After what seemed like a week of rain, today is glorious - snow on the distant mountains with crisp dry sunshine. We went to visit the French food market at Lomond Shores in Balloch and bought salami, cheese and bread for lunch. I also took the photo of Loch Lomond with The Maid of the Loch steamer and snowy mountains.
It may be fair but the ground is still far too wet to do any gardening so I am footering about making labels and pricing up stock which was delivered this morning. I would like to make everything I sell, but time and economics preclude that so I buy things in and try to alter them a bit to make them uniquely Snapdragon!
The waste that seems to escalate at Christmas distresses me and I often question what I am doing as a retailer.
I am partly addressing this this by steadily increasing the quality of the things I sell - I want them to be treasured, not regarded as disposable. For example the hanging tealight holders that I sell now are twice the price of the ones that I had last year, but they are also much much finer quality - more decorative and also less likely to break. I hope that they will be used a lot. They can be used as candle holders at Christmas on the table or hanging from twigs, they can be used for small bunches of flowers at everyone's place for a fancy dinner and they can light the way along a path on a summer evening.
The other thing that I am trying to source more of is "decorations" which have a life after Christmas. The peanut wreath is an example - I don't make the actual peanut rings, I buy them ready made, but I do make them a little bit more decorative without being garish. I think that it would look very fine hung on a rustic door and then out for the birds in January. I am dreading those "peanut allergy" conversations at fairs though.
5 comments:
I agree the waste at Christmas can be awful, I remember as a child my Grandparents (having been through 2 world wars) unwrapped pressies very carefully so that they could reuse the paper. Stuff like lametta on the tree would be carefully pulled off and saved for another year. With so many £ shops selling disposable items much of Christmas seems throwaway now which I think is a dreadful shame.
Jane
I'd like 3 of your wheaty spicy bundles please - I'll email you next week - but don't want you whisking them all off to fairs and I forget to do the emailing (i'm bad at remembering)
Plus how much are your door stops - I know postage will be the real pain but I like them.
Heather
Oh Heather that is lovely of you! The doorstops are £18.00. If you are any good at sewing I could do one without filling for £15.00 and you could put wheat or sand into it and sew up the base. That would sort out the postage.
Let me know
J
"Peanut allergy comments" ??
What the F?
Peanut allergy can be deadly.
Do you dread having to talk to someone in a wheelchair?
How about the blind?
Deaf?
Where do you draw the line on acceptable disabilities?
Sorry to inconvience YOU.
Rockin' in the USA.
Your comment is so aggressive and wide of the mark that my first reaction is to assume that it is a spoof.
My remark was about peanut allergy conversations - not conversations with people who have peanut allergies.
Perhaps everyone in the US is well informed about peanut allergies, their prevalence, triggers and treatment. Here in the UK there can be a tendency to regard peanuts as a general menace.
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