January In Review

I hopped on a plane the evening of January 3, the day my twin nieces turned three months old. I was heading to Cincinnati where I would be nannying them for about 2.5 months. So as you can imagine, things have been different for Stitch & Shutter to kick off 2019.

If you’ve been on the website lately, you’ve noticed a lot of things are out of stock. The holidays were a whirlwind of markets and web sales and I spent the last few weeks before leaving Denver just trying to restock top sellers so that I didn’t have to completely shut down the online shop. Etsy, however, was put on a three month vacation mode.

My husband, Chris, generously offered to pack and ship orders as they came in—which, on just my website is never many—in case you were wondering how I was going about that. Otherwise, the business was shut down for the first quarter of the year. No custom orders, no new wholesale accounts or reorders. I was in good shape to have all inventory fully stocked while I was away (emphasis on WAS in good shape...more on that in a minute).

To be honest, I’m still nervous about what my numbers will look like this year because of this but as it’s my slowest season it seemed the best time to do it. So everything sort of just fell into place for the most part.

So, what did January of 2019 look like for me and the business? Well, originally I was intending to stay in Cincinnati for three whole months, until the girls were 6 months old. But, you know- the best laid plans, yadda yadda. Just about two weeks before I left, I got news of my acceptance to a large market that I had been dreaming of getting an opportunity to attend as a vendor.

Naturally, I called my sister before making any decisions, reminding her that the dates would cut my time in Cincinnati short by several weeks and complicate things a bit. To backtrack, my sister was the one who had encouraged me to apply despite our plans of me caring for the girls as she and my brother-in-law went back to work. She was ecstatic and starting making plans on the spot.

So, I’m doing my first market of the year in March and I’ll officially be back in Denver before April. I’m planning to launch a ton of new and exciting pieces for Spring/Summer 2019 around then.

As for my time until then, I’ve made a goal of reading 50 books this year and I’m almost four books in. I’ve read Girl, Wash Your Face, All the Light We Cannot See, Sharp Objects, and I‘m almost halfway through Becoming (and LOVING every word). I’ve got a long way to go to reach my goal and at this point need to be reading more than a book a week to not totally embarrass and disappoint myself (because let’s face it, finding time to read when I’m back in the swing of things with the business is going to be challenging to say the least).

I spend my days with two always hungry twin girls. They just turned four months old on February 3 and they certainly keep me busy. There’s a lot of synchronized feeding, bouncing, singing, dancing, rocking, reading, and playing. We do a daily tummy time—the smaller of the twins is a true acrobat and has rolled over from stomach to back more times that I can count, starting from the time she was barely 5 weeks old. I’m working on teaching them sign language so they can communicate what they want and need before they find the words. On days when we’ve blown through ten or so of their books I switch to reading my current book aloud. Well, maybe not with Sharp Objects.

They love Jade Castrinos and First Aid Kit. They’re very down with dancing to some Salt-N-Pepa, all of which makes me a very proud aunt. I’m learning that cloth diapers are magical unicorns and that my sister too has mystical powers because she has two 4-month-olds that have been sleeping for 12+ hours a night since just before they were 3 months old. And as I’m typing this I have one squirming baby on my lap and I smell like a combination of spit up and grilled onions from dinner the night before. That’s right, same clothes...what can I say, I pack light. Classy, I know.

I have a brief trip to Denver coming up in a few weeks. I’ll only be home for about four days and in that time I have a long to-do list to complete but I also want to make sure that I spend plenty of dedicated time with my husband and bestie and do things like go to the Denver Art Museum and enjoy a dinner during Denver Restaurant Week. I miss my fur babies and my plant babies something awful too.

So that’s what’s going on around here. There’s also a super short video for you to check out that sums it all up. I just started doing 1 Second Everyday videos this year and so far it’s chock-full of babies.

Best,
Megan