signs of love giveaway
Since Valentine’s Day is right around the corner, what better time to celebrate LOVE?! Grab this eye catching collection of wood signs for your home or spread a little love by giving them away to your friends and family. ($50.80 value)
Just enter below & we’ll select the lucky firefly fan’s name on Tuesday, February 19, 2013 and the winner will be listed on this post.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Have fun, good luck and thanks for playing!
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another week closer
We are finally entering the pedal to the metal week at our new shop in Ann Arbor. Everything is finding it’s place (including the awning) and this week it’s all about getting pretty products placed in the shop.
Here’s a quick tour of how things are coming together… 
My dear friend, Aly stopped by on Saturday & yarn bombed our lengthy limbs we have scattered throughout the store. I’m also loving these cool vintage inspired spools to hang our handbags.
The kitchen space is starting to fill up. Our lovely little craigslist kitchenette didn’t come with burners so we just fastened these pots to the stove top as permanent display pans.
I had lots of fun filling up our bath hutch with jars of Hydra shower bursts, soaps, teas & chill pills. The dressing room curtain is actually sheet from Target dressed up with fancy fabric & yarns. (We’ll be carrying Ellembee tees) I’ve mastered pounding nails in mortar… after bending numerous ones first ;-) Also so excited to be offering Cellar Door soap here too!
Necklaces will soon be hanging on clipboards and our smaller side of the shop is starting to take shape too. This is what Katie & Elliot will be doing the rest of the week as our new crew prices & displays things feverishly. Now I need to go to bed so I can refuel and head back to the firefly frenzy tomorrow.
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pillow talk
One of the advantages of having a 45 minute commute to Ann Arbor and setting up a new store space is that I get to listen to a lot of spotify radio.
Anytime I hear a song I like, I simply give it a thumbs up and it hops on a playlist of new tunes and bands to explore. Wild Child is one of them.
A review reads, “Wild Child is one of those success stories that rekindles my faith that bands with talent and a unique sound can burst out of the sea of bands out there and make a name for themselves. With “Pillow Talk,” the band’s debut album, they have cemented their position as a group with an inimitable sound, ear-friendly melodies, solid lyrics and a fun spirit.” – Gabino Iglesias
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putting the peices together
Another week has flown by at our new Ann Arbor location. Steve has become the master of creating our check-outs from old doors… this will be his fourth & fanciest one yet. And God bless Katie, our new manager for painting TWENTY window panes and our GIANT bumpy brick wall. Her and the color, grape leaves have become best friends. We’ve also found many terrific treasures on craigslist… claw foot tub, retro sofa & kitchenette ~ oh my! Lucky for us we have the important essentials to get us through each day.
Steve, Jule & I spent last Saturday sawing, painting & positioning fixtures. I love turning industrial wire spools into tables and ladders into shelves.
Jule got quite the work-out painting this bench a punchy lime…
One of my favorite parts is seeing the displays start to take form. Everything is still in rough stages, but you definitely can start to see the general layout of the kitchen, bathroom & other sections.
Jule brought this sign to life by screwing in every single light bulb. I can’t wait to put these awesome letters up on the wall!
And just a reminder of the before and after…
This week our full firefly team starts. We’ll continue to paint & position displays & start pricing & putting out product!
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cupid strikes again
We are happy to be partnering with Children’s Hospital of Michigan again for our 4th annual Valentine Card Campaign.
So we invite you to put your crafty hat on & whip up some sweet sentiments for kids who could use a smile on February 14th.
We’ll be collecting your handcrafted cards at our Berkley & Rochester locations until February 8. And if you don’t live near by and want to participate, please send your cards to: catching fireflies 3117 W 12 Mile Berkley, MI 48072.
A note from The Children’s Hospital:
When making your cards, please consider not signing the cards so family members and/or staff could personalize the cards themselves and give them to the patients. It means more to the patients to receive a card from someone familiar vs. a stranger. The patients also like to be able to give cards to their family members or the nurses and staff caring for them.
As a thank you for bringing in 3 or more cards, we’ll give you 10% off your purchase that day. We may not be doctors or nurses, but we can still prescribe the best medicine around… LOVE.
Thanks again for helping us spread JOY & LOVE to those in our community!
coloring our world
Normally I spend a good amount of time behind the computer during the work day but this paint roller will be my tool of choice the next couple weeks. Slowly but surely our new shop in Ann Arbor is taking shape. Thankfully our new manager, Katie also is swift with the brush and has been painting daily while we were at the Atlanta gift show last week.
And we’ve been using Steve’s muscles to move all our flea market finds with our daily trips to the shop. Here are some photos of the transformation thus far…
And the view from the back of the main space…
We’re hoping to hire our Ann Arbor team next week so we can speed up turning this into our whimsical world in the next month. Stay tuned…
letting our light shine
I know the new year is all about making resolutions for the future, but I like to take this time to look back. I’ve never been a big resolution or goal gal, but one thing I strive to do is live with intention. In recent years, I’ve looked for ways catching fireflies could make days brighter for those outside of our store doors and with your help we really shined in 2012.
1,100 handmade Valentine cards were delivered to kids who had to spend February 14th at DMC.
Over $1,200 of our Rochester & Berkley birthday sales went to The Pink Fund & Cass Community… two great non-profits who are making tangible differences in our city.
Loads of school supplies helped local kids in need get a smart start to the school year!
For our holiday open house, we collected many pounds of food for families in Oakland County who need a little help filling their pantry.
Gus could hardly believe his ears when we piled up all the donations to Detroit Dog Rescue! Plus we also gave DDR a $1000 check since we gained 1000 facebook fans during Adopt a Shelter Dog Month.
During the holidays we wrapped oodles of packages for our firefly fans and were able to collect over $1,100 in tips for the THAW fund.
In the spring we started selling these handmade mudlove bracelets and donated $4 from every one to charitywater.org. I’m thrilled to say we’ve given over $1500 to them which means 75 more people have been blessed with clean water this year!
Thanks again for partnering with us in these great projects. We look forward to adding new non-profits to this list in 2013!
celebrating 2012 with our team
We save our holiday party until after the 25th so we all have a chance to catch our breath from the Christmas rush. The gals had so much fun at our Minute-to-Win-it party last year, we decided to give it another whirl… only this time with a Christmas spin.
Since we’re opening our third catching fireflies in Ann Arbor this spring, we made stop to Zingerman’s (0ur new neighbor) for the snack spread.
I think I’m addicted to the Casados olive oil mixed with black truffle salt… and I’m not even a foodie:-)
After our furry family members got lots of pets, we were ready to roll out the games!
#1 The Christmas Ball – Fanning an ornament with a gift box into the end zone may look easy but that pesky hanger part can make it a bit tricky.
#2 Merry Fishmas – Gotta keep your chin up for this candy cane game… while impersonating Popeye & Mrs. Roboto ;-)
#3 Christmas Cliffhanger – It takes more than a powerful set of lungs to win at this game… mental telepathy doesn’t hurt either ;-)
#4 Snowball Fight – Who can pop in the most ping pong balls?
#5 Christmas Ball Conveyer – This dizzying game will have your head spinning quick.
#6 Balance Christmas Balls – Grab a roll of wrapping paper & a yard stick to test your mad balancing skills
#7 Face the Christmas Cookie – This one was too fun so we had to bring it back this year and Katie, our new Ann Arbor manager pulled it off!
#8 Fastest Gift Wrapper in the West – After a full month of non-stop gift wrapping our team was ready to tackle this one and to no surprise Danielle took the win coming in a 1:24 (we know it’s over a minute, but come on… can you wrap a gift that fast?)
In all the competition frenzy, I forgot to take a photo of our crew… but none-the-less we had a grand time ending the year with some silly fun! Steve & I are truly fortunate to have such a great team to work with. Cheers to a great 2013!
a sweet song for winter
Tis the season for cuddling with loved ones, listening to lullabies & enjoying artful music videos like this one.
Thank you Josh Ritter for creating such sweet tunes & wonderful winter scenes by simply using 12,000 pieces of construction paper.
A review reads, “This release is quiet and lovely, with all six tracks using the word “darling” in the lyrics. This is the perfect little record to get us through the rest of the winter. These songs wander in a new direction for Josh: they are sweet and small. Instead of the sprawling narratives typical of much of his music, these are simple songs that he recently described as lullabies.”
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super cute christmas photo booth props
I’ve always had a thing for photo booths. I treasure the classic black & white photo strips I’ve saved of Steve & me during our dating years. So it’s no surprise that I’m loving all the fun photo booth props that are popping up all over pinterest.
We had a lot of fun with our campy Christmas card last year so I wanted to put together another one that brought smiles. Steve wasn’t so sure of my idea, but Jule was totally up for it and the girls won. :-) Here are the props I doodled for our little holiday project…
If you can see your family or friends having fun with these festive photo props, we made them available for you to print at home HERE. We recommend using a 67 pound cardstock. It’s thick enough to be sturdy but not so thick it jams your printer. However I did have to reinforce the reindeer antlers so they would stand up straight.
Cut out around the images & hot glue thin dowels to them. I purchased 5 long thin dowels & cut them by scoring them with a scissors & then breaking them. For the shorter sticks you could also use wood kabob skewers or cheap chopsticks.
We just moved some furniture and used wrapping paper as a backdrop. I have this inexpensive light kit for shooting my wholesale line of paper goods that we used with a slr camera but a simple flash camera would work just fine too. We got loads of great shots, but I’m only sharing a few since I just printed the cards today and I don’t want to wreck the surprise… (my Christmas cards usually get delivered on the 24th ;-)
I plan on bringing these to our family Christmas and hope to get some silly shots of our crew. We hope you have fun with these too!
Here is our finished product! (added at a later date)
I cropped our favorite pictures and created a 17″ long photo strip in photoshop and had 11×17 color copies made and cut them up in strips. I folded the strip in half and put them in colorful #10 envelopes for our 2012 Christmas card.
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