How is the 'journey to a dream' going? Pretty damn awesome! 🙌🏼

Hello friends!

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 ✌🏼

The end of a year... The very best year :)

So it's only 3 hours to go until 2015! Wow! Al and I have been talking so much about next year, we have so many plans and exciting things planned I could burst! But first a look back at our most amazing year ever... In totally random order (sorry about that!)

'the grumpy angel' as he's affectionately known when he sleeps... decorated with the standard
scrapes and bruises of the summer 2014

helping in the office

exploring with daddy

outside all year come rain or shine

watching him experience something new has to be my very favourite this in this world...

Santa at our market stall

dropping daddy at the train, fun for the 5 weeks of the market but the boy and I are sure glad we have him with us every day the rest of the year :)

This years continental market, which was amazing, again. Busy, exhausting, long hours, hard work but we appreciated every second and met so so many awesome new people who are helping to promote a bit of positivity with our products :)

Al and I left Ché Phoenix for the first time in october and stayed at a spa overnight - bliss

one from the summer

happy me :)

the day we met the duke at St.Georges market

wild and free spirited - trying to let him stay that way ;)

spring time family wedding

peeka boo

one from last month :)

summer time strawberries from our local farm stall :)

how our year started - a trip to South Africa, he loved the ocean

possibly the cutest pic of 2014?

just too cool...

my man and me, couldn't be happier than when I'm with him... and thats basically 24-7 ;)

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my beautiful sister (in-law) who i just just couldn't imagine my life without, her and her hubby james have become our best friends, our never failing support and the most incredible auntie and uncle you could ever imagine. This year would have been very different without them...

So thats a random mix of pictures from the last 12 months... 

Looking back I'm really proud of what we have done, Ché Phoenix's 1st birthday was wonderful time for us as parents, we were able to look back and see that for the entire first year of his life we parented exactly how we believed we should, we didn't make any compromises, and that was an incredible feeling, its not often in life you do something exactly how you hope to... We felt so proud :) As he's approaching his second birthday i can say i still feel that pride when i look at him, he is so healthy, so happy and secure in himself, has close bonds with other wonderful people in his life and he is far far to smart, i tell you its incredible! this boy was telling us all the colours at 18 months "blue reea brow yeaow green black paa puuul" lol being his mummy has just been the most incredible privilege this year....

Our business is expanding and still fulfilling us creatively and challenging us to keep learning more, this year we took on a volunteer who ended up being to perfect we're employing her full time come the summer when she finishes uni! 2015 is going to be huge for itty bitty book co and i think we've learned enough this last year and a half to enable that to happen whilst not take over all our time... Delegating and letting go will be key focuses for us i think :)

The last week or so We have been talking more of our dream home, our land and it feels close, almost within reach... tonight we are going to do a online search for land and start putting feelers out... today we lacked about all the awesome alternative housing options people come up with - shipping containers etc and it got us all excited and buzzing... being self employed does cause some problems in the mortgage department but we know where theres a will theres a way and we are psyched to start looking into it properly... who knows, next new year we may be living on our own piece of earth! :)

a few extra points for you guys who've been following my blog for a while...

- i still maintain that its a load of crap how much kids cost lol

- Breast feeding does kick ass for getting back to pre baby shape but it does not work if relied on solely for nearly 2 years *but hey thats what new years resolutions are for lol*

- we still use SFT's sealed pot and have no idea whats in it! will open it next time we're off down south as i know theres euros it it

- my 101 list is very much incomplete but I'm not worried, if i replaced each thing i didn't do with something amazing that i did do it'd be one hell of a fun, varied and exciting list :)

Please excuse the typos and such I'm on my second Jameson and am not gonna proof read tonight, so  signing off for 2014, what a year :) see you all in 2015!!!! Lots of love and wishes for happiness xxxx

Naming Ceremony inspiration :)

When we were planning Ché Phoenix's naming day we knew we wanted to keep it simple. We wanted it to be fun, personal and beautiful. We ended up taking inspiration from our favourite of Ché Phoenix's toys - our new ones from The Little Woodlanders.

Our awesome cupcakes! Decorated like his favourite toys! and spelling out his name :)

A good friend of mine Naomi and her mum run a little cake making business in our local area and they made us a beautiful selection of cupcakes decorated like his beautiful wooden toys! Everyone loved them and I couldn't believe how awesome they looked and tasted! The wee cake Factory ladies are super talented and can make practically anything into cake art!

Little Woodlanders are having a christmas in july sale now until 17th July. There is 15% off everything, no need for a discount code - everything is on sale - have a wee nosey around, your bound to see something you like!

Crafty fun in my new craft studio :)

Something you may not know about me... I am a huge bunting fan! The other week Al (my lovely hubby) was clearing out his art supplies from his university and he had some lino and carving tools, I made my 1st stamp! Going for something simple I did a heart, only took about half an hour :) The triangles are made of off cuts of canvas Al's gets for me from his work, heres my picture tutorial.

I think it turned out really cute but next time I'll lighten up the red, looks a little dark. Maybe use some different brighter colours but there are so many options and they are so fun and easy to make I'll be making more for sure :)

If you don't have access to free canvas you could use card, draw symbols on them or even print patterns on the card before cutting the triangles out - so many options...

 I'm loving my new craft studio so much!

A helpful yet simple DIY for spring gardeners!

Every year my hubby and I use few of these in the spring, we use them to water our seed trays, just-up seedlings and house plants. They are so easy to fill, carry and pour, they don't leak or drip back down the spout like watering cans! The other handy thing about them is that you can make one with a super fine/gentle spray by using a small needle and one with a more substantial flow by using a bigger needle. I need one for my house plants so I'll be using a bigger needle for this DIY.

No drips!

Gather what you'll need, I recommend using lighter because you need to
reheat the needle every second time. 

The needle I chose 

Heat the very end for a few seconds

Pierce the milk bottle lid, being careful not to get your fingers in the way! Reheat and repeat, remember
you can always add more holes after if there isn't enough water coming out. 

You might look at your needle when your done and be cursing me but its OK just heat the needle again and wipe it on some card or paper a few times and it'll be back shiny and clean!

This is what mine looked like when I was done

Perfect for small house plants :)

We keep a 3ltr one in the greenhouse with a finer spray and this one in the kitchen, they last forever and when the bottle does get a bit old, just swap the lid to a new one! We go through so much milk in our house, I love it when we can re-use the bottles ourselves instead of sending them away to be recycled.

Happy spring gardening :)


***Edit/Addition Feb 2017***

If you like this idea and are thinking ahead to Spring I have another fab affordable offer you might like!

My business creates beautiful products to help you stay positive and we've made a printable GRATITUDE JOURNAL sheet that you can easily print over and over and use at home!

Here is the link to our Etsy listing. It is automatically available to download just after purchase. Easy-peasy!

https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/512267305/gratitude-download-gratitude-printable?ref=shop_home_active_1