I don’t know about you, but I’m still reeling from the holiday madness that struck our business and household this winter. My list of blog posts and updates to share keeps getting longer, and I just couldn’t wait any longer to share our biggest news ever: we’re having a baby! In case you didn’t know, Bread and Badger is simply the two-person team of my husband and myself (with the help of a regular independent contractor and volunteer friends when things get really busy). Sean and I have been married for 7 years, and we’ve been business partners for 2 (after B&B became too big for me to handle alone) and this will be our first child.

I’m four months along (approaching 16 weeks!) and our little bundle is due at the end of June. I thought we’d be able to breeze through the holidays since we were really well-stocked, and I’d been feeling great at the beginning of the pregnancy. Of course, life and biology are unpredictable, and we found that we were quite unprepared for the influx of orders we were receiving, plus my all-day “morning” sickness and fatigue. It’s been a rough few months, but things seem to be settling down as I continue to expand.

In addition to our new addition, we’re also remodeling our extremely outdated kitchen, which we’ve been planning to do since we bought our house a year ago. What does this mean for Bread and Badger? Well, it means we’re getting a bit of a slow start on the year because of our chaotic home/studio situation, but we’re going to be so massively pumped for the end of the spring!

We won’t be able to take custom orders anymore, since they are extremely time-consuming, and time is becoming a more precious commodity each day. We will be trying out a new concept of releasing a number of limited edition design sets throughout the year, which I’m currently working on. More designs = More exciting gift ideas! If you guys like the limited edition designs as much as I think you will, then we’ll keep up the practice so we have new glassware at least every few months. I don’t think we’ll be adding any new glassware products this year, but we will be retiring a number of less popular designs so we can always have room for exciting new things. The big clearance sale will take place in Portland on Feb. 6th at Bargain Hunting 101 and continue online afterward.

I’m still deciding if we’ll close the shop for maternity leave during the summer, or if we’ll try to get out a few orders every week anyway. I’m constantly thankful that Sean and I are able to work from home, so this new baby transition should be pretty smooth for everyone. I can’t tell you how happy we are to be able to live out our dream like this, and it’s all because of the support of fabulous people like you!! We really have the best customers any shop could wish for. Thank you for making it all possible, and lots of love to you and yours this year!

Almost a year ago, I made a very special pair of wine glasses for a couple to use at their wedding. I found a nice pair of thrift store glasses that deserved a new life, and came up with this intertwined tree design to put on them. It was the bride’s idea to have this image of the trees embracing each other, and I fell in love with the idea. I decided to hand-engrave the artwork using my rotary tool, instead of sandblasting them, which is easier to do on the curved surface of a wine glass, and would really infuse each piece with its own character.

These are some photos taken at their wedding (used with permission).

This was a special request for a beard design (which I love!), to be given as groomsmen gifts. Of course, the bride and groom wanted a set for themselves as well. ;) I’d love to make more of these if people want them, but we probably won’t add them to our regular inventory unless there are a lot of requests.

This pair of pint glasses was a wedding present for the happy couple. I created the stencil based on the colorful cut-paper wedding invitation the groom created. It was tough to turn such a fantastically textured and detailed design into something small just made up of positive and negative space, but I think it turned out really nicely. It was hard to photograph since the back had a date on it and kept showing through the front of the glass. Here’s a link to the original artwork image if yo want to see what I was working with: