About {Us}

It's funny how the greatest things in life aren't planned.  I'm a planner.  My mom still laughs at finding lists in my bedroom as a teenager that included "eat lunch" on the to do list.  Like I was going to forget to do that!?!  But for me, it wasn't about forgetting, but having one more task that I could check off the list to make my day even more successful.  If I included 'make a list' as one of my tasks on my list, well, then I could immediately cross it off, right? I mean, how's that for efficient? 

Anyway - the husband & I decided that when our son was 4 years old we were ready to start trying for baby #2.   This was August of 2007 and if all went as {planned}, we would have a sweet baby {girl} by July of 2008 at the latest.  Somehow, I managed to convince the husband to buy me an embroidery machine just in case my {plan} was right that we would have a baby girl soon.  Oddly enough, even after all of my previous crazy whims, he was fine with the ridiculous purchase. I say ridiculous now because he had to teach me how to even thread the machine when it arrived.  THAT is ridiculous.

So, a few months later, still no baby on the way and I had made all of about 3 items (those are the ones that I would say were successful, we won't count the ones I threw away...not important.)  By this point, I still had a baby on the to do list and was not able to mark that off yet.  Now, because the husband was so agreeable in the first place, I felt that I needed to do something with this expensive piece of equipment.  By February of 2008 I decided I could figure out how to make things for me instead of just the soon to be baby.  We had recently attended a large arts & craft show in the area and I purchased a personalized koozie for over (don't fall out of your seat) $18.00.  Do you want the bad news? It only had my initial on it.  {Gasp!}  No monogram. No name. No cute quote that I personally requested.  It was a pre-initialed, pre-designed personalized koozie.  Worst part, I had it taken apart within almost 4 hours of having it home trying to decide how it was made.  At the time, this was a huge feat.  Remember, I'm self taught and I'm pretty sure I was monogramming everything backwards at this point - hard to explain but to put it simply I was making everything more difficult than it really was.

So - I made my first purchase of raw materials online to make my own monogrammed koozies.  And let me say, they arrived in the mail within a couple of days and the idea was born quickly.  If I can't at least save our family money by using the machine for us, I can at the very least sell monogrammed gifts & hopefully make the money back that I've invested into the machine. And thus, BoutiqueMe was born.  No, that's not our baby's name but it sure did help me cope with not having our baby as I had planned.

Now, fast forward 2 years.  The husband & I learned to accept that we were not meant to have another baby.  We have a fabulous son & a great marriage and we had convinced ourselves that we were perfectly fine with that.  And we {really} were...for the most part.  Our business had grown from a few sales here & there on ebay, to a full blown successful web-boutique with dozens of orders a day.  Business is good & life is better.

We found out on Easter Sunday this year {2010} that we are prego.  We are expecting our beautiful baby girl {Emily} in November {Thanksgiving day actually!}.  Just as I planned, right? Not exactly. More so, just as HE planned, but look at the fabulous business that developed in the mean time.  We both {oddly enough, yes, the husband too!} love our boutique business.  It's exactly what we love to do - Work together, from home & enjoy creating fab gifts from ideas. We have great customers and we are always so happy to create fab gifts for our brides, moms, teachers, etc. So there you have it - it's really amazing how great things happen that you never planned.  And in the mean time, the things you planned do happen when the time is right, which isn't always {right now}.  It's a buzz kill for the to do list success but I guess my patience is increasing with age, I hope.

We hope you enjoy shopping with us & please let us know if you have any questions about any of our monogrammed gifts!