This elephant sanctuary is about an hour from where I live now. I have heard of it, but never been.

This will probably make you cry. I know I am! :-D

I'm running on empty this morning. I stayed up late last night packing and loading up my furniture for the yard sale this morning that my parent's were kind enough to host for me. I have no furniture now. The only chairs in the house are Lily's rocking chair, my studio chair, and my desk chair. I guess I get to eat at my computer now, though that's really no different than usual. :-D

Enough about packing. I ran across this fabulous artist recently and wanted to send you guys to her blog so that you can check out her awesome free downloads. She offers beautiful printable cards. I'm sorta in love. You can download this thank you card here.

Off to sell my goods.

My to-do list for emmarie Designs is growing and grooooowing. My two-week break to pack, move, and then unpack will also be used to get some things done around emmarie Designs while I don't have any outside designs going on. Here is a short list of just some of the many things you will be seeing soon around here:

• Jewelry page redesign - Yup. It's snazzy too. It's already designed, I just have to find the time to code it.
• A whole resources page full of helpful links and tips for you, my dear boutique owners. I'm even working on a Design eBook to help clients with the building of design packages. Pretty sweet.
• Monthly newsletters, as well as weekly update letters for current projects. I've been doing the weekly updates, but they'll be so pretty!
• New pricing. This is something I've talked about before, and is still in the works. This will be going into effect this Saturday.
• Video blogging - I LOVE video blogs and I really want to get into the habit of doing this occasionally. This is HIGH on my to-do list. Who knows... maybe I'll do one tomorrow. Then you can see the mess I have my office in with all these packed boxes. Gees.
• Turnkey boutique websites - I have been working a little on getting a concept going for a fully designed, fully stocked website that will be for sale on my site. The purchaser will just buy the site, I'll transfer the accounts, and it will be more-or-less ready to go.
• Vendor lists - This goes hand-in-hand with the turnkey boutique sites. I'm working on building a list of vendors who are willing to drop ship their products for the purchasers of my turnkey boutiques. More about this to come later.
• GIVEAWAYS! I haven't done a giveaway in faaaaar too long. This is going to change. Starting soon.

That's all I can remember for now, but I'm sure there are others. Eek!

Ok, maybe not "Look, Ma" but definitely "Look, David!"

David ordered us this fab new bike rack for the back of my car the other day, and it arrived today, only about 2 hours after he left for his week-long research trip. When he told me yesterday that it would be coming in today, I exclaimed, "Yay! I can put it on!" And he replied, nonchalantly, "Yea, if you think you can."

Now, don't get me wrong, David is by no mean condescending to me at all, it was just one of those man moments. One of those things where he just assumed since he "wears the pants" he's the only one that can assemble and mount a bike rack. As if.

So, I did it! I'm so proud. And now our bikes can go with us when we move. Yay!

On another note, my phone is completely freaking out. It is laying beside me blinking on and off as if I'm touching it. I'm not. Gees... time for a new phone?

I have a million guilty pleasures. Really, my days are simply full of them in one form or another. It's probably not healthy to have so many, let along indulge in them as often as I do, but I do nevertheless, and I'm that much happier because of my lack of willpower.

Tuesdays are now "Guilty Pleasures" Day. I will share 3 each week, and would love to hear some of yours!

• Ghost Whisperer - This is what I watch at night when David isn't home to snicker at me. I love this show.
• Black fingernail polish - I simply love the stuff. Giving myself a manicure tomorrow.
• Little Caesars Pizza - And it has to be the pre-made, $5, been-sitting-in-the-warmer-for-God-knows-how-long pizza. Pepperoni. I can't think about it too much because I might gag, but Freakin'. Yum.

There are few things I love more in life than a design job that goes EXACTLY as planned. Sometimes there is just a perfect click between a designer and client, and my most recent logo design had a click that was almost audible. Before I get too philosophical about the goings-on of this design job, let me wrap this up...

A perfectly pleasant lady from Amewsme Photography contacted me last week to create a logo for her blossoming business. (This is the same photographer as the one who did the fabulous photos for BBs News - Wonderful!) She wanted a whimsical logo featuring 2 birds and a hand-drawn birdcage. She sent me lots of samples and gave me some great color ideas, then, she let me run with it. This fabulous logo is the result and we are both so please with the outcome.

In love...

This is the first of what I hope is very many really pretty desktop backgrounds I want to offer for download here on emmarie Designs Blog. Below you'll find links for "regular" and "wide-screen" versions. Just click the link and save the resulting image to your hard-drive, then load them on your desktop. If you have a Mac you'll do this by importing it into your iPhoto first. Windows users can just load it straight from their local folder.

This pretty pink circle design was inspired by the Mac background of tree rings that has had it's home on our desktop for weeks. David is a dendroecologist, which means we have tree ring things all over our house. I needed to make some girly tree rings. So, this is what I came up with. Enjoy!

Regular - 1280 x 1024 
Widescreen - 1680 x 1054

We went for a short walk the other day and returned with some darling photos of Lily. I just had to share.

The fab lady from Viva la Violette, who I met on Etsy over a year ago is having a crazygiveaway on her blog! I love Viva's stuff. We have collaborated on a couple of projects, including two Alice in Wonderland gift sets and a soon-to-come silhouette locket. She just announced on her insanely cute blog that she is starting monthly giveaways, and her first is going on now!

So visit her blog and enter! She's giving away 4 stationary sets, 2 sets of recipe cards, AND a $10 coupon code to her shop. Really, you can't get much better than that.

Go!

That's right. I'm looking for a new desk. My current one is fired.

Here are some that I've found searching the net. Now, the hard part: deciding.

VIKA GLASHOLM/ VIKA ANNEFORS from Ikea

VIKA AMON/ VIKA ALEX from Ikea

EXPEDIT from Ikea

Cottage Desk from Target

Hmm... whichever shall it be??