Maya Road and Me

Almost done

We are almost ready for our tradeshow next week. It has been a week of some late nights, grey hairs and more, but we are ready.

My projects are done:

Our booth pallets have shipped and we are ready meet our customers:

I think I might even get two 4 mile runs in this week to help me think about things which need to get done and do them. 

There is a sense of calm that is coming with this show. At the end of the day, even the best laid plans in the world will have a kink in them so the best solution is to figure out how we will respond to it.

If you are coming to CHA, please stop by and say hello! We look forward to seeing you!

T-minus

T- minus one week til set up starts for our tradeshow. It is both a calm and crazy time. Today was a series of spreadsheets that I meticulously went throw line by line for over 300 rows to make sure we had samples for each item on the list we needed for the tradeshow.

That was followed by another 40 row spreadsheet of products we needed for the workshop that Lisa is teaching at the tradeshow. 

All of that is done now. Our catalog is at the printers. The catalog process is interesting and challenging at the same time - here is what ours cover looks like this time around.

Lots of time spent planning, organizing and executing. I won't lie, nails are bitten, teeth are gritted (if that is a word) and the raising of the voice happens too but we always come up with something I am proud of. 

The design team really rocked it with their projects as you can see from this cover. I am often humbled by what they can do. 

I have also been working on a couple of projects this weekend between proofing and also yikes starting on stuff for the tradeshow in January 2013.  Prototypes have already been submitted to price out and samples are already being made. There is barely any time to breathe before the cycle happens again as it does in many many industries like ours.

I worked this week on a project for my kids:

My son has wanted an Angry Birds bomb bird shirt for ages so I hand cut the bird out of heat set vinyl and layered him. The tricky part was remembering which layer had to go on the bottom to make him look right. 

My daughter has asked for a little pillow for her baby doll so I whipped up a nice hello kitty one for her. I think they are going to love it.

I also worked on this wreath today:

As I was packing the samples from my office and clearing out some supplies, I found this straw wreath I have had for almost half a year. I decided it was finally time to do something with it so I layered it chock full of Maya Road goodies - everything from the trim wrapping the wreath to the flowers and embellishments are all from us:

Ah I see some glue "stickies" I need to take off my wreath as I look at this photo.

CHA is about a week away and I have to say that I think we are almost ready. Just a couple more things to do before the show begins.