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Happy Monday, y'all! Between going live on Instagram for the first time, losing a duck to a bobcat, and watching Lacey plan her hunting dog empire, it's been quite a week. Here's what's been happening on the farm and in our world.

This past week in a minute:

I did my first Instagram Live! I setup in my partially completed studio and painted for about 30 minutes as a trial run, just sharing the process and seeing how it felt. My husband popped on toward the middle, and so many of y'all had questions about business, book publishing, self-publishing, and art supplies.

Jordan runs a lot of the business operations while I create and dream. We'd both fail miserably without each other, which is probably why it works so well.

What else are y'all interested in learning about? I'm planning to do more of these and share some behind-the-scenes of my art process. But it sounds like you also want to learn more about starting or growing your own creative business? Let me know what would be most helpful.

On the farm 🐈️ 🦆 The bobcat is back, y'all! And it's continued to show a strong preference for ducks. One of our first runner ducks went missing the other afternoon. We checked the cameras and... sure enough. We're so sad to see her go. 🥹 🥹 🥹 

Now we're upping our defense system and retraining the guardian dogs on protecting the birds better. To be fair, they've been super busy protecting Isla, our 5-month-old, so the ducks may have gotten a little less attention than usual. Maybe we need to get two more dogs??? (Jordan, don't read this. 😬 )

In happier news, Kitty is officially part of the family and fully accepted by her adopted puppy sisters.

She even went on a walk with us the other evening. It was such a sweet time watching her prance around behind us through the woods, climbing up trees and coming back down. We never dreamed in a million years we'd be "cat-walking people," but life has a funny way of surprising you. The girls are all for it, and honestly? So are we.

Lacey the businesswoman

Oh mercy, what have we started now?

Lacey has decided that after reading and watching "Where The Red Fern Grows," she wants some of her own moneymaking dogs. Specifically, red-blooded raccoon hunting dogs.

You should see the fire and drive in her eyes. She's picking up odd jobs left and right around the property and within our businesses. We're messaging breeders on Facebook Marketplace, doing all the research together.

I can see it now: my sweet 9-year-old baby running through the forests of Texas, trailing her two loyal hounds, hatchet in hand. Honestly, this is who I picture every time we talk about it...

Who's gonna tell her that coon hounds and Great Pyrenees are probably not gonna be the best of friends? (Not us. Not right now.)

Fundraising efforts are officially underway. We'll keep you updated. Jordan just had to say yes to putting up signs across our property for her local "Kickstarter campaign." Hopefully the guests think it's cute.

Our parents on both sides think we've completely lost it. They ask questions like, "Are you serious about letting her do this?" and "Do you think she actually knows what coon hunting entails?"

We pull them aside and tell them, "Yes, we understand exactly what she's doing." We're so happy to feed her curiosity and her drive without crushing her dreams right out of the gate. She got a little discouraged about it the other night, so Jordan pulled up a list of crazy and silly businesses that made more than a million dollars. Can anyone say "pet rock" 🪨 👋 ?

We know this probably isn't feasible. We know that adding two more dogs to our chaos and actually going out hunting as a 9-year-old with them probably isn't going to happen. (Though it would make an awesome Instagram channel, let's be honest.)

But we're so on board with preserving her curiosity, her innocence in a way, and her drive. We want to help her reach her own conclusions. We want to help her dream a crazy dream about a crazy business that could later pivot into something else entirely.

We think it's so important in how we raise our children to dream with them and not immediately give them all the reasons why they can't do something. Help them struggle. Watch them overcome or pivot.

That's where the real learning happens.

Have your kids ever had wild business dreams? How did you handle it?

 — Tabitha Paige, Author/ Illustrator, Speech Therapist & Mom

Sometimes I make books & other pretty things…