End of Pumpkin Season (?)

It isn't Halloween yet, and it is time for our pumpkin season to end.  Our pumpkin making can't come to an abrupt close, but we will certainly be dwindling down.  Why am I in such a hurry you might ask?  It is time to prepare for the holiday season.  Our shelves are barren from simply making to many pumpkins!

Keene Pumpkin Fest was a big hit.  They even broke the record!  Sadly, we couldn't hear much of what was going on, the speakers were very fuzzy around us.  I didn't find out we got the record until we got home!

Man, that was a crazy day.  I'm not sure what was worse, getting in, or getting out!  I swear I'm still recuperating from all the stress that comes with taking on a vendor spot in an event that huge.  A month of preparation, hoping that we will be successful.  Putting all of our cards out on the table.  Spending hours and hours of work, paying for the propane, the supplies, and the labor.  Paying for the booth.  Paying for the labor to get everything out there, and to have enough hands on deck for the crowds of people going by.

Wow.

Breathe Dom.  It's over.  We did great.  PHEW.

For such a small business, with such huge overhead expenses, to put ourselves out there like that, eeek!

But its OK, its over & we did great!

I'm not sure if I am looking forward to next year or not?!?  Catch me after another hot & slow summer, I will be jumping for joy to be this busy and hectic again!

Guess what time it is now????  Christmas ornaments.  Snowmen.  I am now planning on doing two "Blow Your Own Ornament" dates.  The Saturday after Thanksgiving, and Saturday December 14th.  December 14th will also double as our TWO YEAR ANNIVERSARY PARTY/Holiday Sale.  TWO YEARS.  TWO YEARS.

OK Dom.  No more resting.

The Fall Season is Falling Behind Us

Two days until Keene Pumpkinfest.  Our official pumpkin season is almost over.  Wow.  Time to take a minute to sit down and contemplate how amazing these past two months were.

OK.  No more break time, get back up and prepare for Christmas season!

Seriously.

After a slow summer, and my everlasting jaw injury.  Life is looking pretty amazing.  Busy is great.

As I type right now I am multitasking like a maniac.  I am sitting in the studio, on the computer, waiting for my job title as "Stem Connector" to come into effect.  Notice: I am sitting in the studio and it is a comfortable temperature.  WOW.  Summer has surely gone.  I love summer and HATE the cold.  Benefit to being a glassblower: its always warm at work! (hot)

So behind me everyone is working.  Mini pumpkins galore.  Josh's job title for the day is "Pumpkin Machine".  He takes a big orange bubble, drops it in a mold, and cuts off 5, 6, 7 or even more pumpkins off that one "stock".

Haley's title is "Stemminator".  She has a green chunk of solid glass and constantly works to keep it hot and nicely shaped.

I simply connect the two together.

Voila!  Mini pumpkins!

The buzzer beeped.  We have customers!  Time for continued multitasking.

Later we will have New Hampshire Small Business Magazine in to take photos for an article on us!

Bye!

Positive & Hectic

The mood in the studio today can only be described with two words - Positive & Hectic.

Today the shop was BUSY.  Mark & Brigida were in making pumpkins, while Josh & I were also making pumpkins.  Everyone is preparing for their Art Tours!

Anne Marie is packing for the Wool Arts Tour this weekend.  I am trying to think of every little way to make this years Monadnock Art Tour go smoothly.  Signs in the building giving directions, signs on the doors on where to enter and where not, CLEANING CLEANING CLEANING.  Did I mention that the weekend after this one is PUMPKINFEST?  Lets talk about crazy.

Slight issues with the furnace have slightly hindered our progress on  ... everything.  Thanks to Jim's hard work and Charlie Correll's everlasting patience and advice we hope to have this issue fixed asap.  The furnace has been running steadily at 2075 for a long, long time.  Things have been peaceful and wonderful in furnace land.  Lately we have been coming in and finding it at odd temperatures.  This morning we arrived at the studio and the furnace was at 2035.  eek.

Time to get back to work... aka CLEANING!

I'm Back & It's October!

I can't believe it is already October.

Then I think of how many pumpkins we have made - I can't believe it is only October 1st.

This is our second fall season with the shop being open and WOW it is busy.  IT FEELS AMAZING.  Our busy season has begun, full steam ahead, next stop - December 25th.  Literally, just keep working.

I tried to begin my pumpkin making extravaganza in August.  Sadly my boxer puppy had other ideas and wanted to, well, box mom!  7 Weeks and Two Days Later, here I am!  My doctor finally gave me leave to "continue whatever I've been doing" and I don't have to go back to Tufts in Boston for three whole months.  What have I been doing?  Working my butt off!  Sure, I will continue on!  No eating apples, or other hard foods.  I have still not endeavored to eat chips, sadly nachos have not been checked off my list of thing that I want to eat soo badly.   Pizza? Oh yes.  Pizza & I have become well acquainted once more.  Minus the sad part in which I usually have to take a nap after exhausting myself while eating.

Back to pumpkins.  We have been KILLING IT.  This year we are making three sized pumpkins.  Large for $45, Medium for $35, and Small going for $5-$18.  Everybody loves the small pumpkins. SCORE FOR US.  We have been so lucky to have so many local places within our community offering to sell our pumpkins.  Like I said, it is only October 1st, and we are very pleased with the amazing support.

Thanks out to J.P. Stephens, Sunflowers, Benjamin Prescott Inn, Inn at Tartan Fox, TD Bank, Peoples Bank, Our Town Pizza, Terrapin Traders AND Hannah Grimes Center for being wonderful carriers of this years pumpkins.

Upcoming events:
Cheshire Craftsmen Fair this weekend in Keene
Monadnock Arts Tour & Wool Arts Tour next weekend October 12 & 13
Then we are in preparation for PUMPKINFEST!

Big thanks out to everyone who showed up at Gardner Ale House's Oktoberfest. AMAZING.  You are all amazing.  We feel the love <3.

Time to charge the furnace for tomorrows work ... guess what it is????

PUMPKINNNNNS


p.s. Here are some photos of my walk in the woods today with the woofs.  We love New Hampshire.

E-mail, Website, Facebook, Facebook Page Manager, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Blogger, Etsy, OH MY

Updating all of these social media tools proves to be nothing short of stressful.  CRAZY.  I wish they could all combine into one epic site.  It would save everyone tons of trouble, but I suppose some of the fun would be taken away.

E-mailing is the easiest.  Check your Inbox, Delete or Reply accordingly.  Simple.  Done!

Websites, well I guess our website is the easiest for me, because I have absolutely no idea how to do anything with it.  Thanks Mom & Jim!

Facebook is my favorite.  I began using it when I enrolled in college and got a .edu e-mail.  Back when Facebook was exclusive.  Now I'm friends with everybody and their mother (literally).  As a business woman this is great, it allows me to keep in touch with so many people, past and present, all in one place.  I do my best to try and keep my personal page personal, BUT not SUPER personal, where I am spouting about my drama and pissing people off.  This works well for me because when I decide to do a little business advertising, my currently 1,382 Facebook give me quite a possible audience for advertising.

Making a Facebook business page was an obvious step for me.  I hate it when you look up a business and they don't have a Facebook page, UGH, now I have to look up their website.  I'm not sure what is worse though, not having a Facebook page, or having one and not updating it for years.  Get out in the real (cyber) world folks!  Now that I got one of those fancy smart phones (of course just for business purposes) I had to figure out a way I can update the shop page more often.  Facebook Page Manager it is!  Boy, it really limits the functions one can do as a business, but my phone keeps doing some updates, I hope it improves ASAP.

LinkedIn - is that how its typed?  This is all a new thing for me.  It took me HOURS to create a profile, filling all of the tiny little details that would never fit on a proper one page resume.  The hardest part for me?  Finding a "professional" photo!  I think that other people have the same problem, I notice a bunch of blank LinkedIn versions of "profile pictures" - is that what it is called?  So similar to Facebook, but somehow much more intrusive, which makes it more professional?  I feel like some identity thieves would LOVE LinkedIn as a tool.  I'm finding that I only updated my status once, not sure what is appropriate to be saying.  I'm just slowly collecting friends and creeping along, maybe someday I will be as proficient as I am with Facebook.

Twitter.  OVERWHELMING.  We took a class "What the Heck is Twitter and Why Should I Care?".  I was left caring about Twitter, but still very uncomfortable with the whole process.  I think I need to spend some time grouping the pages that I'm following, into pages that I might like to "Retweet" their posts.  Right now I am overwhelmed with news twitter updates, which is great for my personal knowledge, but news and politics are not something a glassblowing studio should bring into their business.  (We may lose some friends)

Instagram.  Easy-ish.  It's annoying how I can't take photos on my good camera and upload them on the Instagram.  My fancy phone is a terrible photo taker.  I like the cool effects that you can make the photos, pretty awesome to check out.  We actually have some followers on Instagram, which is cool to see.  Basically I spend a total of 5 minutes on Instagram a day, posting a few photos, putting some weird hash-tags and linking it to my Twitter.  Two points for Dom.

Blogger.  Do you remember when you were in college and you used to get "writers block" over these short little page papers.  You build it up in your mind to be the end of the world, oh so much time and effort.  When you sit down you find that you actually enjoy writing and it isn't that difficult in the slightest.  That is how blogging has become to me.  To be described as a rewarding burden.  Slightly difficult because the whole time you're typing you're wondering - "Do people really care about this?  Does anyone care about what I have to say?"  OH WELL.  Read, don't read, poke fun, at least I snatched a minimum of a second of your brain power. MWUAHAHA

Etsy.  Oh Etsy.  Etsy is an amazing site, it really is.  It is a LOT of work.  Everyone wants to know if our stuff is available for sale online, complaining if its not.  When we only have a couple things on our Etsy site we get complaints.  When we have a bunch of stuff on our Etsy site, we get no sales.  I know that we really need to establish an Etsy presence, connecting with other artists there.  We need to build a regular customer base and hold strong.  It is hard when my mom, Jim, Josh and I are trying to run a pretty monstrous studio, attempting to sell stuff out of the shop, and constantly updating/deleting our glass on Etsy.  Also, the cost to keep our stuff up there is a small hindrance on our Etsy money-making progress.

Now you know my "educated" opinion - feeling smart yet?

Have a lovely Saturday!

1,005 Facebook "likes"

Today is a small celebratory day, we have hit 1,000 Facebook "likes" and even gone 5 more over!

Boy 1,005 is a beautiful number.  Soooo proud!

Like most fall days, today was a day of pumpkin making

What a workout!

We then went on an adventure to J.P. Stephen's Restaurant and Tavern in Rindge, NH to bring some more glass for display.  It is such a beautiful location, and an honor to be represented there

Oh wait, wait, it DOESN'T END THERE

We went off to the Shattuck Golf Club, right at the base of Mt. Monadnock.  I think I mentioned before, they are letting local businesses make a little fall set-up.  Great advertising.  They let us take a golf cart tour around the whole course!

Exciting, exciting, exciting.  Look at that beautiful landscape.  I love New Hampshire.

The last photo is of our little setup.  We are going to go back tomorrow and tie our sign up between the two trees, up nice and high.  We also want to buy some bales of straw and put some of our glass pumpkins around the area. 

Jaffrey

I will blame the couple day lapse in my blogging to productivity.

I would now like to discuss how much I love our new community.  It is great to feel proud of the place I both live and work.  There is nothing more satisfying.  

I grew up 20 minutes away from here with "Massholes".  Immediately upon driving over the boarder into New Hampshire the attitude changes.  

Imagine walking down the sidewalk and having someone stop every time you simply glace at a crosswalk.  WHAT!

My first time trying to pull out of a parking spot in downtown Keene, someone let me go!! 

I just couldn't understand it!

After being transplanted here, I have finally found that there is hope for this cruel world.  There are individuals in this community that actually care about you.  People that actually want to help, without the sole purpose of benefiting themselves.  Seeing the bigger picture, we can all be successful together.

Free time is nonexistent to me, especially with a new/very old house and a brand new business.  Of course I am the type of person that isn't satisfied without completely overbooking my time and working myself into the ground.  

With this in mind, you can understand why I joined TEAM Jaffrey.  I had high hopes for this organization, having an opportunity to be directly involved in community activities.  My mindset was; if it isn't what I expected, its only three year commitment.  I enjoy all time I spend working my house and on my business, if meetings and events are the only drudgery work I do in my young life, it won't kill me.

I love it.  I am at loss for words to truly express how proud I am to be a part of an organization with such an amazing purpose.  

I promise to tell you a little about the upcoming ideas and events TEAM Jaffrey has in mind.  NEXT TIME on "Behind the Scenes at Terrapin Glass" - from the viewpoint of Dom... duh duh duh

Well, I promise to write more often.  I also promise that I won't have to make this promise again.  

I will reach out and see if we can get Jim on here as well.  Give us some words of wisdom Jim!