May 7, 2010
Little Adventures - "Adorable Dress Ups at an Affordable Price"
Little Adventures - "Adorable Dress Ups at an Affordable Price" By Jenny Farnsworth www.littleadventures.com As a mother of five, it is a challenge to make ends meet each month. I ran a day care business for two years so I could remain home with my children. As a day care provider, I discovered how much children love to dress up. I went out to purchase some dress ups but was very disappointed. There were no dress ups on the market that met the needs of an active child. I decided to design dress ups for children that were made of quality fabrics, were washable and comfortable. I tried them out on my own children as well as the day care kids. The children loved them so much that many mothers expressed an interest in purchasing them. I saw this as a great opportunity to create a way to get out of the daycare business once and for all. I approached my friend Heather, the mother of one of the children in my day care, with the idea of starting a dress up business. It has not been easy. Pregnant with my fifth child, I have memories of Heather and I sewing hundreds of costumes in the basement after the kids had gone to bed. Sometimes we were nearly in tears. The machines never seemed to cooperate when we were facing deadlines. Broken needles and jammed threads frustrated our efforts. To help us get through the struggles, our husbands tried to make us laugh and helped out a little more at home. There were times we wondered if our business was going to fail, which would have forced me to return to daycare or find employment elsewhere. I desperately wanted to stay at home with my kids and that motivated me to push my own limits. Heather and I decided to look into a local factory where we could turn the sewing over to someone else freeing us up to grow our business. In order to utilize a factory, we faced minimum requirements which meant large, expensive fabric purchases on our tight budget. I remember the big freight truck arriving and filling my driveway with fabrics in every color of the rainbow. I sat next to the pile wondering what I was going to do with all that fabric if our business did not succeed. Amazingly, that fabric was quickly sewn into hundreds of costumes that all sold. In fact, we outgrew the factory and were forced into other options. We currently have our dress ups sewn at a factory dedicated to our products in a small town in Idaho where the economy is depressed and many people are in need of jobs. We also employ five stay-at-home moms to make our accessories. Here we are two and a half years later. We are able to be full time moms to our seven kids. Although we are up late with the business (as most work begins after bedtime hugs) and up early with the kids, we wouldn#146;t have it any other way. We love what we do and are proud to say that We are our kids' moms! We believe that no matter the circumstances, all little girls are princesses and deserve to feel special. We have seen the joy of our own little girls as they dance and play as princesses. We would like to share that same experience with Dr. Laura#146;s kids and allow some to escape their circumstances, if only for a moment, and become princesses. We consider it an honor to donate to Dr. Laura#146;s "My Stuff Bags" program. We hope that as our at-home business continues to grow, our donations will be able to grow as well. Little Adventures Email: info@litteadventures.com Wholesale Website: www.littleadventures.com Retail eBay store: www.stores.ebay.com/mydressuptrunk?refid=stores Permission granted for use on DrLaura.com

Posted by Staff at 2:00 AM