{ view from our front porch }

I was once jealous of people living in areas that regularly get a decent amount of snow accumulation. After our recent record snowfall here in North Texas, I’m cured of that jealousy. We rarely see much more than one snowfall per winter and that one snow event is usually pretty lame. We are lucky to get an inch of accumulation. Most of the time it comes down for an hour, doesn’t stick and then turns to a sleet/freezing rain event. We get those days at least a couple of times a year. On February 11, however, we were surprised to wake up to a few inches of snow on the ground.

The snow continued to fall the entire day and into the night. By Friday morning (the 12th) it had accumulated to at least six inches at our house. School was cancelled! We had a blast building snowmen and women, throwing snowballs and doing basically nothing for a couple of days while the school was shut down and the roads were a little too dangerous to drive. It was definitely a nice experience.

I can’t imagine having that happen several times a year, though. I guess we’d get used to it if it was the norm here, but our family went into hibernation mode and got little to nothing done. Again, thats nice every now and then (like during Christmas break), but I’ve got to be careful not to let myself get too used to downtime. Like most people, I am more productive when I’ve got alot to do. When things are slow, I tend to get less productive (which is really stupid, because that is when I should be busy doing things I’d put off due to a hectic schedule!) I am kicking myself for not getting my taxes done during that time, but I wouldn’t have been able to watch all of The Office episodes the DVR had piled up. Thanks to our rare opportunity to be snowed in, ‘Thats what she said!’  has become my involuntary response to just about anything. There is the silver lining, I guess.

I feel like it’s been a while since I checked in on the blog, here.
December was basically a blur - a fun, fast paced blur (as it always seems to be.)
January was basically a hangover from December.
Now February is here and with it comes lots and lots and lots of catching up on bookkeeping….
Tax time. Oh. Boy. It’s not all bad, though - my birthday is coming up and not long after that, Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland will be out in theaters! After seeing Avatar a couple of times in 3D on an IMAX screen, I am even more excited about AIW. I imagine that my husband and oldest son will enjoy it even though they don’t care too much for the story (I know, they’re insane.)
As for BlueSkyRocket.com- I’ve got alot of VERY COOL things to add SOON. We’ve got an amazing new brand of AWESOME babies/kids onesies, tees, hoodies coming as well as new designs from our existing brands. After Christmas we started carrying the Color Me House and Color Me Rocket. Those are very popular and perfect for indoor play during the cold months. (Spring’s right around the corner and they are great for outdoor play as well!)

I don’t usually blog about random childhood memories, but thanks to a contest on TwitterMoms.com (called “What Was Your Most Surprising Gift?” in which the winner receives $100 Target Gift Card) I had a chance to stop and remember a truly awesome Christmas morning.

I was 9 and my parents had been struggling financially for a couple of years. My dad was an artist and did freelance work. He had previously sold off his half of a sound and lighting company called Dallas BackUp, so we were sort of coasting on that money and the money my mother made cleaning houses. Things were tight to say the least. Because of our small budget, my parents didn’t buy every pair of Guess! jeans I HAD to have. They didn’t shell out tons of money for expensive shoes. Instead, during those years my parents took the whole “things don’t last long, but memories last a lifetime” idea and ran with it. They saved the money they would have spent on frivolous purchases and overpriced clothes and booked amazing road trips for us to take. This particular year, they booked a surprise trip to DisneyWorld. It was on Christmas morning that they unveiled the plans. My mother had cut pieces of Mickey Mouse themed wrapping paper into puzzle pieces. Each piece had a letter on it. I was supposed to A) have the patience to put the puzzle together and B) have an actual reaction to the solved puzzle. I remember quickly getting frustrated (it doesn’t take much for me) and complaining about not being able to figure out the word jumble. I am sure my mom kicked in some help (she usually did) and then… it was spelled out right there on the floor. “D I S N E Y W O R L D”.

I remember being confused and then my parents quickly filling me in on the trip details. We were to leave New Years Day for Florida. By car. This meant our trip would take us to several states east of Texas. I loved to travel and the idea of seeing Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama in addition to Florida seemed just as exciting as DisneyWorld itself. I was very excited, although I do remember moving on rather quickly to the pile of unwrapped presents that remained under the tree… I am sure my parents felt a bit deflated by my reaction at the time, but I think the trip itself made up for my lackluster performance on that Christmas morning. It was truly amazing walking right up to any ride we wanted to ride, experiencing NO LINES at all and being able to ride them over and over as we wished. Yes I missed some school, but my teacher at the time told my mother that I would learn more on my trip than I probably would that week in class.

23 years later (well, almost - i’ll be 33 in feb…) I still have those memories, but those parachute pants with the zippers all over them? Those would have been long gone.

I love reading Celebrity Baby Scoop! They have included a very sweet review of Rocker Baby Inc’s Little Audrey in the City dress (available in my shop). Thanks guys!

Read the review by clicking on the link below:

With Halloween behind us, it is time to start focusing on the Thanksgiving & Christmas holidays (coming up sooner than we are ever ready for!) I wanted to highlight our popular Personalized Tees & Onesies for this blog post because I have seen how happy these make kids when they receive them. Christmas gifts? Forget about it! Tearing open the wrapping paper to find a personalized tee does yeild the same reaction from a child that say, tearing open wrapping paper to find a sweater box containing a sweater does. In fact, it is quite the opposite. Check out all of the designs we’ve got - you are sure to find something that fits your little one’s personality!

Did I mention that you can customized your own t-shirt or onesie? Choose the color, sleeve length, etc. and you’ve got a FULLY customized, personalized gift!!!

We offer seasonal designs = coming soon we will have Thankgiving and Christmas in our Seasonal section (as well as the Personalized Tees section).

Here are just a few of the MANY designs available: 

This year I doctored up my son’s sweats to create his Halloween costume. He is a HUGE (I repeat HUUUUGE) Muppets fan. He favors Kermit, since he’s sort of the leader of the pack, but would have been happy being Fozzy or Animal. While searching online for Muppets costumes, I found a serious lack of cute ones available for purchase (for toddlers). I stumbled upon a craft site that had a picture of another mom’s Kermit creation. It looked easy enough, and after having copied the creative mom’s idea, I can say it really WAS easy.

First off, where the heck are the green sweats??? I had to dye some heather gray sweats. No big deal - it worked perfectly with RIT’s Kelly Green dye powder. My friend suggested I use styrofoam balls as the eyes, rather than the stuffed eyeballs the costume in the picture had. This worked great. I just glued on some black “Kermit pupils” and used a Tapestry/Upholstery needle to sew them onto the top of the hood. I then cut triangles out of lime green felt and sewed them around the base of the hood.

Ta-Dah! Kermit:

First Ever BlueSkyRocket Story Writing Contest Winners:
Emily & Totton!

Congratulations guys! Enjoy the Gift Certificate

There were several stories submitted, some coming in right as I was getting the contest wrapped up. I hated to prolong the contest since some of the entries came in back in the summer - I didn’t want those kids to forget that there was even a contest going on - but I did end up taking a bit longer anyway due to the back to school madness and a couple of short family trips. SO… thank you everyone for being incredibly patient. Also, Thank you to everyone wrote and helped write these amazing Simon the Squirrel stories. I would say our First Story Writing Contest was a success!

World, remember these names, as they are sure to be amazing writers:
Braden, Rowan, Cedar, Linden, Ava, Emily, Totton, Hunter, Kaleigh & her Mommy, Twila & Sarah

The story will be added onto Captain Simon’s Space (B)log, so when future contest winner’s stories are chosen they will join the previous winners stories there.

Here’s Emily & Totton’s winning Story:

Captain Simon’s Space Adventure
By Totton, age 4 with a little help from Emily, age 15

Once upon a time in Atlanta, Georgia there lived a squirrel named Captain Simon. Captain Simon was four years old and loved the color green, mac `n cheese and football. But what Captain Simon really loved were superheroes and flying rocket ships. The squirrel really wanted to visit his cousins, who lived on Neptune,
but buying a rocket ship was too expensive for Captain Simon. He decided to build his own. His one hope for the rocket ship was that it would never break, but he wasn’t sure how to do that.

Besides Neptune, Captain Simon’s favorite place was the park. He loved to swing on the baby swings. One day when he was on the swing set, Captain Simon saw something in the sky. At first, it looked like a cloud, but as it got closer, he could see there were two people, no, superheroes swinging and flying through the sky.

Look! There was another one running so fast he was a blur of red and yellow. When they all came to a stop, Captain Simon could clearly identify Batman, Flash and The Green Lantern. They walked up to Captain Simon and said, “We heard you need some help building a rocket ship and we are here to help.”

“Oh thank you superheroes!” The squirrel replied.

The next day, the group met up in Captain Simon’s backyard. Batman had brought tons and tons of steel in his Batmobile. They worked with the metal all day and they did not even stop for lunch! By the end of the day they had constructed an engine, two seats and a control panel. The superheroes had each shared their
powers with the ship so it would never be destroyed, just like Captain Simon wanted. All that was left to do was paint it green and stock it full of mac `n cheese for the journey to Neptune.

my younger cousin is getting married in december. growing up I basically adopted her as my little sister…(as an only child i was always ready to exert my authority on SOMEONE and alyson was usually the one that i lorded my powers over- she was a good sport but also gave it right back to me when i deserved it…) anyway i am sitting here blown away by her gorgeous bridal portraits. she is such a gorgeous, sweet girl and i’m so proud of her. anyway, just had to share

Seriously.The.Tastiest.Website.Ever: www.TasteSpotting.com

I don’t know whats going on, but since I got online this a.m. I have been printing recipes.

Is it because today’s the last day of summer (signaling the coming of fall, which means I’ll be baking like betty crocker…) Is it because I’ve been doing less cooking since working from home and I’m ready to get back into the kitchen? Am I preggers?

No it’s because I found two wonderful cooking/food blogs that I will have to avoid visiting in order to get anything done from now on. As if Facebook, LinkedIn & FunnyOrDie weren’t distraction enough. TasteSpotting, as I mentioned above, is THE one to check out. It’s like food porn. Nothing but pictures in a grid formation - click if you want the recipe. Perfect.

The other site I found is www.LoveAndOliveOil.com. Again, lots of pics and lots of great recipes. The author of this blog is also a fabulous web designer.  

while updating some graphics for the shop, i came across the first ‘mission statement’ (if you can call it that) that i came up with for BlueSkyRocket. this was before i started stocking the shop or even designing the site. as you can see, the squirrel in the background was one of the ‘keeper’ ideas. the plan was an ambitious one considering it took me a while to realize that i needed to make money to keep things up and running before i could start donating to charity. now that the shop has ‘legs’ i can start on this phase of the original plan :)  oh, and notice the outdated reference to a ‘myspace’ page for the shop… i do still have one, but this was when myspace was THE social networking site to visit.