Here's the story

Alright, our travel to England (Josh's Secondment) is being put off until June1.  That means we will be leaving town late May.  While they may have been able to work things out for an earlier date if we really pushed for it, there would still be several months of uncertainty.  Josh and I are like-minded in that, we'd rather have a real, actual, solid working date...even though it means waiting a little bit longer than we would ideally like.

So what does this mean for my business?  I'm going to list out a bulleted list, as I plan on directing confused and annoyed customers to this page for the full story

• from now until the new year, I am going to still really focus on making up crown stock.  I spent a lot of money getting 6 months worth of materials in, and I might as well finish making stock while I am in that mind set.  This way, I am prepared for leaving town, when or if that happens...which ultimately means that I will be able to continue custom work/engravings up until a few weeks before we leave (rather than a few months).
• I am going to open up the engraving options again (now)...any customer may now add an engraving to their crowns/trays if they'd like
• I'm going to try and delay any really custom crown designs until after the new year.  I will have more time starting in January to focus on custom work.
• Starting Jan 1, the website will feature an integrated shopping cart function/check-out page.  But I am also going to start charging a shipping fee at that time.  It will be a low flat-rate. (under $10 for domestic.  Int'l customers are currently charged shipping in the$25-$30 range...I'm going to make that a flat rate for all int'l, too)
• It will be easy to still add customization to your order, once the new shipping cart feature is added. But I still have a lot of work to do to get all all of your crown and candle options posted, and get things just right....which is why I want to keep things as low-key from now until Jan 1. 
• As always, call or email me to place your orders for the time being!  And again, Customization is now open again!
• I will start cutting of customization in May...so place any orders for spring/summer weddings in a timely fashion. I will keep the website fully updated with any cut-off dates.
  

Thanks to my cusotmers for being so flexible and understanding of our changing travel plans.  I am sorry for any confusion or inconvenience I have caused/am causing.   The bright-side here is that I will be around for filling all the spring orders myself, which makes me pretty happy.

Waiting for clarification...

Alright, well, here's the current UK status:  We should still be heading to the UK next year, but it might get delayed a wee bit.  Why?  The director of Josh's company won't sign-off on Josh's secondment, as the company has a lot of work headed their way at the start of next year.  This is a GREAT thing for the company....but it also means that there's a lot of work to be done...and with a hiring freeze still in place...well, they'd like to keep Josh around for the work.  So, we have no doubt that this will work itself out.  the boys will come to a compromise.

If it turns out that we end up NOT going, well, we'll be pretty disappointed, and I'll have needlessly cut off engravings and custom work...but I'll have a lot of awesome crowns in stock to make my work a lot easier in general. And it will also mean that Josh has a great project at work here in the US to keep him busy...so it is a win-win situation either way.  We are just really looking forward to going to the UK.  So unless we're actually told otherwise, we're still preparing as though we are leaving the 2nd week of Jan.

By early next week, I'll have a pretty impressive amount of stock made...I'll have to post some pictures as the piles of boxes start to grow.

Ready to "Blog"

Alright--I think I have everything set up to have an official Blog now....rather than that news update page on my glass website.  So of course, now that I'm ready to start updating family and friends about our upcoming England trip, it looks like there is a hiccup in the plans.  we'll see what the day brings.