I think the Christmas spirit is finally upon me. I am ready to spend time finishing my Christmas shopping and wrapping and baking cookies with my kids.

I think this came about becuase of some final accomplishments that were completed today. I had my last show for the season this past weekend (and it was awesome!) and I delivered a wholesale order to Palm Beach Zoo! I am very excited to have two zoos as wholesalers. It's a wonderful feeling and I am excited and pumped for the coming year!

I've been thinking about all that I've accomplished and I am very pleased. I have learned much this year and am ready to make new goals for next year. I am eager to finish all this back end work to really see what I accomplished. But as I speak about it, I am also very tired so I'll give it a couple of days and then dig in. The orders are still coming in so I am making the most of the holiday season!

So today I check out the December issue of South Florida Parenting where my friend wrote a rave about Kaboodle Kids and was told it would be in the December issue. I was disappointed to see that it was not in there; however, my friend did get her writeup. She didn't bother to tell me that she wrote in under a few different topics - she couldn't remember what she wrote. Well one of the other topics she wrote was picked. I was bummed a little bit today as I've been on cloud nine thinking I'd get some advertising through this. I called her up this afternoon and told her she was a shmuck! We laughed about it!

I am bloated from Thanksgiving and finally trudged to the gym today. One of my little models just turned 3 a week before Thanksgiving. She had a tea party birthday - "Come for the tea, stay for the potty talk!" So we had a busy holiday season. The guests left this morning.

I found out some great news today! South Florida Parenting magazine is going to rave about me in their December issue. I am so excited! I've been pondering much about marketing this season and I missed a good marketing avenue that was my fault, but the prices are too high in all the others. The holiday shows are doing pretty good. I've got three of them within a 4 day period coming up. Should keep me from shopping at the mall anyway.

I am having a blast doing all these shows! No matter if one does well and another doesn't, I am at least having fun. I meet lots of new people and learn something new at each show. Just the other day while coming out of my storage unit, I met two guys giving away new really nice wire racks. I told them I only needed two but they said it was an all or nothing deal. (They wanted them all gone.) So I have 6 of these things when I only needed two. I called my friend who sells fishing equipment and he took the other 4 off my hands, not without negotiating a lobster dinner though. (He goes out and catches them with his buddies.) It's nice to have friends like that. My husband was glad to be on the retrieving end of that one!

So on my last show, the racks really made my display beautiful! I displayed the clothes very well. It was awesome and I got them free! The only thing is that there is more to carry to these shows and it takes me longer to set up. Oh woe is me! ;-)

Crash and Burn on my second "Chic Night" show. I am now realizing that chic night means I am spending money on myself, not my kids. Probably not a good venue for future shows.

Happy Day! I locked in another zoo! Whoooopeeee! I really didn't know what to expect when I went into my second meeting today. All I know is that when they got detailed on ordering I jumped in to help them knock out an order. It's a great feeling to walk away with an order in hand. ;-)

After the grueling 4 days working a vendor booth at Zion Lutheran Octoberfest, I was floored this morning catching up on emails that one of my customers from the festival emailed 20+ friends raving about me and Kaboodle Kids, attaching pics of the clothes she bought and stating how wonderful the clothes are. It made me so proud! I love customers like that! Thank you Robin! (Her name is Robin too.) I am too giddy to work today.

Not only did I meet some great vendors that I will stay in contact with, we all shared our leads for future vendor shows and I got a few more leads that I've been following up on this morning. I was happy to finally be able to help someone else this time. I really liked the camaraderie we had... the beer drinking might have been a big part of it! ;-) (but only at the end of the night.)