2024 Year in Review

After the busy holiday season, I always welcome the calm and quiet of January. Work wise there's still a bit of a hustle to reach out to all of our stores to encourage them to restock for Valentine's Day. I spent quiet times at home and at my studio finishing writing my book - So Many Moons. I also started to plan the cover and back cover which I was very excited to tackle between taking the photos and editing them together in photoshop. The previous October, I found out about the upcoming Eclipse so I immediately set out to make an Eclipse pendant that we could offer for preorder and sales started coming in right away. While I was at it, I made some Moon Phase Pendants that I planned to release with my book in the spring. So actually it wasn't that quiet or slow now that I look back but it still was a cozy time. Everything felt more intentional, planning and planting a lot of seeds for spring. 

In February we celebrated 5 years at the studio, not a huge turnout but that's to be expected in such a dark and cold month. I finished my book and worked with my mom who edited it. I also launched my Kickstarter which was another whole huge project in itself. It felt crazy to simultaneously be working on the book, the cover and the Kickstarter but it all went hand in hand. I remember being very sick with a bad cold while I worked on the cover and while we finished editing it. Everything felt hard and huge and I was struggling. Our Eclipse pendants were selling like hotcakes though and that was very helpful - the first time we've had a piece do super well that wasn't a fundraising piece so that was very exciting to just have sales coming in during a slow season. Then my husband and I took our son to Disney World and had a freakin' blast! 

March started with us still in Florida, at Legoland which was also really cool. A few days after we returned home we got to see one of my favorite bands, Thievery Corporation at Higher Ground and we danced our asses off. The rest of March was filled with the excitement and anxiety of watching my Kickstarter rise until I reached my goal! My book was off to the printers and I worked on a new collection - the Cosmic Collection that included the Eclipse Necklace and my book, it was kind of the umbrella and culmination of all of these ideas. I was hoping to have my book in time for the Eclipse in April but they printed it so fast and I got it at the end of March, such a treat! 

April started off with a new tattoo, my biggest yet, it spanned my upper back. This was my first tattoo with Anne Winslow of Hellbrook Ink, I had gotten 2 from her sister, Priscilla, the previous year. This was in honor of my book and the Eclipse, to mark this occasion. Both Seven Days and the Burlington Free Press featured my Eclipse pendant as the frenzy got closer and closer. Then the day came THE ECLIPSE!! It was magical. We gathered on the Soda Plant rooftop, our little family and friends and neighbors and TOTALITY was EPIC. It was otherworldly and magical and it felt like time stopped. It was awe inspiring and worthy of the hype. I want to be an Eclipse chaser now. My goal, for so many months, was to hold my book in my hands for it and I did! My Eclipse Pendants were one of our most successful designs and campaigns and I was proud of that too. We went out that night to see Lady Moon and the Eclipse and danced and reveled in the magic of it all. 

In mid April I held an event - a mala making workshop with my friend Laura Neal. I made mine with moonstone and turquoise. On April 19th I held my Cosmic collection release and book launch. A few days later we saw another favorite band of mine, Mamuse. Any sunny day that I'm on a beautiful stretch of road in the car, I put on their song Glorious. To hear them play it in person, in a small music hall in Randolph, Vermont was Glorious. A few days later I celebrated my 45th birthday. Things had been so busy and I planned a day of self care. After years of taking occasional satellite classes from Laughing River Yoga with Devin Russell at Hula and the Surf club, I finally took one of her classes at the LRY studio, overlooking the Winooski River and it was so lovely, then I had a massage, went to a salt cave with my dear friend, went shopping at my favorite store Nusantara and met up with my fam at Waterworks for an epic dinner. It was such a great day, a great month! 

My eclipse wish, my birthday wish, my intention that I had been wanting to make happen for so long... was to finally really make yoga a part of my life, to make time for it, to make a life change. 20+ years of making jewelry has crunched me up into what feels like a twisted, knotted root ball, a wilting flower and my hope was to really start to unfurl, stretch out, gain flexibility, gain strength and to unlock some chronic pain. In May I started going weekly and then twice a week. Also in May, I got my book into Phoenix book stores which has been a dream since I first went to UVM over 20 years ago!

In June I treated myself to a retreat! On the previous full moon I saw that Krissy Leonard was putting on a luxury retreat in Stowe for “the Aligned Female Entrepreneur”. MY EYES LIT UP. A gorgeous space - Sterling Forest Lodge, yoga, vegan meals, hydrotherapy + chatting about business strategy, rediscovering your brand essence and upleveling your systems all with a small group of dynamic women - local and from afar. I was like SIGN ME UPPPP!!! Plus it was starting on the NEW MOON! The timing of it all aligned perfectly for me. I really needed a break, to RETREAT and to TREAT myself. I had an absolutely beautiful room, a huge copper tub and the time and space to relax and to be with myself. It was truly magical and so needed. 

I had been looking for a marketing person to help me get some things off of my plate and to help take my biz to the next level with ads and to have new eyes on my social media, I found someone amazing, well actually she found me and it was so exciting to start to take steps to elevate my biz. In the process though it got really intense in reevaluating the ways I do everything and feeling totally overwhelmed, instead of taking things off my plate, things were piling up but it still felt good to be really zeroing in on my biz and how to make improvements. My fam also took a little weekend trip to Lake Willoughby which always fills my cup. 

July came and we realized we needed to focus on the big show that I had been planning on vending at for months. It was coming up in September and we created a big spreadsheet to figure out our best sellers and how many to bring of each style. Things had been slow for the summer at the studio with construction going on outside and our road only being one way for months. We put all of our energy and focus toward making work for this show, figuring if it didn't go well, we'd at least be getting ahead on making inventory for the holidays. Somehow I planned 2 photoshoots a few days apart at the end of July, the first with Laughing River Yoga teachers in my jewelry and the 2nd with the Hellbrook Ink tattoo sisters. They were both so much fun. The sisters truly nailed the vibe, I love the photos and those gals so much! They also opened their own Gallery and bigger tattoo studio in Morrisville and they carry my jewelry there too!

In August we took a great week-long vacation on the coast, spending most of it in Maine, we had the best time, we stayed in a new area and explored new beaches, we even saw the huge trolls at the Botanical Garden. When we got back I worked on a new Yoga inspired jewelry collection featuring sacred geometry. With all the ongoing construction and traffic in our area, I'd been thinking about opening a second location somewhere. I'd been looking on and off for over a year and suddenly it looked like that might happen in Shelburne. I was getting super excited but it fell through but it just wasn't meant to be. Plus we needed to fully focus on our big show coming up next month, Jase even made me the coolest diorama, TO SCALE! so I could figure out how we would display everything. Plus he made all of the earring displays!

September brought the big show, I was away for 10 days, the longest I've ever been away from my son. I told him that I would never ordinarily go away for so long but "mama's hopin' to make a lot of money and get a lot of new customers". Sadly neither was true. It just wasn't the right venue for my work or my price point. My expectations for this event were so high as I had done my due diligence to make sure this was the right fit... but it just wasn't. The days were so long (12+ hours) and knowing I had to be there for 9 days when it wasn't the right fit was pretty rough. The whole ordeal kind of broke my spirit. It had me questioning everything. It felt like I had made such a big mistake and I was so off course. Doubt and insecurity crept in and wore me down. There was no down time, no time to hang with vendor friends or socialize, just enough to drive back to the hotel, shower, go to sleep and do it all again and again. My employees took turns helping me for days and my brother was there for the last 4, so thankful to have his humor to get me through it. Then my new marketing person quit via text, and it ended with me getting Covid. All I wanted to do was cuddle my boy, I drove myself home and stayed in our half finished basement for 4 days until I tested negative. I felt pretty unhinged.

In October I was just trying to rest and take it slow and pull myself up and out of this massive funk I had fallen into. I'm always trying to grow my biz and make each year better but everything was pointing to me slowing down and staying small. Luckily the collection I had started in August had arrived from our caster and I had trays of new pieces to assemble and combine with crystals and it was so healing to have this work to bring me back to my work and myself.

I love the fall but it's so fleeting, we went on a lot of walks and drives to take in all the warmth and colors while we could. We took a trip to Lake Willoughby again and this time stayed in a treehouse and had a great time, so amazing to drive through Vermont in peak foliage. Two of my production assistants scaled back their hours to focus on their own interests which was fine because we were so ahead on inventory. 

Started off November with a wonderful one day retreat in Stowe that my friend Laura Neal hosted with Jessica Rose Lantos filled with Cacao, breathwork, yoga and ecstatic dance and I got the tattoo sisters to join and we had a fab time, we even stayed over and talked into the wee hours. We were doing our best to fill our cups and raise our own vibrations of hope and positivity into the ethers. Then came the election and so much worry for the world. I spent some time feeling really low again. We celebrated Jase's bday and then my dear friend Tiffany's bday. She always has a great and positive spin on things and she said "our souls signed up to be here, now" and that same night I heard the same line on a podcast.

I really felt the need to be in nature and to be creative and took my son to Lake Champlain to collect rocks, thinking it might be nice to make some into pendants. I drilled some and felt so empowered! I'd been nervous to try that but wanting to for ages. Our customers were so excited for this new Vermont Rocks collection and that really brought my spirits up. Then one of my employees gave notice, I'm happy that she's moving on and trying new things and it felt like the right thing all around but also I just feel this universal pull to stay small and feeling uncertain about the future of everything, that feels fine. 

We are at the end of December as I'm writing this paragraph and I'm feeling so lucky and grateful to have had a busy holiday season. It's been a wonderful distraction. After feeling like it's been so hard to grow, to reach new audiences, to market, to expand...after feeling small and stagnant and sad, it has been everything to be reminded that we have an audience, we have amazing customers. Hearing all month long of the connections made through my work, the joy felt when giving it, the empowerment felt when wearing it is so uplifting. This month I even bought a new (used) car. My car was nearly 20 years old and someone in my neighborhood was selling their 10 year old hybrid and I'm so excited to have a newer and more eco-conscious car. I also reached 50 yoga classes this year and I'm so proud of myself for finally weaving movement into my life and I plan to keep it up! I realize now, if we had been any busier, I would not have been able to carve out the time for yoga. 

So that's my year, the ups and downs. Looking back at it all, it's just waves... the highs and lows and finding ways to navigate. I'm grateful for it all, the hard stuff made me feel grateful for all I do have, sometimes that's all the growth you need in a year, a fresh perspective. Similar to my book, I feel compelled to share all of this with you and hope sharing bits of my journey can help you on yours. If you read all of this (thank you!) please drop a comment below!

*We did a few custom projects/pieces for Terry Bicycles, Laughing River Yoga and April Cornell.

*We got into 13 new stores this year:
Northwood Gallery - Stowe
Hellbrook - Morrisville
Artisan Hand -  Montpelier
Putnams vineyard - White River Junction
Currier Museum Gift Shop - Manchester, NH
Enjoy - Shelburne Falls, MA
Maria Luisa boutique - Nyack, NY
Hang the Moon - Mystic, CT
Emporium Collagia - Baltimore, MD
Burnt Sienna Gallery and studio - Galena, Illinois
Made - Jackson, Wyoming
Sumi's - Los Angeles, CA
Buffalo Blue Boutique and Antiques - Houston, TX