gals to buy expenive dresses to compete and then sell tickets to this "pageant" at the school. the only thing you needed to do to apply was to be nominated. so one of the girls i was friendly with and i made a pact - i would nominate her and she would nominate me. so we did and that was cool. they were to pick 10 girls to "compete" in this.

i had done this so that i could "fit" in - so that i could at least show myself that in the scheme of things, i wasn't at all ugly and i could feel good about myself. here was the thing, i knew that i had a chance b/c the teachers were the ones who decided who got into this pageant - it wasn't a "popularity contest" with my peers. i stuck my neck out there b/c i felt in the hands of my teachers that i could at least get the chance to compete.

well we all know what happens next. i wasn't in the pagent. when the names were announced, i had to hold my breath not to be upset about it. i mean these were teachers that i had known - that had written recommendations for me - that i competed with on the academic team for.

and i could only attribute it to one thing - i was ugly. i mean i was competing to be the smartest nerd in the class (so it couldn't have been the grades) and i participated in like 5-8 activities since i was a freshman - so what else could it be? it was that i was a dog. and that just made everything even worse.

i did end up going to the pageant. i think i only stayed for about 30 mins b/c my heart couldn't take it.

it is funny but with the passage of time, i now realize that all of that stuff doesn't matter anymore. it seemed so important then and made me so sad then. i look at the photos of me NOW and even though i have gained like 20+ lbs since then (of SHEER MUSCLE of course - kidding) - my eyes now tell a different story of who i am and who i have become.

...but sometimes it is nice to visit those memories to remind myself that life isn't always as bad as it seems. and in the end - the nerds win (haha).

i will post the RAK winner tomorrow! thanks for all the great challenge participants and comments!

i have a complaint today...

you know usually i try to stay positive but nothing peeves me more than someone who has no need to be rude.

it can be a number of things from not saying thank you or my rude perons of they day : calling our 1-800 number every day and leaving us a nasty message about a damaged item (um hello, we can't replace it if you don't tell us what it is or where to send it and leaving nasty messages doesn't help). and don't hang up on us when we are trying to get you help.

in the end we are all human. we all get frustrated. packages get lost, things get damaged but really how is getting all pissy going to help us get to the resolution? it isn't. you know what? we are all human - we all make mistakes and we do work on trying to fix our mistakes the best way we can and the fastest way we can.

and if you are that angry about a damaged item, step back and really, just BREATHE. it will get better and i promise you if you at least tell me which item and what address, we will try our darnest to get it to you.

we went to the botanical gardens today...

to get some fresh air and not be stuck inside with me on the computer working. we also had some friends come along - the kiddos were unsure of the grass still:

but they got used to it and we had a great picnic lunch:

followed by a long stroll in the park:

and finally we all went home and both of the mommies went and played a 1.5 hour soccer game. i am tired so good night!