Its almost October, and for those of you that aren’t privy to the Porridge Papers history, we’ll be celebrating our 16th year of sweet success next month. All month long we’ll be offering 16% off cards and paper goodies in the store! We’re also working hard to get a few new products launched by the first of November. Keep your eyes peeled!

We’ve also got an amazing anniversary party to plan for! Things are being glittered, plates are being ordered and paper is being made for goodies that will go into what I can promise will be one of the sweetest Schwag bags in history! Here are a few teaser pictures for ya!

just a few snapshots of recent goings on around the shop.

We’ve been doing a LOT of brainstorming around here lately. LOTS and LOTS of great things are in the works. We’re working on expanding our retail and wholesale lines to include more finished and customizable products, we’re playing with expanding our line of stock plantable papers to include some funky and vibrant colors, and we’re getting some great letterpress projects under way to fill our schwag bag for our Sweet 16 party in October. In hopes of building a stronger local network and really pushing the envelope for some fun projects, we’re working closely with some great local artists, companies,  and designers. The schwag bag is the main focus right now but we’re hoping that the ideas will keep flowing and we’ll get to keep making fantastic pieces for sale in the store and beyond!

Speaking of great ideas, we have sold our paper to great minds and talented bodies all over the world and we have seen a few shining examples of fantastic work done with our papers. We’re quite proud of our customers’ work and we’d like to show it off. If you, or someone you know, has done something you’re proud of with Porridge Papers, let us know! Send us photos, samples, information about the design, and the ideas behind the project and let us do a little bragging for you. Over the next few weeks we’d like to start featuring these projects and goodies on a section of our blog.

We’d also like your suggestions and ideas for different unique stationery companies that you might like to see carried in our store. We’re always on the look out for fun and quirky paper goodies to fill our shelves with. Let us know if you have any bright ideas!

happy hour around 4pm with beer, wine and tasty treats followed by more beer, wine, food and cake! we will have live music doing covers from the years 1993 (think proclaimers, rod stewart, meat loaf and kris kross to name a few). oh and i cant forget about the great swag bag we are trying to put together! its going to be a blast! so if your going to be in town and you want to come, drop us an email telling us whay and we will get you on the guest list.

so you ask, why?

why are we doing this? well in october porridge papers will be 16 years old and we thought what a great reason to throw a sweet 16 birthday bash! there will be more detials in the coming months. also if your interested in coming drop us a line and we will see if we can get you on the guest list.

Christopher is on vacation! That means that I’M in charge until he gets back on Friday (he was gone all last week too)! While the radio may be a little louder and the music playing may be everything that he can’t stand to listen to when he’s here, we’re still cranking out paper goodies at top speed. We’ve gotten to work on a top secret glitter project that was ooooodles of fun, and I’ve had the pleasure of running around like a chicken with my head cut off answering questions, giving pricing, and shipping orders. whew!

Of course, a vacation isn’t really a vacation if you don’t do a little work while you’re away. Betwixt all of the yummy New Mexican foods and margaritas and gourmet tortillas and other things that I’m daydreaming about from afar Christopher has managed to put up a Q and A page on our plantableseedpaper.com website! Every day we get a ton of calls with general questions about our plantable papers and what can be done with them. Hopefully now we’ll have some of these questions answered straight from the site!

AND

If you’re in the neighborhood stop by and check out the great selection of new cards just in from the National Stationery Show! Christopher did some shopping while he was in New York and now our little store has a small cornucopia of paper goodies! INCLUDING some fantastic Father’s day cards.

so what are you waiting for!?! come pay us a visit!

back in october we got an order to produce 2,163,000 cards for a promotion for kraft foods. it was embedded with lettuce seeds and then attached to the inside page of a magazine. what was i thinking, how could i get it done, what would it take? looking back to an october post…..

“2,851,200 square inches upholstery foam + 1,232,000 square inches cardboard + 1,436,400 square inches pellon +
155,232 square inches felt + 92,400 square inches plywood + 200 pounds lettuce seed + 18,750 pounds recycled fiber +
countless screws, nails, bottles of glue, and trips to the hardware store = 2,000,000 plantable pieces
quite possibly the largest order in plantable paper history…booyaw acheived.”

that just about sums it up. im sure the numbers are a bit different but it was a lot of work! i was so greatful to have an amazing team of papermakers and support crew! without them it would not have happened. not only did we get it done but we did it on time! the final count was 2,237,745 pieces which equals 78,418 sheets of 19″x25″ lettuce paper.

thank you to everyone!!

As the exhilarant chords of “The Final Countdown” echo through the mill, I couldn’t help but reflect on the last several months here.

Sadly, today will be the last day for Katherine, one of our papermakers who has been on since the beginning of the Kraft adventure. She is just the first of a few that will be leaving us in the next several weeks. And today, the final day of the papermaking for the largest order in Porridge Papers history, there are mixed feelings of celebration and sadness as we start to say our goodbyes.

Thank goodness we have powerballads and 80′s pop hits to get us through.

Though I can’t promise I won’t cry later.