Vacation Memories

My mom recently turned 60. We celebrated her birthday where we always do, Rehoboth Beach, DE. The Corrigans have been visiting Rehoboth for over 30 years, so it was the perfect place to celebrate such an important birthday!

Since I am in the business of supplying people with meaningful gifts, I could not let my mom's birthday pass without the creation of a Bellflower Book! I decided to put together a collaborative book of vacation memories from Rehoboth over the years. I contacted all of the friends and family who visited us there and received a great response. In addition to the pages the contributors created, my sister and I created many wonderful pages full of our own favorite memories, photographs and traditions.

The Bellflower Book I created ended up being a gift not just for my mom, but for the whole family. I can't wait for my children to read it so they can relate to the traditions we are now doing with them. One of my friends liked the idea behind this book so much she immediately started one for her own mom honoring their family traditions in Harbor Springs, MI.

Now that I am a parent myself I see how much work goes into family vacations. Until around five years ago I think I thought the cottage magically cleaned itself and that my mom actually enjoyed grocery shopping and making dinner. I now know how much work goes into making a family vacation special. I am so happy I could create a book for my mom honoring everything she has done over the last thirty years to make our family vacations happen!

A Little More About Us

Let's just say we're not your typical CEOs...

There are just two gals behind Bellflower Books- Kerry (Corrigan) Wellstein and Heather (Waring) Smith. We became friends at age 3 and business partners at age 6. It's pretty crazy to think that we're already celebrating our 25th anniversary as business partners and we're only in our early 30's...

We dabbled in a bunch of small creative businesses growing up such as our annual summer carnival, the monthly publication we called "Kid's News," the year we ran a summer camp, and our participation in numerous craft fairs. But, we're ready to try something new and we think we're on to something this time.

We created www.BellflowerBooks.com after wracking our brains to find meaningful, personal gifts for events such as Kerry's Father's Retirement or Heather's Mother's 50th birthday. We both remembered one particular gift we had been given during important times in our lives- a collection of letters and photos from our closest friends and family members, gathered in a box or album. It was one of the most meaningful gifts we had ever been given. We realized it would make a perfect retirement and 50th birthday gift.

As we created the gifts for our parents, we figured out that this gift required a LOT of time and effort - mailing out letters to participants, postage expenses, the effort required for participants to write and submit letters via “snail mail,” and the process of collecting all the letters in a book or album.

We've created www.BellflowerBooks.com as a solution to creating this truly meaningful gift. Whatever your occasion, Bellflowerbooks.com automates the logistics involved with the creation of this collaborative gift, and the end result is a beautiful, professionally bound book which recipients can keep and proudly display.

In the end, this is more than just another business to us. It's a fun way for us to help others spread joy and give back. But, then again, it's also a great excuse to get together and celebrate our 25 years as business partners over a glass of wine (or two...).