Vacation Sale!

Vacation Sale! 
Now through August 8th 

www.LeenTheGraphicsQueen.com

$10 OFF

orders $40 or more

Coupon Code VAC10

$15 OFF

orders $60 or more

Coupon Code VAC15

$25 OFF

orders  $100 or more

Coupon Code VAC25 

all orders placed while we are away will ship by August 11th

New Ways to Win!

We're so excited to tell you about a new way to win LTGQ gift certificates!  

All you have to do is send us a pic of your LTGQ decal and/or vote!

Yes, we're switching up our "Take a Pic and Win" contest a bit.  Now every month we will select the top five (or ten, we haven't decided yet) customer submitted pics and open up the voting to our blog readers.  Whichever pic our readers vote to be THE BEST WINS!  We will send the winner 

a $50 gift certificate to our website!

What about the voters?  They work hard submitting their honest opinions, shouldn't they get something too?  Of course!  We'll select one voter each month to win 

a $25 gift certificate! 

 Start submitting your pics to pics@leenthegraphicsqueen.com

or post them on our Facebook page

the first contest begins September 1st!   

We'll provide more details as it draws nearer.  We can't wait to see your Best Pics!!

Beach Birthday Party Ideas

Our son, James, will be ten years old tomorrow, where did the time go?

Since we'll be vacationing at this beach house beginning on Saturday, we figured we would have a beach birthday party. What could possibly be more fun than that?  Nothing, I say, nothing!

I designed some cute Surfs Up! invites (free on Vistaprint) 

This evening I am heading into Wilmington to get the rest of the supplies I need for the decorations and goody bags.  


Here are a few ideas that I am loving.  If you follow me on Pinterest, you've probably seen these ( I HEART Pinterest!)

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How cute is this banner with little swim trunks hung by mini clothespins?  LOVE!

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This watermelon shark is a must!  Isn't he so great?!

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I don't have the budget, time or energy that a few of these require but I am going to do my best to make sure my little guy has the best birthday party ever.  After all, you only turn ten once!

New Customer Pics & a Winner

The winner of this rounds Take a Pic and Win contest is Steffany!  Steffany sent us this sweet pic of her daughter's nursery with our His Eye is on the Sparrow design.

Congrats Steffany!  You won a $20 gift certificate to our store!  Send me an email to leen@leenthegraphicsqueen.com and I will send you the code.

Here are a few other pics that were sent in.

Monkey Tree

Girlie Monogram

Girlie Monogram

Butterfly Name

Thanks to everyone who sent pics in, we love to see them! 

Soon we'll be doing our pic contest a little differently.  Still working out the details but it's going to be pretty cool with more chances to win!  We'll keep you posted!

New Customer Pics

I am going through my email (still trying to get caught up from vacation and JC being way last week) and thought I would share with you some of the customer pics that were patiently waiting in my inbox.

We are loving Kelly's cool idea of using our Three Initial Monogram with Dots decal to spice up a vinyl rug!

 Can you even take this compass on the ceiling?  It's 4' round!  It's an amazing finishing touch to Alexandria's new nursery!

pic taken from floor

 

I love the way this custom monogram design turned out so much, I may list it on our website.  Travis did a great job picking out colors, white and silver on dark blue walls, Gorgeous!

Melissa used our Two Roads design on her Chiropractic office.  Cool wall color, huh?

Laura sent us two pics.  One of her fun clocks with city names over them.  This idea is becoming very popular, we get requests for it often.  So fun!

 Here Laura used our Custom Number decals on her stairs.  Makes me wish we had stairs!

Maria applied out Home is Where the Happiest Memories are Made design to a mirror above her fireplace.  Doesn't it look amazing?

Melissa used our Scalloped Circle Monogram in her 7 year old daughter's room.  This design is very popular with little girls :)

Amy added hand painted vines above her baby's crib along with our popular No More Monkeys Jumping on the Bed design.  Looks great with her cute bedding!

I have lots more that customers have posted on Facebook recently.  I will post them here soon!

This week....

I've gotten less than five hours of sleep every night this week

We haven't had a homecooked meal yet this week, the closest we got was bologna sandwiches and chips for dinner last night

My bathroom remodel project is at a complete stand-still, if it weren't for the sink in the middle of my bedroom I would have completely forgot I was even working on the bathroom

The lawn desperately needs mowing

I haven't even checked on the vegetable garden, there are probably 20 tomatoes rotting on the plants

The house is a complete and total disaster area

My inbox is overflowing with emails waiting to be answered

BUT I have been filling and shipping orders!  67 in the last two days!

part of today's shipment

Not bad for a one man band :)

James and Mike will be home soon from West Virginia soon ~read about what they are doing here~ and everything will be back to normal.  I am ready!

Where and Especially Why

I mentioned in my last post that half of my guys are missing.  I am a one man band in the studio this week although I must admit, I wish I were with them.

Wondering where they went?  and Why they went there?

James and our oldest boy, Mike, are in Lincoln County, West Virginia, nine long hours away from home, making homes warmer, safer and drier with The  Appalachian Service Project.  This organization brings thousands of volunteers from around the country to rural Central Appalachia to repair homes for low-income families.  The need there is heart wrenching.  Some of the walls in the home that James is working on are made of cardboard.  Seriously, cardboard. In the past, teams from our church have installed a bathroom in a 40 year old home that never had a bathroom before.  They have helped build a home for a woman who had previously lived in a barn with tarps over the holes in the walls.  

I can't even express to you how in awe I am that people (mostly teenagers) from a "well off" town participate in multiple fundraisers, give up a week of their summer vacation,  to go hours away from home,  sleep on the floor of a school or church (one year the only shower they had was a hose with garbage bags around it for privacy), and work hard digging trenches, installing roofs (in 95 degree heat),  laying in the dirt under a trailer putting in underpinning to help someone they have never met before.  

It truly makes you believe that there is hope for the future.

James with his hardworking crew last  year

I can't tell you more about it because my eyes are tearing up just thinking about it but here's a quote from the ASP website.

"How can a region so rich in natural resources be so poor?  You can't build factories on mountainsides. You can't plant crops. And for more than a hundred years, large corporations have extracted natural resources while putting little back in the form of taxes or community support.  The result is that jobs are few and far between. For many of these families, their modest houses-handed down from generation to generation-are the only real possession they have. But houses need maintenance. And when you don't even have money to put shoes on your kids' feet, fixing a hole in the roof is a low priority.  As a result, the homes are crumbling. Walls buckle. Roofs leak. And sagging floors pose hazards to the elderly and the very young.  Into this bleak environment, ASP shines a ray of hope."

So, now you know where half my crew is and why I am cutting, weeding, taping and shipping decals, answering emails, running the household and taking care of my little guys alone this week.  
I am so proud of my guys and a little inconvenience on my part is so small compared to the HUGE amount of good they are doing in WV!

Master Bath Remodel Sneak Peek

I am back in the studio today! 

Notice I said "I am" not "we are"? 

More on that later in the week...

I have so many things to share with you! 

Like where a certain family member has been for weeks 

and why we went to Florida in the first place

and where half of my guys are now 

and some new designs that aren't quite ready to list...

and of course, our progress (the little that there is) on our master bath remodel. 

Since I am up to my ears in orders (thanks to our wonderful customers who place orders even when I am relaxing on the beach, love you!!) and have more than 100 emails to answer (seriously more than 100!!) I can't get into all that right now but I will give you a sneak peek at what going on with the remodel.  I am hoping to get this project done this week (stop laughing, I'm serious!) and will post more about it later!

Whatcha think?  Can you even take that color!!??  I am SO digging it!