Our Latest Excursion

I hit our regional Market in Columbus yesterday to see what items we could find there for our Holiday 2008 look. I know, I know. I'm late on the draw. No, really. Many retailers have had their Holiday look signed for, sealed, and all but delivered (that usually begins in June) by the end of January, beginning of February. With the launch of our online boutique consuming the early months of this year, I must admit that I'm still wrapping my head around Holiday '08. We've had a strong vision for months, now I'm nailing down the detail work--textures, trims, exact color tones, and most importantly, what I won't buy, as cute as it may be (a handful of oddball choices can throw off the whole look). As the Romantic Gothic writer Edgar Allan Poe said of literature (and I quote this loosely, or maybe exactly--it's been a while since I've studied OR taught this), you will write no word that does not contribute to the unity of effect.

Photo of Edgar Allan Poe mural courtesy of Flickr.

Poe was all about poetic unity, making every word, every choice, connect back to the central theme or dominant motif, and we think along the same lines when buying a look for an upcoming season.

It's always fascinating to watch trends in the home decor and gift industry evolve from season to season. It's pretty easy to spot said trends when shopping a Mart, mostly because they are reinterpreted over and over again from showroom to showroom. Let's say the new theme or motif is celestial. It isn't. But if it were, you'd walk a whole show and see that celestial theme played out here, there, and everywhere. From suns to moons to stars to angels, you'd see it over and over and over again. Sometimes with a rogue harp or halo thrown in for good measure (somebody getting adventurous). You'd see, essentially, the same ornament done in fifty different ways, with only slight variations in shape, weight, and color. This doesn't mean the look of the moment isn't interesting or well-done or sellable or desirable, it just means that with so much sameness out there in the market for the end customer to choose from, you'd better get your mind around YOUR vision as a shopkeeper and stick to it. And how, as a shopkeeper, will you differentiate your interpretatation from that of the other shops out there?

In a neighborhood of big box retailers and in the midst of so much sameness, we are steadfast in our quest for the "something different" you are always looking for at THE BLISSFUL. Come and see our latest finds for the season, including a new shipment of our coconut fiber French doormats (Mon Petit Palais, or "my little palace," mat featured in photo at top), green boxwood topiaries, printed pillows, iron gates with which to splendor up a room, and garden pots. Get your verdigris crosses for Easter, Velveteen Rabbits, and egg wreaths this week, too.

Off to upload new products into the online boutique.

Oh, and I promise, promise, promise that the next post will unveil the details of our 100th Post Giveaway!

Spring Thaw

Lest you think I've fallen off the face of the Earth, I thought I'd better post and give you a little update. I've been basically incommunicado ever since the launch of our online boutique. Wow! Thanks for all of your support and thank you to every customer whose order we have fulfilled. From Oklahoma to California and back to Connecticut, we've been boxing and shipping as quickly as we can. Dozens and dozens of new items will added to the online boutique over the next week, so please check back daily.

The Lantern Candles featured in the photo below are two items we just added today:


Talk about yummy and delicious eye candy, not to mention fragrances to make you swoon. Click here to learn more or to purchase.



In brick-and-mortar news, we took advantage of last week's major winter storm (of near blizzard proportions) and tricked our shop out for Spring. We'd been waiting on certain deliveries (most of which finally came) before we could do our Big Changes. A shop is like a jigsaw puzzle. If we move one thing, seven other things have to move in order to accomodate the shift and keep the balance, flow, sense of scale and proportion, and color palette moving from display to display. And I'll tell you this: every time we face a major seasonal floor set change, we face it with a giant sense of trepidation. Can we do this? Can we pull this off? Can we do justice to all of our new finds, make sure they're all seen and shown off in their best aspect? Can we make our customers say wow? Can we (and this is no small thing) find the manpower when manpower is what we need (yes, 90% of our display changes are accomplished entirely by maman et moi. Not kvetching, just elucidating.) Last week's crazy snowstorm was a bit of a luxury. We threw on our sweats and spent the better part of two days moving new merchandise out on to the sales floor, then around the sales floor (Musical Chairs-style), then back around for another do-si-do. Move it, try it, stand back, appraise it, move it again, turn it around, lean it over, prop it up, layer it, etc., etc. Over the past two years, I have come to the recognition that shopkeeping and merchandising truly are art forms. Shop owners are stagemasters (and stagemistresses) to a large degree.


And now...the shop has a bright, airy, wonderfully "found" and earthy feel, offset with vignettes of vintage deco glamour. In the afternoons, certain spots in the shop look not unlike a sun-dappled glass menagerie.

I have several new shots to share. I had to be careful in deciding which photos to post here this time, as THE BLISSFUL was just lavishly and thoroughly photographed for a feature in a national shelter magazine (I'll keep which one a secret until closer to the on-newsstands date). I have to keep most of the more sublime shots under wraps so that they can make their debut between the glossy pages of X%(&^@ magazine late this summer. If you're local, you'll just have to come in to the shop and see what else is new!


If you haven't yet heard about our new Twilight Hours, please note that THE BLISSFUL is now open from Monday-Thursday from 10 AM to 7 PM and Friday and Saturday from 10 AM-5 PM. To introduce our longer, later hours, we're offering a daily Twilight Special Monday-Thursday from 5-7 PM only. The special savings change daily and are valid from 5-7 PM that day only, so stop by to check out what's on sale today. And tomorrow. And the next day! Come in and meet our two new hires during these hours, as well. Zoey and Jamie have tons of retail experience and know their stuff. Best of all, they both have wonderful spirits and a certain brightness around them, just great people to be around. They are the shopgirls I have been looking for ever since we opened our doors but didn't ever think I'd find. It's not easy to turn one's business over into the hands of another. It feels good to know that if I wanted to, I could flit out the door without a care or a concern. The shop is in magnificent hands.

Here are a few more peeks of what's currently in store:

This is the blue Bohemian Apartment Mirror we found at Market, now gracing our expanded apparel section. Here's just one of our new vintage-washed tees, front and back:

Isn't that the truth?

The best honey we've ever tasted. Swirl this over a piece of fresh-cut French bread, still warm from the oven. (I'm sure your local bakery or neighborhood Panera can help you out with that one.)

Fresh-picked jewelry in the soft, soothing colors of Spring. Cool brights and soft metallic sheens bring revival, as well.

Our newest body care collection, straight out of Napa Valley. Rich with olive oil and natural extracts. We love treating our skin to applications that come straight from the Earth.

This is the petite leather handbag we're all going crazy over. With jeans and heels for a night out with your girlfriends, it's just too cute! Click here to learn more or to purchase. Check out its big sister, too.

Our flour sack-inspired pillows. Available with both French and Italian print.

A bevy of fabulous little books awaits. Click here to learn more about or to purchase this one.

Usher in Spring with a French-y twist. Tie on one of our lightweight spring scarves in georgette, bamboo, or Italian silk. Click here, here, and here to see what's already popped up in our online boutique.

A new crop of our Savon de Marseille is fresh for the picking. Click here to learn more or to purchase.

An affair with a handbag. We can't stop drooling over this gilded, studded clutch in three colorways: Emerald Green, Magenta, and Gunmetal. Terribly chic.

Our new collection of high quality melamine reinterprets classical motifs in fresh, modern ways. Click here to begin browsing or to purchase.

Don't forget: just because it hasn't yet made it into our online boutique doesn't mean it's not available if you live far away. Simply e-mail us at sales@theblissful.com and we'll happily help you purchase anything you'd like.

Now, off to create a post about our 100th Post Giveaway...

It's Our Online Shop!

Look for our Post Script Mirror in our Decorate : Wall Decor department.

"Happy Birthday, Leap Year Baby!!!" [cue sounds of plastic horns and noisemakers, people whooping, and much clinking of glasses and general merrymaking]

Look for our VIN Glasses in our Entertain : Glassware department.

As promised, our long-awaited online boutique is open for business! We hope you'll visit and spend some time wandering through.

New finds and furnishings will be added on the regular, so stop by daily to see what's just arrived. We plan to highlight new arrivals on our blog whenever possible so that you can stop here first, then skip on over to the boutique for a first peek.

Now for the personal stuff. What can I say upon the launch of our online store? Not to get all choked-up and Toastmaster-ish on you, but I really have been thinking about how to put this e-commerce launch into perspective, how to frame it for myself. Have you ever gotten so lost in a big new project that when you come up for air you fail to behold the true scope of your accomplishment? I think that's where I'm at right now.

Customers often ask me if I've considered expanding The Blissful, either in terms of physical space or even franchising. The fact is, at this point I am quite content with the brick-and-mortar store in its current size. This is as much store as I want for right now! And I can't even begin to imagine a new shop in a new city. However, the online launch is an expansion of no small proportions. It's a bigger investment in every regard: time spent behind the computer, hours spent at the shop, training new staff, getting my office into shape as a shipping center (and yes, it's come a looong way from the last time you saw it), not to mention the additional financial investment of stocking inventory for not one but two shops (that's one way of thinking of it; the other way of thinking about it is that our customer base just multiplied by several thousandfold; either way, that means more inventory). It's a leap, and how appropriate that we're launching on the eve of February 29th, 2008...Leap Day.

Look for our Tiny Garden Tee in our Dress : Apparel department.

And so we commence this next phase of our journey at The Blissful. We are launching with what I see as a fairly modest representation of all that is to come. Our product mix online will grow by leaps and bounds over the next few weeks, months, and years. We look forward to the great pleasure and privilege of doing business with you and thank you so much for your friendship and support. Merci! Merci! Merci!

Oh, and as always, thank you to Matt and Becki and to Linds, three of the best friends I could ever have. Without the three of you, this online boutique just might have leapt right into March!

Let the wonderment begin!
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Save the Dates

Because with no end in sight to this cold, sleet-y, snowy, freezing rain-y weather, we all need something to look forward to...

you are invited to
Paris in the Springtime at The Blissful

Thu., 4.17 from
3 PM - 9 PM

Fri., 4.18 from
10 AM - 9 PM

Sat., 4.19 from
10 AM - 9 PM

Sun., 4.20 from
11 AM - 5 PM

Enjoy our French café appetizers, gourmet patisserie, pink lemonade, & something bubbly, all set to the music of the Paris cafés. Friends & lovers welcome!

Plus, fabulous shopping promotions, one unbelievable giveaway, & more.

Yes, I know the dates are a bit far off still, but I wanted to give all of you roadtrippers a good heads up.

More later! Details about our 100th Post Giveaway in our very next Lettre!

Café Love

Photo above courtesy of Flickr.

Yesterday my friend Becki and I took a little day trip to Columbus (Ohio), where (some of you may know) I used to live and teach, back before my life as proprietor of The Blissful. People often ask me if I miss teaching. I tell them the truth, which is no, I don't miss teaching, but I think often of former students and wonder where they are and how they're doing. I miss my super colleagues and teaching partners, too.

What I also miss from my former life are the coffee shops I used to frequent. My very favorite string of coffee shops were part of a locally owned franchise called Cup O' Joe (not the café in the photo above, which could be somewhere in Ville de Wonderful, France). They do not have their own website (yet), but I believe this is the link to their parent company. I regularly frequented three of their (to the best of my knowledge) four locations: the one near The Ohio State University campus (Go Bucks!), the one in German Village (think cobblestone streets and iron gates protecting deliciously Old World-looking homes, some of them so tiny they're practically dollhouses), and most recently, the one in The Short North Arts District. Yesterday after shopping our regional Columbus Market for more Christmas decor (yes, I'm late on the draw by retail standards), and after a hearty lunch at a Scottish pub, I took Becki to Cup O'Joe in The Short North. We needed a little something sweet for the two hour ride home. Being there in that venue, among artists sketching in their sketchbooks, writers tapping away on keyboards of impossibly small computers, and avid conversationalists smiling and pressing each other's wrists to make points, I realized how much I miss the laid back café lifestyle. I miss the long, stretchy, coffee-flavored Saturdays of my former life. Not so much that I could be wooed back to a regular paycheck and a great benefit plan--I wouldn't trade those perks for what I get to do now as a shop owner--but I do miss having time on my hands and a few precious weekend afternoon hours to while away. At some point in the future, I hope to be able to resume my café life without missing a beat at the shop.

On the subject of coffee (how's that for a segway?), take a look at our new favorite coffee mugs: love the size and the weight, the fact that they're clear, and most of all, the darling little coffee bean with the phrase Grain de Café on them. I also love that they're handle-less, but they narrow toward the sturdy foot and thus allow for grabbing on and drinking without fear of burning oneself. How delightful.

When I returned to the shop this Monday morning, here's what was waiting for me:

A heaven of green. Alongside our softest of soft Green Cattail Balls (velvety to the touch) and our new Green is Good totes, we're featuring our new Garden + Forest Infusion line, which comes to us via our friend Margo, candlemaker extraordinaire of Tatine Candles in Chicago. I wish you could smell the shop today. I've been burning Salted Caramel Tabac, which I'd told Margo I knew would be my favorite based on the name alone. I was right.

After stubbornly resisting carrying fragranced pillars the first year we were in business and simultaneously keeping my eye out for just the right line (because you never know when something might sway you), we finally found Tatine and knew it was just right for The Blissful. Here's a preview of Paris, one of our bestsellers. With notes of champagne, sea salt, and kelpy air, this candle smells just like the city itself.

Back on the coffee shop tip, I should mention that we've recently introduced a patisserie into the shop. Again, courtesy of Tatine (clearly I have a lot to thank Margo for). Her Patisserie line of candle tins features all of the yummy baked goods scents you would dream of finding in the best little patisseries in Europe, including Café Crème, Framboise (raspberry with a whiff of vanilla), and Madeleine (a classic French tea cake). I think I'm gaining weight just from burning them in the shop.

Speaking of which, the remainders of our Valentine's candy are being put to good use:

That's my mom's hand in the photo and she wanted me to be sure to tell you that it only appears miniature and chubby. It's the angle, people, just the angle.

There are still a few boxes left!

Wistfully Yours from an Imaginary Table at My Favorite Café,

Abby
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It's a Leap Year Baby!

LEAP YEAR
according to Wikipedia.com (channeling Michael Scott, for all you fans of The Office):

A) A leap year is a year containing one or more extra days in order to keep the calendar year synchronised with the astronomical or seasonal year. For example, February would have 29 days in a leap year instead of the usual 28.

B) The launch date of The Blissful's new online boutique!

We didn't plan it this way. It simply came down to the fact that I had promised we would launch in February and I wanted to keep that promise. It meant that we would launch the very last day of February, but February it would still be. (Building a comprehensive e-commerce boutique that reflects the flavor and scope of its brick-and-mortar big sister takes a lot longer than one would think.) And so, I decided that February 29th would be the day. And then I realized what day it already was: Leap Day.

So Friday, February 29th is our big day! We are working hourly to perfect every last finishing detail on the site. We continue to upload more great product as we unpack boxes, stage and shoot new items, and write up descriptions that will make our online store as tangible an experience as possible for you. I'm even doing something I never thought I'd have to do when my store was this young: hiring part-time help! We feel pretty blessed and lucky to have a small bevy of terrific friends with lots of valuable retail experience who 'get' the veeeerrrrry low-key sales approach we favor at The Blissful. Our new staff--who you may get to meet beginning in March--are going to be fabulous additions to our team.

Thanks for your patience, your warm words of anticipation, and your support. I appreciate the e-mails I've been receiving from so many of you asking when this baby's going to launch, and I'm here to tell you: we're having a Leap Year baby!!! Get the (fake) vanilla cigars ready!

Why, St. Valentine, Why?

It's Valentine's Week, you know. ("Valentine's Week?" exclaimed my boyfriend yesterday evening. "Now it's a week???")


There's little historical veracity to back up the idea that it was the St. Valentine of history books who founded the holiday that is alternately beloved and dreaded by people throughout Western Civilizaton. However, I appreciate the cultural mythology so much that I am going to blame him for picking the middle of February for this holiday. Why, St. Valentine, why? It's only in the single digits here in Ohio and I'm sure it can't be much warmer anywhere within a ten hour drive! (Those of you in warm weather climates, I hope you're counting your lucky stars this week.) This is the weather in which we're supposed to run out, buy a cute new outfit for our big night out at a restaurant, or hit up the grocery store for ingredients for a batch of cupcakes for our honey? Yeah, not really feeling like it this week. But we press on.

Just in case you plan to brave this week's oncoming weather, we invite you to make a stop at The Blissful, as we are running our St. Valentine's Sale today through Saturday. We're taking 10% OFF all pink and red items and all other Valentine's-specific finds (cards, candy, etc.).

Below, we are featuring exquisite chocolates (each truffle is named after a girl; pop open a box and you can sink your teeth into a glorious ganache-covered Sophie, Antoniette, or Helena!) in our handmade pink polka dot heart shaped box. Lovely and adorable. Enjoy the chocolates, then treat the box as a keepsake.

Certain of our KOBO candles are perfect for this holiday. Try Santal, which is a blend of sandalwood, cognac, and anise. (Once he takes it out of the pink and red box, the candle is white soy wax in a clear vessel. The fragrance is great for his study--not too girly.) Or light up a Chocolat et Orange (now burning at this present moment), a mix of dark chocolate, tangerine, and orange.

On another note, have you seen the feature on our friends Darcy and Kara's shop in the March issue of Country Living? Check these ladies out! The honor couldn't have been bestowed upon two nicer, more deserving people. Their online shop is debuting soon, too, so watch for it!

It's hard for me to believe it, but our 100th post on Lettres from The Blissful is fast approaching! In fact, it's just seven more posts away. I'm going to jump on the bandwagon (not usually my favorite activity, but all of you wonderful bloggers deserve it) and do a 100th Post Giveaway! More details to follow soon, including how to enter and what the winner will receive.

Hope your Valentine's Week (week, week, week, week, week) is unusually sweet.