Hey folks, it has been a while. Too long! It feels good to have some time (maybe 30 minutes while my husband entertains the baby 🙃) to give you all a lil update on where Iv'e been and what has been happening here in foggy Louisbourg.
As I type this, I'm tucked away between our abundance of houseplants. I'm savouring the moment, with some cafe music going, a coffee at my side and a candle burning. The precious minutes of free-time are a gift, moms out there you know what I'm saying.
Little MJ has kept me on my feet and now that I have gotten a taste of life as a business owner and Mum, I have so much more respect for all the mums out there who are also entrepreneurs. You definitely learn the art of time management, resilience and functioning on low energy mode. I really love our path right now though, as busy as things are I love this new season we are in. We are learning and growing together as a little family.
So what else have I been doing this year? Well, we opened Canapa Candle Studio & Artisan Gift Shop in Louisbourg. The shop has been a huge success since we opened, with plenty of local support from the folks in town and fellow Capers, we are overjoyed and excited to stay open through the fall and winter months. Louisbourg really needed a boost and over the last couple of years we have seen several new businesses and entrepreneurs spring up. For our foggy little fishing village, this is a huge win!
The shop is located via the side entrance of the beautiful Louisbourg Post Office building on Main St. Inside you'll enjoy soothing scents our candles, with plenty of Canada and local made gifts and self care products like soap, artisan chocolate, plants, coffee beans etc. We love our little candle & gift shop and would love if you come visit us.
We had a super successful opening day as it also turned out a ship stopped in our harbour, they had originally planned to go to Newfoundland or Greenland I believe, but there was too much ice. So they docked here and the passengers really enjoyed exploring the town. We also held some special events, like a Dads and Donuts event for Father's Day as well as a Christmas in July event. We had the entire shop decked out in Christmas lights and holiday products and customers seemed to really enjoy. Anything that makes folks smile is so worth it, especially at that time because we had been covered in a blanket of fog for about a month or so and enjoying some holiday fun really helped pep people up.
I have been taking time to learn the ins and outs of being a shop owner, I had to push my knowledge into hyperdrive as I navigated ordering inventory and staying on top of the changing seasons. Owning a shop I feel like the seasons change so much faster, we are still in summer and here I am prepping the shop for fall.
We are about to release our fall candle scents, but I had to order more pouring pitchers first. Even though I have been a making candles for a few years now, I was working with two... yes TWO pouring pitchers. So when I would get an order for say 50, 75 or 100 candles I'd be making them, two pouring pitchers at a time. Yes, crazy I know. But now I have 6 new pouring pitchers on the way and that's a start.
When I say these candles are handmade from top to bottom and hand poured, I mean it. At Canapa Candle we are really proud to produce a quality artisan product that is clean burning but also created by a real person (me) here in Canada. I can't even begin to count the hours and hours of work that go into creating our soy candles and that is why I am so proud to stand behind our product and brand. I love our soy candles and it makes me so happy to see repeat customers coming back telling me about their own experience burning our candles.
Not only will we soon be releasing fall candles but I have an exciting new collaboration drop coming up for a business in Sydney. It was something that I had been working on for several months and I know you all will love it so much. So keep your eyes open for that, I am hoping to do this drop next week.
Hmmm let's see what else has been happening. I had a baby back in November, opened Canapa Candle's retail location with the help of my family and husband, we have some new wholesale stockists as well which I'll be able to announce soon and so that was very exciting as well.
I think right now we are in the middle of prepping for candle season (fall) and planning some super fun in store events! Since we will be open all year long with some reduced hours, I am really wanting to do some fun events at the shop. So keep your eyes open for that news coming soon.
Thank you all so much for reading my little update, I think that would be all for now haha. My life is a whirlwind but I am so in love with it, everyday is such a gift especially with our new bundle of joy. We are so grateful to our community for all of the support, we love what we do and cannot wait to see what the rest of the year brings.
I'll do my best moving forward to get back into regular blogs, sharing more behind the scenes fun snippets of my life as a candle maker. If you want to stay in our news feed, feel free to sign up for our newsletter. We promise not to spam you, I send out super fun behind the scenes emails, promos and new drops. You can sign up by clicking here.
Cheers & don't forget to keep an eye out for our new candle drop coming next week!
- Farrah