I'm letting you know my family has been blessed with a healthy baby boy! Father and daughter are so thrilled. He's been such a blessing and as expected very demanding of my time. I know I've thanked everyone on Facebook about your patience and understanding of my maternity leave...although I haven't technically left. I'm still not on top of my game with being able to get to my orders made up and out right away to my customers as I'm usually known for...this has been the hardest adjustment for me to have to accept.

I had shut down shop in December for half of the month...as much as I dreaded to I was much relieved. I thought I was going to be making up order through my labor pains...I made myself shut down days prior to giving birth even though I still had many nights of staying up till 3 to get the Christmas orders out for the holiday rush...up to the night before giving birth! It was a bit crazy this year...Great but just all out Crazy to say the least!

I'm slowly getting back into the flow of things. I'd like to say I'm finding it easier with each week but I'm afraid to say I have a demanding little boy who is still feeding about every 1.5 hours. So as you can see it doesn't leave much time for much else to get done. I wanted to let you know I am doing all I can to get to the orders as I can to get them out as soon as possible.

I will say I'm very pleasantly surprised at the jump of orders I'm getting...I thought for sure from what it was last year it would be a dead month...but I see it's very steady! I think this is wonderful but I do have my moments of shear panic and thoughts of how will I get my orders out! I somehow have managed but with great understanding of my amazing customers that I have a baby on board. It has to be said again...I appreciate all of you!

I've been tossing around the idea of closing down shop again for a couple of weeks...but see as long as my customers are on the same page with me I'm hesitant in doing so...unless I pickup even more well then I'll have to reconsider. I'm doing what I can to not have that be the case for now. I love what I do too much to close down that easily. ;)

Amongst the orders, I've been meaning to add so much to this site and fail to get around to it. Being that baby comes first, then customers...website comes to dead last. Just so you know, I've wanted to show sneak peaks of my newest creations, a page featuring all my most popular, revamp my shop on here that has been simply sitting here for almost the past year...I think maintaining my Etsy shop is where I'll stay for now and remain. So my LMK resolutions for 2012...

1. Get all new items up!

2. Reorganize and expand on my customs page.

3. Blog a bit more than what I do.

4. Get Donation Page of Support Our Soldier Details.

5. Get my new shop in working order...details coming soon! Hint...will pertain to Jewelry Supplies!!! Something I've been wanting to do for a long while now. It's going to happen! I purchased the domain name for it tonight actually and cant wait to be sharing the name of it very soon!

There are a TON of new supplies to that I've purchased and haven't gotten to play around with to get my new ideas in my head into my shop! I'm bound and determined to make them happen and I'm promise they will but lets get baby to where he's not feeding every hour or so first. ;)

Collection of Support Our Troops Personalized Jewelry.

These are very popular designs for mothers, daughters and wives of military and army men. They give you the ability to support our troops in a very special one-of-a-kind way. By wearing any of these custom jewelry pieces you will be honoring our military in their fight for our greatest gift as Americans - FREEDOM!

These can all be purchased on my Lil Miss Katie's Etsy Shop. Click Here view more and or to purchase. They now come available in either sterling silver plated chains or solid sterling silver options along with gold plated wire or now 14 kt gold wire bows. As always you are more than welcome to come up with your very own special design with what you see that I have or let me know what you have in mind!

Happy Creating & thank you for supporting our troops with these purchases!

Note: I'm happy to donate 10% of all proceeds from this Support Our Troops Collection to organizations that are dedicated in helping our troops! I will have a post on this soon with where I've decided to donate to. I'm also open to suggestion and will be happy to link and feature other supporting organizations in helping such a cause.

My Newest Lil Miss Katie's Bracelet Waxed Cotton Cord Designs

I've been waiting a while to get in this order of Wax Cotton Cording. The shipment came in and even though some of the colors I've ordered are on back order...it didn't discourage me from starting in on some new creations. I'm excited to be presenting my newest collection of bracelets.

I've got several more very simple and elegant designs in the making and at very affordable pricing. So far I love the look and feel of the newest pieces. I love the colors and the versatility of this material. It's easy to work with and I find it very durable to use and wear.

There are so many options on how to create the new bracelets I'm all over the place when wanting to create and customize my pieces. I'm not sure how big of a hit they will be but I see a lot of viewers are enjoying them and marking them as a fave so I have a feeling they will be a big hit. I plan on adding my personalized charms to be an added option to any and all of these. Making it easy to have the be custom created to have a specific name and word to these fantastic new jewelry pieces.

I've kept in mind the importance of making each one as unique as possible and to insure doing so is by making sure a custom stamped charm is available with as many items I create and sell. My other idea is to be making best friends - friendship bracelet sets to be versatile to wear as mother daughter sets, bridal sets and sister sets.

This is where I think sets like my "Love You Inside & Out" set will become a great example of how versatile the symbolic representation of the piece is. I will continue to create and design up as many options using this great new discovered material. Although it's been around and not new to the world...My new found love for it has made my creativity time quite enjoyable!

Not to brag but I love hearing from my customers! I love when I hear how they love their purchases. Here are just some of the comments that my customers have shared with me. To view all of them click here.