Springing Forth to Spring Gardens

We have been so busy lately! There's always a period of time between Christmas to about March that things really slow down. I think that's the case for most all retail. One might think that would be the perfect time to make, create, and increase stock.

But not us.

See, when everything else slows down, so do I. It doesn't matter that I had months to prepare for the upcoming craft season, I procrastinated and am now rushing around trying to get everything ready for tomorrow.

Tomorrow marks the "first of the season" show for us, and we'll be doing a local home and garden show hosted by our local radio station, KVRH, et. al. For those of you that are in the area, we'll be at Brady's West in Salida, just behind Burger King.

I'm pretty sure there will be lots of booths there and I know most everyone is giving away prizes so there's a good chance you might even win something free! It runs all day, from 9 am. to 5 pm. and despite feeling completely unprepared, I'm excited for it. There might be some scattered rain showers in the afternoon, but we're indoors! We'll be in one of their empty greenhouses so even if it's raining, come out!

We'll also be debuting some new products. We'll have hard lotion bars, several new soaps (including Grass, Acai Berry, and Lilac) and a super cute gift "basket" for you or your favorite gardener. It's actually a flower pot packed full of gardener's goodies. Grass-scented soap with cornmeal to really scrub away grit and grime, hard lotion bar to sooth dry, cracked, working hands, and some other special stuff every garden-lover should have on hand.

I'll take pictures soon, but I've been too busy "catching up" lately! Hope to see lots of people tomorrow!

Bow Retarded

Yesterday we had to put together 9 gift baskets that customers ordered. That's a lot of baskets, which is great! But it's also a lot of bows, which really sucks.

Mom is self-declared bow retarded. She had lots of practice, but just can't make a good looking bow. Unfortunately, I think I'm about the same minus the practice. It took about an hour and a half to two hours for me to make all those bows. I would take a picture, but the baskets are already gone.

Now we have to make several more bowed baskets for our craft show this weekend. But this time, we're buying pre-made bows.

Etsy-bitsy Celebration

I'd been working several days on this "blogging every day" stuff. And I was visiting forums and plugging our products everywhere I could possibly think of. And our sales were really not showing any improvement. Last night I was pretty bummed about it all. When you work all day long at something you expect to have something to show for it.

Then finally, something happened. I was prowling around etsy like normal, and stopped into a chat room again. I was there for about 30 seconds when someone out of the blue asked "Does anyone here make soap?" I just happened to be the only soapmaker in the room, which I think is rare. She looked at my products and loved what she saw! She ordered a gift basket full of stress-be-gone stuff for her husband and plans on buying a few bars for herself as well. Score!

A few minutes after those details were worked out, another person joined the fray. Etsy's chat is pretty cool because you can post pictures up in a sidebar of products that you like from people in the room. Someone had posted our pomegranate soap and this person messaged me very excitedly. She has been wanting to make cold-process soap and almost has all the ingredients she needs. But, she said, she got excited and bought a bar of our pomegranate.

So finally! It seems like I did *something* to pay off a little! Not only the sales, but both of these people seem like genuinely good people. I know I'll be talking to them both again soon. Go Etsy!