Entry #1: Starting

anitazachary
Jan 17
4 min read

Updated: Jan 21

It's January, and instead of a crazy resolution this year, I wanted to start something that I can look back on and cherish, because time moves so fast. I end up throwing out my paper planners that keep my day-to-day, because I never use them! So this journal, with pictures and feelings - marking time - is, I think, my solution!

Hi there, and welcome to the PE (Pumpkin Emporium) Journal, my personal journal that I'd like to share with you. Here, I want to write about all the things I'm passionate about: historical homes, antiques, handmade (and crafted!) items, cooking, cleaning, gardening, birds, books, classical music, art, home improvement projects, and my beautiful family. Hopefully this journal will reflect those passions, and the excitement I have for this next chapter!

Before I rush off to make sure the website is good and ready to present to the world, I'd like to write a little about The Pumpkin Emporium. We officially opened on Etsy in 2020, but the dream of having our own shop began far before that.

You could say that I'm a maximalist. I love beautiful things, old things, weird things, and fun things; I collect them. Between myself, my daughter (who inherited her love of old things from me), the passing of cherished relatives; at one point, the entire second floor of our house was covered in stuff. Not just little piles, no, we couldn't see the floor. We forgot we had carpet!

Various items piled high, almost touching the ceiling. There's stuffing, fabric, cardboard boxes, and mess. — What a mess! Before cleaning.

That is where the dream of The Pumpkin Emporium started, wading through original paintings, gold painted bookends, plastic cutlery used for college, zebra print luggage, wrapping paper, bows, and tons of books, all piled up to our hips. We kept agreeing and then putting off cleaning it all up, over and over, until the summer of 2018, when we actually created a path through it all. From there, the moving was slow - shlepping things from one room to the next, taking carful after carful of things to the Goodwill (saving some for Jordan's dream Victorian house) - and the room that would become my craft room began to take shape.

In all, though, we were just happy we could get through the room without knocking anything down!

That is where the idea of a shop started picking up steam. Jordan and I would imagine it aloud, talking through ideas for what to sell, for a name, for where to go. Somehow, The Pumpkin Emporium came to us - because we are a Fall (and Halloween) loving household - and one of our nicknames for Jordan is 'Pumpkin'. When we think of an Emporium, we imagine a shop of curiosities, of anything and everything you might need (and many you don't, but you love anyway!) and it seemed just...perfect.

However, the actual selling of our Pumpkins was far from perfect. Plush, pumpkin-shaped pillows wrapped in toile; we loved how squishy and adorable they were, we loved the toile fabrics we worked with, but shipping such a lightweight - yet bulky - product was financially death by a thousand cuts. We were a vendor at a fall fest named The Sorghum Festival and sold half of our stock, bringing the other half back upstairs to sit in a mountainous - yet stunning - pile on the side of the room. We knew we couldn't keep creating pumpkins, but, what else were we to do?

This is where I was given a dream - one that I talk a little about in the Our Story tab of our website - of a blonde woman (me) and a brunette (Jordan) opening a brick-and-mortar store selling ornaments for a few months, then shutting their doors. I asked the blonde woman if she made enough, and she nodded. I woke up that morning and excitedly told Jordan over breakfast, and immediately went to experimenting.

After a few days, I'd cracked it. Using fabric from our leftover pumpkin stock, I created our first fabric ornaments.

12 drying ornaments. Six are red and cream toile, and the other six are green and cream toile. They're upside down, balancing on the lip of each neck/stem so the body of the ornament dries. Three clear plastic bases can also be seen. — Ornaments drying

From there, we acquired (mostly) vintage toile in all kinds of colors - many shades of red, green, blue, tan, black, cinnabar, gold - but didn't stop there. In 2021 or 2022, I had the idea for stocking ornaments, ones you could hide a gift card or a handful of Hershey's in, and created them.

Five light blue stocking ornaments - mini stockings - four of which are in a light brown basket, while the fifth is sitting on a shoe form on top of a tiger wood desk. Their reflection can be seen in the mirror behind them. — Weathered Waverly Stocking Ornaments

Now, in terms of my craft room, well, it's not flawless by any means, but it's clean, functional, beautiful to work in, and I'm happy there. We're hoping to update it sometime this summer, and will document that here!

Various colors and patterns of toile du jouy folded on top of each other on a bookshelf. This picture is a close up of three shelves (a fourth can be seen) where colors range from red, to black, to blue, to green. You can also see ticking fabrics and a fabric that looks like beautiful, 17th Century handwriting. — More organized toile fabric

More toile du jouy fabric is folded and sitting in a golden bookshelf. Three shelves can be seen. The colors range from black, to gold, to brown and tan, to green, to light and dark blue, to pink. The edge of a pile of quilts can be seen. — Beautiful, OOP (out of print) folded toile fabric

Toile and Ticking fabrics are rolled up on their bolts, sitting in a custom-made frame to hold them upright. There are five layers of fabric bolts all against each other, against a cream colored wall. — New home for my fabric on-the-bolt!

Five Rachel Ashwell quilts are in a pile. They are all of shabby chic variety. Three of the quilts are a light green with light green roses. The other two are white with a repeating pink rose pattern. They are all pre-2000s. — Shabby Chic quilts to make stockings!

Three types of toile wrapping paper laying on a mini quilt rack. The first is a black-and-cream toile, the second a blue-and-white, and the third being a vibrant green-and-cream. Beneath them are rolls of packing tape, bells, scissors, and a stapler. They are against a cardboard box. — New packing station (with toile tissue paper in green, black, and blue)

With The Pumpkin Emporium, we aim to keep growing, keep ideating and dreaming our next products into reality. I've got ideas for some toile products (and some not!) that we'll introduce slowly, settling into this new, exciting rhythm.