wintry wonderment

We didn't mean for it to happen. But these things do, don't they?

You know how sometimes you're going about your day, minding your own business, then you trip and drop a photograph onto a customizable product which then accidentally tumbles into your shopping cart where a sudden sneeze causes you to inadvertently hit the place order button just after a meddling genie wanders by, tossing a pair of temptingly stackable promotional codes at your feet? It was kind of like that, only with fewer clumsy--and, dare I say, highly unlikely--variables.

Still, it had to be done. I'd been uploading a photograph of Maisie (shocking, I know), backing it up in our Shutterfly account, when, on a lark, I tested the scene on a large, rectangular slate. I wasn't shopping. Really, I wasn't. At least not before that interfering genie came along, dragging Dennie behind him. She promptly fell in love with the slate, as had I--it features, after all, our favorite subject (and I don't mean snow)--and the rest, as you may have guessed, is history.

No. We didn't mean for it to happen, for a moment of innocent mucking about to turn into an actual product, but we're certainly not lamenting that it did. Every time we see the smiling face of our girl against that snowy backdrop, it not only brings a smile to our own lips, it evokes the childlike bliss of the season. It's an accent that seems to have always belonged here; we just didn't know it until a series of improbable accidents landed it in our hands. Now it may be a tad on the (wet) nose, but, in light of this magical coalescence of events, I suppose you could say of that auspicious day, that Maisie's family had already been slated for a taste of wintry wonderment.