for the kids.

{TL;DR version of today’s blogpost? We launched an awesome new project on kickstarter for kids.  You can check it out here.}

Several years ago, my husband came home from work and told me that he needed to start looking for a new job.

I looked at him and asked why.  We had three babies and a little starter home we’d bought just over two years before; moving wasn’t exactly on my wish list.  He told me that he saw changes coming and thought if he didn’t start looking now that we’d wish he had.

So we started looking for a new job.  You know, preemptively.

This was in the middle of 2008.  Remember what happened that year??

Yeah.

We’d been to a good college, Craig did an internship, graduated at the top of his class with a degree in Engineering, left school with 4 job offers, and still it took months to find a new job.

But eventually the job came and we moved our little family down to Arizona.  Not a month after we left, his old company laid-off a significant percentage of their employees.

I’ve never felt more relieved, grateful and also, so vulnerable.

That could have so easily been us.

Fast forward 2.5 years.  Craig did an MBA, had a great job, and yet I still had that nagging feeling of being vulnerable.  And then one day, I decided to try something.  I’d been getting lots and lots of requests from blog readers to start selling my designs online, so I thought, “hey, why not?”  I posted a few pieces on Etsy, made a small announcement on my blog/facebook page and just waited to see what would happen.  Everything I posted sold out in a few hours.

It’s was such an ah-ha moment for me, I can’t even begin to describe it.

So we started a business, and it grew and evolved and took us places we (mostly me) never would have imagined before.

But you know the very best part about running that business? (besides meeting all you lovely ladies.)

I felt empowered.

That nagging little vulnerability I’d had ever since the economy crashed and I realized that even if you follow all the “rules,” (college, job, savings, house) it doesn’t mean you’re going to be necessarily secure.

Being able to earn extra income for our family to the extent of our hard work and creativity made me feel like I could pretty much take on whatever the world threw at me/us.

One thing that Craig and I would say over and over through the whole process of starting our business was how much we wished we had known/understood these things when we were much younger.

Naturally, this made us think about our kids.

Because that’s what it’s like when you’re a parent, isn’t it?  You learn from your experiences and you want to teach your kids everything you can to give them that much more of an advantage when they go out on their own.  We wanted them to be equipped with the tools they would need to thrive in any economical climate when they are grown.

And we think the best way to do that is by instilling them with an entrepreneurial spirit, where they see opportunities everywhere they look; where they know how to both make and manage money.

But it turns out teaching basic entrepreneurial principles to children isn’t as simple as you’d think.  We looked for tools, or ideas and came up short.

So we got to work.

We knew we wanted to teach them three fundamental ideas: delayed gratification, resource management, and actively investing in something that grows over time (paying you back again and again.)

We believe in the power of creative play.   Friedrich Fröbel, wrote that, “play is the highest development in childhood… children’s play is not mere sport. It is full of meaning and import.”

We believe that one of the best ways to teach children is through play when their minds are at rest and learning happens in an organic way.

So we knew we wanted to teach these ideas for cultivating success through play as well.

And that’s where the idea for Rabbit Patch was born.

Rabbit Patch is a card game we designed to teach children basic principles of entrepreneurship in a fun and creative way.

We launched the game on kickstarter today.

I’d love for you to check out the project and share it with your family and friends.

Thank you all for always supporting me and my family so profoundly!

xo,

Cori