Category: Tales from a Shopkeep
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Tales from a Shopkeep: on the new year and Love
We’re off to a great start this new year – we’re pretty excited for what 2019 holds for us, are you!? I mean, sure, the weather hasn’t been great . . . as I sit here in the store, with the rain pouring down, threatening to freeze later this afternoon, but still, we’re glad to…
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here’s to 10 (more) years!
The year was 2009. I was a stay-at-home mom to an adorable, kissable, cuter than cute bouncing baby boy, and Etsy was in its heyday. Far far away, on the IU campus, three young women started something big – the Bloomington Handmade Market. No one can really tell me who or where the idea first…
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Tales from a Shopkeep: Shine & Scratch Entrepreneur
So, many of you know I’ve been recording our own podcasts for a few weeks (months?) now, but where did that idea come from? Why did I start doing a podcast? The inspiration came from quite a few places, one of the powerful ones being the Scratch Entrepreneur podcast put on by my insurance agents, and…
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Tales from a Shopkeep: Craft-a-Way Camp
A few weeks ago (ok, maybe a month- time travels WAY too fast these days!) I was reminded about Craft-A-Way Camp thanks to FB and its incessant need to stalk my interests and friend groups. As per usual, FB wins and I applied to join the adventurers that run craft-a-way in the middle of the…
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Tales from a Shopkeep : BHM Wrap-Up
Last fall, four of us sat around a table and discussed the future of the spring BHM show. Gather had moved out of Fountain Square Mall, which meant, it didn’t make logical sense to host the spring show in that location any longer. To be honest, FSM was never the BEST place for a spring…
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Tales from a Shopkeep: Bloomington’s Bicentennial
Today the fam and I ventured into the wild (ok, downtown Bloomington) to visit the City’s Bicentennial Street Fair held on Kirkwood Ave between Walnut and Indiana, which, for those of you that aren’t familiar with organizing festivals (and wrangling cats) is a SUPER HUGE endeavor. It really is no small feat to close down…
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Tales from a Shopkeep: New Year Reset
There’s this thing in the retail world – they call it a reset. I think. I mean, who am I kidding? I just make this shit up as I go! But, it sounds good nonetheless;) Every few months we make the store look new again. It’s important for us to change things out for a…
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Tales from a Shopkeep: BHM recap
Oh boy, this season has hit us like a mack truck, and there’s really no looking back! Where to start, where to start?! Let’s begin . . . at the beginning. Our NINTH annual Bloomington Handmade Market was just a few weeks ago, Nov 11, at the Monroe Convention Center. I can’t say enough positive…
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Tales from a Shopkeep : the transformation
I’ve wanted to document the transformation of our space for some time – but I made it pretty clear in my last blog that this all happened pretty quickly. Not to mention, I completely checked out for awhile and, just, I just wasn’t on my game. So, I didn’t really get proper ‘before’ photos. But,…
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Tales from a Shopkeep : long time coming
I always hate blog posts that begin with . . . “well, I haven’t written in awhile,” but, that’s just my truth right now. And it’s important to note because, well, I haven’t written in awhile because DAMN, life happened!! These past, oh, six months or so, have been an absolute whirlwind! We had an…
Gather 