Congratulations and Salutations!

Let's cut to the chase. I have drawn two winners and their names are....

Lainie

and 

Jessie

Let's all do a happy dance for the girls. I am also doing a happy dance for all the incredibly sweet things you've written in the comments section. It's lovely to see some long-time followers and some newbies in there too.

image via here

I will email Lainie and Jessie forthwith to discuss our plans and will share the design process with y'all on the blog.

If you missed out (boohoo) I would love you to comment your design ideas below. Am always up for making something new and interesting. I can't work in a vacuum, your input would be awesome.

Have a happy day. I'm off to get my child ready for a hot Friday at school. Heading for a top of 29 degrees today, and a possible thunderstorm tonight. Wait, didn't I move away from Australia?!

Big love.

They Say It's Your Birthday...

Well, it's my birthday too, yeah...

Well, pikelet workshop's birthday to be more precise. It's incredible to think that I've been making these crazy Poppets for only two years. The Facebook page arrived not long after I launched the business but the blog took a little longer. For the sake of being schmaltzy, here's a link to my first blog post.

In just over a year, I've written over 150 blog posts and received over 26000 hits. Fancy that!

I've sold heaps of Poppets (poor fingers), even though there was an almost twelve month hiatus whilst we moved to the other side of the world. 

A big thanks to all of you for sticking around, purchasing my products and listening to my drivel. The online community is an incredibly rewarding place to hang out, I'm a complete addict! And I feel like I've only really skimmed the surface of it. My toes are dipped into Twitter though I haven't really made a commitment to it yet, it makes me feel like I'm being unfaithful to Facebook. Ha! But with all the changes that will no doubt happen to Facebook as it goes public, Twitter may become even more of a necessity for those of us in business.

Who knows what lies ahead, I like to be fairly organic in my approach to business though I should knuckle down a little more in future. I need to get a better camera and learn how to use it, spend more time editing photos etc. I would like to work on some tutorials and post more recipes, and generally just be more regular with this whole blog thing.  And I need to start focusing on cracking the Canadian market in earnest, sometime.

But, for now, I would like to offer up a giveaway in thanks to your incredible loyalty and support.

Here's how it will work...

Simply comment ONCE below, warm fuzzy fluffy posts encouraged (this is, after all, a celebration!) and you will be entered into the draw. Two lucky followers will be given the opportunity to order a custom Poppet each. 

But. 

You can't order an existing design (no pirates or superheros or mermaids please), you have to challenge me to come up with something new. I'm up for it!

This draw is open internationally, and you will have 24 hours to comment (closing at 6pm Toronto time tomorrow). The winners will be chosen via random.org.

You guys rock, and are totes awesome. Thanks again, and good luck with the draw. 

I'll be off now, these family members won't feed themselves...

New York Day 2

So, day 2 was spent doing the toy stores. We hit the American Girl Place first, followed by ToysRUs and FAO Schwartz, and I'll discuss the later two in a different post.

It was an enormous hike to the American Girl store, but we wanted to stroll through the park and the city and find our bearings. Poppet managed it quite well, all forty minutes of it, no doubt because her doll would be getting her ears pierced at the end of it. 

Here is the huge store, it is certainly worth a visit (but keep it in mind that you will plonk down a fortune in this place if you have a daughter). 

 

The first piece of business was to have brunch. It was a rather lavish affair in the specially designed cafe upstairs, complete with four courses. So many birthday parties were being held, we must have sung happy birthday at least four times whilst eating. The table came complete with a box of conversation starters and a high chair for Poppet's doll, Tilly. Do you think it's pink enough in there?

Next, we were off to the salon. Tilly was to have her hair styled and her ears pierced. I can't express how excited my kid was about all this. The stylist combed Tilly's hair out, then explained how to care for it properly to my wide-eyed child. She then took the doll out back to pierce the ears (no child needs to see a hole being punched into the side of their dolls head!).

Once we were done with the salon, we moved onto the store to spend Poppet's saved up Xmas and birthday cash. She did a pretty good job of budgeting and came home with a hoard of new gear for Tilly.

Oh, need to pee? No problem, there's a doll hook inside the toilet cubicle so you don't have to put your doll on the floor. Nice.

After three toy stores (and a couple of boutiques), we strolled home through the park. Poppet only put up with this because she new ice cream would reward her sore feet.

It was a beautiful day, who wants to spend it in a car on under the ground. I'm surprised we didn't end up with blisters after this weekend in New York.

More tomorrow, got to get this kid ready for school...

New York Day 1

 Well, we had to go to the bowels of the airport in Toronto yesterday. Should have taken a packed lunch to eat on the journey to our gate! When we saw our plane we understood. It was tiny! Only four seats across and one toilet.

The flight was really smooth and we were low enough to see everything along the way. Niagara Falls was not particularly spectacular from that height, Poppet said it was 'cute'. 

She spent part of the flight writing me a letter in my filofax.

"Dear mommy,

The roads are very tiny, from up hear on the plane! I can see lots of green and blue. And even red! I also see lots of white things, Autho (although)  I can't realy make out what they are. I'm looking forward to going to F-A-O shwarts and geting someting realy cool! I am also looking forward to geting Tilly's ears pearst."

Here she is writing it, being careful to finger-space between the words...

After and hour in the air, we landed at JFK and were glad we took a pitstop at the bathroom (washroom?) because the drive to the hotel took over an hour. Not particularly picturesque coming down through Harlem past roadworks, but when we crossed the top of the park the city completely changed.

We are in the Upper West Side and it's very family friendly. A little like our own 'hood, kids on scooters complaining that they're tired. Ice creameries, restaurants and toy stores.

The hotel (the Lucerne, if you`re interested) upgraded us to a suite so we have a crazy amount of space for a New York hotel room. No bed bugs (yay!) and very clean, and a fabulous restaurant downstairs which does room service. We will head down there for breakfast when we can be bothered.

Dinner last night was at Coppola`s. They had pizza and I had eggplant parmigiana. Mmmm.

The Poppet has started carrying her American Girl (named Tilly, for her cousin) in the backpack I made. 

We get a lot of smiles, which is quite helpful in such a big city. And yes, we are going to attempt to get her doll's ears 'pearst'. They have a spa for dolls instore. (rolls eyes)

After seeing about an inch of this city, I can say that I love it. I don't want to leave.

Here is the view from our window. The neighbour has a pretty cool roof-top garden. Lots of koi and a hammock, maybe we can befriend him....

Tickets Please!

We have a crazy busy week ahead of us. I'm just sorting through all of our tickets in preparation.

Tonight we're going to see this. Saturday we're seeing this. And Sunday we're off to this.

Though possibly the most exciting tickets are taking us on one of these tomorrow...

image via here

To go to this place...

image via here

The last time we took a flight for under 6 hours (this one is only an hour and twenty) was part of a crazy long haul to Brazil. What a weird and wonderful thing it will be to jump on a plane, flick through a magazine, have a chat and get off again. And that's it!

Yay for New York City. The people ride in a hole in the ground....

See you on the other side.