Where SmilelineCo Actually Began

I didn’t start SmilelineCo with a five-year plan. I started it because I needed somewhere to put things down.

A few years ago, I left my job. My days got smaller almost without me noticing: the same chores, the same four walls, my child needing something every hour or so. Nothing about it made a good story. There wasn’t one bad day I could point to. It was more like a long string of very ordinary ones that quietly added up into something heavier than any single day deserved to be.

So I started making pages. Nothing dramatic, just a place to write down what I hoped for, and a place to notice the small, real progress I was actually making, even on the days it didn’t feel like progress at all. A box checked here. A number written down there. Some weeks the page barely changed. But I kept opening the notebook anyway.

Looking back, I think that’s what a lot of people mean by the law of attraction. Not magic, exactly. More like: once I let myself want something and put it into words on paper, I started noticing the small steps toward it, and then taking them.

SmilelineCo grew out of that desk, in that ordinary room. Some days I still sit in the same chair and think about how far that first notebook actually took me.

I’m still here.

I Have a Slight Obsession With Putting Things on Paper

I’m a very literal person when it comes to goals.

When I want something, I picture what “done” looks like first, almost like a little photograph in my head. Then, without really deciding to, I start breaking it into something I can write down: a box, a line, a number, a date.

When I wanted to lose weight, I made pages to track it. I should say clearly: I’m not a health expert, just someone who read enough to understand the basics and then tracked everything a little obsessively, because for me, seeing it on paper was what kept me going past the first two discouraging weeks.

When I wanted to save money for something specific, I made a page for that too, and watched the little boxes fill in slower than I wanted but steadier than I expected.

When my child needed a way to keep track of homework without it turning into an argument every evening, I designed one for that.

Some pages start because I have a real problem to solve. Some start because I looked everywhere for a page like this and it simply didn’t exist. And sometimes, if I’m honest, I make one just because I think it would be nice to have it on paper, no better reason than that.

I notice things. I write them down. And somewhere in between, they become pages.

The Ordinary Person Behind the Pages

Here’s the version of me that doesn’t fit neatly into a product description.

I’m a mom. I grew up and built my career in China, and spent more than a decade in corporate roles before I let myself try building something of my own. I’ve worked in marketing, operations, content, and product, and none of those job titles really explain what I’m doing here, so let me try a different list instead.

I like recording things, more than is probably useful. I like paper in a way that doesn’t make much practical sense in 2026. I like handwriting even when typing is faster, because something about the pen slows my thoughts down to a pace I can actually think in. I’ll pick at a small, boring problem for far longer than it deserves, just to understand it properly. I love traveling, and I love family dinners even more, maybe because both involve sitting somewhere unfamiliar with people I care about. When I walk into a messy room, my hands start organizing before my brain has caught up. And more than once, I’ve designed a page purely for myself, used it quietly for weeks, and only later realized someone else out there was probably looking for the exact same thing.

I live in an ordinary house in China with my family. Without realizing it, my younger brother and husband have become the stars of the various printables I create—yet they have no idea just how often I mention them. I have a child who reorganizes my schedule daily, usually without asking. I have good days, messy days, productive days, and days where absolutely nothing goes the way I planned it that morning.

In other words, a pretty ordinary life. And that’s exactly where most of my ideas come from: a family dinner that ran long, a trip I’m still paying off, a habit I keep almost quitting, something I’m slowly learning, a small problem at home, a thought I didn’t want to lose by tomorrow.

I don’t want SmilelineCo to feel like it was made by someone who has already figured life out.

It was made by someone who is still living it, one page at a time, right alongside you.

From My Side of the World

I live in China, so naturally, China finds its way into what I make and write about.

Sometimes it’s something completely ordinary to me that turns out to be interesting from somewhere else entirely. Why do we talk about weight in jin instead of pounds? What does an actual family dinner look like here, not the postcard version? What do we really do for Mid-Autumn Festival once the mooncakes are gone? What’s it like taking a high-speed train with a tired child and too many bags? What would genuinely surprise you about an ordinary Tuesday here?

I love these questions, maybe more than I love answering the ones about printables.

I’m not a tour guide, and I have no interest in explaining China as if I’m an expert on all of it. I’m just someone living her everyday life here, telling you the small things I notice along the way. Some of those things turn into stories. Some might turn into little guides. Every so often, one turns into a printable, the way the weight loss pages started with an actual dinner at my brother’s place.

So if something about this side of the world has ever made you curious, ask me. I mean that literally.

I write about this regularly on Life of Smile: family dinners, small routines, festivals, and the pages that quietly grow out of all of it.

Ask Me Something →

What I Believe About an Ordinary Life

SmilelineCo isn’t about having a perfectly organized life.

Mine certainly isn’t, whatever the photos on this site might suggest.

I don’t think a printable can fix a hard week. But I do think that putting something down on paper can make a hard week feel a little more carry-able. A page can hold a number so you don’t have to keep it circling in your head at 11pm. A list can make an overwhelming day feel like a series of small, doable things instead of one enormous one. A tracker can help you notice a pattern you’d otherwise miss completely. A journal page can turn an unremarkable Tuesday afternoon into something you’re glad you wrote down. And sometimes a cute little page is simply a cute little page, and that’s a perfectly good reason on its own.

I believe there’s a surprising amount of happiness tucked into ordinary days, usually in places too small to notice unless you’re looking. A good dinner with people you love. A trip you’ve been quietly looking forward to for months. Your child finishing their homework without a single argument, for once. Watching a savings page slowly fill in until you can finally afford the thing you wanted. A quiet cup of something warm before the day starts asking things of you. A page filled in, just a little, at the end of a long one.

I like noticing those moments. I like keeping them somewhere they won’t get lost. And I like making little pages that help other people notice theirs too.

That’s probably the kind of happiness I hope SmilelineCo quietly passes along.

What I’m Making These Days

I’m always making something.

Right now, that means more pages for whatever is actually happening in my own life: family, health, money, routines, food, travel, and a handful of smaller projects I haven’t fully named yet, even to myself.

I’m also writing more stories about everyday life in China, my family, the things I’m slowly learning, and the small moments that make me think, “Hmm. Maybe I should make a page for this.”

And I’m listening to what other people wish existed, too. That’s what You Want, I Design is for. You tell me what you’re missing. There’s a good chance I’ll try to make it.

If You Like Little Things Like I Do…

If you love stationery, journaling, writing things down, filling in little boxes, keeping memories somewhere safe, planning for things you’re excited about, or just making an ordinary day feel a little more your own, I think you’ll probably feel at home here.

There’s no perfect system waiting for you, and no perfectly organized life on the other side of it. Just a growing collection of little pages, made by one person, from one very ordinary life, in the hope that a few of them might make yours a bit easier, happier, or simply more fun to live.

Thanks for stopping by.

— Smile

Browse the Printables →
Read My Stories →
Tell Me What You Wish Existed →