14 Mar Durable Handmade Mugs…
With Annie and Eloise up in Baudette with her parents for the next 2 weeks I'm feeling a bit down...
Blog
01 Mar Short and Sweet – Handmade Pottery Blog
In the middle of our conference season, and coming off the Birkie (a 31 mile ski race from Cable to Hayward), I have found it difficult to remember to blog. If there is one thing that you are supposed to do with your blog - It is write often, put in pictures, and post them. So I'm going to keep this one really 'Short and Sweet'... The 'Short' part is about the Birkie - Annie and I participated in this Cross Country Ski event in 2009 and 2010 but with the birth of Eloise, Annie was sidelined this this year.An exciting thing about the Birkie is that I contacted them in the summer and we were able to work with their staff in creating custom mugs for their Trail Run event in the Fall, trophies for the age class categories for all the ski races, and a line of handmade mugs for retail! Here are just a couple of images of the mugs that we made. The artwork shows the 2 Norwegian warriors rescuing the infant Prince Haakon Haakonsson in 1205.
Although my time wasn't as good as last year, I enjoyed myself... The air temps was about -3ºF at the start and maybe about 4ºF when I finished... Luckily after the race was over I got to drive back to MN and see my beautiful baby girl and amazing wife...
Now we enter the 'sweet' part of the blog, more pictures of Eloise!
A good friend and photographer, Becca Sabot, came over to our house 2 weeks ago and shot some amazing images of our baby girl. We talked about a few ideas and then began moving furniture and staging things - Eloise was great but didn't exactly go along with our 'plans'... She must be taking after dad. For the shots that we wanted to do with her asleep she would wake up, and then when we tried to go along with her being awake, she would... Yep you guessed it, she fell asleep. At any rate here are some of the favorites!
09 Feb Handmade Mugs and Bread!
What a fun week it has been...
18 Jan Back from the Innkeepers Conference
This one will go down as the 'COME BACK' year... Like most businesses and cycles there are good times and, well, some not-so-good times. Over the last 18 years that we have been vendor members of Paii, we have seen some high highs and some lows... Ever since Jay Karen became president, things have slowly but steadily started to change. Change takes time, but in just a few short years with Jay focusing on the innkeeping industry and as president of Paii, amazing things have started happening, and the Charleston Innkeepers Conference is proof. We met more new customers, and wrote more orders for existing customers that we have in at least 6 years. "This is the best conference in a long time", Peter Deneen mentioned after the closing. Peter also said that "more innkeepers increased their orders for our handmade stoneware mugs, and that shows that Jay is doing a great job." We heard that the attendance was up by 20% over last year! Also the overall mood of all that we talked to was of positivity, filled with renewed hope, excitement for Paii, and the innkeeping industry as a whole.
05 Jan Comments that surround ‘hand-crafted mugs’…
If you are an innkeeper, a successful one, then you should have a blog and at least a facebook page...
