By: Casey Bishop
Julie and I decided to start pushing to grow My Wonderful Wreaths during 2018. The first month was full of administrative, legal, boring stuff. You can read more about getting it all put together here. Outside of the "boring" stuff, we have started purchasing a lot of inventory. In the first month we bought enough material to help us get a start on getting Valentine's Wreaths and Easter/Spring Wreaths built and up for sale. We are anticipating on adding another 8 finished Easter/Spring wreaths and 5 Winter Wreaths (even though Winter decided not to show up this year in Southern Utah) on top of the 9 Valentine's Day Wreaths that are built and can be bought on our website and social media pages. Julie has also curated 10 DIY wreath kits for Easter/Spring, most of which will be used for our first Build-a-Wreath Workshop that Julie is hosting on March 4th. For those keeping count (I have an Accounting degree, so we know I am), that totals 32 wreaths, plus the 1 we are giving away right now (get entered here). That brings me to the point of this blog, the Wreath Invasion.
For those of you who don't know, we are currently operating out of our home basement. Not long ago, our basement was your typical basement... extra bed for guests, storage, you know, the usual.... but now, there are wreaths everywhere! I have randomly put nails throughout, all of which have a wreath hanging on them. Each door has at least one hanging on it. The bed for guests is now covered with wreaths. They have even overflowed into our upstairs, with wreaths hanging on our stair railing and doors. We have effectively turned one bedroom in the basement into Julie's "Workshop", where Julie builds all her wreaths. Another bedroom has been turned into an office, to help us run and manage the business side of things. The "guest" bedroom is now stacked with boxes of supplies and wreaths that aren't quite in season. It's starting to look like we are running a wreath business, and I am having more fun than most people would ever expect.
We will continue to fill up our basement until the day comes when we have to rent out a small hobby shop. A move like this would help us be more effective in storing the wreath materials, as well as the finished wreaths. It will also open doors to bringing in equipment, such as a CNC machine to custom make centerpieces and accessories, as well as being able to order materials in bulk and have a place to efficiently store them. We hope to be able to lease a place in Cedar City by this Summer, and let the Wreath Invasion continue.