Open House Mania

Wow!  What a busy November and December I have had!  Sorry for lack of posts - but I've been head down working since the last post.  I held my open house on 16, 17 & 19th November.  I posted about it on social media big time and lots of people cam through the door that haven't visited before which is great, and I got inundated with orders, so much so that at one point I was beginning to panic that I had taken on too much (mainly due to the fact I had quite a few cake bookings in my December diary already!).  This year I took over £1,000 in pre-orders which is a first.  (Haven't actually totted it up yet, but it was certainly my best Christmas season ever, mind you I expanded my range massively this year so I was hoping for a good season - I didn't use all my ideas either so got next year's season pretty much in my head already.

Fudge, gingerbread and truffles (oh and knitted goodies from last year)

Feedback from people was good - most were amazed that I had produced so much and my ideas were liked.  Think I need to do something with lego / star wars next year to cover the boy market.  I'll just park that here for now.  Also I was doing boxes of filled chocolates this year (dark chocolate, gilded ginger being the most popular by far).  I did boxes of 4 and 6, but people were wanting bigger boxes, so I need more shapes and more flavours for next year.

Oh and yes I still need to get up at 6am to get everything ready in time.  I washed the floor, tidied and cleaned the kitchen in advance, but it still took me till 9am to get it all out and ready - I literally finished as the first customer turned up!  So maybe start setting up the night before next year.  Being open all day Friday, Saturday morning and Monday morning was a good ploy this year and as a result more people came, so definitely do that again next year.

Oh and I took videos of my range and posted them to FB - this definitely got more business through the door, need to do again next year, but next time do it slower!

  

Anyway, since then I have been making chocolate and packing chocolate until it literally took over the house.  I came out in spots as I think I was breathing chocolate for quite a few weeks, the kitchen turned brown and I went through a whole 10kg bag of milk chocolate, about 7kg of white chocolate and about 2.5kg of dark chocolate. It was nuts, but a good nuts and I only badly tempered 2 batches of chocolate during the whole season which is good.

Salted caramel fruit and bullion bars...

 filled choccies, mermaid tails, unicorns...

Xmas choccies, loaded bars, sea creatures....

 phones, choccie men, motorbike & rusty
nuts & bolts, tools etc   

So I got it all ready and laid out by the end of Wednesday and then spent a lovely Thursday and Friday tidying up and clearing up the mess of the laundry / kitchen / garage.  We had been living in a mess for a good month and hadn't managed to eat dinner on the kitchen table for over a week due to the orders taking over.

Didn't make the gingerbread until Monday / Tuesday which was a good plan - especially the giant gingerbread men as they took over the space in the kitchen big time.

Anyway, well done me, I got it all done in time and people seemed happy with what they got.  Maybe try to do this on Etsy as well next year as there will come a point when Ingleton people don't want or get bored with my stuff.