It is exactly one month until our very first Kiln Opening. One month until we find out if our hard work for the past 11 months has paid off; one month until we see how the public reacts to our work; one month until, well, our business world seems like it will begin. We broke ground for our kiln on October 27, 2017. Yes...that long ago, just 10 days shy of being a year until today.

In that year, Curry and I got married, moved into a house, built a kiln, and adopted 1 dog so we're now raising 2 dogs and 1 cat (never a dull moment with them!). I also majorly changed jobs. There have been so many big life changes and new beginnings for us personally, and it seems that now, with this first Kiln Opening, our "business" lives are beginning.

To prepare for this time, it's been very scary doing things that we've never done before and facing a lot of uncertainty. Curry had never built a kiln before, I've never worked on my own business before, but we knew it was necessary to push our [negative] emotions aside and work hard in order to make our dreams of having our first Kiln Opening and pottery business come into reality. There are many days where I think we're both literally crazy doing what we're doing, but neither one of us could ever imagine doing anything else for a living. And it's not an easy one at that. Every day is different and there's so much manual labor involved on top of the constant planning.

The other day as Curry spent about 8 hours stacking wood to prepare for our first firing, I was buried deep in computer work continuing to plan every little detail for our Opening, then went outside to help him move wood and build rock walls. At least once a week Curry and I sit down to work on our white board planning for the weeks ahead, whether that's for our pottery production schedule or our random "home" tasks. I never knew how much planning went into an event that seemed so simple when we first started talking about it. I mean, you fire a kiln, unload and clean some pots, then put them up for sale, right? Ha! Every little detail from what type of yard signage to get to scheduling how long it will take us to unload the pots from the kiln, get them photographed for our website, arrange them on tables, and price them needs to be attended to.

We will take this next month to attend to such tasks, and many more that come our way. But though this is a stressful time anticipating what will be, and what could be (both good and bad), I want to make sure that we are enjoying the time because we will never prepare for our first Opening again. We'll have many more openings to follow, but this one is special because it marks a new beginning for us with our business and because it signifies a year of hard work, emotional ups and downs, but overall a year of working towards something that we hope will be around for along time and that will bring many people happiness.

Thank you for reading! Sarah

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