I was going through my business blog over at www.ittybittybookco.com and I realised there is a lot of personal stuff in those posts! Those posts share how my journey to a dream is progressing and what is going on in my life... So I wanted to share the more personal bits here if you're interested (and miss out the more sales-y ones) so that any of you guys who encouraged me 4 years ago and believed in me can see that it's actually happened LOL so thank you so much for that!
Yup, I really have created a business that I love, is ethical, does good and supports my family... It's obviously not all rainbows and sparkles but most of the time I really do need to pinch myself :)
Here's a little breakdown - first the intro video we made at the end of summer - if the outtakes one tries to play after I recommend that hehe!
We took on some staff, to allow Al and I to step away from the day to day order fulfilment, production etc and to allow him more time to design (the business had started to feel like it really needed some new designs and products) and for me to get my head back into a creative space where I could strategise, bring new ideas into the business and focus on expansion -
https://ittybittybookco.com/blogs/blog/the-itty-bitty-team-is-growing
Love over Gold - as the business has been growing we have been able to reduce our production cost and we passed the savings back to our customers. More on the ethical side of our business here -
https://ittybittybookco.com/blogs/blog/love-over-gold
I was super excited to launch the #PositivityTakeover which is a fun 'pay it forward' type of movement :) You can read about it here -
https://ittybittybookco.com/blogs/blog/positivity-take-over-preview
But I think Instagram gives a better idea of what it really looks like -
https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/positivitytakeover/
As the Business has grown I've found myself becoming more and more interested in the science behind happiness and positivity - it's really quite incredible! Did you know that you can decide to be happier - that you can teach your brain how? Happiness levels are not just something we are born with or that develop and that's just it, if we want to we can change our happiness levels!
Gratitude is an easy place to start and to make it easier, we've created a printable worksheet on Etsy and a gratitude journal on our main site, which you can get via the links below. Do it for 21 days and see the difference yourself! -
Printable:
https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/512267305/gratitude-download-gratitude-printable?ref=shop_home_active_1
Journals:
https://ittybittybookco.com/collections/gratitude-journal/products/itty-bitty-gratitude-journal
Tomorrow is Ché Phoenix's 4th birthday... and our 10 year anniversary 💜 So I'll be doing a little 'family life' post soon ☺️
How is the journey going for you? Are you balancing all the aspects of a happy/fulfilled life? As you can tell by the sporadic nature of my posts here, I've still not quite hit the sweet spot with 'me time'. The space I create for myself generally gets used up on long baths, exercise and seeing friends which is obviously just where my priorities lie right now, but part of me still misses the unique type of sharing and connecting of blogging... So I'm not giving up! Once again I'm going to try and make a little more time for it... The only failure is to stop trying, right? 😆
Love and happiness to you this Valentines Day 💕
From Astra ✌🏼
