Motherhood, Motivation, and Making It Work

Aaniin Boozhoo!

Yeah, I know - I really need to get at least a lil better with keeping up with my blog but maybe it's just for sharing the extra special things. (No actually, I do want to start keeping up with the blog.)

For those who don't know me, my birthday is today. I was born at 5:05pm back in May of '99 and was slightly undercooked at about 34 weeks if I remember correctly. So that means that now, I'm officially 27 which is starting to sound like a real adult age or something.

This over-sized Lil Boss was once a small baby, almost a decade ago. Recents are from late 2025 and baby pic is 2016.

Though I guess it makes sense that I've been a real adult. It's been almost 10 full years - an actual decade, of me being the very proud mom of Arya "Odemin," or Lil Boss Odemin. She’ll be 10 next month, and even though I’m obviously not actually old, I still feel old! Thinking about it feels both daunting and awesome - no matter how much time passes, she blows my mind everyday with her wit, her humour, and her vibrance. I can’t even see the similarities between myself now and my 17-year-old self anymore, she was technically already a mom too (Arya was still cooking) but still a completely different person compared to how I am now at 27. For real though, the transition from 17 to 27 feels like jumping planets to me now.

My birthday selfie, here's to 27.

Being 27 is super cool so far, I guess, but being 26 was pretty great too. It was crazy hard in lots of ways, and actually kind of annoying at times since adult problems suck. But this past year yielded great rewards, awesome opportunities, and was a major new turning point for Odemin's Creeations so it balanced out the right way. We just did a lot of stuff, I can't even think to write about them all but I'll share our key highlights.

First we started off May 2025 after my last birthday with our annual beading workshop with NOSM students - future doctors! I teach them beading most years when they come to stay in our community for a few weeks so it's always a fun opportunity to share my knowledge with these students. Last year, we decided to make some wristlets over the course of a couple days and it worked out great. We made some lit wristlets and they went back with some new and authentic teachings from a real and chill rez Auntie.

Then we dove face first into a very packed but fun summer season of being a deadly vendor. Our list of summer events included:

• NBIFC Powwow at Lee Park in North Bay - we actually broke our record in profits for the entire weekend by more than 50% compared to our previous years!

• Pride Temiskaming's Vendor Market - as a two-spirit woman, I was super happy to attend this market as a vendor and even made a small collection of Pride items. Chi-miigwetch Kailey and the rest of the Pride Temiskaming Team!

• Teme Augama Anishinabek Powwow (formerly Temagami First Nation) - my little fam had tons of fun at my home community's powwow as a vendor.

• Temagami Summer Markets - these were every Saturday at the Temagami Train Station, so of course when I had the chance to make it - you bet I was there.

• Nipissing First Nation Powwow - the fam and I headed out on our last summer trip to North Bay (Nipissing territory) to have a great time at our last powwow of the season.

After such a crazy and busy summer, we moved to Cobalt - just a bit up north from our homeland of Lake Temagami. So, we took a much-needed break to adjust since Arya started at a new school and I wanted to set myself up to do my business stuff properly in the new place. Then I started having pretty bad problems with my chronic illnesses again #thankyoustress, so I extended my break longer. But it paid off since I really needed that time to adjust to my new life and schedules. Plus I signed up for the local gym (shoutout to Rack Fitness) to start on a more healthier path to prevent future problems.

A keychain from last summer, 2025.

With our fall break coming to an end, we started up with Christmas/Winter market season. We didn't go to too many but we had a great time to the few we did make it out to. We made it out to Hudson Township's Christmas Market, Harley's Market, and NBIFC's Indigenous Winter Market. We made quite a few Christmas items and nearly sold them all so it was a great turnout at these markets! After the holidays, we also went as a vendor to Canadore College's Powwow in February, which was tons of fun and busy as always.

As the winter carried on closer to its end, we got a HUGE order, literally. My home community was having an official Renaming Ceremony and I was the beading artist they commissioned to create a medallion of our new logo and name. With the amount of detail in the design, the medallion ended up being just about 7" wide in diameter. I used both size 11s and 15s to ensure the design stayed as intricate as I needed it to be. And I made it just in time after pulling an all-nighter to finish it, my partner and I just made it time for the ceremony to make the delivery. It was probably my most hectic, yet most rewarding and stunning project of the year. Knowing my work would become part of such an important moment for my community meant more to me than I can properly put into words.

The Teme Augama Anishinabek Medallion: 7" in diameter and made with 11/0s and 15/0s.

Overall, it constantly felt like a crazy busy year. As I mentioned slightly earlier, I had tons of problems with my chronic illnesses so I also had a lot of appointments this past year to ensure things were good. Arya was doing her new school routine so all mornings were chaotic and busy, Monday to Friday. Trying to keep up my stock of beaded items was an experience too, since it was hard to get time for myself to hunker down and focus on anything with all my life's chaos. Winter blues also seemingly slapped harder this year than past years. We had some emergencies - cats got ear mites which is pricey if you got three cats (LOL), then our one cat homie got a ear hematoma when the ear mites came back with vengeance, and then our car's fuel pump died and needed to be replaced. But over time, I've started getting better at managing the crazy balance of motherhood, business, upgrading school courses, and anything else that popped up.

My lil family, minus the cats since they aren't allowed outside.

Honestly, this felt like a year of change and learning for me. Learning new routines, learning how much I appreciate my lil family for their support in all I do, and of course, learning more about why my business and art means a lot to me over these past years. But really, it doesn't end here - I'm excited to see what kind of things we'll be getting up to in the coming year. I always got tons of ideas and can't seem to go a day without being busy or doing something. If you made it this far, I'd like to say chi-miigwetch in all your support in my art and business - it means the world to my family: me, Mike, Lil Boss Arya, and our three cats (Finch, Hugen, & Hinata).

With love,

Callie<3