From Wildlife To Wildfires

Hello Friends!

Happy Monday. Next week it will be September and summer will officially be over, at least per school schedules that dictate our personal schedules.

Many of you know there was a devastating fire here in Auburn yesterday. Many of you called to make sure we were okay and we are. The fire was in north Auburn and really did some damage. Last I heard, sixty homes were burned to the ground and many area businesses. I sure hope those families have friends as great as you guys! You made us feel really good reaching out.

We spent this weekend camping in Coloma on the American river. It was a really great time. We went with Steve, Roberta, and Julie. On Friday night, there was a group of firefighters doing water rescue training and their victims decided not to show up. Julie and Roberta were happy to help! It was quite an experience to watch these guys work in an ice cold rushing river...in the dark! The other exciting thing that happened was while we were visiting by the campfire. We were listening to satellite radio, hair bands from the 80's reminiscing about where we were and what we were doing back then when the dogs went crazy! Monty went running off and Riley was pulling his lead tight. The guys looked around and determined, it was nothing. We went back to laughing when Dave got big eyes and said, "Look!" As we turned to look, we saw the rear of a skunk, tail strait up and positioned to fire. We all tried to move away quickly, except Dave who realized that Riley was in his crate just to the right of the skunk and Mason was asleep on a lounge chair directly in the line of fire. As I climbed over Dave, literally, over the top of his head, the skunk scurried away. I'm a little embarrassed that I completely forgot Mason was there until the skunk was gone and it occurred to me that I wanted to be out of "spray-range" so I could assess how best to rescue Mason and Riley! Yeah, right! As the critter made his way down the line of campsites, we saw lights focus on the riverbank, and squeals and screams just like the ones we'd just let out. It was a very funny moment, and for the record, skunks are not as cute from that angle! We slept under the stars, ate s'mores, and panned for gold. We didn't strike it rich, but we had fun!

For the next two weeks, I am up to my eyeballs in gloves and trade show preparations. We are planning to have our pre-sale live on the 1st, but I'll send out an official announcement so you know. Hopefully, I'll remember to post some pictures of our weekend and when I do, I'll send you the link. I hope you are well and thank you for calling to make sure we were okay!

With love,
Kathy

I'm Not MIA

Hey friends, I'm up to my eyeballs in details for the upcoming ABC show in Las Vegas. We are only just over two weeks away from packing up the car and the list of things to do is growing by the moment! I have some exciting news and updates, but I have to be in a place where I can sit quietly and write. I'll get everything updated before the end of this week!

Baking Contest Winners!

Happy Monday!

We had a lovely weekend. Saturday Dave had drill and Mason and I stayed home baking cookies. As it turned out, we made cookies and pie for the National Guard picnic on Sunday. They had planned a baking contest and all three Partak's were in the running. Dave made a peach-blueberry pie, I made a lemon-blueberry pie, and Mason made sugar cookies. They had a clown twisting balloons, face painting, and took the kids to the petting zoo and to ride the train. Dave played horseshoes, and I got to meet some of the people Dave works with. After a great barbecue lunch, the contest was judged. Dave took third place, Mason took second place, and I took the blue ribbon! It may seem that the contest was rigged, but in fact we were three of only four entries! It's all in fun!

Mason starts school on Wednesday and he is SO excited! As many of you know, Mason started kindergarten last year but wasn't quite ready. I'm glad we decided to wait because he is so much better equipped this year. We have to get some new shoes and a haircut this week, as for clothes, we'll just wait and get them as he needs them. He's still so hard on clothes, I hate to buy anything brand new!

Have a great week and write back to let me know what you did this weekend! I love to hear what's new!

Happy Monday!

I was completely out of sorts yesterday. There was no good reason, I was just simply out of gas. The day still needed to be addressed though so we moved onward and upward. Let me go back to Saturday though because Dave and I had a ball! Mason got an invite to sleep over at Zack's house. You know what that means...free baby sitting and Dave and I get a date night! We headed out on Saturday afternoon to Apple Hill. We went to Patrick's Berry Farm and picked blackberries. Oh my goodness, they were SO good! I'm not much of a blackberry girl as I've never really had any that were this good and the seeds didn't make the so-so flavor worth it. Not so with these! The Navajo variety tasted like blackberry soda and the Triple Crown tasted like candy. We picked enough for Dave to make a pie, and make pie he did! He also made sorbet in two floavors; orange and nectarine. So good! We did some wine tasting in Apple Hill, toodled old town Placerville and then had a nice dinner out.

As I've already mentioned, I was pooped on Sunday but we had planned to have Monica over to shoot Mason and Scottlyn in snowsuits pretending to be in a snowball fight. We plan to use the images to create life size photo stand-ups of the kids for our trade show booth in September. It was classic, 85 or 90 degrees outside and the kids are in full snow gear throwing Styrofoam balls at each other! You'll see more about that in the coming weeks.

What did you do this weekend? Hopefully you had some fun. Don't forget to nominate ZipperBack Gloves in the Intuit Love A Local Business contest and help us gain some much needed free business capital. Have a great week and remember to do something that moves your dream forward, just a little bit! Consistency is what will get you where you want to go. Happy Monday!

Apple Hill and Berry Picking!

Things Are Starting To Happen!

Happy Monday and welcome to August!

Summer is in full swing and we are busy, busy, busy! I worked a temp job with Julie on Thursday and Friday and though we were working, we had some time to visit. We went to the Lodi Thursday night farmers market and met Greg, Heather, her parents and Josh for a nice evening of music, fun food, and a great glass of wine.

On Saturday, Dave, Mason and I were getting the ball rolling for our trade show in September. We are looking for two kid mannequins, a counter top spinner rack to display our gloves, and so many other things. We scoured Denio's Farmers Market & Auction and found a pair of children's skis and then we also found a pair of kid's cross country skis at a thrift store. From there, we went to TAP Plastics and got an earful on how to make molds and castings of children's hands. We bought our resin mix and headed to Michael's craft store to get our alginate mold material. We made two castings of Mason's hands and it worked beautifully. Now that we've done it once, we now need to do it again to get exactly what we need to show buyers why our gloves really are the best!

In addition to all the ZBG work we did, Dave worked in the front yard, I cleaned our room, and did loads of laundry. Mike came up and we had a ZipperBack Glove meeting over pomegranate margaritas while we sat by the fire in the backyard. It's exciting to know that in January 2008 this glove project was just an idea. Here we are in August 2009, preparing for a pre-sale, a trade show, and to have our gloves for sale in retail stores in just a few short months. WOW! It just goes to show you, if you take small actions on a consistent basis, you will create something...something more than small talk about this great idea you have. Stop talking and start doing and you, too can be busy, busy, busy, and say, "Things are starting to happen!"