The Sacramento Baby & Toddler Expo This Sunday October 24th, 2010

Come see us!

Sunday October 24th

Courtyard Marriott Cal Expo

1780 Tribute Road

Sacramento

2pm - 6pm

Photograph courtesy of Brenda Bisharat Photography

We are very excited to be showing off our fabulous designer hospital gowns in our home town! The Sacramento Baby & Toddler Expo is this Sunday October 24th and if you are expecting, hope to have children, or are interested in adoption you don't want to miss it.

The 5$ donation will benefit The Birth Connection.

This is a wonderful non-profit organization that helps women facing unplanned pregnancy offering them a safe place to prepare. The Birth Connection gives these women the resources in decision making, childbirth preparation, and/or adoption planning. To find out more about this organization that is 100% funded on contributions, check out their website.

www.thebirthconnection.org

With your entry to the Expo next Sunday you will enter a raffle with amazing prizes. Each vendor will be contributing a gift for the raffle... A.K.A... You could win a free Annie & Isabel designer hospital gown for your upcoming delivery!!! Goore's for Babies to Teens has donated a Munire nursery with a value of $1,800! There will be Baby Swag Bags to the first 100 guests.

You can pre-register for an extra chance to win the raffle below!

http://www.sacbabyexpo.com/

Natalee who has put this wonderful event together with Selena showing off our Susan Gown

Here are some lovely pictures of beautiful Mom's in their Annie & Isabel

gowns the day they met their babies! Don't you think you deserve a beautiful gown on one of THE most important days of you life?

Stephanie, Mom of 2, wore the Anita gown as she welcomed her son into this world. She wore the standard hospital gown with the birth of her daughter and LOVED having her OWN gown the second time around. You can read her testimonial here.

Sara debuting our latest gown, The Susan Gown, as she welcomes

her second son in beautiful Hawaii.

Amy was the lucky recipient of her Annie Gown before the birth of her beautiful daughter Mio.

You can read about her experience here.

As many of you know... we LOVE our family photographer Brenda Bisharat. She loves to photograph births in the greater Sacramento area. Here are some photographs she has shared with us of the beautiful mom's she's photographed in Annie & Isabel gowns.

Looking forward to seeing you at the Sacramento Baby & Toddler Expo this Sunday!!!

The Story of Alexxa, A Breast Cancer Survivor!!

When we dreamed up Annie & Isabel, we had hopes of providing comfort and dignity to those that are sick and dealing with difficult diagnoses. We have felt honored to be invited into the lives and stories of so many inspirational people. Even though we deal with sickness every day in the hospital, we find comfort in coming home to our beautiful families and appreciate the health of our family and friends. As we all know, cancer does not discriminate. It affects the young and old, men and women, and children of all ages. With all that we know and see, it is still so easy to believe that cancer will never come into our safe little neighborhood. So when we found out that our friend, Alexxa, was diagnosed with breast cancer we were stunned.

Alexxa and her family often sit in front of us at church on Sundays. Our cars pass each other as we drop off our kids at school. Alexxa is part of our "safe" world. Her diagnosis made us uncomfortable with the realization that this could happen to any of us.

A close friend and breast cancer survivor purchased The Elizabeth gown for Alexxa as she embarked on her hospital journey. Here is what Alexxa had to say about wearing her designer hospital gown:

"I am a proud mommy to three girls, ages 9, 7 and 4....so naturally, we have a lot of pink around the house. I did not realize how much the color "pink" would impact my life until this past June, when I was diagnosed with breast cancer. From date of diagnosis to surgery was 13 days! Before I underwent a double mastectomy a dear friend, and fellow breast cancer survivor, gave me one of Annie & Isabel's hospital gowns...The Elizabeth, which was fitting in honor of their Grandmother and her battle with breast cancer. I cannot tell you how much hope and faith this gown brought me, on a day otherwise to be considered frightening. My mother told me I was barely out of surgery, still quite groggy from the medications, and I had her help me change out of the standard issue hospital gown into my beautiful Elizabeth Gown for the remainder of my stay.

I am proud to say that I am cancer free today. I am still in the midst of chemo-therapy with radiation on the horizon (which my Elizabeth Gown will accompany me to as well). All of this preventative treatment will give me the best possible odds to rid this horrible disease of ever impacting my life again.

As a side note, Anna is a close friend to our family, her love and support...and checking in on me, is a bonus I am fortunate to receive."

If you want to learn more about Alexxa's inspiring story you can follow her on her blog at www.alexxafaithorfear.blogspot.com

In October... We Remember Our Grandmother Elizabeth

October is breast cancer awareness month. As many of you know, we have named all of our hospital gowns after very special and influential women in our lives. Our Elizabeth gown is named after our paternal Grandmother Elizabeth. She was strong, brave, and resiliant during her battle with breast cancer. She was a fighter and refused to ever stop planning for her future. She was also very stylish throughout her life and she would have loved to have had her very own designer hospital gown. She was a beautiful woman inside and out.

Here she is stunning as always...

We wanted to have a gown in honor of breast cancer that will make the women who wear it feel beautiful during such times that can challenge femininity. We both teared up when one of the first women to wear our Elizabeth gown wrote to us and said she actually felt beautiful on the day she had her mastectomy. We can't imagine the fear one might feel on the day you lose your breasts. To think she felt this way validates every reason we started Annie & Isabel. We know that our Elizabeth gown will give women battling breast cancer back their dignity and style on their journey to becoming a survivor.

Since we are a fairly new company, we have not announced who we are donating a portion of our proceeds from our Elizabeth gown to yet. We will be doing another post about this! We have a small sum of proceeds to donate and hope some day that it will be a large sum. We need everyone to spread the word about our company and suggest our gowns to anyone trying to help someone fight this battle. Every dollar counts in helping find a cure and we hope to donate many dollars with the help of you. We all can make a difference together by helping a special woman feel beautiful and find a cure. We have even had two beautiful young moms wear our Elizabeth gown for the birth of their daughters in honor of their mothers... both breast cancer survivors! How great is that?!

During October, we will be featuring two inspiring women who are wearing the Elizabeth gown for surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation treatments. We share these stories in hopes that it gives strength and hope to other women and men fighting this disease and to inspire people to rally and become involved in finding a cure for breast cancer. If you have worn one of our gowns for breast cancer we would love to share your story too.

Let us find THE cure.

Becky Gives Birth In The Isabel Designer Hospital Gown

When we saw the maternity session on Brenda Bisharat's blog of this beautiful family... we were SO curious as to what Becky was going to have! As most of you know, between the two of us sisters, we have 6 boys! Actually, our parents have 8 grandsons because our brother John has 2 boys too! Every one of our pregnancies our Mom went out and bought a dress... well, now there is a closet full of girl clothes and we almost have a baseball team!!! Not to offend anyone, but when people are having their second baby... and of course they are having a boy after a girl.. or visa versa.. we can't stand when they say.. we have "one of each.. now we're done!" We both wanted big families.. so, really the sex of the baby didn't matter.. But, that takes us back to Becky... we were so curious when we saw her maternity session

with Brenda Bisharat that we were stunned to find out she and her husband weren't finding out the sex of the baby!!! How could she have such willpower???

We LOVE these maternity pictures and Becky and Brenda were so gracious to share them with us for our website. Her boys are so adorable.. and they have no idea what is in store for them...

A baby SISTER!!!!

Brenda Bisharat, voted Sacramento's #1 KCRA A list photographer, loves to photograph births. We were both fortunate to have her at the births of our last two boys. Brenda gifts one of our Annie & Isabel designer hospital gowns to her moms-to-be, making our gown a beautiful background to her amazing photographs.

Here is what Becky said about wearing our Isabel designer hospital gown,

"I love, love, loved wearing my SPECIAL gown. I received so many compliments from the hospital staff and visitors. Being a nurse myself, it made me feel so refreshed in a beautiful gown, and not a grungy old hospital gown that had been used a thousand times! When SHE came out it was a definite surprise and a wonderful moment wearing my Annie & Isabel gown holding my precious little GIRL! 11 weeks later I still look at her in shock that she is MINE."

Congratulations Becky! Thank you for sharing your wonderful birth story with us.

The Gift of a Designer Hospital Gown

We were really touched by a group of women rallying around a dear friend just diagnosed with cancer. She is going to have to spend time in the hospital for treatment and they bought her THREE gowns to help her feel more comfortable during such an often un-comfortable time. When we started Annie & Isabel... this was exactly our vision... Here is what the giver of this thoughtful gift wrote to us,

"As you know, it just sucks to be in the hospital, to have cancer, the whole thing just sucks. This gives us a way to feel like there is something we can do for her, since we can't do what we really want to do, which is make the cancer go away. Thanks again Selena and Anna, for helping patients, and for giving those of us who care about them a way to help".

In honor of October Breast Cancer Awareness Month... We will have some great upcoming posts... Stay tuned!