A Tree to Call Home

So, some of you are wondering why I'm changing my business name and how I came up with this new name and logo. And I will tell you.

I felt like Laura Ann Thiessen Photography was not only bulky, but didn't quite shape what I want to do with my at-home business. I wanted a name that could cover my multitude of interests/skills including photography, sewing, pottery (potentially?), design and anything else I come across that I want to pursue in the future. Rachel Regier suggested I use the term "mixed media" instead of photography and finally I had the phrase I was looking for...now for a name.

Last Summer Katie Elias and I sold homemade goods at the farmer's market here in Winkler. We called ourselves Farrago (far-rey-go), meaning "a confused mixture", which I thought was cool and definitive, if somewhat foggy for people with very small vocabularies (truthfully, I'd never heard the word until I looked up 'diverse' in a thesaurus). However, this name wasn't working for me personally. I felt a little stunted by it. It just wasn't open enough to spark any creative imaginings for me. So I continued to look.

I was reading "The Runaway Bunny" to Luke over and over and over and over again (he gets stuck on particular books), and suddenly this childish prose seemed to hit me over the head like a bell clapper in full swing. The baby bunny says, "I am going to run away" and the mother bunny says, "Then I will follow you!", and the baby bunny proposes several different ways to get away from his mother all of which the mother has a clever answer to. The bunny finally says, "I will become a bird and fly away from you" and the mother bunny says, "Then I will become a tree that you come home to". As you can see, this phrase, while being such a beautiful spark for creativity, leaves me once again with the problem of length. So with some help and suggestions from friends I managed to maintain the image and trim the wording down to "A Tree to Call Home", which I am very pleased with.

Along with a group of my fifth-grade peers, I memorized The Runaway Bunny for an oral language competition. We didn't win any awards, but I always liked the pictures, and was very pleased when Derek bought me the book to add to my children's literature collection for my birthday several years ago. I love the quirky pictures (a rabbit-shaped topiary and a bunny in the sky with wings), and now that I have moved far from my own mother I connect with the story on a more personal level.

"Have a carrot" says mother bunny, and they do. I want to have lots more carrots with my own little bunny before he flies away, which is why business stuff is sort of moving in slow motion. It's really worth it, and in the meantime I get to develop neat ideas like this new business name, which I think feels less stiff and since it has a story (or several) behind it, invites conversation.

The logo of the tree is sort of a combination of many trees that I've been attracted to over the years. The Visalia tree, the Buttonwillow tree, a random wooden tree that I found in a thrift shop, and the elm tree in my parent's back yard that Derek and I were married under. I am very fond of these trees, and when I imagined a tree for my logo I couldn't pick just one, so I tried to work in elements of each.