Where in the World is Snuggly Monkey?

Traveling was my first passion, love, obsession... I was on my first airplane before I was 6 months old. The travel bug bit me hard, and I jump at any chance to check out a new place whether it is 15 minutes away or 15 hours.  I have lived in 3 different countries, 5 different states within the US, and traveled to over 18 different countries.

My travels have slowed down considerably since having children and I miss it. I have been fortunate to meet lots of amazing people on my journeys around the world, so I get to live vicariously through the travel blogs and facebook posts of my friends for now until I can get back to getting on a plane with a simple carry-on instead of 5 bags, a stroller, a car seat etc...

With these thoughts of travel floating around in my head today, I thought it would be kind of fun to tally up where I have shipped items to since starting Snuggly Monkey back up again in earnest last March. I put together a couple of maps and I am going to post them on a tab here on my blog and add to them as I ship to new and exciting destinations. I was excited to realize that Snuggly Monkey items have shipped out to 45 states in the US and 19 countries!

I only need 5 more states to go to have shipped to all 50 US states!

Do you know anyone in Idaho, Wyoming, North Dakota, West Virginia or Vermont that you can refer to my shop?

{snugglymonkeyco.etsy.com}

If you live there or know anyone that does and they make a purchase that ships to one of those 5 states you can earn yourself a $5 Gift Certificate to Snuggly Monkey just for sending them over. {To earn your gift certificate, just ask your friend to write your name and email address and "Referred by:" in the "Notes to Sender" at check out}

Thanks for helping to keep Snuggly Monkey traveling :)

Happy New Year!!

Happy New Year! 
May 2012 be filled with love, laughter, good health and happiness for you and your family! 

The holidays were a very busy time for Snuggly Monkey and for me personally. It was a joy to work with so many lovely customers and to be a part of so many people's holidays by helping prepare gifts for folks around the world. I am grateful to all of my wonderful customers for helping to make my first year on Etsy a great success that far exceeded my expectations. So, I would like to start off the new year by saying thank you very much for all of your support!

After taking a bit of down time to enjoy the holidays with my family, I am back to work in the wonderful world of Snuggly Monkey - full of energy and new ideas for my shop! But before I get to that, I thought I'd share a bit about my holidays...

Aside from keeping busy filling orders, I managed to squeeze in A LOT of baking during the holidays, which made me very happy. If I could do it all over again, I think I would have gone to culinary arts school and become a pastry chef. I baked 5 loaves of bread, over 30 dozen cookies and a cheesecake! Yum. 

I managed to snap a shot of a late night visitor to our house in the wee morning hours on December 25th :)

But best of all, I got to spend lots of time playing with my girls and the many monkeys that live in our house. 

I have been busy tinkering around in my "studio" (aka the playroom) and experimenting with some new materials and techniques.  I am really excited to be adding some new product lines to my shop in the near future. But, in order to make room and time for new items and designs, I have decided to discontinue some items as well. I will be selling off the ready-made inventory of these discontinued items in the clearance section of my shop.

In addition to new designs and new items, some changes will be coming to snugglymonkey.com as well in the next few months.  My focus this year will be to share more tutorials and recipes with you all this year as well as more in depth information on the items I make.

I'm off to get started on some of the improvements. As always, I welcome you comments, thoughts, ideas and feedback!