Valentine's Link Party Features and a Little Venting...Sorry!

Thank you guys for participating in our first ever link party! It was so much fun to go through all the links and see all of your wonderful posts and all of the beautiful photos. I tried to comment on as many of your posts as I could but because I had either Lillie or Lola in my lap when I looked through most of them I didn't always have free hands to type, and there were several that I did try to comment on that the word verification wasn't working right on my phone and wasn't letting my comments through. So, whether or not you did get a comment please know I did enjoy viewing every one of them!

Before I share my favorites with you, I wanted to write a little bit about our shop. I have gone back and forth about writing this for a few weeks now. I generally like to keep this blog more inspirational and don't like to vent or write anything I will regret later. However, due to the amount of e-mails we are getting lately I think I am going to go a bit out of my comfort zone and address our current struggle with keeping items in stock. 

First, though, let me say we cannot thank you all enough for the fact that because of you we are able to run Dear Lillie and I am able to stay home with my girls while still contributing to our family's income. Since we reopened last fall is has also become a full-time job for my brother, Jason, and my mom and sisters continue to make some of our items like the tutus and hats. Every few months as our business grows we revamp how we do things and get more help as needed. We have plans for moving our location in April to allow us to do a much better job at keeping up with the quantity of items we need to be making and will share more about that soon. In the meantime, though, we are working out of our small 1800 square foot townhome. Every month the amount of hits we are getting on our blog and website are growing and in just the last three days alone we have received over 100,000 page views here on our blog. This is not only extremely exciting it is also a tad overwhelming too. The reason I am writing this is because we have been getting quite a few frustrated e-mails. A year ago, when I would make a "batch" of pillows it would be somewhere between 8 and 12 pillows. Now we have help with both the screenprinting and sewing and our batches are sometimes as large as a couple of hundred pillows. We have been able to do a better job with the pillows as far as making enough of them that although they often sell out, it often takes a day or two so everyone has plenty of time, and that has helped with keeping customers from becoming frustrated. Our  newest problem has been the growth charts, and this is mainly what I want to address. 

We have pretty much dismantled out back porch so that we can make as many of these as possible at a time and we have enlisted a third person to help Jason and I with them as well. The thing is, although we are working on them as quickly as we can they are rather time consuming and there is just only so much space on our back porch. This week we will have listed three batches (one on Monday, one on Wednesday and another one coming tomorrow). Unfortunately there are far more people trying to purchase them than we have available in each batch and they are selling out almost instantaneously from when we load them in. Obviously we understand that this is very frustrating for customers who are sitting at their computer trying to add one to their cart right at the exact moment and still aren't able to get one and we receive a ton of e-mails within a few minutes of them being loaded from people missing out on them. I have to say, most of them are very sweet people wondering if it is possible to pre-order one (which we are not doing at this time because there is just no way to keep up with them) but there have been several that have been rather rude. I try not to let myself get too upset by them but I did want to address it here on the blog. There are only so many hours in a day and there is only so much room in our home to be working on them. I go to bed every night betweeen 2 and 4 AM (and Lola gets up most nights at least 3 or 4 times), and during basketball season my husband is gone the majority of the time so I am often juggling everything on my own, and lately Jason doesn't get home to his apartment until the wee hours of the morning either. We are not intentionally doing anything to frustrate people and are working our absolute hardest to make as many as possible. And don't worry! We will continue to make them each week and starting in mid to late April we hopefully will be able to make larger quantities of them at a time.

Okay, sorry to have vented. I don't want any of you to think I am complaining. I absolutely positively LOVE LOVE LOVE what I do and I really and truly am so grateful to you all because without you guys making it possible I wouldn't be able to do it. I cannot tell you how appreciative I am that I am able to stay home with Lillie and Lola. I have briefly mentioned it on this blog but not gone into detail (for a bunch of different reasons) but both Lillie and Lola have had some health issues that have required many trips to the Children's Hospital and weekly therapies. Being able to be a mom and be home with them and take care of them all day yet still help pay our bills is something I feel so blessed by. This has been such an exciting year so far for Dear Lillie with the magazine shoot in January and something else coming in March that I will share as soon as I have permission to and I cannot thank you all enough!

Okay, enough about that. Now to something far more fun! 

Okay first, I have to say it was so much more difficult to pick than I thought it would be! In fact I decided to go with FIVE instead of three! I guess it's okay to break my own rules, right? Even just narrowing it down to five was extremely hard.  Thank you all for sharing all of your fabulous posts!

Although it was hard narrowing it down to five, I did have one absolute favorite:

 I am MADLY in love with this pillow from Craftberry Bush (and the photos of it!) 

Seriously the whole photoshoot Lucy did of this pillow is just gorgeous! I highly recommend heading on over to her blog and checking it out! I visited her blog for the first time thanks to her linking up and am now a HUGE fan!

And now for a few other favorites:

I love this pillow from Josie Jones and Co. and the whole soft color scheme of her room.

 This display by Kristin at My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia is beautiful!

These Jane Austen cookies by Be Book Bound are fabulous! And the best part is she has a tutorial on how to make the silhouettes so that you can place them on the cookies. I am dying to try this!

And how adorable are these Valentine's Owls from Keeping it Cozy?
I want to make some for Lola's room using some of the extra damask fabric from the lampshade and her crib bedding.

I hope you all have a fabulous Thursday! I will be back tomorrow with some painted Roman Shades!

Also, just a quick reminder that we have a section here on our blog that tells all of our paint colors (you can find it by click on the link "our house" above or by clicking here) and a F.A.Q's page. Jason is doing an amazing job keeping up with the e-mails but they are coming in faster and faster and if you are in a hurry for an answer about paint colors or where an item is from or what kind of camera I use many of the answers can be found there.