Promises, promises, promises

Okay I'm busted. I promised to post at least once a week. Well what I actually said was that I'd try. But you know how it is, life happens ... and the best laid plans seldom work out as planned.

Take last week for example; I'd wrapped up my last order of the year, and even printed up a couple of Christmas gifts for family friends. My husband had surprised me with an overnight visit to a local resort/spa to celebrate our 5th wedding anniversary and I'd managed to enjoy a relatively quiet celebration of my birthday (no, I'm not tellin what number, you can forget that). It was finally time to close my office door and shut down for the Christmas/New Year holiday, it was time to relax and ease out of 2010.

I was even looking forward to a little hit -n- run trip to Texas to visit my BFF when our world got turned upside down by a health crisis for my much loved mother-in-law. After a brief hospital stay she's back on her feet, and is staying at our house for a few days while husband Keith travels to Hong Kong. Ya know, there's just nothing like a family health crisis to make you appreciate your own health, not to mention whatever time you may be blessed to spend with those you love.

It's now 5 days before Christmas. The gifts are wrapped, the stockings are hung, the tree is lit, the manger scene is in place on the mantle, and all the ingredients for the dozens of Christmas cookies I'd planned to bake are sitting in the kitchen. If only I could muster up the energy to actually mix it all up and bake those cookies! It's not as if I haven't tried, I've even managed to put out a couple dozen cookies. Just not the dozens I'd envisioned when I shopped for the mountain of "essentials" two weeks ago. Ah well, there's still time, right?

Well in between cookie recipe's I've been thinking about new products for 2011, and I'm thinking bibs. Baby bibs go with onezies like peanut butter goes with jelly ... they're made for each other. I've found a manufacturer here in the US that produces a nice quality white cotton/terry bib trimmed in colorful fabric piping. They stand up well to color and heat setting, and they wash up really well, something that's probably most important to busy parents.

In addition to the bibs, La Petite Pilot will introduce new t-shirts for toddlers, teens and adults. Our new designs are fun, colorful, sometimes a little irreverant, maybe even border-line suggestive. They get people talking, that's all I know for sure.

And in January, Keith and I will attend both the 2011 Gift Mart, where I hope to meet gift shop buyers from all over the world, as well as ISS, the International Sportswear Show. ISS is the biggest tradeshow out there for our kind of business. We're both so excited to be able to attend this important tradeshow where we look forward to meeting vendors and other decorated apparel producers alike.

The future looks bright and exciting, and La Petite Pilot is poised for even greater success. Stay tuned for more design and product news, as well as new photos! Until then, may your holidays be filled with the laughter and love of friends and family.

From our house to yours,

A Very Merry Christmas!

The junk drawer

We had one when I was growing up, I had one when I was single, my husband and I have one now. What is it about the family "junk drawer" that we never seem to outgrow and cannot live without?

Rubber bands, paper clips, hotel note pads, pens from around the world I understand. What I don't get are the bits and pieces that seem to have no purpose, yet we cannot toss them out;

The chain piece to a door lock long ago removed
The label of a wine we once enjoyed
A CD for a version of AOL my darling husband used in 2003
A broken mechanical pencil that no one tries to fix
Fabric swatches, tile samples, business cards and book marks
An article torn from a magazine, one shoe lace, expired coupons
And keys, keys, keys ... of every size and shape and color imaginable.

Why do we save things that on the surface appear to have no purpose? Why don't we just let it go in the first place, instead of tossing it in the junk drawer? Why does my husband get that look of fear on his handsome face when I casually mention it's time to dump out the junk drawer?

What's in your junk drawer? I bet you don't even know. But I'm challenging you to explore that forbidden territory, and to do some dumping of your own!

As for me, I know what I'm going to be doing this afternoon.

Summer Day

I've always thought that two of the prettiest words in the English language are SUMMER DAY. When I think of summer days gone by, I remember laying in the grass behind my Ohio home listening to the bees buzzing in the Tulips, and the birds in the Cherry tree while I watched airplanes floating lazily through the cloudless summer sky. I remember trips to the neighborhood swim & tennis club, riding bikes with neighborhood friends, and collecting coffee cans full of flowers to present with a smile to my mother as she hung our laundry on the backyard line.

Sometimes I think how nice it would be to go back to those carefree summer days of childhood, when my toughest decision was what color ribbon I should tie around my pigtails. And then I think; WHAT? And miss all the fun I'm having right here, right now?? Not on your life!!!

In late February my darling husband surprised me by building me a raised garden bed just like those described in the wonderful book "Square Foot Gardening" by Mel Bartholomew. I planted two varieties of tomato's, onions, bib lettuce, arugula, dill, rosemary, green peppers, basil, thyme, lavender, chocolate mint, strawberries, and marigolds. In the days that followed, I planted beets and two types of zucchini plants as well as cherry tomato's, both runner and bush beans and purple peppers of all things! And then I started on the flowers (a story for another day)!

What started with the intention of being a simple summer garden of bits and bobs, soon turned into something far bigger and much more joyous, and drew my husband and the apple of his eye - my 11 year old stepdaughter Chloe - out of the house into the garden. Chloe's favorite part of gardening is picking (and eating) the strawberries and cherry tomato's. She laughs with glee as she teases her father that she's eaten more than him, though she always saves at least one of something for daddy.

Husband Keith seems to be getting a kick out of how much I'm enjoying my days of leisure as a lady farmer, and is always game to let me try out a new garden-fresh ingredient at dinner. His current favorites are the sliced then grilled eight-ball zucchini drizzled with Tuscan olive oil, and the pesto I make with homegrown lemon basil. Needless to say, he also has yet to turn down my

lavender-infused Creme Brulee (made from scratch, and with homegrown lavender of course)!

Now my summer days are filled with the sound of birds fighting over figs in the tree in the orchard, bees buzzing through the French lavender and pots over-flowing with Vinca and pink Wand Flower, and the happy sight and sound of my family enjoying the fruits of my labor.

Go back to the summers of my childhood? Not a chance ... not when I'm having the time of my life!!

A word from the blog owner; please note that comments, while always welcome, are always moderated. No comments appear without my review and consent.

Wishing you a bee-buzzing, bloom filled, beautiful Summer Day!

Lori

The Goodbye Girl

Or; why I fly 5 hours, (that's 2,133 miles according to http://www.convertunits.com/) to spend one night in a Newark, NJ hotel with my airline pilot husband, then fly 5 hours (yep, another 2,133 miles) home ... alone.

When I say I'm flying to Newark to overnight with my husband Keith, and will be home the next day while he flys off to some far off place, I'm usually met with blank stares or something like; "what the heck for?" I could say it's because I like the pizza in New Jersey (Bruno's - yum), I could say I like hotel romance, I could say I enjoy the occasional (make that rare) upgrade to First Class on Continental Airlines ... and all of that would be true. But the real reason I do it, is to spend those few precious hours with my husband.

Home life is a nonstop crush of schedules and committments, of school bells and student pilot training, of expectations and deadlines. But the 5 hours on the airplane to Newark, even if my husband is asleep in the seat beside me, and the ten to twelve hours alone with him in a New Jersey hotel room are a gift beyond compare.

For those few hours there are just two of us. There are no one elses wants and needs more important than our own, there is just my husband and me enjoying the quiet of a small New Jersey hotel room as we sip our Coke-a-Cola's and eat our pizza, and share a few hours of husband and wife talk.

Then all too soon it's over, and I'm re-packing our bags in preparation of going our seperate ways. I take his dirty laundry home with me (no sense in him carrying it to China and back), and we grab a quick cup of tea before the van takes us back to Newark Airport. My job as the Goodbye Girl is about to begin.

At the airport there is just enough time for a late breakfast or early lunch, then Keith is due in the weather room. There, as he meets the rest of his flight crew, he pours over weather reports and route charts and begins in earnest his work as the professional and dedicated pilot I so admire and respect. He will inevitably introduce me to the Captain and the IRO's (International Relief Officers) flying with him, but it's my job to stay in the background, quietly observing but beaming with pride. That man, the one discussing impending turbulance and route diversions with such experienced authority ... that man is my husband ... imagine that.

I always schedule my return flight to depart after Keith's plane leaves, so once he's through in the weather room we head to the gate where his airplane awaits crew and passengers alike. I find a quiet corner in which to wait, while Keith goes down to the plane to "load the box", a pilot's expression for loading the route and flight data into the airplanes computer.

It's not long before my husband is back at my side, asking how the loads (seating) look for my own flight, and what I plan to do whilst he's away. Small talk fills the next few minutes, but it's what we don't say that hangs so heavily in the air. That we'll miss each other. That I wish he could retire tomorrow. That I hate goodbyes.

All too soon the gate agents begin calling row numbers, filling the plane with passengers. Keith hugs me, telling me how much he appreciated and enjoyed my coming all this way for such a few small hours. He reminds me it'll only be four days and then he'll be home again. In my mind those four days might just as well be forty-four. One more lingering kiss good bye and it's my husbands back that's disappearing down the jetway. But not before he turns around one last time and using the ASL sign for "I love you" - blows a kiss to his goodbye girl.

I wait at the window in the boarding area as all the passengers board, the door is closed, the jetway is wheeled away from the plane, and the supertug begins the slow push of my husbands' beautiful jet towards the runway. One last kiss blown back and forth, one last "I love you" hand sign, one last prayer asking God to keep him safe, and he's gone.

My job as the goodbye girl is over ... until the next time I pack an overnight bag and follow my pilot husband 2,133 miles to Newark New Jersey for a few precious hours with the man I love.

Why do I do it? Because to do otherwise would be to rob us of that time together. Because my husband seems so much more relaxed when I'm saying goodbye to him in person than over the phone. Because it makes the man I adore feel loved and special. And that he is.

Lori