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Spring has finally sprung in Boston and we are so excited to see flowers, sunshine, and even (the occasional) spring showers. Aside from celebrating the appearance of tulips and lilacs, this week we're raising a book to the 98th anniversary of Children's Book Week. So in a nod to the arrival of this hopeful season and to readers everywhere, here are a few of my favorite books to read aloud at this time of year.

And Then It's Spring by Julie Fogliano and Erin Stead perfectly captures the agony and amazement of growing plants in the early springtime. The waiting! The wondering! The worrying!

Fogliano's beautiful text, an ode to green thumbs young and old, comes alive with Stead's neat rendering of the perils of planting. The playful story (beware of bears!) is a year round favorite for this reader but feels especially satisfying now that green is creeping back into the cityscape.

The Night Gardener by Terry and Eric Fan deserves a place on this list primarily for the beautiful shades of green within its pages. But if you come for the color, stay for the mysterious story about a town where the trees are being sculpted into delightful creatures overnight.

The delightful shapes and the mystery behind the person responsible for the topiaries will enthrall readers of all ages. 

For little readers who prefer baby animals to flowers, the Gossie & Friends series by Olivier Dunrea provides an almost endless source of reading joy.

The little goslings in Dunrea's bright and colorful illustrations caper about in various treasured boots and hats, play constantly, and inspire laughter!

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Moms are our everyday superheroes. They juggle a million things at once without blinking an eye. And let’s face it, most of the time it goes unrecognized (that’s how stealth they are!). When it comes to Mother’s Day I think we can all agree they deserve to know how much we appreciate all that they do, big and small. To get you started, Sarah and I rounded up our favorite Mother’s Day cards to celebrate your own mama, mom friends, or mother of your children!

1. Lucky for you, you got the best mom genes out there! E. Frances’ elephants in jeans card makes us chuckle every time.

2. Mom taught us what unconditional love means, and Thimblepress has just the card to thank her.

3. This Crayola approved card is a perfect pick to send your wife who encourages your children to explore all of their creative talents … even if it gets messy.

4. She raised us right, and she revived the obscure houseplant you left for dead months ago. Celebrate mom’s natural green thumb with Idlewild’s vintage seed packet card.

5. For all of the superstar moms (that is what you are), shine bright with this understated yet fabulous card from Egg Press.

6. Everyone knows there’s no holding mom back when she’s in driver’s seat. Tell mom she’s a badass (in the best way possible) with this hilarious McBitterson’s minvan card.

7. Sometimes all moms need is a simple sentiment to feel oh-so-loved, and this floral canopy card will get right to the heart of it.

8. Calling all you smart alecks (you know who you are!) Steel Petal Press has just the card to give mom credit where credit is due.

9. Thank mom for teaching you everything right down to your shoe obsession with Chic+Nawdie’s sweet mom and mini me clogs.

10. We love the superhero vibe of Goldteeth Brooklyn’s mom-wow card!

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This month our National Stationery Show (NSS) prep falls into all three categories! Read on for a look behind the scenes. 

THE GOOD. We bring our own hard walls to NSS. So far we've built or patched up all of the walls. We have also measured and cut our shelving and pre-drilled holes in the walls for easy hanging during setup. Eric and I truly love working together, and this kind of project is a fun change of pace. 

Pre-drilling shelving

We have to work in our garage because it's been pretty rainy here. When it's cold we set up space heaters and wear winter jackets. It's pretty glamorous, obviously.

Measuring and cutting shelves and display pieces

There are so many pieces to this big puzzle. We work from the 2-D booth layout using a scaled ruler to measure and place everything correctly. As we place shelves on the wall I label them and make notes everywhere—sometimes directly on the shelves! 

 My notes on the shelf that will hold our new jotter!

Wes, age 4, helps by handing us tools and by providing comic relief

The back wall is 20' long but we can only set up 12' at a time in the garage! 

Clayton's 3-D model has really helped us visualize the booth, which is awesome! If you haven't yet, go check out his great post about designing the booth layout! 

It's also been wonderful knowing that my team can hold down the fort at the office while I'm working on the booth. It makes this process so much easier. Go, team!  

THE BAD. There's still so much left to do. Every night Eric heads out the garage for an hour to work on the booth. We're currently preparing to paint everything—the walls, the shelves, the furniture (that we have yet to build!). Wish us so much luck. 

THE UGLY. The pile of tissues on my desk right now is pretty ugly! Season allergies are attacking with a vengeance right now.

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Rome was not built in a day, and the same goes for a successful National Stationery Show (NSS)! Sending fun and beautiful mailers to stores and paper friends alike only hits the tip of the NSS iceberg. As you may or may not know, we must build a booth too! Building ours (Booth 1421!) comes with both its joys and challenges.

It all starts with a plan, and for us, that plan started months ago. Priority numero uno: our booth had to be fun! Priority 2: all of our products—and I mean ALL—must be displayed on the booth walls. Priority 3: the entire booth must be able to fit in the boss's mini van. With this in mind, we hit the illustrator art board (and the ground) running.

(image: select 2-D renderings of our NSS booth)

To start, I designed 2-D models of the wall display and fixtures to essentially serve as our building and assembly blueprint. When we actually go to set up the booth, everyone gets a printout (and scaled ruler to boot!) telling us exactly what goes where right down to the quarter-inch. Putting in the effort upfront to create a detailed to-scale model saves us loads of time and guess work when we're deep in the setup trenches.  

This year’s booth measures nearly twice the size of last year’s, so we more or less had to start from the ground up. But once we landed on a direction and liked what we were seeing on paper, the implementation of 3-D modeling began. Don’t flip out too much, no auto-cad software used here, just some humble paper cutouts (more fitting for a paper trade show I must say).

(image: 3-D model of our NSS booth)

The 3-D model really gave us a better understanding of the flow of space. The human figurines helped us visualize the experience our visitors might have in relation to our products and furniture when steeping into our booth. And though time-consuming, three scale models later we can be even more sure of the aesthetic and functional quality of our end result than we could have with solely a 2-D printout. Basically, the 2-D blueprint serves as our building guide and the 3-D model as our vision.

(image: close up of 3-D model of our NSS booth)

Priority 1 has been met with the creation of larger than life party animals while Priority 2 has been met via the laborious hours of puzzle-piecing products upon our blueprinted booth walls. Priority 3? Well, April and Eric have started building and seem to be making great headway. Let’s just say they’re basically Booth 1421 gladiators! Stay tuned for the next blog post to hear about their progress!

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We’ve been begging Emily (the E behind E.B. Goodale) to come out with a little baby collection for as long as I can remember. Her illustrations are so charming and capture a child-like innocence and wonder that tug at our heartstrings. In fact, keep your eyes out for her first children’s picture book making its debut this fall! Luckily for us, there was a more convincing force to nudge her along, and we’re thrilled to add her new baby card, thank you note set, baby gift wrap, and baby thank you note log to our shop.

Utterly adorable, right? Read on to hear what Emily says about her inspiration behind the design …

I had just given birth to my first child, August, as I was thinking of new designs for Smudge Ink’s spring release. I remember getting such a kick out of the triangle swaddles and cute little hats that the nurses put the babies in at the hospital that I just had to draw them. I hadn't known at the time that I would use that very same drawing for August’s letterpress birth announcement.

(image: close up of August's birth announcement)

Everyone loved the drawing so much that I played with squeezing little August into a larger, swaddled babies pattern on a card, and then some wrap, and then also for a thank you note log!

To this day, I still put August into the same little hat he wore at the hospital (it fits a little tighter now at 6 months old!!) because it reminds me of him as a brand new, sweet little bundle. Truly the most precious gift!

(image: family portrait with Auggie in his birth hat!)

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