Update from the land of crazy

We all trotted off to the big gift fair in Auckland at the beginning of September, hauling all 5 of us and about 7 billion pieces of luggage (portacot, carseats, buggy la la la). We had a stand at the gift fair, so we all spent 4 days doing "relay parenting" and "relay selling shizz". It was a fantastic fair, we gained many awesome new stockists for Dishy and Babylicious, and I also ran around buying up large for both shops.

We spent a fairly hectic couple of days after Auckland in Whangarei on family duty. For some reason, after being pretty good in Auckland, the baby decided she couldn't sleep unless I was in permanent physical contact with her. I was veeeeeeeery tired by the end of it. Fortunately (dare I say it?) she has slept through since we got home. Dammit. I shouldn't have said it, it is bound to screw things up, but 8 months without a decent night's sleep, I feel I deserve a break.

When we got back we were delighted to find that my mother has painted the bulk of the new shop, and since then has pretty much finished the job. It looks amazing, and we feel very lucky to have her do it, especially as we hadn't figured on being so busy with the wholesale orders. Each night has seen one of us in the workshop packing orders, and one of us in the house writing up invoices and emailing customers. Our ritzy new offices and storage behind the new shop is going to make the business of being in business so much easier. The working from home thing is somewhat overrated.

And now we're on a crazy countdown to opening on Saturday the 19th. We hope to have a bit of a shindig in there on the 18th, so the deadline is tick tocking ever nearer. I've been spending a lot of time hoofing around feeling frazzled and then repeating my personal mantra for the moment "chill out, we're doing this because it is fun", and lo, it is so.