Saturday afternoon and I have time to sit with a coffee and reflect for a few minutes...

It's been a heartening couple of weeks at Cottontails. Despite my tendency to leave things to the last minute (or, let's face it, to leave things altogether) I managed to pull together a celebration for our 21st birthday - including the first mailing list email of the year, a special offer, and a blog post of memories and photos. It all really paid off as I had a lovely busy week - and even now, after 21 years of the ups and downs, nothing beats the feeling of a busy period with sales coming in, and a sense that what I am doing is worthwhile. This is especially true in the summer holidays - it's always a quiet time and I can go a couple of days without selling anything at all, so a rush of sales means a lot. 

My timing was a bit rubbish though - I had scheduled some extra shifts at my other job so there have been quite a few long days where I'm catching up on orders in the evening, then leaving a big pile of parcels for my long suffering partner to drop off at the post office the following day. It's only really an issue when I'm working back to back days in the other job - as a rule I try to have alternate days at Cottontails to stay on top of things. So - it was very much an issue when I had three long shifts back to back the week after my biggest offer of the year so far. Poor organisation! 

This afternoon I'm sending out another email to the mailing list (my second of the year - that's two in two weeks - a flurry!) which will highlight a (somewhat tardy) Summer Gift Guide and also a little flash sale for the Bank Holiday weekend - some Maileg and Beatrix Potter toys. Fingers crossed for another busy few days, and this time I've even booked out a day in my diary for catching up, just in case. 

x