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The Wahm Spot

Special Spot Review: Custom Made For Kids' Personalized Book

Custom Made For Kids' personalized book, The First Adventures of Incredible You, found its way into my family's heart this past Monday, when we sat down and read to each child their own personalized book. Written by Sarah Headrick and Sarah Rivera (the founders of Custom Made For Kids), the book's lyrical adventure incorporates your child into the story along with his/her friends, siblings, relatives, favorite places/things, events in their lives, and events that may happen in the future. I had to stop after every 2-3 sentences because my 5 year old son kept asking, "how did they know that?" and exclaiming "WOW, look, my brother's name is on the book too!" and "that is so cool!" Needless to say, my son LOVED seeing his name in a book and was very impressed that there was a book written about him!

Jill Bartolucci's illustrations are dynamic, bold and colorful, with each page as engaging as the next. My 2 1/2 year old follows the story while pointing out, "that's me with Daddy" or "that's me , when I'm bigger and I can ride a big boy bike (with no training wheels)."

The books have become our kids' own "Special Book." They've asked us to read it to them every night since we've received them! It is indeed a special book, evoking memories of those special moments, places, and trips. At the same time, it also makes you relish the present and look forward to what's ahead.

The First Adventures of Incredible You personalized book makes a fabulous gift for the holidays, especially if you're looking for something different! It's a wonderful keepsake that children will thoroughly enjoy today and cherish when they are all grown up.

Visit Custom Made For Kids at www.custommadeforkids.com

(Meet the moms behind Custom Made For Kids in their Spot Interview below! Hint: They have a special promotional offer especially for The WAHM Spot readers!)

Special Spot Interview with: Custom Made for Kids
Meet the Moms Behind Custom Made for Kids!

Who is Custom Made for Kids? Where are you located?
We are Sarah Headrick and Sarah Rivera, co-founders of Custom Made For Kids, and we make the most highly customizable personalized children's book on the market today. We are located in the western suburbs of Chicago.

How did you come up with your business name?
We wanted the name of our company to reflect the type of business we were starting (custom made kids' books) and we needed it to be a name that had an available domain name on the internet. CustomMadeForKids.com was available and we thought it was general enough to allow us to expand into products other than books in the future.

When and why did you decide to start your own business?
We started the business in the summer of 2006. By that time, all of our children were out of diapers and we were feeling like we could do something for ourselves again. We had known each other for 4 years through our playgroup and had become good friends over that time. Both of us were looking to start a work from home business that would allow us to continue to be the primary caregivers for our children but also earn some money and do something that we could be proud of and that would challenge us -- and boy, did we get that!

How did you get started?
We wrote our personalized storybook, The First Adventures of Incredible You, over a 6 week period by passing the rhyming verse back and forth between us. We kept refining it and refining it until we felt it was right. Then, we found our brilliant illustrator, Jill Dryer Bartolucci, a local Chicago artist whose art we admired and hired her on the spot! Jill delivered 1 spread per week over a 16 week period and we think her paintings are a big reason our book has been so successful. They are full of color and life and she brings a sense of humor to every page.

What motivates you to keep your business going?
The pure joy this book brings to so many families and children out there. The kids who receive the book cannot believe that someone actually wrote a book about them and that has their friends, their family members, their favorite sports team, favorite food and their favorite places mentioned throughout it. The success we are having with the book also motivates us -- the book just appeared in the Holiday Gift Guide of Pregnancy Magazine and we have just been invited to hand out our book in a Pre-Golden Globes gifting suite for celebrity parents.

Do you have a particular product that's unique, a best seller, or that you are promoting on your site?
The First Adventures of Incredible You, our first personalized children's book, is the only product on our site thus far. However, we hope to expand into additional personalized books and gifts in the near future.

How do you juggle family and work at home?
That, of course, is our biggest challenge. Fortunately, our children and husbands have been very supportive. Right now, we split our work hours 50:50 so that Sarah Rivera works Mondays, Wednesdays and half the day on Friday and Sarah Headrick works Tuesdays, Thursdays and the other half of the day on Friday. This way, we can still volunteer at our children's schools on our off-days and maintain some semblence of an organized household!

What advice would you give to moms seeking to become a WAHM?
Follow your heart and look to find something that is currently missing from a certain market or that makes peoples' lives easier. We found that there were no other high-quality personalized books out there that were highly customizable like ours so we felt confident that we could fill a hole that was in the market. Also, realize that starting a new business takes A LOT of time the first year but that things will get better and easier over time as you learn how to do them. And...find something that you believe in and that brings you joy so that those long hours away from your family are still really enjoyable ones!