And the winner is...

Thank you everyone for your warm words of encouragement and support. I am very sorry the drawing was delayed from November 16th to today. I have been out of the office with a small cold for the past few days.

Now, without any further delays, the winner of our clock pillow giveaway is:

Susie Harris from Bienvenue!

Congratulations Susie and thank you again to everyone that entered!

I hope the weekend is a happy one for all,

Growing Pains

As our business grows bigger our space grows smaller. About a month ago we had moved into a new office. It only took a month for us to realize that our new space was too "Petit" for our "Coterie". Once again we found ourselves packing our bags and set out for a new moving adventure. With the help of family and friends we managed to settle into our new location in a single day. We are pleased with our new space and our growth and we give thanks to those of you who have helped us on our endeavors in making this company what it is today and will be in the future.

To show our gratitude we are having a giveaway for one of our pillows. Just leave a post and we will pick a winner on November 16th. Good luck!

Can You Feel The Holidays on Your Heels?

The days are just flying by. Yesterday while out shopping, I was amazed to see all the Christmas decorations in the stores. Suddenly that anxious feeling of Christmas shopping crept in and one part of me were saying, “ I have no time to shop” while the other part of me was saying, “just buy gift cards”.

The weather has not given an indication that fall is here. It is still in the 80’s and very humid. I am waiting for winter weather to nudge me into shopping.

I did want to get into the spirit, so I have added a few holiday pillows. Just fun little accents for that holiday touch.

I hope your week has been filled with blessings,

The Winner is...

I must first apologize that I failed to draw a winner yesterday for our flag pillow. The entire week has been a blur. I was a day behind all week. I even missed trash day in our neighborhood which is on Thursday, as I kept thinking it was Wednesday. I just hate when that happens.

The winner of our flag pillow is Connie from She Dreams Big blog. I am always so thrilled that all of you have taken the time to visit my blog and to leave a post. Thank you all for entering.

I hope you all have a peaceful and restful weekend.

Blog Giveaway

Just today we were thinking of doing a new blog post since we have not posted in awhile. We felt it would be much better to offer a giveaway, so we decided that we would offer our black flag pillow as it is one of our favorites. We hope it will be yours as well. Just leave a post and next Friday we will select a winner.

I hope all of you have a wonderful week.

So Good To Be Back

It is so good to have the time to do a short blog post. Things have just been crazy. We are now with a wonderful sales agency in Los Angeles, Bassman-Blaine. We had our first sales event on One Kings Lane, which was crazy, exhausting but fun. As of today we are doing the Las Vegas show. Our wholesale website is finally finished. All of our Elf's have quit so we are in over drive getting all of our orders out. It has been an amazing year and I feel so blessed that I can wake up each day and do something that I love.

I do hope all of you have had a great weekend and your week is off to a great start.

Blessings,

We Are Ready for Summer...

I love summer, the days are longer and it’s a great rejuvenation time. If I’m lucky my husband and I will take a quick trip to the beach where we can just relax and do nothing. Summer reminds me of bright colors as well as nautical colors, red, white and blue. We wanted to change things up a bit and add some fun nautical pillows which are great for summer.

The winner of our number pillow giveaway is Alicia from Time Worn Style. Thank you to all of you who posted your acts of kindness.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Acts of Kindness And A Giveaway...

I really want to thank everyone for the sincere posts regarding the awful tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico. We experience the sadness of this event daily.

Each day we are all bombarded with sad news events that occur all over the world. When my daughter was small my husband and I made it a point at dinner to have each person at the table tell what was good about their day. There is so much negativity that we hoped it would help all of us to see the positive aspects of the day. I also remind myself to show an act of kindness each day. Believe me, there are some days that I feel so stretched that I am not feeling kind. But even the smallest act of kindness can impact someone else’s life and that can be so rewarding.

I would love to hear from you regarding the last act of kindness that you received. I would also like to do a giveaway as we try to do one each month and I do think that I missed May. So leave a post and if you put a little note on your blog you will get a double entry.

We just finished a new pillow slip that is done in our grain sack fabric. It is our French number pillow slip so we hope that you will leave a post. We will have the drawing on June 18th.

Wishing you positive feelings,

Is That The Smell of Oil?

In each of our communities we have events that happen, whether it’s flooding, tornadoes, and hurricanes, huge snow storms and even earth quakes but we learn to deal with these natural disasters. They are never easy and often times cause great hardship but we dig in, help our neighbors and life continues.

Our community has faced huge challenges such as hurricane Katrina in 2005. Many here on the Gulf Coast lost family, friends, homes and business not to mention many of our historical landmarks. Our gulf coast looked like a war zone and to this day there are still remnants of that terrible event.

Now we are faced with another disaster. The enormous oil spill that threatens all of the communities along the Gulf of Mexico. Our white sand beaches will be riddled with tar balls. The marine life such as our beautiful dolphins who swim in schools right off our beaches will be harmed. We live in an area where shrimp fishing is one of our industries as well as tourism and now those will be impacted.

Just the other day, you could actually smell oil in the air and we now see fish washed onto shore filled with oil. We know our beautiful Gulf of Mexico will be impacted for years to come as we don’t know the extent of this horrific disaster. The people on the gulf coast are resilient, we worked hard to clean up after Katrina, but this disaster will take years and years to reverse itself. We all ask, what about our wildlife and marine life, how do we save them?

I am so saddened by this that I just had to share. Natural disasters are out of our control but disasters such as this one should be controlled.

Blessings,

I Hope You Dance...

This past weekend my husband and I decided to escape to the beach, where we could just relax and enjoy the white sand beaches and watch the Dolphins early in the morning. We have our favorite hotel which just happens to have our favorite restaurant so we basically don’t leave the hotel for the entire weekend. There is a wonderful piano lounge where you can sit and look out over the Gulf of Mexico and can enjoy an after dinner drink.

After our dinner Saturday night we stopped to have a quick drink and much to our surprise there was quite a crowd. What stood out in the crowd was a very thin gentleman in his late 80’s with white suspenders and a white bow tie. He immediately took a table and proceeded to change shoes. He obviously comes quite often as the staff greeted him with affection. He now put on his black and white spats, which were in pristine condition. From the time that he arrived and had his spats on he became a dancing machine. It was obvious that his favorite dance was the Jitter-bug and definitely had all the right moves. He would go to different tables and ask the older women for a dance. As he finished each dance he would glide across the floor and return the lady to her seat.

It was like being transported to a different era. It really made me think about how often my husband and I dance and why we don’t make it a point to even slow dance once in awhile at home. The phrase that kept going through my head as I watch this smooth older man with spats and suspenders was from Mark Twain, "Dance like nobody's watching; love like you've never been hurt. Sing like nobody's listening; live like it's heaven on earth." And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance, I hope you dance, I hope you dance.

I hope your week is filled with sunshine,

We Are Off To Sweden...

We are once again packing our pillows for a long trip. This time our pillows are going to Sweden. We are thrilled to soon have our pillows in the wonderful shop Country by Mail. Several years ago I book marked this wonderful site as a great shopping experience for Nordic merchandise. I do hope you will stop by and take a look at all the gorgeous items.

I also want to tip my hat to all of the wonderful blogger's out there who are continuously coming up with amazing blog posts and photos. I must admit, I do struggle with finding interesting material to post, so I hope you will all bear with me. My head has been buried in work and unless I post about the qualities of burlap, I don’t think I have many exciting things to share with you except for my excitement that Petit Coterie will be available soon at Country by Mail.

I would also like to thank so many of you for your kind thoughts and prayers for my husband. He is doing so well that I have to hold him back from doing too much. So a huge thanks to all of you! You are the BEST!!!




Many blessings to all of you this week!

Easter Blessings and The Winner Is...

I have been a bit reflective this week, thinking of all the blessings that I receive each day. I normally don’t use my blog as a personal journal but with Easter here I have to say that I relied on my faith this week to see my husband through heart surgery. Very unexpected as he is always the one telling me that I should be taking vitamins and of course stop eating junk food. Faith get's us through the most difficult and stressful times as well as making us take stock on how truly blessed we are.

The winner of our burlap King slip is Julie, from Being Ruby. I want to thank each of you for your wonderful comments and for participating in our giveaway. We really love doing giveaways as you may have noticed. It is our way of saying thank you for visiting our blog and becoming one of our blogging friends.

Happy Easter to each of you and we wish you many blessing.

Revival Time and Giveaway at Petit Coterie

We had stopped making our burlap king slip and yet we still get so many requests for it. So it was revival time this week and now we feel it is greatly improved. We added the envelope closure to the back and also added a new wreath. We are so excited, it's like having an old friend back. So we have decided to share it in a giveaway. Yes, we are giving one of our burlap king slips away. Just leave a comment and we will have the drawing next Friday.


I hope all of you are having a wonderful weekend!

Show and Tell Friday...

This has been a busy week at Petit Coterie. We did have a chance to add our new Petite Pillows. Most of our pillows are 16"x16" and larger, so we decided to offer our Petite ones which are 12"x12" perfect size to send as a gift. We just had to do a show and tell Friday and we do hope you will post a comment to let us know what you think of our Petit Pillow.

I hope all of you have a wonderful weekend!

The Winner Is...

Friday was a blur but in my frenzy I did manage to pull a name from all who entered my giveaway and the winner is Polly. Congratulation!!

I want to thank all of you for entering my giveaway and for all the nice comments you left. I love to do a giveaway, so please do stop by again as you never know when the urge may strike



Have a wonderful weekend!

End Of The Month Giveaway...

It has been awhile since we have offered a giveaway, we thought it would be a nice way to end the month. We also thought it would be nice to giveaway one of our original designs the D. LaBlanc. To enter just leave a comment, we will draw the name on March 5th.

We have had so many requests for a personalized pillow and this last week we completed one for a customer. We just had to share it with you, I think it turned out so cute! We will be offering this pillow which can be customized with your own text. I Would love your feedback on this one.

Wishing all of you a fabulous weekend!

Mardi Gras 2010

The festivities have been going on since January 6th, which is also known as the Twelfth Night. Today is Mardi Gras which is French for Fat Tuesday, the last day of feasting before Lent begins on Ash Wednesday. There have been the large balls as well as many parties. Children are out of school for Mardi Gras so they can share in the festivities. Most of the children in the south enjoy going to the parades, as catching the good beads can be quite a challenge.

From the small towns in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama to New Orleans there have been parades as well as homes decorated in the gold, purple and green. Of course we cannot forget about the King Cake which is tradition. Who ever gets the piece of cake with the baby has to buy the next cake.

I thought it would be fun to show the new king and queen of Ixolib. The pageantry of the balls is steeped in tradition and the costumes are gorgeous. I love the decorated masks. Which one would you choose? photo Sun Hearld

I hope all of you have a wonderful week and "Laissez Les Bon Temps Roulez".