Kathy growing up in Santa Clarita, Valencia Glen, CA

Little Flowers & Friends is the brainchild of fine artist Kathleen Marie Aulbach, based on her childhood memories and experiences of growing up in a playful environment with a big two-story house, an active and athletic family, dogs and cats, and any tiny creatures that fit in a cage or a glass tank. The Aulbach kids rode bikes, roller skated, competed in swimming and field sports, and played joyfully in the freedom of nature's beautiful grassy, green meadow park with meandering paseos, ball courts, a clubhouse, and a big blue swimming pool across the street from her family home.

Kathleen was born in the late 1960s in Santa Monica, California, to a humble and devout Catholic family with four generations of local family pioneering history. Kathleen's formative foundation for education and work ethic blossomed in her rearing. Her industrious family members were her role models. Their legacy included family agriculture businesses, MGM and Hollywood studios careers, symphony orchestra musicians, community church leaders, and richly Catholic family heritage from both sides of her family lineages.

In 1970, the growing Aulbach family of six moved from the foggy beach in southern California to a big house in a newly developing rural area of Valencia, California. They lived on a cul-de-sac with the regional swimming pool and clubhouse, a grassy park with trees, a picnic area and ball court at the other side of the green meadow, and the sandy playground all across the street from Kathleen's family home. Intertwined with meandering paseos and bridges that lead the way to school, Kathleen grew up in a kid's paradise. 

Balancing school, art, drawing practice, and sports was educational and inspirational for the bright young artist. Kathleen's best friend and teacher was her mother. They loved spending time together working on art projects and planting pretty flowers in the manicured front yard of their home, peacefully sharing the bond of lovely surroundings and pleasant days.

The Aulbachs were among the first homeowners in the newly built neighborhood with the opportunity to see the complete building project and landscaping of the entire Glen Park and Paseos. Kathleen recollects how her mother and father were excited to have a community center for their kids and neighbors so near to home.

Their family delighted in seasonal camping trips. Together, they had thrilling adventures in lake fishing and water skiing, deep sea fishing trips, fun sunny days at the beach and local golf course, amusement theme parks, occasional horseback rides, and frequent spontaneous trips across town for ice cream.

Kathleen's uniquely dynamic and diverse young life packed with action and adventures served as a model foundation blueprint for her conceptual ideas, insights, and reflections of some marvelous times with lasting memories of growing up with a close, loving, and bonded family with big hearts and big dreams and a big beautiful garden full of bright, colorful, and fragrant flowers of all kinds, and wide open spaces for playing and romping combined with a wellspring of spiritual grace and a wealth of family values and talents, all were the perfect chemistry and ingredients in the inspiration and development and formation for the life of Little Flowers & Friends.