This past week we said goodbye to our longtime animal companion, Mojo. He was a 13.5 yr. old attention loving lap cat who battled what we believe was a type of lymphoma/cancer with his characteristic stubbornness. We loved Mojo with full and open hearts, and are so grateful to have spent many purr filled years with him. 

Mojo was adopted from an animal rescue organization in upstate NY. To honor his memory we will donate 10% of our retail sales profits from now until the end of the year to a wonderful Portland non-profit animal adoption and rescue group, the Pixie Project. We frequently drive past their glass fronted location and always keep an eye out for cats in their "cattery" adoption room. We love seeing their snoozing faces, and we often travel that way just to spy how many cats we can spot. It never fails to make us smile.

Over the next few weeks and months we'll be adding many new seasonal items to our online store, and look forward to giving the Pixie Project a nice, big donation check to start off 2013. 

Give your furry loved ones a few extra pets for us! Their time with us is a gift.

Maybe it's the deluge of social media posts discussing where people were on this fateful day what seems like another lifetime ago, or maybe it's the (supposed) change of season, or maybe it's that one of our cats was diagnosed with cancer, but I've found myself thinking big thoughts lately, like "where do I want to be in 5 years" and "if money were no object what would I do". For so many reasons life has been nudging my husband and I towards making big, potentially life altering choices and so I find myself in a reflective frame of mind.

This Friday is the one year anniversary of the successful completion of our Kickstarter fundraising campaign. That means it's officially been a year since the studio became a really-real thing. That moment of triumph has carried us through continued uncertainty and lots of growing pains. Now we are on the threshold of trying to transition from the somewhat predictable safety net of our day jobs to having at least one of us work full-time at the studio. Though it's not our preference, it looks like we'll need to get an operating loan to make this possible. For me, taking on additional debt is a huge and risky thing, as I have a mountain of student loan debt from undergrad and grad school, and have been mostly working at non-profits since graduating (i.e., not exactly mega-money coming in). But sometimes you have to take a deep breath and just hope that when you come up for air, you'll find it.