Fall Photo Contest!

Yep, Woollybottoms has fallen for doing a photo contest as well. The prize? A $100 gift certificate to Woollybottoms. We are going to open for submissions from today until November 15, 2009. No theme or any piece in particular.... just your baby in Woollybottoms. Have fun with grabbing some great photos. Please be sure to include with your photo your baby's first name and a few words or sentences. Submission of your photos gives Woollybottoms permission to use the photo on our website or in printed forms. Sound like fun? I think so and I look forward to seeing your photos. One winner will be chosen and will be posted here. Entries can be sent to woollybottoms @ gmail.com (no spaces) and please put Fall Photo Contest in the subject line.

This picture is a little blast from the past of Caleb from about 3 years ago. My how he has grown! I found it buried in photobucket and had to share :)

More Soap On The Way

I manage to do this every single time. I wait until the last minute to re-order soap and sure enough, I did it again. That doesn't seem to matter though as I can email Katie and she ALWAYS responds within minutes and tells me it is no problem. Saying Katie is fast is an understatement. So we currently are having more Love Spell being made up and instead of the Butt Naked scent this time (which I really DO love), we are going with Yuzu which is in the same family of scents in my opinion, but something different to offer and another scent that I really love.

If you are not familiar with Katie at Ewe Need It,( http://hyenacart.com/EweNeedIt/ ) check her out if you get a chance. Excellent products for wool and baby, and of course stellar customer service.

Already Preparing for Fall.....

Our busiest time of year is soon coming up. With all the sewing that goes on and wrangling of kids, sometimes the details get overlooked. I finally took a couple of hours to do a little bit of house cleaning on the website. I had a stack of 6 or 7 new footies prints that have been sitting here for weeks waiting on photos and to be listed. I think yesterday I must have listed 20 new recycled pieces and today cleaned up the footies listings and divided them neatly into "boys" and "girls" catagories. After customer requests a few months ago, we now have an option to customize footies with the addition of an interlock waistband rather than a traditional waist band. I want to further the idea of customization and will be working on adding a slot to "build your own footies" or something to that effect. We should have that activated by tomorrow if all goes as planned.

New Footies Print, Inspired by Mom & Baby

We recently ran a large group order for our customers signed up on our yahoo news group. It was a lot of fun to put together custom footies for our customers where they were able to pick out the footie fabric and wool colors. This was a particularly fun print. I had this fabric sitting in my stash for quite some time and had never used it. I pulled it out for this custom order and put it with the blue wool and the result was one of my favorite combos. It is such a fun print and the name Solana (named for Solana Beach, California and the little girl who inspired these footies) fits it perfectly.

Lots of Changes in Store for 2009!

Our new footie fabrics are finally in and are being sewed up as quickly as possible. The fabric is incredibly soft and fluffy. We are also moving to a new location in beautiful Heber Springs and closing on the property today. To start with, it will be a workspace/shipping area only with the potential to grow into retail space in the future as we continue to grow. We are very excited about these changes and thank our customers for helping to making this possible. New patterns are being stocked daily and we have also added an "outlet" section on the website.

Gluten & Eczema????

As many of you know, my little boy who is now 4 has been plagued with eczema since he was a few months old. It has mostly settled in on his legs down around his ankles. We tried cutting out dairy for a few weeks and there was no change. Then we thought the culprit may have been eggs. We cut them out and no change. It would seemingly flare up for no reason at all. When it was at its worst, we took him to the dermatologist and I tried to find out from her what internally could be causing this???? She wanted to only give me creams filled with crap and tret the symptoms. They worked at first and then quit working. I thought, well, I guess he will grow out of it. He turned 4 last September and guess what.... he hasn't outgrown it. He has always been skinny but I felt he just has a high metabolism like me. No big deal. I was talking online with another mom and as moms do, we discussed poop. Caleb may kill me for this later talking about his poop, but the boy has always pooped 2-3 times a day and it was never "normal" stuff. I chalked this up to high metabolism again and dubbed him Sir Poopalot :) I never put the 2 together until I started researching, but the symptoms really seem to line up with a gluten sensitivity. I don't think his body is absorbing the nutrients he needs. Along with being skinny and the eczema, I have noticed his hair seems a little dry and he just overall doesn't seem healthy like he should. I am very excited to try this new theory about the gluten because for once, the symptoms seem to line up. We will be on our way to the health food store for some snacks and some bread that he can eat hopefully. If this is it, we should know in a few days.

On a more fun note, the kids put together a gingerbread house. They had so much fun. A day later they ate most of the candy off and demolished it :)

I will be back to update in a few days about the gluten prognosis. This has got to be the answer. We have struggled with this so long and it is so hard to see my baby afflicted with this mess.

The World's Worst Blogger

That is me. I have come to realize I just stink at blogging. We have had soooo much going on and I barely have time to breathe. Even though Caleb is now 4 years old, he seems to be more demanding of my time than ever. Running a full time business from home and helping James with his really wears me very thin many days. I am very excited about where Woollybottoms is heading for 2009. We spent months developing a perfect fabric to start using in our footies made from a yummy blend of 80% wool, 10% cashmere, and 10% angora. It is incredibly soft and just perfect. I know at first many were like WAIT!!!! We want our recycled wool!!!! The truth is, I can not meet the demand in numbers dealing with recycled wool only. It is unpredictable to work with and does not offer the consistency in product that we want. We will continue to offer recycled wool and are NOT doing away with it. Working with recycled wool is a passion of mine that will not be done away with. This is merely going to be an expansion to help alleviate the supply issues. I would love to eliminate the whole stalking thing and that is my goal for 2009.

As for what I have been doing here around the house, we decided to paint our kitchen cabinets after living here for about 10 years. The house was built in 1962 and the cabinets were honey stained pine with ugly beaten copper hardware. I wanted to go white being the conservative that I am, but James wanted color so I went and picked up all kinds of samples. We ended up going with tomato salsa RED!!!! I was a little freaked out at first but now that it is up, I LOVE it. I would post a pic but James has the doors at his shop and they are still being painted. With the cold and rainy weather, drying time is taking MUCH longer than anticipated so the doors are still off. I feel like my whole life is exposed to everyone since everything is out in the open. For the cost of a gallon of primer and paint and a LOT of muscle power, it looks like a new kitchen.

I also wanted to share this adorable coat of Caleb's. Now that we have ours, I can share :) It is made from wool and lined in THE cutest vintage cowboy print. Priscilla of Bebops makes the most adoable coats for kids and they are each so unique and timeless. This is the Audubon coat and we love it. You can find her shop here: http://hyenacart.com/Be-Bops/