Will Trade Autographs for Milk

Good evening! Just a quick post because we are going to try to get in bed early tonight, last night was not a stellar Lilli night. I'm pretty sure we're about to have some new teeth soon and that means pretty interrupted, fussy sleep around here. She woke up screaming at 4:30, and since I get up at 5 that doesn't really help you ease into the morning. Brent had to rock her for a while, and he didn't even get a shower before work this morning because she just wouldn't go back to sleep in her crib this morning after that. So, we sent her armed with all her teething essentials to school today, and the report back was that she wasn't awful but she also wasn't her normal happy self. Tonight she's acted much the same as when the first two teeth came in - always desperate for something to put in her mouth to chew on, whiney, short tempered, and just not happy or laughing at the usual things.

Anyway, she'd better get all her teeth in line because she is getting primed to be a "celebrity"! Working in the Retail Division of Lifeway, along with what I do there, gets me primed with all the "best" contacts. Besides loads of freebies from all my buyer friends I'm also good friends with all our Marketing Peeps. And what do Marketing people do? Why, they market all our stuff! One of my friends is a graphic designer who works on our catalogs. She's always commenting on how cute Lilli is so of course I mentioned that she is available ANY time to model for one of our catalogs, but due to increasing paper costs and shrinking catalog sizes we've gotten away from 'lifestyle' shots (aka real people) but she told me she would def get her into a picture frame. A couple of weeks ago she came to me and asked for a pic of Lilli to be in an ornament for our Christmas catalog, and today my copywriter friend (aka the person who writes all the wording in the catalogs) called me over to show me the image they're using! Of course I made him email it to me ASAP, and naturally in my glee I completely overlooked his subject line of "Your Snot Nosed Kid". But no worries, something will disappear from his desk soon over that one.

And here we go:Of course it's laid out on page in the catalog with other items, this is just the image within the page layout. And it's a HUGE corner of the page AND she's in the opening spread! That means she's in the prime spots of the catalog where we put our "best" stuff (she's on page 3). I used to play a game with our copywriter every month where I'd make him use certain words (like "ridiculous" or something just a little unusual), and then when the catalog actually came out I'd have to find it, but since everything gets done MONTHS in advance I would always forget the word so we quit playing. But I revised the game today and told him he had to work in "cutest baby ever". After rolling his eyes at me numerous times this is what he ended up writing for this item:

Available only at LifeWay, this ornament features "Jesus Is the Greatest Gift" and a 2.5" x 2.5" photo frame — now you can show off your too-cute baby as well!

Good stuff! Of course I forwarded it to Brent right away, and Mr Smarty Pants had to make some "alternate" versions for Lifeway.

Personally I think this one could be subbed out and no one would even notice what he changed! And of course the sentiment is still true!
And then this one:Also a true sentiment, and probably also stems back to how Brent makes fun of us for pretty much selling Jesus. (But we are non profit and we do loads of good things will all the money we make! Like pay me!)

So yes, this is Lilli's first brush with celebrity via Lifeway. Last year's Christmas catalog went out to 2.2 million homes so this year should be more or at least the same. And this item could be on the in store flier, I'm not sure if we've selected those items yet. So start watching your mailboxes in November because Lilli just may be in it!!! Now I just have to work on one of the other graphic designers because we're going to have a spread of baby items in an upcoming catalog and I know just the perfect model.....