dots and spots

Friday, 15 July 2011

Harrogate Home and Gift....

.....here we come!

We are packed and ready to go - wish us luck!

This evening we head off as far up as Nottingham, then the final bit of the journey to Harrogate in the morning.

We then have to register for a pass and time slot, then hopefully it will remain dry whilst we unpack the car and find our allotted stand space.

EXCITING stuff - makes all the hard work and preparations worthwhile!

Will try and keep you posted whilst we are away - my daughter will be cross if I don't post pictures of our stand straight away!

Hope you all have a lovely weekend.

Wednesday, 13 July 2011

Slowly but surely, I feel I am getting there and with my new found help, I am doing better than I'd thought possible. I am still way off target but I can now see a way to the finishing post before the next round of work load kicks in. The piles of cards on the table are diminishing......

.....as towers of boxes are appearing around the room!

Each tower signifies a completed design - 1044 packs per design!

2 designs done - 3 designs on the go and 1 left to start!!

Seeing them laid out in all there festive splendour makes me smile.

And then seeing them all packed up - yehhhh!

2 sets of place settings - 2088 packs are also complete!

But then lurking around the corner is my wall of tape.

It got delivered on Tuesday - 88 boxes - 4224 rolls of tape! eek!

Each roll needs to be checked and the paper info strip stapled on before they get boxed up, ready for dispatch early August.

Then finally there is all my show prep sat ready to be packed into the car on Friday!

We will be away for just short of a week. My parents are looking after the children and my two fantastic and willing workers will be carrying on in my absence.

I will then return from Harrogate (hopefully) with a lovely pile of orders - just to add the the workload and fun!!!!

Saturday, 9 July 2011

Sad Goodbyes

I mentioned the children's Primary School in my last post at Ditcheat. Well, the Head is leaving - we will be very sorry to see her go - she is so kind, very easy to talk to and genuinely seems to love her job. She is moving to a slightly bigger school, still in Somerset but she will be sorely missed. She has taken Sam for Maths and English this year on top of her Head duties.

I wanted to create something very special for her to say thank you. As I had to be at home today because my husband was working, I hid away in my studio to do this collage of the school.

I hope she likes it!

Friday, 8 July 2011

When did.......

... my children become so grown up?

These next few weeks seem quite big in my children's lives - lots of 'end of era's' and 'new beginnings'. Sophie starts Secondary school in September so is doing lots of 'last time' things at school and whilst very sad to be leaving her Primary School, is excited and happy to be moving on. We gave her the choice of 2 Secondary Schools and think she has made the right decision for her.

Ditcheat Primary School

The children used to go to a Private School as my husband was Head of Boarding and we lived in but 3 years ago we were offered the chance to leave the boarding accommodation and move into our own house. This also gave us the opportunity to move our daughter who was very unhappy where she was and really not doing as well as she could academically, to Ditcheat Primary - a lovely small, friendly village State School. It was the best move we made and once a space became available, Sam followed too. It's only now, when we see how happy and confident she is, that we realise just how unhappy she had been.

For the past year they have been in a mixed Year 4, 5, 6 class together. They have just preformed in the Willow class play - Alice the Musical - Sophie in one one of the leading roles - Sam happy with his one line! Sophie spent a taster day at her new Secondary School on Wednesday and loved it (huge relief) and Sam got to spend the first day at school without his sister there.

Today was Sports Day - not the favourite of school events in the Peabody household but Sam was proud of his 3rd place in the Beanbag Race and Sophie performed one of her last roles as Red Team Captain. It was on the way home though that the real 'Proud Mummy Moment' happened. Very nearly home, Sophie announced that she had something to tell me........

........she only got 3 level 5's in he SATS tests - the highest you can get!

I fell very proud of my 2 children and what they have so far achieved in their little lives. It was a big step to move them out of private education into a small village state primary but they have really flourished there, have come on leaps and bounds academically and are both much happier and more confident in themselves.

Thank You Ditcheat staff for all your hard work.

Sunday, 3 July 2011

Catalogue drop done!!!!

So, it's done - I knew it would take the best part of the day but all the catalogues are ready to go out to our trade customers, all the catalogues are now ready for the show and another pile ready for my agents.

It takes so long as we staple in the terms and conditions sheet, add a Harrogate Trade Show sticker, pop in an order form and sample sheet of our new wrapping paper.

I must confess that gone 10.30pm last night , I gave up adding the tape and dots and spots sticker - it was fine last year when I was sending out just over 100 catalogues but now it's over 500, time just got the better of me!

So another job ticked off the 'to do' list!

Just got to now pay for them to be posted and work out how to get this lot to the sorting office!!

Before I know it, January's catalogue drop will come round far too quickly!

Friday, 1 July 2011

Catalogue Version 4

Late afternoon yesterday - my new catalogues arrived, very kindly delivered by St Andrews Press - all 1200 of them!! This is our 4th version, with each one increasing in pages as we add more new products and increasing in quantity. The catalogue only has a 6 month duration before the next one arrives and sad though it may sound, I'm already working on new products and pages before this one has even been sent out. This catalogue is here in preparation for our next trade show in Harrogate in July or should I say in 2 weeks time.

My Mum and Dad came up to visit last weekend and very kindly addressed and postage stamped the envelopes.

My weekend job is to do all the rest. Because we use the catalogue for both our trade and website customers we have to add additional things. Our trade customers get a terms and conditions sheet which is stapled onto the back cover.

Then we stick on a Trade Show sticker to highlight where we will be.

This time around we are including a sample of our gorgeous wrapping paper.

And of course an order form/price list which I folded last night.

All of this gets put into our fabulous new catalogue.

I then like to add a bit of our super sticky decorative tape.....

.....and finish it all off with a dots and spots sticker.

As you can imagine this all takes time and will take me the best part of the weekend to do the 500+ we need to send out.

My next job is to put together packs of new products for our agents and update the trade website - everything should be now on our website - wrap orders are already coming in!