Out of the Frying Pan and Into the New Year We Charge!

Actually, we're all sick here at the home front, so we are more of a coughing, sleeping crew than a charging crew, but we carry all the same enthusiasm in our hearts that brought us this far. We've learned so much these past several weeks. Since the day I hit the "go live" button on our Kickstarter campaign in October, things have changed so quickly, it's felt like time is standing still. Except when it comes to our daughter. She started growing faster and all of the rest of time contracted around her rapid learning curve. 

Eve learned to walk. Alongside her, we've learned to help our business walk. It's been quite a dazzling parallel, actually. She has fallen more times than anyone cares to count in her quest to walk, and though she's pretty good at it now and chooses walking over crawling, she still falls. So we are the same.

We spent the days of our Kickstarter learning how to help social media respond to us. At the same time, we spent those days in surprise and disarray from not having any actual idea how to get people's attention. Haha. It was really funny. We'd succeed and then fail almost in the same breath. Just like learning to walk. 

Before we finished the Kickstarter campaign, we realized we had a hurdle ahead of us in fulfilling the orders we'd worked so hard to drum up. So, we began collecting ingredients. We bought GALLONS of whiskey on a Saturday afternoon, toting it from Denver to our house with our daughter in the car. It felt weird. But exciting. But so weird. We ordered an ungodly amount of vodka and insane quantities of vanilla beans. We learned how to find black peppercorns in bulk and we made discoveries about the costs of bulk supplies.

There was a first birthday party for our daughter under the lights of pre-Christmas and we celebrated the people who brought us through this year.

Then it was back to work.

We bought too little vanilla oil and too much lavender oil. And we learned. We started staying up through the night in a rush to fulfill all those orders before Christmas. The magical day upon which all held goods turn to dust unless they've been delivered. Or at least that's what we told ourselves to keep our motivation. Our parents came to spend weekends with us just to help us box up orders. Each time they visited, our house looked less like a home and more like a small-scale factory. Our daughter started trying to walk amid a mess of carboys and glass bottles and she eats lavender off the floor like it's going out of style.

Eco-Enclose began building us boxes to fit our products and things took on a sharp appearance. Busy Bee Lavender Farm sold us nearly her entire stock of lavender. Then a few weeks later, we turned around and bought the rest of her supply.

We stayed up all night and then spent all day with one of us at a day job, the other toting a baby to the post office, the UPS store, the other post office that allows for shipping to military personnel, and FedEx. Repeat. Repeat again. Repeat again. Pizza for dinner? Yes. Delivery is a lifesaver. We sheepishly tipped in bottles of deodorant since we became short-term regulars with our delivery guys. We worked many nights and all weekend days, and we made it through about 93% of our orders in time for Christmas shipping, the whole while, enthralled with the delight of learning new things. Tired, but with the same rapt attention that our daughter learns new things. We were taking on the world as we know it as she took on hers. 

Without warning, Christmas was upon us and we didn't wrap any gifts. None. We spent Christmas with Jason's family, then did a re-Christmas with my familly. We handed everyone their gifts in grocery store bags. Reduce, reuse, eh? It was simple and beautiful.

That's when the crud hit us. It found a weakness in our family through our teething daughter, and suddenly we all thought we might croak. But we didn't and we're getting better slowly. 

Alas, last week some time, we finished our Kickstarter orders. And we gave it less than 24 hours to sink in before we told everyone. Because as soon as you say you're done, you find out you're not. The emails began rolling in for orders through Kickstarter where we never heard back from the survey. And we're hoping to be closing that chapter soon. Worn out, exhausted, but happy. This has been a fruitful learning process. 

We spent all the money from the Kickstarter to restore our supply of everything. So now we wait to find out whether the entire rush for Pit Liquor was a Christmas miracle, or if it's something we can build our family's future on. 

Time will tell. 

Thanks for journeying with us as we've learned to walk. Next up is running, and we hear that's pretty awesome.