The Blog Police Would Kill Me

If I was paying attention to any kind of official blog advice, I'd know that posting this late on a Friday before a three-day weekend is some kind of blog cardinal sin.

But, turns out, I'm not paying attention. At all.

I'm so sorry that it has taken me so long to update you all on our NSS experience. When we started all of this, I had these grand ideas of real-time updates and lots of beautiful photography from our own booth and others. When the reality hit, it knocked us off our feet. And we've only just now gotten back up.

So, in short, the show was CRAZY.

Let's start with the crazy awesome stuff:

- Meeting so many nice, cool people who share our interest in beautiful paper, including Carina from Crow and Canary, the girls from Two Trick Pony, Jean from Bobbin and more

- Getting attention (and hopefully some orders-- more on that later) from some of our biggest dream stores

- Hanging out and sharing the first-time show experience with our good friends Eva and Kirk Jorgensen from Sycamore Street Press

- Seeing our booth and products come together to make something we were super proud of

- Meeting the owners and buyers of great stores who were willing to give our products a chance

- Finding new markets and ideas for our products that we never would have thought of on our own

- Discovering that cabs in New York now have TVs in them

- Eating with my adorable cousin-in-law Sami at a great new restaurant called Little Owl

- Staying with incredibly generous and supportive friends-- namely Sarah Jane and Nathan, Matt and Melany and Ashley and Todd (thanks guys)

- Cleaning up at the Dwell sample sale, Anthropologie and other fine shopping establishments

- Getting help from two random but amazingly nice guys who helped us get our bags (each of which weighed as much as Kristin) on to the subway and subsequently kept us from missing our flight (we literally arrived with only three minutes to spare)



And the not-so-awesome crazy parts:

- Having our feet hurt so bad at night that they still hurt the next morning

- Standing for over ten hours straight every day

- Spending an obscene amount of money on aforementioned cabs

- Eating the Javits Center food (it's never a good sign when you can get Italian, Chinese and Indian food in the same line)

- Hauling our gigantic baggage all over the city

- Almost missing our flight home and breaking down in tears in the subway

- Being so tired that we actually started slurring our words



All in all, we had a totally amazing experience. It's crazy how much we learned every day. And it's also crazy to realize that our real work has just begun. We have a lot of follow-up to do. There are a lot of opportunities out there and we have to keep determined and smart to make things happen. We were blessed with a lot of chances that make us think that this is something that is going to be real and long-term. We are really excited to continue to learn and build and grow. I'm sure there are still disappointments ahead of us too. But the coolest part of this whole thing is realizing that you have something somewhere inside of you that can do whatever it takes.

We're going to keep moving this blog forward as we started-- as a place for us to talk about the amazing, funny, heartbreaking, frustrating things that go into trying to do something you've always wanted to do. We'll probably mix in some other things too-- people, things and places that inspire us; plans for the future; things we want to get your opinion on, etc. Thanks for all of your help, suggestions and encouragement. You guys are all the best.