TalesOfAPeanut

Today, I’m linking up with one of my favorite author’s and blogs: Courtney DeFeo of Lil Light ‘O Mine.  If you’ve never heard of Courtney, you should definitely check out her story.  She is a Mom who is sold out for Christ and is working hard to encourage and help other Mom’s.  She’s got two little girls and a heart for Christ and she is such an example for me.  Her initial product, ABC Scripture Cards, were such a hit that she partnered with some other awesome ladies and great businesswomen to make them more widely available.  I’ve got a set and LOVE them!

This week Courtney has been doing a series called #SHOPWISER where she challenges her readers to shop with a purpose this Christmas season.  The days included shopping to give, to empower, to train hearts, and to connect.  Today is the last day of her series and it is “Shop to Support Women”.  On that note, I’d like to share a little about my business, Tales of a Peanut.

Tales of a Peanut was born out of my interest in creating unique, personalized birthday invitations and announcements for my kids and Christmas cards for our family.  It has since turned into creating a wide range of products that range from stationery, invitations, cards, placemats, plates, luggage tags, Bible verse art….and more.  I love working with someone to create something that represents them, their family, their interests, and their personality.  I have lots of “stock” designs and options in my shop, but my big passion is creating something personal for someone, even if it’s just altering colors or fonts of something that I have existing to make it more like their personality.  Here are some of my favorite products that would all make great Christmas (or anytime!) gifts.

The Inspire cards came as an idea of how to help support my cousin who is going on staff with Cru in Orlando.  Half of the proceeds go to support her mission with the writer’s team.  The set has five of my favorite Bible verses on them with blank insides so that you can write your own note.  Verses include Philippians 1:3, Joshua 1:9, Lamentations 3:23, 1 Corinthians 16:14, and Revelation 19:7a.

I started creating these 11″x17″ double sided, laminated placemats for my kids because I was getting tired of having to switch out their cloth placemats every day (sometimes with every meal!) because they were getting so dirty.  These are perfect to rinse off in the sink and my kids love to have some with their chosen designs and names on them.  I’ve also found that they make great gifts and have sold and given many of them for birthday and Christmas gifts.

I like personalized things and not having to write our names on every gift tag that I put on a gift this year at Christmas is such a time saver that it almost makes me giddy.  So I created a few designs for 3″ circle stickers to use as gift tags.  I either center the names, leave them blank, or leave a space for the sticker to be personalized (like shown above).  I also have a friend who purchased these to stick on the required brown paper bag for her child’s snack at school each day.  Instead of writing her daughter’s name she just puts on a sticker and her daughter loves having ones in her favorite colors and designs.

When my daughter turned one I created an invitation for her party, favor stickers, food labels, you name it.  And then I realized that I wanted something that she could keep out to remember the theme for her party.  So I ordered a 10″ melamine plate and have continued to do so on every birthday for my kids.  I now design and sell these 10″ melamine plates and have to say that my kids love remembering what their party was about when they eat off of a particular plate.  And now that I’ve added a few non-birthday ones to our collection there might be some fights over who gets which plate each night.  Virtually indestructible as long as you don’t put them in the microwave or use a sharp knife on them, I feel confident serving my kids on these plates because they’re BPA free and non-toxic.  They also make great gifts and any design in our shop can be made into a plate design.  The only catch about these is that they take 2-3 weeks to arrive so make sure and order by November 25th to avoid having to pay rush fees to get them in time for Christmas!

And if you’re overwhelmed by the choices in the shop or just can’t decide what your friend might like most, you can’t go wrong with a gift certificate.  Good on any item in our shop and available in $5 increments, we can send them to you to wrap and give or can wrap them and send them to your friend for you!

Thanks for your interest in my shop!  If you’re looking for other women-owned businesses check out this post for some of my favorites!

And make sure that you head back to Courtney’s site to check out the other women with businesses that are linking up in her #SHOPWISER series!