The college decision is made… this is getting incredibly real!
If you have kids who have gone through this process – you know what I mean when I say “wow! I thought we’d be in preparation / application / wonder mode forever!” If you have younger kids, know that this is a process… and not a short one.
Last night as I sat watching tv, my printer started spitting out paper. (Such is the wireless world we live in – my son hits “print” in the other room and I’m startled in mine – every time!) I glanced over expecting to see some physics or marketing project coming out and noticed the red Boston University logo… wow! This is it – it’s for real! The decision is made – my baby is going to BOSTON in the fall…
I’m becoming one of “those mothers” – the ones who start saying things like “it goes by so fast!” and “how did he get so old when I feel like I’ve barely aged” – it’s true! And now I’ll add “how did I become one of those mothers???”
Since this sweet little boy was born, we’ve been planning and talking about the day he’d head off into the world – to college, to a job, to… who knows what. I know that my job has been to raise him to be an independent, kind, thoughtful and responsible young man – if I do say so myself, I think I’ve done a great job! But that doesn’t mean I’m not a bit overwhelmed and sad and excited at this milestone we are about to go through…
How did this little boy sleeping on his Harry Potter sheets turn into the cowboy making funny faces and the teen who doesn’t like getting his photo taken for the first day of school – but is wonderful enough to humor his mom?
We’ve had some great adventures – my son and I! And as I went through them to pick some for this post, I realized I WANT MORE! So I’m charging the batteries and he better be ready to smile for the camera – my days of easy access to this kid are limited so I better get snap happy! (Please don’t warn him or he might not come home!)
But you know what – this really isn’t about me. I’m over-the-moon excited for him and know he is going to love Boston and flourish. I’m incredibly proud and even though he still says I’m not allowed to cry yet – I will if I want to and yes, there are a few tears of joy flowing now.
We are so excited that the applications, SATs, ACTs, information meetings and everything else that goes into figuring out college is done… extra excited that he got into Boston University which has been at the top of his list. I, like every mom before me, will survive this journey – and he, like every kid, will survive my emotional outpourings. 
That’s a little peek into this artist’s life today – hope yours is wonderful as well!
– Tara Reed
Leapin’ Leprechaun Bunco – the perfect way to celebrate St Patty’s Day with the girls!
Forget green beer… play Bunco!
I recently received the following in an email from a new user of my Print-Your-Own-Bunco kits:
“Just wanted to let you know that my Bunco Party was a success today the ladies had a blast and can’t wait to do it again. I used your art work and the detail of it was a wow factor act the party.
Thanks again till my next Bunco Party!”
This just warmed my heart because this was my intention when creating the themed kits for Bunco – to help Bunco hostesses everywhere add that extra touch to their party.
This week would be the perfect time to gather the girls and roll the dice with the Leapin’ Leprechaun Bunco Kit. Not sure how to play? I have the rules on the website too >> PrintYourOwnBunco.com/how-to-play.html
Here’s to good times with your girlfriends – may the luck of the Irish be with you as you roll the dice!
– Tara Reed
Posted in Product News | 
Bunco, bunko, St Patricks Day Bunco kit, Tara Reed, Tara Reed Designs | 
Leave a commentAre you a creative entrepreneur trying to find that fit between your passion and your business?
I am quite honored to have been asked to participate in the newest online course (I hate to call it that because I really believe it is going to be so much more than that!) by Kelly Rae Roberts and Beth Nicholls. When I look at the other people involved I pretty much pinch myself and say “Really? Little ol’ me gets to do this?” It is so exciting to be a part of something that says “Yes! You can have your art and your cake too! No need to starve! No need to sell your soul! Find your passion and find your way…”
I fully expect to be blown away, inspired, and left speechless at the end – I can assure you I’ll be there at every one of these soul sessions! I thought it might be of interest to some of my blog readers as well.
That is me paraphrasing… here is how they describe the Hello Soul – Hello Business
The Business Soul Sessions is brought to you by internationally-renowned mixed media artist and author Kelly Rae Roberts, and award-winning entrepreneur Beth Nicholls, founder of Do What You Love. This collaboration was born out of a shared vision to revolutionise the way entrepreneurs approach business. We want to inspire a new generation of business owners who build businesses with soul, infuse them with beauty, and have a positive impact in the world. And we want those business owners to flourish, embrace abundance, and make more money than they thought possible doing what they love.
photo credit: Tiffany Kirchner-Dixon
This revolutionary online course consists of nine powerful Business Soul Sessions, delivered over nine weeks from January 16 2011. Brought to you by the entrepreneurial powerhouse of Kelly Rae Roberts and Beth Nicholls, this experience will be rich and deep, fulfilling and inspiring. Each Soul Session focuses on a particular aspect of building your business. Sessions consist of:
- Thought-provoking posts that will have you thinking about business in completely new, inspiring ways – ways that will get you excited to breathe more life and soul into your business model, so that more joy and profit results
- Juicy audio discussions between us – Kelly Rae Roberts and Beth Nicholls – where we spill the beans on exactly how we have grown our businesses (never-before-heard, in-depth sharing of best mistakes, worst mistakes, actual $ figures and more)
- LIVE webinars where you get to ask us anything you’d like – insightful advice and commentary will be shared as part of this conversation
- Real life case studies – where we dissect and offer growth strategies for the actual businesses of a handful of students from the class
- Interviews with highly influential business and thought leaders sharing invaluable insights and advice
- Prompts to spark lively discussions with other entrepreneurs in the class
- An abundance of mini-masterclasses to solve those burning practical questions (see below)
- Challenging and insightful exercises to help you dive deep, dream big and plan properly to enliven the soul of your business while making more money than you thought possible.
Together we will create a soul + profit roadmap for your business, resulting in more beauty, more profit, more joy and a real positive impact in the world.
All this PLUS a private community space to connect and share with others from all over the world
Class starts 1/16! To learn more, head to HelloSoulHelloBusiness.com.
Be sure to look at the amazing group of people Kelly Rae and Beth have assembled for this event here: http://hellosoulhellobusiness.com/whos-incontributors/
Enough of my babbling – check it out and decide if it feels like a fit for you.
Here’s to your creative success!
– Tara Reed
P.S. If you decide to sign up, I’d appreciate it if you say you heard about it from me at registration – there isn’t a formal affiliate program but I get some props for helping artists find their way to this very cool concept!
Fashionable checks anyone?
I was SOOOOO excited when I saw my RedPlum.com ads in the mail last week. I usually flip through quickly before adding them to the recycle bin but this time, lo and behold, I saw my own checks! How very, very exciting!
So, if you like animal prints and fashion you might love the Concrete Jungle checks available at 4checks.com*. (The are the third down on the far left – pinch me! This is exciting!)
– Tara Reed
Posted in Product News | 4checks, checks, Concrete Jungle checks, Tara Reed, Tara Reed Designs | 1 CommentVintage Apron using my “Welcome to the Roost” fabric
My online artist who I’ve met a few times live Denise Clason wrote a book called Vintage Aprons*. I was so excited when she contacted me to see if I had any fabric that would work well for a vintage apron because she wanted to do some samples. We sent her to Welcome to the Roost fabric (now available in your local independent quilt shop – made by South Sea Imports).
I was so excited to see this version of Annie’s Apron (p. 33 of the book) using my fabric – totally cool!
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She also made a few hot pads from the panel that includes 7 different squares – great for, well, creating hot pads of course, or to use in quilting or home décor projects.
Thanks, Denise, for thinking of me and sharing these great projects. If you are reading this blog post and love to sew – consider grabbing a copy of Denise’s book* – great for you, great gift for your seamstress friends… the holidays are coming!
– Tara Reed
A little fun this Friday – the merging of two of my favorite things – the web and musicals
This morning my fiancé (that still sounds funny!) sent my sister and I an email that said, “I thought the theatre sisters would get a kick out of this.” He knows that we both love musicals and go to at least one each year when we are in New York. I clicked the link and this made me smile! How clever to combine West Side Story with all the trendy internet sites to create WebSite Story…
Hope it brings a smile to your face too! Thanks for the link Craig!
– Tara Reed
Embroidery Machine Owners in Beaverton, Oregon have a fun, new option at The Sewing Room!
The Sewing Room – a local sewing machine and fabric retailer has a standing order to buy any fabric I design. It’s pretty cool to go into the store and see “Local Artist” tagged on my fabric collections. In art licensing, I am usually focused past my local marketplace – working with manufacturers all over the US who sell to stores nationwide and some worldwide. It is always inspiring to get to know stores and consumers locally – who I can actually see and talk to in person – and learn more about what they like about my work, what they are looking for and more.
The Sewing Room is starting an Embroidery Club and I’ll be a special guest in September. Members will receive an exclusive embroidery design (for free!) of this coffee mug that coordinates with my Sip & Savor Coffee fabric.
So if you live in the Beaverton, Oregon area, come check it out!
Find them online at http://thesewingroom.info/
Here are the details:
THE SEWING ROOM EMBROIDERY CLUB
will be held on the Second Thursday of each Month from 2:00 P.M. to 3:00 P.M.
One hour doesn’t seem like a lot with all that we have to do,
but ALAS! We can always change the time and length of time
after the first meeting or two.
So put the date on your calendars -
September 8, 2011
We are so excited!!!
Please call to sign up – 503-643-4111. There will be a $10.00 per month club charge which includes
- design(s)
- patterns
- hand out sheet/s
- and much more
Wendy and Mary
The Sewing Room
Save 15%
Coupon good for 15% off all Embroidery Thread to Embroidery Club Members the month
of September.
Offer Expires: September
Finding yourself is so exhilarating!
By that I mean “stumbling upon my art in a store when I’m not expecting it”. One of the hard parts of art licensing is that we often don’t know where our products are being sold. Since I license my designs to manufacturers who are in charge of selling and shipping products to stores, I don’t have a lot of visibility of that side of things. It makes it hard when people email me and say “I love your stuff, where can I find it?” Sometimes I have to reply with “I don’t know…” – that is so heartbreaking!
But today isn’t about being heartbroken – it’s about being exhilarated! I was wandering through Kohl’s the other day and decided to wander through the Home Accents section. I was admiring the pretty wall art, turned around and gasped! (It made the lady working an aisle down stop to see what the problem was.) I was SO EXCITED to see my art on stretched canvas looking back at me! This is my art’s first time in Kohl’s and I’m quite excited about it!
The woman working at Kohl’s was excited as well – first that there wasn’t something bad that I was gasping about and secondly, because she’d never met anyone who made something for sale in the store. She had lots of questions about how it worked and I was happy to explain it. (If you don’t know about it – you can learn all about licensing your art on my websites at www.ArtLicensingInfo.com and www.ArtLicensingBlog.com)
So… if you are a coffee lover and want to add a little whimsey to your kitchen or office – head over to Kohl’s and see if they have any left!
– Tara Reed
Posted in Product News | art licensing, coffee wall art, Kohl's, Tara Reed, Tara Reed Designs | 4 CommentsA technology first for me…
I just deposited my first check while sitting in my studio – and it freaked me out and got me very excited at the same time! I love technology and my iPhone but for some reason those fun Chase commercials with the couple who just got married, depositing their gift money by phone in their hotel caused me some discomfort. I was in my local branch today asking some questions and the banker asked if I had tried it. I admitted my slight fear of the process and then immediately wondered why.
I also realized that I had forgotten one check I wanted to deposit so I had two choices: get the check, get back in the car, drive back to the bank and make the deposit or try something new.
I decided to face my fear (why it was such a fear is still a mystery!) and put the app on my iPhone.
With a few security verifications and setup procedures – which took all of about 2 minutes – I was ready to go. Choose the account to put the money in. Enter the amount. Take a picture of the front. Take a picture of the back. Done! Way faster than going back to the bank and requires no gas! Two minutes later I got an email confirmation that my deposit was received and it would be processed on the next business day. They’ll send me an email to confirm that the money is in the bank too!
So… kudos to Chase – love the app!
– Tara Reed
A tribute to my sister on her birthday
Today is my big sister’s birthday! I was just looking through the many photos we took when Christine came to Portland to meet her new nephews (our brother’s new twin boys!) and thought I’d put a silly one on my blog with some thoughts about being her sister.
My sister is my best friend. She is 2 1/2 years older than me and we shared a room from the day I was born until the day she left for college. I have always looked up to her and thought she had everything figured out. How couldn’t she? She was the oldest so certainly the wisest, right?
This is our "look how adorable we are" pose
In high school I watched her get Calvin Klein jeans and a fabulous boyfriend. So I made mental notes – get good jeans, find fine guy. Ok, got it. I had absolute younger-sister-idolizing-syndrome and I had it bad!
I have followed her lead in many things in life … and tried not to just to forge my own path at times too. Sometimes that worked out well – she thought I was insane to go to France for my junior year of high school – I thought it was one of the hardest and best experiences I’ve had. Sometimes I decided that in my effort to be different, I made the wrong choice – like going to University of Maryland and not Penn State just because everyone expected me to follow in her footsteps. I corrected that choice 2nd semester and am proud to be a Nittany Lion!
There were times where this naive younger sister was led astray or hung out to dry but I think that comes with the territory. Christine also had to forge the road with my parents so they would be more relaxed when it came time for me or our brother to want to be out at night, see R rated movies, etc.
Overall, my sister totally rocks! We have so much fun together and never lack for things to laugh about. She’s helped me in so many ways – she’s shown me how to grow up, she’s helped me through a divorce, been my sounding board through dating and helped me learn to trust that marriage can work when you choose well. (She is much of the reason I’m now engaged – I’ll give credit where credit is due!)
Christine helps me with my business – hoping on a bus and heading to NYC each May to have “sister time” – much of which is spent in a 10 x 10 booth at the SURTEX show. I hope that I am half the sister to her that she is to me…
I’ll finish this very gushy post with a big
HAPPY BIRTHDAY CHRISTINE!
Wishing you everything you want from your day!
– Your little sis – Tara