In case you missed last Monday’s Today Show, your favorite baby products have a new look thanks to the latest designer collaborations. Skip Hop has teamed up with Jonathan Adler to make diaper bags you’ll plan on recommissioning for use long after your little ones have graduated from high school, and Bugaboo met with Missoni to create adorably solid strollers (and matching bonus blankets) to inspire longer constitutionals through your local park.

And let’s not forget our own fantastic collaboration! WallCandy Arts has been working with the modern design masters at French Bull to bring you new wall decals, new ways to play with your kids, and new additions to our collection of removable wallpaper.

During the Today Show segment, one host dubbed WallCandy wall decals the “easiest and cheapest way to decorate a kid’s wall” as she finished designing a set wall with our French Bull city wall decals. We might be a bit biased, but we think she’s on to something. Decorating your child’s nursery, playroom, or bedroom should be fun and peel-and-stick simple, not to mention completely nontoxic and safe for the surfaces you spent time and money painting. The city wall stickers kit is the perfect complement to your preexisting colors, no matter how you decide to arrange baby’s very first city skyline. Once you’ve designed an initial look, feel free to reposition the whole shebang. (Of course, you might want to take a photograph first, just in case you find yourself at the end of a rearranging frenzy and wish you could go back to where you started. Hey, it happens.)

What you didn’t see during the Today Show segment is our new French Bull Cupcake Land wall decals game. Gather your family and work together to arrange over 50 repositionable wall decals and design a classic game that doubles as cheerful wall art. Use the numbered square stickers to create the game’s path from start to finish and add stars galore, adorable animal faces, clouds, flowers, fruit, hearts, rainbow shortcuts, and arrows to make the game super challenging or easy-breezy. It’s an effective way to teach younger children how to count up to 40, and you can remove and reuse each piece to start a fresh game without damaging your walls in the meantime.

Our French Bull collection doesn’t end there. Stay tuned for a host of new removable wallpaper designs in striking, extraordinary patterns to inspire your coolest, most commitment-free room designs to date. Whether you’re planning to decorate a nursery in the near future or revamp your kitchen to include kid-friendly color and style, removable wallpaper is the easiest way to transform a space from so-so to stunning in no time.

Did you watch the Today Show spot? What did you think of the latest designs by Skip Hop and Jonathan Adler, Bugaboo and Missoni, and WallCandy Arts and French Bull? Join the conversation by leaving a comment or sending us an e-mail at hello@wallcandyarts.com!

December’s end calls for positive thinking. As the holiday tunes disappear from your local radio stations, visiting family members and friends return home to their busy schedules, and your trees and wreaths transition from living room to compost heap, it’s important to do what it takes to stay healthy and happy. We find the post-holiday season especially challenging because our everyday environments go directly from decorative and warm to dull and chilly. Blech.

Still, a new year inspires new goals and brings new possibilities. It also just happens to be the best time for introducing new wall decal designs for decorating your favorite spaces new and old. January might not always measure up to December’s merry frenzy, but reflection eventually leads to invigoration and making cheerful changes to our personal spaces is still as simple as peeling and sticking. Get started with six easy-to-keep resolutions inspired by our newest wall decal designs:

Explore at least one new city. No matter where you’d like to take your first-time-ever trip, you need only make a plan to get started. While you’re dreaming of corner bistros and sidewalk shopping, build your own bustling dream destination with repositionable city wall decals (shown above) that can spike a nursery, playroom, or bathroom with instant activity. Should you decide to relocate your cityscape, these removable, reusable wall stickers won’t leave shadows or smudges on your surfaces.

Start a family game night. As the old adage says, “The family that plays together stays together.” Not that the absence of a family game night is a devastating breach between parents and kids, but it sure can’t hurt to spend a few evenings every month playing classic board games or creating your own kind of tournament with French Bull’s cupcake wall decal game. This dynamic kit contains over 50 adorable wall decals you can use to design and redesign your family’s favorite new game.

Spark your own unique brand of creativity. If traditional creative pursuits such as taking a photography course or starting a novel don’t appeal to you, find a project that speaks to your style and let go of any self-imposed limitations. Imagine what the world was like before someone decided to dabble in the art form known as balloon twisting. We’re guessing things were slightly bleaker, which is why we’ve been working on a decorative wall sticker kit to encourage extraordinary art. These removable, reusable dog balloon wall stickers are a nod to all things creative, not to mention cute, cuddly, and static-free.

Love, love, and love some more. Get a jumpstart on your Valentine’s Day décor and design a wall to remind you that love is free and exists in many forms, shapes, and colors all year long. Add removable, rearrangeable overlapping heart wall decals to your daily landscape and let the abundance of brilliant hearts influence your priorities every time you pass through the room.

Remind yourself there’s much more to come. The newest addition to our family of patented chalkboard wall decals is full of jungle flair. Add a wild chalkboard jungle to your kitchen, home office, or playroom walls and use the included colored chalk to create to-do lists, jot down your official vacation countdown, or schedule a movie night for snuggling with the kids. Should you need a little inspiration to get started on your latest creative project, try designing a line of evening wear to attract sophisticated chicks, elephants, and giraffes.

Plan your next big shindig. Once you’ve got a clear space on your schedule, nail down a day to invite those long-lost cousins, nieces, nephews, and neighbors over for celebrating a birthday or holiday. The newest design in our line of party wall decals is a tea-riffic tea party birthday wall decal kit that begs to be paired with crumpets, cupcakes, and coffee for the grownups. If it’s a Valentine’s Day hug-a-thon you’re hoping to hold, design a background with candy heart wall decals and watch them fall in love.

What are you hoping to accomplish in 2012? Got a specific design project in mind? We’d love to hear about your goals (and maybe lend a hand, if we can). Leave a comment or send an e-mail to hello@wallcandyarts.com.

Photo credit: Ian Barnard

Christmas Day is only two weeks away, but your shopping list isn’t getting any shorter. Between your kids, relatives, friends, and the lucky colleague whose name you picked from the Secret Santa bowl, there are probably still a few handfuls of folks you’d like to surprise with a little something special this year. ‘Tis the season to feel elfish, right?

Giving gets even better when it’s done without breaking your holiday budget. We’ve compiled a quick list of 10 great holiday gifts under $50, which we’ll gladly ship to any of the 48 contiguous states for free until the last day of December. When you give a gift from WallCandy® Arts, you support a small mom-owned-and-operated business that designs products proudly made in the USA with non-toxic, high quality materials that will last for years to come. So, go ahead – shrink your shopping list with universally appealing wall décor from our 10-under-$50 gift guide:

Luv Letters – $6 per letter

Help your coworker claim his cubicle with starry blue stick on letters, provide your family’s patriarch with a proud surname to display on the foyer wall, or personalize your daughter’s bedroom with peel and stick letters in a whimsical bird print.

Superstar Chalkboard – $14

Give your niece a removable, reusable chalkboard star sticker to decorate her bedroom door now (and her dorm room door later). It’s removable and reusable without damaging surfaces, so her parents and future resident advisor won’t have to worry about chips or smudges.

Mini Chalkboard Panels – $18

Redesign your beau’s office space or your son’s pretend workshop to include mini chalkboard decals he can use and reuse to manage his to-do list without damaging that cherished Mets-themed paint job.

Mini Whiteboard Panels – $18

If there’s only one way to show your child’s teacher some thoughtful holiday appreciation, it’s giving him or her a trio of peel and stick dry erase decals for the classroom, kitchen, or home office.

Watch Me Grow – $32

For your family’s littlest growers, a cheerful growth chart wall sticker provides the best way to check vertical progress daily without marking up the walls.

Design Your Own Snowman – $38

For your aunt and uncle’s family, a design-your-own-snowman kit packed with removable, repositionable winter wall decals will encourage them to spend more than a few snowless afternoons sipping hot cocoa and building snow pals indoors.

Rococo Chalkboard – $36

This regal-looking decorative chalkboard decal is gorgeous enough to fit in with your best friend’s posh living room décor and functional enough to provide your dear mother a place for working out her latest recipes.

Chalkboard Heart – $36

No kitchen is complete without a peel and stick chalkboard heart for jotting down phone messages, grocery lists, or love notes. This spacious chalkboard wall decal is the perfect place to write “I adore you” all year long.

Night Lights – $48

Surprise your dear mother with a screened-in porch decked out in glow in the dark wall decals that emit just the right amount of moonlight without electricity or recharging. Each peel and stick strand is removable and reusable, so she can easily transfer her design to the guest bedroom in case visiting grandkids need a little nighttime light.

My Sunshine – $48

Know a nursery or playroom in need of some warmth? This all-in-one sunshine kit comes with a brilliant sun wall decal and the celestial accessories to keep blossoming babies always looking on the bright side.

Need your gifts by Christmas Day? Order with ground shipping by Dec. 16, or with expedited shipping by Dec. 20. We can’t guarantee that orders placed after those dates will arrive in time.

Happy holidays!

Today marks the official beginning of autumn, which happens to be the official season for nature’s best blushing bounty, the apples.

In a previous post, we tooted our metaphorical horn in favor of the apple’s steadfast position as one of the healthiest, fiber-filled fruits around (and our apple chalkboard wall decal‘s usefulness when organizing a few of the apple-inspired items on your family’s autumn agenda). Everyone knows that what matters is truly on the inside – especially when it’s fiber and vitamins wrapped in juicy sweetness – but we’re also impressed by the apple’s shape as a classic style icon.

In New York City, the apple’s voluptuousness has provided many painters and sculptors with the space necessary to capture various artistic perspectives of city culture. Jewelry designers, both burgeoning and bigwig, know that apple pendants can either hold boatloads of rhinestones or shine with minimalistic glory as curvy, three-dimensional beauties in static sterling silver or gold. Even certain rappers-turned-fashionaires know that, of all the shapes a gal could want her jeans to create, the apple is one of the most agreeable.

And then there’s our new line of removable, reusable peel and stick wallpaper, which begins with three apple designs in subtle-but-sophisticated colors. To add a touch of fruitful autumn style to any room, be it a child’s playroom or your very own dream kitchen, simply cover one wall with peel and stick wallpaper and create a focal point you’ll enjoy long after the apple orchards are closed up for winter. For a few room-specific ideas, read on.

Cover the blank wall space between your cabinets and the kitchen counter with peel and stick wallpaper patterned with green Granny Smiths set in serene blue. Don’t worry about working around the toaster’s designated electrical socket – simply cover it, mark the area with a pencil, peel away, and trim a precise hole allowing the socket to peek through. Re-stick the reusable wallpaper and smooth with your hand to finish the job. Use any leftover wallpaper to line pantry shelves, turn a narrow connector wall into an apple-tastic accent wall, or provide an adorable background behind the photo collage on the fridge.

Teachers, pediatricians, and farm stand owners, give your home office a dose of effortless flair and design an accent wall decorated with peel and stick wallpaper covered in classic red apples. Whether you’re revamping a tiny professional’s nook or a spacious office-slash-guestroom, you won’t need to spend time slathering on the glue or primer to get the job done. Simply peel, stick, and use the included squeegee tool to smooth each wallpaper sheet. Should you make a mistake, it’s no biggie – just peel away and re-stick once you’ve scouted a better spot.

For a tasteful child’s bedroom decoration, add a peel and stick wallpaper headboard on the wall perpendicular to the bed. Use scissors to create the perfect square or scalloped shape, then stick and re-stick until you’ve designed a perfectly posh bed. If your child has already inherited Grandma’s Chippendale headboard, snip the removable, reusable wallpaper into wide bands and add them to a plain wall in a recurring sequence of stylish stripes. Line bookshelves or bureau drawers with any leftovers.

Got your own peel and stick wallpaper design idea? Tell us about it! Leave a comment or send an e-mail to hello@wallcandyarts.com.

Frames are truly among our favorite removable, reusable wall decals because of their decorative versatility. They can be captioned and recaptioned with a dry-erase marker, and just like the Polaroid camera resting quietly among the dustbunnies in your attic, they make any image look coolly vintage.

As kids armed with our own Polaroid cameras, we loved dabbling in landscape photography. While portrait shots of our parents, grandparents, and childhood doggies needed time to appreciate in aesthetic value, photographs of backyard sunsets and mountaintop views from Girl Scout campgrounds were always instantly amazing. Those Polaroid-captured lookouts got us thinking about the places we’ve been and how each destination could potentially inspire us as we were deciding how to decorate a nursery. Any of the following five decorative destination ideas could be pulled together with a few carefully chosen snapshots displayed on the wall in Polaroid style, but we’ll let you use your imagination:

1. Nashville, Tennessee

You won’t need to fly all the way to Music City to find a few country-inspired items for decorating a nursery. Paint the room in shades of moody blue, pose your guitar in the corner near a cozy rocking chair, and add a framed poster of the Parthenon shot during a semi-rare winter blizzard. If you’ve got time to do some hunting, you could easily add a row of baby-themed country records on one wall. Give yourself a big country kiss if you can find “Baby’s Got Her Blue Jeans On” by Conway Twitty, “Baby Let’s Play House” by Elvis Presley, or “Baby on Board” by The Oak Ridge Boys.

2. London, England

Start with a search for crib bedding and textiles in just the right shade of Tower Bridge blue and top with throw pillows printed with the Union Jack or graphic renditions of famous London landmarks. Add touches of Royal Botanic Gardens with clusters of colorful flower wall stickers near the baseboards or on the wall behind the changing table. Pull the nursery’s theme together by using removable and reusable wallpaper in a London bus print to create an accent wall that doubles as an ode to the oh-so-stylish Brits.

3. New York, New York

Anyone who declares the city to be no place for babies has never fallen asleep to the soothing din of muffled afternoon traffic. If you can paint squares and straight lines, start your city chic nursery with a handpainted black-and-white-checkered skyline. Design your own rush hour motif with peel-and-stick car wall decals that could potentially highlight a crib repainted in taxicab yellow. Complete the look with a removable, reusable apple chalkboard wall decal for displaying a few lines of “Mannahatta,” Walt Whitman’s plush poem about New York City.

4. Eugene, Oregon

If your idea of serene is lined with tall trees, keep Eugene in mind as you prepare the nursery for its peaceful little inhabitant. Choose nursery furniture made with natural wood, and cushy textiles in leafy greens and chestnut browns. Continue building your forest room with a reusable tree wall sticker you can arrange and rearrange to resemble a sweet spring sapling. If you’d like to add some adorably watchful nighttime critters to your baby’s abode, try a few owl wall decals in a kit that happens to also contain a silvery shade tree and matching night sky.

5. Corea, Maine

Spend one afternoon in a maritime museum and you’ll likely emerge an expert on how to decorate a nursery in a nautical theme. Begin by designing a focal wall covered with peel and stick wallpaper in blue and cream stripes. Use the leftover wallpaper to line bookshelves where jars of sea glass can share space with a few decoratively displayed books, such as Lois Lenski’s The Little Sailboat, or Jerry Pallotta’s The Boat Alphabet Book. Add lamps that cast a seaside sunset glow, then create spaces for snuggling with schools of stuffed fish, lobsters, and mermaids.

What’s your destination inspiration? Leave a comment and share your own favorite places and nursery decorating ideas.

We definitely need some sod for the living room. (Photo credit: Ryan L. Hyde)

This week, it’s supposed to reach the 60-degree mark on the official New York City thermometer. Lately, I’ve been wondering about that thermometer. I’m not sure where it’s kept, what it looks like (cartoonish oversized novelty thermometer, or electronic wonder small enough to fit inside a button?), or who’s in charge of checking it, but I hope he or she is strict and diligent in limiting viewing access. This winter is passing through at a frozen-molasses pace, so it worries me to think that someone has been staring at the official thermometer often enough to cause watched-pot-never-boiling conditions.

Because I just can’t wait to stash my woolly socks away for a short season, I’ve decided to take on a summer-invoking decorating project the way a kid left to call all the interior design shots might hang up the holiday lights the day after Halloween – with gusto! March is always a low-budget affair, but there’s usually a welcome delay in any financial pinch I feel while sprucing up for the warmer months. I suppose throws, insulating curtains, and thicker materials are easily more expensive than vintage mirrors, potted African violets, and pillows fit for a warm afternoon’s nap.

If you’re interested in starting your own relatively inexpensive early indoor summer, start with these five tips for an easy seasonal shift:

1. Consider the sun. As you switch accessories and adjust your color scheme, choose fabrics and hues that look best in bright, cheery light. Mirrors – especially the kitschy vintage kind – are classic sunshine reflectors, so why not hunt ‘em down and hang ‘em up?

2. Berries are best. Replace forest greens with grape, beiges with golden raisin, and reds with raspberry. Color is king from May until December – go ahead, crown your space early this year. After all that snow shoveling we did, we totally deserve a sweet color makeover.

3. Pick summer shapes. The iconic soft-serve snack inspired WallCandy’s new ice cream cone chalkboard wall decal. It’s taller than Lilly, our resident product tester and Allison’s adorable 6-year-old, so there’s plenty of space for a Saturday sundae bar menu, potential summer road trip routes, or a countdown to the school year’s official end.

4. Move flourishing greenhouse perennials to the living room. I love a few good cacti because they love a humid day, they live to be forgotten, and the cat stays far away from all tipping points. If you’d rather keep your plant life to a minimum, try enhancing your indoor creepers by adding a kit of gracefully lush flower garden wall stickers as a baseboard accent.

5. Decorate to remind your kids that winter is on its way out. Nothing’s more contagious than childhood spring fever, so adding a row of festive flowers wall decals or a mighty sun wall decal to your child’s favorite environment is sure to inspire more than a few infectious good moods.

Share your summer decorating tips – we’d love to know how you shed the winter blechs and prepare for longer, sunnier days perfect for sipping iced tea and watching the bubbles float on the breeze.

I recently had the pleasure of accidentally attending an Owl Education Workshop, which just happened to be going on at the same random time I picked to go our town’s hiking trails. These birds are magnificent! They can twist their necks around almost 360 degrees without any need for a chiropractor — and it seems like their piercing yellow eyes are better than any of those night vision goggles you can get at the mall.

Unfortunately, owls make poor domestic pets because I assume their talons aren’t very upholstery-friendly.

So you might imagine my excitement when I found out that WallCandy was not only introducing an owl wall decal, but an entire forest for him or her (it looks like a “him” to me) to roam free. When I go hiking, I never see any woodland creatures beyond chipmunks and squirrels, so having this new option to be surrounded by rabbits, raccoons and owls is quite appealing.

The new Forest Animal Wall Decals officially come with one owl, four bunnies and four squirrels — but candidly, I see the blue squirrels as raccoons. You also get four whimsical trees, six mushrooms, six grass patches and a bunch of leaves and acorns to remind you of the pending fall yard cleanups!

The scattered acorns remind me of a fruitless exercise I tried with my son a few years ago. My yard is annually besieged by pine cones and I offered him five cents for every one he picked up and tossed in the barrel. I figure it was a great lesson about being ambitious and showing how much hard work pays off — the harder you work, the more you benefit. But his progress was so slow that it was me who learned the lesson: I have a few more years before I can depend on free child labor in the yard!

Anyhow, the best thing about removable wall sticker acorns and leaves is that they never multiply… Check out the whole forest collection for your child’s nursery or playroom — and perhaps you also might want to add a happy deer or two in your own little idyllic woods.

We all know so-called “helicopter parents,” those overprotective moms and dads who hover over their children on playgrounds like they are Secret Service agents. And who are afraid to let their kids make mistakes on even the most rudimentary levels.

According to the New York Times, helicopter parents are now hovering over college campuses, too — some refusing to leave the dorms!

The Times reports that college administrators now have to formally include messages to “hit the road” in orientation programs to parents who insist on setting up their children’s dorm rooms as if they are still playing with Barbies and Mr. Potato Heads.

“In order to separate doting parents from their freshman sons, Morehouse College in Atlanta has instituted a formal “Parting Ceremony.”

It began on a recent evening, with speeches in the Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel. Then the incoming freshmen marched through the gates of the campus — which swung shut, literally leaving the parents outside.

When University of Minnesota freshmen move in at the end of this month, parental separation will be a little sneakier: mothers and fathers will be invited to a reception elsewhere so students can meet their roommates and negotiate dorm room space — without adult meddling.”

Smothering your kids’ independence in college, which is supposed to represent the first real steps into adulthood, is obviously counterproductive.  But as a sentimental parent, I do think that this is not a black and white issue. I have played the role of bodyguard on many playgrounds over the years because the reality is that toddlers don’t need to learn the harsh lessons of life by getting stepped on and crushed.

Any parent who goes to the playground can attest that older kids have absolutely no regard for the fingers and toes of younger children. Sometimes I see teenagers playing on the slide and swings and making things very unpleasant for the kiddies meant to be there.

If or when I am ever confronted with the unpleasant issue of bullying, I guarantee I will not sit idly by if the school officials look the other way. We all want to protect our kids and it is tough to let go at every mini-stage of independence.  But overall, I side with Lenore Skenazy, the leader of the Free-Range Kids movement.

Skenazy maintains that kids don’t need a helmet and elbow pads when they are climbing in the backyard treehouse. And she urges us to drop the fear that every kid who rides his or her bike to the local grocery store will get kidnapped.  Check out some of the irreverent lecture topics she offers for her speaking engagements:

Playdates & Axe Murderers: How to Tell the Difference

Who’s Crazy: People Who Trust the World or Those Who Assume the Worst?

How Come We’re So Much More Afraid Than Our Parents Were?

Raising a Sad, Worried Wimp (How Not To)

No matter where you stand on the helicopter parent issue, here’s the great news…. WallCandy’s amazing removable wall decals come in creative themes and styles appropriate for both the nursery and the college dorm.

Just one piece of advice, though. Please let your college students peel and stick the decals themselves. These decorations are phenomenal for building up hand-eye coordination and self-confidence!

OK, so the zillion-gallons-a-day oil spill is bumming you out?

Or maybe you’re a little melancholy because most of your favorite TV shows are in reruns?

WallCandy Arts has the perfect thing to cheer you up: SUNSHINE!

Hey, I don’t know about you, but I when I was real estate shopping for my current house, “natural light” was one of my top criteria. There’s something about the sun — both the real version and the children’s art incarnations — that instantly makes us smile.

Check out the latest removable wall decal design called “My Sunshine!”

It’s called MY Sunshine because you or child takes ownership over where the vibrant rays will shine. The fuschia, red and yellow sun (wasn’t Superman born under a different color sun?) will instantly infuse optimism into your child’s bedroom.

The removable, reposable, remarkable sun — along with the blue cloud accessories — would make a splendid addition to any wall decal mural. I especially think “My Sunshine” is a perfect complement for WallCandy’s Season Tree (a gorgeous blooming tree teeming with birds and butterflies), the vibrant Blossoms collection, and Deerly Beloved, frolicking woodland creatures so cute you just want to pinch them!

Hey, without sunshine there can be no photosynthesis.  I remember a first grade science experiment where we took one beansprout plant and put it on the windowsill and another beansprout and put it in a dark closet. Both seedlings were given equal amounts of water and love.

Not surprisingly, the closet-imprisoned beansprout grew up sad and lonely. The sunshine-infused plant had tons of self-esteem.

Brighten up your child’s room with “My Sunshine” and please share pictures of your murals with us — especially if you incorporate the sun with other designs. We LOVE to showcase our customers’ creativity in our Inspiration Album!

(Tune in here for news on the official “My Sunshine” release date or sign up for our free newsletter.)

The latest issue of Parents Magazine (March 2010) praises the style and science behind Smarts Bees & Trees

Q: What’s Black and White and Red all over?
A: A sunburned penguin.

Q: What’s Black and White and Red all over?
A: A newspaper covered with spilled strawberry syrup.

If you are decorating your first baby’s room, you likely have been spared from the onslaught of mundane jokes and riddles you’ll find on Popsicle sticks, cheese stick wrappers and Dixie cups. But rest assured, your time is coming.

In the meantime, black and white patterns should be especially relevant to you when you think about how to adorn the walls for your precious bundle.

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, a newborn’s vision is most attracted to high-contrasted patterns such as checkerboards, bull’s eyes and stripes. And color recognition really doesn’t kick in until about four months.

With pediatrician and ophthalmologist guidelines in mind, we designed the adorable Smarts Bees & Trees collection ideal for both girl and boy babies.  Bees are especially appropriate since it was the birds and the bees that got you in this situation in the first place!

Our removable Smarts decal set includes more than 30 inches of checkerboard, seven small bees, two large bees and six wall sticker photo frames.

We’re flattered to have the Smarts Bees & Trees decorations be endorsed in the latest issue of Parents Magazine (March 2010).  And as the magazine notes, our Bees & Trees can be enhanced with a splash of color at age four months (when your baby will appreciate it the most) and with photos of your family in our snazzy removable frames.

We’d love to see pictures of how you’ve incorporated WallCandy Arts into your children’s world. Become part of our Customer Inspiration Gallery!

(But please don’t send us any riddles.  Right now, WallCandy Dad is already feeling a bit overwhelmed).