About Us - Our Story
Hi there Sweet Friends! ♥
My name is Charlie Girl! We live in Idaho, I married the cowboy of my dreams, Mr. PillowPanels, and we are raising 3 cute little cowboys! We live on a farm in a darling little farmhouse! We worked together in the insurance industry for many years until one day...
Our little farmhouse brought all sorts of adventures. It's where my babies were born and are currently raised... those babies grew and grew and got bigger things. Well now, those bigger things didn't exactly fit in our little shed out back where I stored the Christmas tree and all my girlie decor things that I reorganized and got all excited about a new season coming up.
It was time to do the decor shuffle again and the hubs said that we needed to make room for these growing boys. As I went out to that little shed to see what I could part with... I found NINE totes of holiday pillows.....Whoa....what??
I remember holding up my favorite Halloween pillow I had gotten in college and talking to it "I wish I could just turn you into a Christmas pillow instead of having to get rid of you... sniffle, sniffle!" LIGHTBULB MOMENT.
It just so happened that my job was ending and we were discussing what I could do next to help. There was no way anyone would like a pillow that turned into 30 others without having to pillow covers anywhere else. I just knew other people didn't like pillows as much as I did...lol..
I had a good friend say " oh c'mon, those are cute...go to a craft show..." but I was too embarrassed to tell people I had NINE totes of pillows or what if they thought it was a dumb idea... what if they didn't like it... after all, we couldn't find anything else like it anywhere else... so it had to be dumb... right? I finally got the courage to do a craft show and made that friend come with me....LOL. You guys - we sold out! I was sooo wrong. What I found was an amazing group of people that had my same problem! I couldn't believe it! ..and we all became friends!
We were so excited.. we cleared out the basement next! We used our dining room table for a sewing machine and I used my boys crayons and markers to design all the panels on paper first (which I still use to this day, btw!) My boys would fill up our truck with orders and daddy would take them to our tiny, little post office up to our "one gas station" town. We worked hard, long hours..but I could at least stay home with our boys this way. They enjoyed making forts with the boxes in the basement... and I only had to stop a few pillow fights.. LOL.
We weren't sure what the future would bring... but it seemed the more craft shows we attended, the more you all loved us. It was time to build a warehouse and get more help to keep up. We built the best family tribe ever (picture below). Each one of these beautiful people hold such a special place in my heart as we grow this family business. We have been to over 150 shows together now. We all work together, raise our kids together, cry and laugh together....we wouldn't have it any other way. We love our sweet customers just the same.. they are family to us. We see many of you come back time and time again and it is our happy place to serve you, listen to you, chat with you over emails and meet many of you in person!
♥ Come join us - we will treat you like family!
-Charlie Girl and the PillowPanels fam