Finally, the exciting news!

It occurred to me that I should probably follow up my "exciting news coming soon" post with the actual exciting news. So here ya go: Mama is moving into our very own store at the end of this month! And this time, it actually is our very own. My name is on the lease, and I'll be paying all the bills. Gulp. To say that I'm terribly excited is the understatement of the year. And as it gets closer, a little anxiety is creeping in here and there. I suppose that is to be expected.

The new digs are in Decatur on East College Ave.


I'll post pictures soon of the interior before and after once I finish with the after. The shop needed a little work, so right now I am up to my elbows in paint. We move in August 1st and I need a couple weeks to get set up. Our grand opening will be Saturday, August 22nd, so I have a lot to do! The weekend after the opening marks the beginning of fall festival season, so I'm mentally trying to gear up and get my head in the game.

I'll write more soon about how this came about, but right now I need to go paint!

Thanks to Leah from the Daily Piglet

A very belated and heartfelt thanks to Leah at the Daily Piglet for her kind words about Mama.

At some point I will blog again. This is the first week where I have been able to sit down and take full breaths in and out, so I'm trying to (start to) get caught up. Which probably won't happen anytime this year, but at some point soon I will fill you in on all of the exciting new things that are going on behind the scenes. Just to keep you guessing: one of them involves a change in venue.

Exciting details coming soon!

Talulah B trunk show and Paisley Umbrella Save the Date

I'm heading out of town this weekend, but my wares will be at the fabulous Talulah B trunk show. The trunk show got a Daily Candy write up today, so hopefully the ladies will be out in droves! Click here for details

And if you're a bride to be or know of one, the Paisley Umbrella save the date event is tonight in Buckhead. I just signed up to be one of the vendors, and I will be offering unique gifts and custom favors, as well as a whole lot more.

More on everything that's happening right now (and there's a lot) later, because I'm trying to make a plane.

Have a great weekend!

Technology meltdown

I apparently have the ability to break electronics with my mind because my phone is down and my email has disappeared. If you sent me one of the 300+ emails in my inbox, I promise that I will write you back as soon as I figure out where it went! My phone should be back up and running on Friday, providing that there are iphones left when I show up at AT&T bright and early.

Sigh.

Work/life balance

The title is sort of a joke, because let's face it, anyone striking out on their own with a business doesn't have much balance of any kind. I'm writing this to postpone cleaning up my disaster of a house. I have boxes of supplies and soap stuff taking over 3 rooms that needs to be straightened and put away.


That's about the extent of the life part of my balance equation. Cleaning up the overflowing messes from my rapidly growing business. I've moved soap making operations into my house because it takes up so much room and I'm already tapped out of space at the shop.

I did, however, carve out a little me time this week and went to 2 shows. In one week. That is a rarity for me, especially since they were both on school nights. We went to the Decemberists on Wednesday, and I have been in a perpetual state of blown away-ness since. They are one of my very favorite bands, and their live shows never disappoint. I haven't seen them since their last incredible tour in 2007, and we got a two-fer this time around - they played their entire new album in song order for the first hour, and then came back out and did another hour of their older stuff. It was the best night out I've had in a long time, and the new album has been perpetually on repeat since.

And then last night we went to see Bon Iver. A very different show from the Decemberists, but equally impactful. His pitch-perfect falsetto and gorgeous harmonies were exactly what I needed to end the week. I love this video.

The other non-work item I have to report on is my vegetable garden. I planted it from seed and it has absolutely exploded, which excites me beyond words.

We are going to have cucumbers, beans, squash and hopefully peppers. Enough to feed a small country. Despite the repeated warnings I've read, I planted everything too close together. When you're planting teeny little seeds, it really is hard to comprehend how big the plants will get. The fence was put up to keep predators out and it isn't doing a very good job. Someone's been nibbling on the leaves. I believe this is the culprit:


Meet my dog Lucy. Part canine, part goat.

Mea Culpa

In light of an upset comment about a recent post, I decided to take the post down. The offending post dealt with a small segment of the population that I run into periodically at festivals, people WHO ARE NOT representative of my customers. I grouped these people into intentionally generalized stereotypes and attempted to write humorous anecdotes. My intention was to write a funny, if not a bit irreverent post - think David Sedaris. My commenter obviously thought Ann Coulter, because she handed me my ass. The post wasn't intended to be mean-spirited. Snarky, yes. I was blowing off some steam. Humorous definitely. But mean-spirited, no. I struggled with whether or not to take it down. After all, it's my blog and I can snark if I want to. But this situation has really gotten me thinking about what I want to put out there, and what I'm trying to achieve with my blog. I want to connect with people who care to read what I have to say. Mission not accomplished. My fault.

I'm still finding my voice on this blog, and I announced to my husband a couple of weeks ago that I've decided it was important to "be myself". To be honest about what I was feeling, and really give people the real inside scoop on running a small business, the good, the bad and the ugly. Today, after I read him the comment, he said, "so how's that working out for ya?" Honestly, I wasn't even sure anyone read the damn thing, so I was terribly surprised to discover that my readers aren't necessarily my friends who know me and think my brand of humor is funny. Lesson #1: know your audience. Snarky and irreverent certainly has its well-worn place in the blogosphere, but if I'm alienating customers, I've obviously missed my mark. It would be one thing if I was trying to inspire controversy or even a spirited and intelligent debate. But I don't want that. I want to give people who are interested an honest look at the engine of a small business, from my perspective. That still means the good and the bad, but hopefully no more ugly.

This incident has gotten me thinking a lot about the Internet in general. I've never been the biggest fan of blog comments. The anonymity of communicating through cyberspace seems to give a lot of angry people a license to wound. I've read a lot of comments on other blogs that were intended to sear, and I always wonder how people are capable of such cruelty when they would never say it to someone's face. I'm not referring to my commenter - I obviously offended her and I feel really badly about that. I take full responsibility for the situation, and I replied in my comments with a genuine apology. But she said she wouldn't be back on my site, so I have no way of reaching her to give her my apology. She may not be willing to accept it, but at least I would be able to try. I'm also not referring to my post. I'm not anonymous - you know how to find me if you want to give me the what for in person. But the one-sided communication of commenting on the Internet really bothers me. I find myself longing for the days of telephone and good ole US Mail, where a return address is required.

So my new mission statement for my blog is to be provocative in a way that makes you want to know more, not in a way that puts you off. And if you stop reading my blog, I hope that it's because I bore you to tears with my verbosity and not because I've pissed you off. But hopefully you'll still want to patronize my business. Because I truly am so thankful for my customers and I value your business and your support more than words can say.

ICE Re-cap

What a great great weekend. I’m writing this in a very relaxed, very grateful state of mind. It’s not very often you’ll find me like this at the end of a festival. The getting ready wears me out to the point that I usually enter the weekend exhausted, so I’m on the verge of collapse once the weekend is over. Something was different about this one, and though I haven’t quite been able to succinctly define why, I do have some thoughts about the matter.

I’ve been pretty frank about how I feel about doing festivals. But I’m starting to feel a shift in my attitude. Festivals have a lot of the same familiarity that film sets do. You can be in different cities with different crews, but you make fast friends. There’s a “we’re all in this together” comraderie that you don’t get very often in life. And I happen to have chosen two jobs that have brought that into my life. That can’t be an accident.

One of the aspects of my business that has always greatly appealed to me was being a part of my community, and now that I'm out and about in the festival circuit more regularly, I'm feeling that tenfold. It is the best feeling when people come into my booth saying, "Oh, I bought your products at (insert place) and I love them!" Or, "I've heard about your products and I've been wanting to try them." Mama felt invisible for a lot of years because I was so in and out of it. And now that I've put myself and my products out there, I'm loving all of the new connections that I've made with people in the community.

I want to give a big hats off to Christy and Shannon and all of the people that went into making ICE a success. Centennial Park was a fabulous back drop for this show, and it was hot hot hot, but that didn't keep people from coming out in droves. I was really impressed with the vendor line-up. There were a lot of talented crafters and artists who I had never seen, and the ICE crew did a great job of getting them there.

This marks the end of spring festival season for me, and will be my last until the fall. I just found out that I was accepted into Grant Park Summer Shade, which will kick off the fall festival season in August! In the meantime, you can find me at some farmer's markets around town, or you can stop by the store and shop in air conditioned comfort!