Jeffrey and I decided to surprise our warehouse employees with a remodel this weekend.... We have been in this space since 2001 ( we added the second space last year, doubling our warehouse without having to move). 8 years can built up a lot of history on walls that have never been treated other than the original spray texture when the building was constructed. Who knows how many occupants had been in here adding to that history before we arrived.... I don't really want to know. We just decided to change it up a bit, make it happy, show some spirit and create a fun working environment for them.
I chose 4 different green paints, and we spent all weekend (friday night, until sunday midday) painting the one section of walls within the warehouse. I spent thursday and friday painting the office that I share with jamie (and melanie when she is here, one day a week) and the bathroom. It was nice to create a nicer office environment for us. I have a creating station in there as well, so I can work on samples and Garden work, and I really wanted something that felt better than the white walls and destroyed blinds that hung in the windows. I picked a color that both Jamie and I had in our homes, knowing that we both would enjoy it. and did the same for the bathroom. I also picked up a bunch of black frames with white gallery mats on sale, and then put patterned papers in them and hung them in our office and the bathroom--- I figure that I can change them up with each season, and holiday. and take all of the warehouse favorite papers and hang them around. 

So friday late night, and into the weekend we (we is jeffrey and myself, as well as my dad who is always willing to spend time painting and/or helping with any chore) spent painting the walls in the warehouse. There is only one section that is actually finished walls, the rest is all unfinished drywall, etc. So this whole section got painted one of the 4 different greens. my favorite is the wall that you first see when you walk in, it is called Happy Camper. love that. After it was all dry on sunday, I painted our logo on that wall as well. 

The only walls that have paintable surfaces are the walls that make up the offices of this warehouse unit. You can see the two office doors at the top of these stairs. on the first level of those walls, are the other 2 office doors, the bathroom and the kitchenette. This photo is taken from the opposite corner, where there are stairs leading out the back to the yard behind the building.

This is a bit of a joke around here.... 'dirty dishes' and them not being washed by whomever used them has been the cause of many issues around here. This hand written sign was posted above the sink. It became a joke of sorts and when we painted I didn't want to lose that. So I framed it for them. :)

A couple of weeks ago, my son was in the office for a few hours while on Spring Break. In the past couple of years he and one of the sisters have claimed to have their own desk in the new offices (of the next door warehouse that we took over). When the whole contingent of guys moved themselves and their new programmers over to this new space, the kids no longer had their "own office". So now they share a space in the new offices with our Graphics dude Jerome---who works out of his home office most of the time. (Jerome is the one who likes to 'Impose his will via Photoshop', from his Garden Guy profile).  

So on this day, when he was visiting while on Spring Break, Jack sat at his desk in this chaotic office totally loving that he was with the other Guys working on computers. He brought his sack lunch (the green bag) containing a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and some cheese crackers. As well as a container of plastic animals that would later spend time exploring the aisles in the warehouse. [The guys have only half moved over to this new office space. They have enough moved over that they can get their jobs done and stay intensely focused on a new project they are developing. Their old office looks like a Mad Scientist Lab with bins of wires and cords, and computer parts & pieces and tools and books, and things I couldn't even begin to guess what they are. Their new office looks like a mini disaster in training, since they have nothing but desks, a treadmill and a kitchen sink. I tell you this because you can see the very chaotic scene in the photo below.......]

 We are always so busy, we often neglect to plan big parties for our own employees.... we have socials at all the big CHA events 2x a year, we are hosting our 2nd big crop this coming Saturday, we do small things here and there for the company, but nothing ever big. In the beginning we would do things like this... take everyone to play PaintBall, where everyone would unload their guns on Jeff. or set up our own Amazing Race, even a Two Peas Summer Olympics, but we have done nothing of this magnitude for years. Never ones to just do anything simple or easy, Jeffrey and I put together a Birthday party for all of Two Peas in a Bucket on Tuesday. 

We held a Two Peas Dance on Tuesday. Jeffrey and I transformed our 2nd warehouse space into a dance hall. It has yet to be completely built out with shelving, etc. So we had enough room to spread out. We set up a projector and a stage for Rock Band and had our little high school band play for us.... ( we all rotated out and played instruments, etc). Food, music, dancing, photos, games, Mario Cart, Mario Party, Tiger Woods Golf, Rock Band.... 
 

The team was greeted with signs like this when they arrived: 

Followed by:

and:

Where the girls were instructed to put on a formal dress (over their clothes), get all pretty with jewels and hair adornments and to proceed to the dance hall. 
The boys were instructed to put on a tie, slick their hair and proceed.

It isn't the easiest thing to make a warehouse all pretty for a dance, but we went all out for cheesy and glitzy with all kinds of lights, shiny decorations, and more....

Jeff wore a special green tuxedo he purchased for the event, a special middle part hair style, and I wore a special green gown, with a side ponytail:

TJ, Kitty, Melanie and Jamie all stepped up to do the singing for our Rock Band, and we all took turns on guitar, bass and even some on drums. As everyone arrived that morning, they could hear the music, and commented that they wondered who was playing music so loud already that early in the morning.... turns out it was for them as they all soon discovered. We are certain the rest of our complex heard us play Boston's More Than a Feeling 500x and wondered when we would ever learn a new song.

There was some dancing, the electric slide. the hokey pokey among others:

We tried to get as many individual shots as we could, it seems that we got mostly shots of the girls in their formals. and the only shots of the guys are of them playing Rock Band or other video games. 
they are as follows:

Kitty, 

Tonya:

Melanie:

Little Jamie:

Kathryn:

Lisa:

and Jamie:

We are so thankful for all that everyone does here for Two Peas in a Bucket and we hope that they all enjoyed the dance day as much as we hoped! 

 We were treated to our First Valentine's Day Tea Party today. Jamie (we call her Lil' Jamie), our Customer Service Representative, hosted the event. She brought in her own china, the displays, the handmade table decorations, and prepared all of the yummy food. Even though our setting is an loft in the second warehouse--- our make-shift lunch room (the boys--all 6 of them, moved into the office of the 2nd warehouse thus taking away our lunch room), made of plywood and warehousey materials, she did a great job of setting the table for our tea event. 

We were treated to scones, fruit, chicken salad sandwiches, egg salad on toast, little desserts and of course, ...delicious tea. 

In attendance, Jamie and Kathy (kitty):

kathy ( again) and Tonya:

Lisa and Lil Jamie:

and Melanie and Camryn (who came in special to attend our tea party today) in her cute little birdy onsie and Baby Legs leggings. 

and Lil and me.... 

 The Two Peas in TwoPeasinaBucket is myself and my husband, co-founder, and now President of the company: Jeffrey. Two Peas started before our second child was born, but she arrived in that first year and thus it was widely thought that the Two Peas were those 2 little girls. When the Two Peas are actually Jeffrey and I.

We named our company Two Peas in a Bucket because it was something that meant a lot to us. We had been together since we were in high school. We had a lot of sayings, inside jokes, etc. Two Peas in a Bucket is one of them.
"We are very much alike, we are like Two Peas in a Bucket"

This wasn't meant to be our life long 'thing', but we knew that we wanted anything we did together to have a special name that was representative of all that we would put into it together as a pair. We didn't think that it would always be scrapbooking. We didn't want to name it anything with scrapbook or memories or anything related to that. Because we wanted to always be able to change it into whatever we wanted to do next. Two Peas in a Bucket could really be anything, anything we could dream up. We also wanted it to be something that stuck out, not another face in the crowd, something that you might not forget. Something that differentiated what it was that we were trying to do from the others who came before us. We had new ideas and were hoping to do something special.

At this point, we could never use the name to be anything other than Scrapbooking. And little did we know at the time that it would hurt us in the great black box they call Search Engine Optimization. We were in our early 20s. We were just kids. 

We like being different. We like being the Two Peas. We like being known as "those Two Peas Kids."

Photo taken at Disneyland during CHA Winter 2009.

 Two Peas was created by my husband, Jeffrey, and I in February of 1999. As a new scrapbooker, I wanted to be able to find more cutting-edge products that I was seeing in the magazines and was having trouble finding in the local stores. At the time, the entire industry was still in its infancy stage and there was a lack of attention to the hobby in local markets. Driven to the internet to find items, I discovered that there was not an Internet-based company that featured these products as a local specialty retailer would--- for instance paper by the sheet, individual die cuts, and not grouped together in kits. With an interest in finding these products and providing them to other scrapbookers in the same dilemma, Two Peas in a Bucket was created. Products that are not found in local discount stores but are featured in industry magazines, at trade shows and other unique arenas are the mainstay of Two Peas. It was for the love of products that Two Peas was really created.

As it was then, Two Peas is still committed to bringing new and trendy scrapbooking products to the Internet. Patterned paper is still the largest percentage of the Two Peas in a Bucket product inventory, and the majority of this is offered in individual sheets rather than the usual packages offered by larger companies. Two Peas was the first to do this. This is what Two Peas does best.  I have been heard saying many times “ you can’t scrapbook without paper”. Though this is not true with the arrival and success of Digital Scrapbooking, paper still is very important to the Two Peas Store Mission.

The site is a collaboration of Jeffrey and I, whose individual and diverse talents have been easily combined to create this awesome site. As a computer consultant for several years, Jeffrey had enough background in computer programming to do all of the technical design and development, while I provided all of the creative design work, including logo, appearance of the site, and general direction of the site contents. I hold a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in Art History and Classics, which had been encouraged by the love of the arts taught in the years of growing up in a family deeply involved in artistic endeavors. Spending years learning various arts and crafts, an appreciation was formed for all hobbies and crafts. Scrapbooking has been the last of a long line of crafts that I have done in my lifetime. It has been 12 years and I am still here, and have not moved on to another craft as I had with all the others. I actually been scrapbooking my whole life, in different mediums and just didn’t know that was what I was doing until much later. I seem to have developed a passion and a love for Scrapbooking that I do not have for any other hobby or craft.

With the interest in providing a place for other scrapbookers on the World Wide Web to call a home, Two Peas in a Bucket was created with more than just a store in mind. There had to be a place to post (or share) their own creations. After having spent some time on the Internet prior to building Two Peas the importance of having a place to share your creations was very apparent to us. A gallery was born.  This is a special spot for people to not only see what others were doing and to learn from them—getting inspiration—but also to share their own accomplishments. There also needed to be a place for people to talk to one another; to communicate about the techniques they were trying, or hoping to learn more about. “I made this! What do you think? “ “How do I adhere a button?” A community message board was created to allow people to share their experiences, talk about ideas, and make new friends.

So we started out with a small loan of a few thousand dollars from my parents and built this little site. We didn’t know what to expect. Actually, I do know what we expected. We expected to make around $500 and attract a few customers as well as users. The journey to where we are today was fast paced, the site growing beyond our control, often likened to a monster, and bringing us to a successful ten years later. We vastly under-estimated our success, and at this point we have users numbering into the 400,000s and attracting millions and millions of page views each day.

Until July 2001, Two Peas in a Bucket was located in the basement of our home. We moved to a new house in this time frame doubling that space for a while. In 2000, Jamie Ward, Warehouse Manager was hired and brought on full time. Jamie has been an incredible part of Two Peas and its success, and is considered a third piece of the puzzle right behind Jeffrey and Kristina.  A move to a corner of our current warehouse location was made in the summer of 2001. Up until 2002 Jeffrey worked a full time job as a Computer Consultant, and worked for Two Peas after hours or whenever he could spare a minute or two. These earlier years were spent constantly upgrading the site, always designing something new.  We have done all of this growth and success with minimal staffing and a lot of time and devotion from all who have worked for Two Peas.

In those early years ‘Growing pains’ were a problem for the company. With all of the rapid growth, Jeffrey and I were painfully aware that we could not do this alone anymore. In 2006, we were acquired by Kaboose, a Canadian Media Company, which taught us a lot about how to run a business. In 2008, Two Peas was acquired by Leisure Arts, who has been in the crafting industry for more than 35 years. This new partnership brings many new facets to our company, already we have doubled the size of our warehouse (by literally cutting a hole into the space next to us), inventory levels are higher than ever before, we have more staff than we have ever had allowing our developers to get back to the business of creating new features for the site, improve our shipping rates and so much more.

We are a family. We call it the Two Peas family. Jamie, Rob, TJ, Kathy, they have all been in our lives for a long time, each in their own way. The others, well, they become part of the family as soon as they accept a position in our company. We have a lot of new faces around here in the last year. We love them all. They have fit right in and made their own place in our team. I don’t know how we would work without them at this point. We are a loud, rowdy bunch at the best of times, not unlike a family we liken ourselves to. Our real families are very much a part of Two Peas as well. Kristina’s Mom is seen in the warehouse on a regular basis, her dad helping out with building projects, Jamie’s Dad bringing in treats and extra hugs all around. Children are also a regular sight at Two Peas…. Jeffrey and Kristina’s 3 children speak of the ‘warehouse’ as if it’s just another home. And we have dogs here. Big Dogs. Jeffrey and Kristina’s 2 – Artemis (Black Lab) and Lucy (Great Dane); Jamie’s Penske (Greyhound) and sometimes even her little Mimi (Shih Tzu). Other dogs are known to visit and create a fun stir as everything comes to a halt when they are here.  Everyone wants to see them.
We lunch together as a group on most days; eat a special lunch on birthdays; often make after-hour treks out to hang out together; have a big Christmas party each December and try to have as many other fun get-togethers that we can, including everyone’s spouses and children as well. We care about one another and look out for another. We have been through a lot together.

If the warehouse and office staff is our immediate family, then the Garden Girl design team could be considered our extended family. The idea behind this was my experience in teaching at a local store. The fulfillment that I gained from watching someone understand the process better; to see the light go on and watch them walk away happy and excited to do this new hobby…. The team was created in 2000 in attempts to educate our users, and to supplement the store sales. It’s so much easier to sell a product if people can see how it’s used. The Garden Girl team has been a close-knit group for so many years, even with the designers switching in and out on a regular basis. Their involvement in the site, and its design, its features, the site functions and products has helped to make Two Peas what it is today. 

It is this family dynamic that makes Two Peas what it is today.

This has been an interesting journey, the last 10 years. We have made a lot of mistakes and knowing what we know now, would have done things differently if we could have a Do-Over. We have had great successes and learned so much about all things scrapbooking, business, e-commerce, the Internet, developing and success.

Since I am so passionately involved in Two Peas, feeling very strongly about all things that occur and knowing that it has touched so many people, it is with much emotion that I celebrate it’s birthday this year. I am so grateful to all who have been involved in Two Peas, our vendors, and without question, the hundreds of thousands of people who visit our site everyday.  Thank you. 

 see. my couch is looking a lot better.

only a few more catalogs and paperwork things to go through. I should be finished today. 
 

 I was gently yelled at this morning about the state of the couch in my office.
"people want to sit on that you know". I was told but someone who shall remain nameless and geeky.

But I am still digging my way through all of this stuff. tee shirts and bags to be divided up among the crew who doesn't get it to attend the show with us; catalogs to review, sort and file; data to enter; packages to unload, etc. 

I brought my Disney album in today to show Melanie so she can tell me what she thinks of it.  (she says its okay).  So its sitting there on the back of the couch just waiting for someone or some big dog to knock it over. 

now that I look at it again, Melanie is also responsible for some of this mess on the couch. She has prize package stuff on there too. I feel better now. 

 this little guy arrived yesterday, with his buddy next to him. 
he does not have a permanent home as of yet, but for right now, he is going to sit right there in the mix on my desk. 

in case you want one too.... go to Bam Pop and take a look! 

this arrived in the warehouse this week..... Kelly Panaci's Art collection. And this paper makes me happy. I love it. :)

I love the green paper too.

This is also Kelly Panaci, 360 Degree Collection. I love these papers. the solid colors. I have used the red several times in my disney album this week.