{ Elevated Guest Experience Series: The Background }

I previously mentioned that I’d be sharing some posts in a series I’m titling our Elevated Guest Experience. Prior to really delving into it all, however, let me back up to even explain the background behind the title of the series. And there is significant history behind it, so bear with me while I explain every little detail…

For years, we have prided ourselves on making sure our guests feel well taken care of when they’re in our home. I worked very hard to try to think of everything and make each stay as pleasant as possible. Friends joke about us needing to add comment cards to complete the experience, or they’ll complain we didn’t turn down their bed. Aside from that, it’s a pretty complete five-star experience. Or so we thought…

This past summer, Doc & I headed out west to see friends and family. One of our first stops was in Denver, where we stayed with a friend of Doc’s & his lovely wife. We’ll call them Jason & Lynn because…well, those are their names. That’s why.

As mostly irrelevant (yet fun) background, Doc & Jason went to optometry school together in Florida and have remained close friends ever since. Jason married Lynn a few years ago. Shortly after their wedding, we met up with them in Miami. We fell in love with her as soon as we met her. She is absolutely delightful.

Whenever we stay in Miami, we’re fortunate to have a five-star suite at a hotel where one of Doc’s friends is a financial analyst (or something like that) and it is truly an experience I wish every single person could have at least once in their lifetime. While at the hotel, I try to take in as much as possible and aim to pick up on little tricks they do that make our stays more pleasant. For example, they know that I love cookies & milk, so there will be a plate of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies and a carafe of milk waiting for me upon arrival and each day thereafter. Doc likes fresh fruit, so there are plates of that. Jason loves mojitos, so there are make-your-own-mojito trays left in Jason & Lynn’s room when they join us. It’s just little touches like that which really make the stay memorable.

Side jaunt: especially memorable is the last stay in Miami, when Doc & Jason had a continuing education conference to attend. Lynn & I did not have such boredom to attend to, so we just relaxed, shopped, ate, and lived it up. (And, of course, we sent Doc & Jason text pics along the way. Not to rub it in or anything that we were having a great time while they were stuck in cold meeting rooms with cheap hotel food…)

My personal favorite of that particular trip was having breakfast in bed with Lynn. We got up and went down to my favorite little French café a couple of blocks from the hotel to get breakfast, stopped at Starbuck’s to get drinks, and then we piled back into mine & Doc’s huge bed to pig out on deliciousness while watching the boats go by below. (Our room had a large curved window that went around almost three full sides of the room, so we had a fantastic view. It was made better by having a plate of ricotta pancakes with berries in my lap.)

Anyway, back on track, last year Jason & Lynn came to the Glorious Christmas Party and we gave them what we thought was our five-star guest experience. But then we went to visit them this past July.

When we walked in the door to the guest room they were putting us in, it happened. And there was no hiding it. Doc later said that he’d never seen such a look upon my face…but that he’d also never seen someone out do me before either. Yes. That’s right. That oh-so-delightful Lynn became my arch nemesis in that very second. From that moment forward, it was game on. Well, after I pulled my deflated self back together that is…

Over the next few days that we were in Denver, I contemplated, I pondered, I may have even cried a little, but by day three, I had a plan & I could not wait to get back home to test out my ideas. But first, we had the rest of our trip to do. So, I used Amazon to start getting various elements shipped to the house so that I had a head start upon our return. I told Doc that I needed him to not question me, but to just support and love me as I embarked upon creating an elevated guest experience. (And thus, the title of this series.) He looked at me oddly, but agreed to just love and support, no matter how crazy I got. He knew how deeply affected I’d been by this, so he was wise enough to also know to just stand back and not get in my way while I tried to recover from the trauma.

You see, Lynn took guest treatment to a whole new level. Whereas we had provided all of the toiletries in our guest bathroom & each night I placed water bottles by each side of the bed, she streamlined the experience a bit more and also spread it into the bedroom itself. Instead of the towels stacked on the bathroom counter, for instance, she had a giant basket in the bedroom filled with bath towels, wash cloths, and—wait for it—snacks and drinks. That’s where she got me. She totally got me, in fact. I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of that, but I hadn’t. So, I set out to outdo her and her Pinterest ingenuity. Curse you, Pinterest, and your great ideas! Curse you! (OK, not really, Pinterest. I take it back. I was just going for dramatic effect there, but I really do love you oh-so-much. Please don’t leave me out in the dark…pretty please. I promise I’ll do better.)

It took some doing, but I have finally gotten it all together and have tested it out a couple of times. While in beta mode, I have learned a few more things and now I’m ready to share them all with you. In the next blog post, I’ll be covering the ideas for the guest bedroom itself. I’ll go over some obvious and not-so-obvious ways you can really help elevate your guests’ experience while staying in your home—and then we’ll move on to the guest bathroom. Stay tuned…

{ Quick Tip: Sealing Envelopes without Licking }

Doc was so sweet and threw me a surprise birthday party last night! It was so fantastic and as if spending time with a bunch of friends and family wasn’t enough, I got some very generous gifts, too. So, I wrote my thank you notes and was just sealing the envelopes when I realized that my usual way of sealing envelopes may not be something everyone is aware of. Thus, I’m here to share it in hopes that it makes someone else’s life a little better.

I, like most people, truly hate licking envelopes. Lord only knows what floats around in the factories in which they’re manufactured and stored, let alone what is encountered during shipment. It’s not like they’re in air-tight containers. Anyway, my point is that I hate licking them. So, this is what I use to seal them instead:

It’s just a basic glue runner that I bought at Marshall’s. I bought a pack of four of them, but found that I loved them so much that I went back and bought several more packages. The Marshall’s nearest me seems to carry them on an ongoing basis, but I’m sure they originated at some of the craft stores—they’re probably in the scrapbooking section. That would be my guess. But, the great thing about them is that the width of the glue is approximately the same as the width of the envelope seal area. So, I just take the glue runner and go around the envelope’s lick line and then seal it. It holds the envelope shut tighter than it normally would be, plus you didn’t have to lick a thing! And they’re cheap. Does it get any better than that combo?!

I highly recommend seeing if you can find something similar before doing your Christmas cards in order to save yourself from contracting some horrible disease that requires tongue amputation. Not that I’m dramatic or anything…

{ Developing a Personal Brand }

If you’ve stumbled across this post in your search to develop a personal brand as part of furthering your career or job search, I apologize. This is not that kind of personal brand. Instead, we’re talking about developing a personal crafting brand. And I’m not talking about a logo here. Most people hear “brand” and assume that means “logo”. Incorrect. This is about consistency with the look, the feel—you know, the brand image—of what you share with friends & family. To have this make a little more sense, I shall first back up a step.

Doc and I have been together for what’s coming up on five years now. For about four of those years, we’ve had a brand. Through my marketing work and my own companies, it has become engrained in me that maintaining a consistent brand is key to solid brand recognition. At first, branding seemed like a pain to me. As part of a new branding kick-off with my FT job a few years ago, for example, we were given an 87-page book of branding guidelines. At times, I wondered if we were even allowed to breathe through our nostrils instead of our mouths while working on a branded piece, as it just seemed like a book of insane strictness. And, actually, it really was. It was overkill. But, what I took from it was that while branding can be taken to the extreme, it can also be a helpful simplification tool if done correctly. Having almost all of the decisions made in advance frees you up to focus upon the message of whatever project it is you’re working on. You know what fonts you’re going to use, what placement to work within, what colors can be included, etc., so that’s not a concern.

In that same spirit, about four years ago I combined that concept with the more simplified version of a style sheet (something heavily covered in a lot of my comm classes back in college…that’s right, college finally did pay off for me) and I used it to come up with an idea when it came to gift wrap.

What I found was that I was buying a lot of rolls of wrapping paper, different colors of tissue paper and ribbons, random gift bags, etc., and then I’d end up with a lot of leftover stuff that may or may not get used again at some point if a similar occasion came up for a person with a similar taste. So, I decided to break it down to a more simple plan. I had to slowly introduce the concept of a personal brand to Doc, who did not take too well to it at first and thought I was 100% insane. (It’s quite the opposite now; more on that in a second.)

I thought about how I wanted our friends to feel when getting a gift from us, about what style matches our personalities, and about what is universal for everything from birthdays to Christmas to housewarmings to career success celebrations. At roughly the same time, I was falling in love with kraft paper. And that’s when it hit me—the only gift wrap we need is kraft paper & from there, we can embellish it…within our brand guidelines, of course!  So, with that as the base, I set out to determine what else we could consistently use for all of the aforementioned types of events. It started with old fashioned striped twine in a variety of colors (think: old mercantile store style), then grew to include ribbons, silhouette stamps in white ink, and a few more fun designs here and there. It’s worked perfectly. In fact, it’s now to the point that when someone is opening gifts, they immediately know which one is from us, as there’s now that brand recognition, so to speak.

And it’s made my life a lot simpler in the process. I only have to store the one roll of wrapping paper.It’s fantastic! Plus, it’s also inexpensive—last time we needed to buy more, we just got a roll of it from Lowe’s Home Improvement. They offer it as a floor protector; little do they know, it works great to wrap gifts, too!

Oh, and as far as Doc is concerned—he absolutely loves the brand now! Just this past weekend, I had him along with me while I picked up some supplies at the craft store. I normally do not take him with me, as he ruins all the fun (i.e., “Do you really need that?”, “Don’t you already have ten of those?”, “Where are you going to store that?”, “Are you done yet?”), but on that particular day he was alongside me. I picked up a package of patterned gift bags that were a great price & a fantastic pattern. For gift bags, I now typically only buy solid-color kraft colored ones or white ones, then add decoration from there. So, when I picked the patterned ones up and had them in my hand, he said that I couldn’t get them because…and this made me so proud when he said it…they were not on-brand & that would not work for him.

It’s actually not the first time he’s had to keep me in check, but I’m very proud of the brand monster I’ve created. It’s fantastic!

So, as we head into this gift-giving season, think about using this as an opportunity to create your own personal brand. It may not be that you use it for all of your gifts—maybe it’s just something you come up with to use when wrapping crafts you make yourself. But, have some fun with it and create a look and feel that is totally you! You’ll be surprised at how much easier it makes life when it comes to wrapping—and at how much people enjoy seeing something that comes branded from you!

Here are several examples of ways in which we’ve used our brand:

{ Elevated Guest Experience Series: Refillable Toiletries }

At our home, probably much like your own, we already have a lot going on to get ready for the holidays! With guests coming (including my mom for 10 days—hooray!!!!), our annual Glorious Christmas Party to host, and a large house to decorate—including adding & making the decorations for what will be our 11th Christmas tree, woot woot!!—there’s just a lot happening. In fact, just a few minutes ago I was battling it out with our housekeeper over the schedule to get the oven cleaned, floors waxed, windows washed, etc. You know—all the extra crap you have to do to make it look like you’re actually on top of it the whole year, when in reality your oven is rarely clean, your floors don’t always shine, and your windows have plenty of spots. But, at Christmas, everything is…well, glorious!

Anyway, as part of all the preparations, I’ve decided to do a series of posts related to entertaining and hosting in general. This is the first in that series, which I’m calling the “Elevated Guest Experience”. I’ll be sharing very easy and (perhaps, most importantly) inexpensive ways for you to create a five-star experience for your own guests, regardless of if you have a dedicated guest space or if your guests just sleep on your couch. Either way, you can always provide guests with an elevated experience using just a little bit of extra effort!

Doc & I love to host and to entertain friends and family. It’s always so nice for them to have taken the time to come visit us. So, we work very hard to make sure that those staying with us feel like they’re being taken care of and don’t have to worry about a thing while they’re here. We try to think of everything for them—and then some. We’ve been very fortunate to stay in some luxurious hotels and I’ve tried to incorporate some of the things I’ve observed happening there into what our guests experience when they stay with us. It just makes for a much more fun experience and I know it’s what we ourselves appreciate when we stay with others, too. Here, I want to discuss the toiletry situation.

So, I have this thing about staying in other people’s homes: I hate using their half-used toiletries! It can be some of the nicest product you’d ever imagine, but I feel so weird squeezing shampoo out of the same bottle I know they themselves (or 100 other guests) have used. Don’t ask me why. It just is. My simple solution, of course, is just to travel with my own shampoo and body wash. But what about when guests stay with us? Do we just put out mini toiletries we’ve collected along the way? Short answer: no.

Having said that, I do travel quite a bit and have to admit I find myself taking the soaps and mini shampoo bottles from the hotel bathroom whenever I leave. I feel like a mini-toiletry hoarder. But, here’s the thing—I don’t like mini toiletries when it comes to the guest bath. Heck, I don’t typically even use the hotel ones myself (yes, I’m a product snob). So, why I take them after a hotel stay is beyond me. It’s like my little perk for paying for the room, I guess. At any rate, mini toiletries are not what I want to put out for guests. Especially because it’s a bit tacky to have a Hilton-branded shampoo bottle sitting in the shower at home. Guests know full well we aren’t a Hilton and there’s no big ol’ Hilton logo on the front of our house, so why would there be Hilton toiletries in the guest bathroom?!

To solve this, I keep full-sized toiletry bottles in the shower. My trick is that I have back-up bottles stored underneath the sink. After guests leave, I use the back-up bottles to refill the bottles in the shower so that each guest doesn’t feel as if they’re dealing with a half-used product. However, once I got my Cameo, one of the first things I knew I wanted to change was the full-sized bottles themselves. You see, the labels on the bottles didn’t match the bathroom. And that annoyed me greatly. (I know. I need help.) So, after a great deal of searching, I came across some frosted pump bottles (at Target, of all places!) that fit the bill perfectly.

I used my Cameo to cut vinyl labels for the bottles, making all of it coordinate nicely, regardless of what color the bathroom walls or towels may be. This is how they turned out:

Now, what’s funny here is that when I filled the bottles, I reversed the shampoo & conditioner and didn’t even realize it until my sister came to stay with us and pointed it out. So, that’s been changed since taking this picture.

It works beautifully, looks coordinated, and best of all—there’s no half-used bottle for guests to use. In fact, with these bottles, they can clearly see that they’re full. My neurotic self thinks that’s fantastic.

So, a couple of possibilities when you’re looking at your guests’ experience:

1) Forget the mini toiletries. Put full-sized bottles in the shower, refilled after each guest leaves using back-up bottles of the same product. Even if you just use the bottle the product came in instead of putting it in non-branded pump bottles, that alone will make a world of difference. And all for about $5. (I just buy Tresemme products at Target for the guest bath refills.) That’s it—$5!

And, if you have a bunch of mini toiletry bottles already and you don’t want them wasted, you could always use them as the refill for the bottle as it gets emptied until you’ve used them all up. Unless it’s a different color toiletry (i.e., pouring green shampoo into a bottle of white shampoo), nobody’s going to know the difference.

2) Spend a few more dollars to find or make labeled pump dispensers. (Remember to avoid anything with metal so that you don’t have to deal with rust.) My three bottles? Yeah, they cost a total of $12. Love that!

This is a very inexpensive & simple solution that will help your guests leave your home feeling like a million bucks!

{ Tutorial: Burlap Bubble Wreaths }

First off, I must make what I fear is going to be one of many apologies for the delay between entries. It has been an absolutely insane couple of weeks!

For those who don’t know me personally & who just happen across this blog, I currently work a FT job in marketing, have a wholesale business featuring dog apparel & accessories, and I have recently launched my Krafty Kade brand with retail space in a local boutique. Life can get a little hectic at times, so it seems that I’m always dropping the ball on something. (In this case, the blog.) Last week, I was out-of-town for team meetings for my FT job, which really threw off my production schedule for the launch of Krafty Kade’s retail space (which happened two days ago). Anything in-between is a blur. But, I’ve gotten in lots of crafting in order to have products in the retail space, so now I’m trying to get blog entries written that cover some of those really fun (and VERY doable!) projects. First up: the burlap bubble wreath. Something that looks like this…

Stay with me here. If you only knew just how easy this really is, you would not feel remotely intimidated. So, come with me through a detailed pictorial tutorial that will leave you with a fantastic wreath that looks so much more impressive than it ought to. And, the best part is that it requires zero unique tools. Just some readily available supplies. So, we’ll start with those…

Supplies

You’re going to need:

1) 6” wide burlap ribbon: about 10 yards if you’re doing a 12” wreath; 20 yards if you’re doing an 18-20” wreath. I think mine is a 20” wreath, based upon my rough measurements. What you see in the picture of the finished wreath at the top of this post is 15 yards of plain burlap, with five yards of chevron-printed burlap. The supplies picture above only includes two rolls of five yards. More on that little mistake later, but it ultimately led to the chevron-printed burlap coming into play.

Burlap ribbon is easily found at Michael’s, Hobby Lobby, etc. If you buy it at Hobby Lobby and aren’t in a rush to get this project done, wait until they put ribbon and notions on sale (usually about every-other-week) so you can get it all for 50% off. Or, pick up a roll at Michael’s & use the 40% off coupon, go back the next day & do the same, etc., until you’ve got as much as you need without paying full price. You can do this for cheap.

2) a wreath frame: select one in the size of your choosing; just remember to buy enough burlap ribbon to accommodate whatever size you decide upon. A 20” wreath is about as large as I’d go for a front door, if that gives you some perspective. Wreath frames are found in the Floral departments, typically, and are a couple of dollars. They’re green metal frames comprised of four circles (giving you three open rows) attached together using equally spaced crossbars.

3) any embellishments (bows, ornaments, flowers, pinecone clusters, etc.) you may want to include. I went with one large burlap flower that had sparkly stuff (technical term, of course) in the middle of it. It was on a pick and I ultimately just used the pick to attach it to the frame—no glue required!

Step 1:

Tie the burlap ribbon onto the wreath frame. Do it such that the tail of the knot points towards what will be the back of the wreath. That way, it won’t ever stick out amongst the forward-facing bubbles. In other words, the exact opposite of this:

I tied this, photographed it, and then realized I tied it on reverse from what I’d ultimately want. But, I forgot to re-photograph it the other way. (You’ll notice the curve of the wreath frame. You want the concaved side to be the back.)

Step 2:

Create your first bubble. What you’re doing is gathering small bunches of the burlap and pulling it through the wreath frame in alternate rows. You don’t have to do any tying or knotting for each bubble. As long as you alternate which row of the wreath frame you’re feeding each bubble through, they will stay just fine. I think the most logical and easiest method is to go in order from top to bottom row when putting in the bubbles. That way, it makes sure there’s even coverage. This is what I mean about gathering the burlap into a bubble (also note that in this picture the knot tail is going the correct direction)--

As you can see, it’s not hard. Just grab a bunch of the burlap. Some people choose to twist the base of the bubble gathering before feeding it through the wreath frame. I tried it both ways and didn’t see a difference. I don’t think one holds any tighter than the other, so do it whichever way you prefer.

Step 3:

Feed the gathered bubble through the frame.

Here, I fed it through the wreath frame’s middle row. It doesn’t really matter which row you start in—just remember that you’re alternating each bubble to be fed through different rows each time.

Important note: This is the point at which you need to decide how poufy you want your wreath to be. The bigger you make this first bubble (i.e., how much burlap you pull through), the puffier your overall wreath will be. Each bubble needs to be about the same height to maintain a uniform look, so decide now upon what that height will be. (I think this is about 3-4” high.) Also, keep in mind that the puffier the bubbles, the more burlap ribbon you’ll need.

Step 4:

Feed the next bubble through the wreath frame, using a different row. Here, I fed the second bubble through the outer row:

Another important note: To keep the back of the wreath mostly flat and to keep the bubbles in place best, make sure you are pulling each bubble tight after pulling it through. This will require you to hold onto the previously placed bubble (so that you don’t undo it) while you pull through the new bubble. The end of the ribbon that’s connected to the previous bubble is what you’ll pull tight so that the ribbon is right up against the underneath side of the wreath frame. Like this:

This will take a little bit of practice, but it’s not hard.

As you go along, it will ultimately look like this underneath:

Step 5:

Continue feeding bubbles through the wreath frame in the alternating rows. Be sure to keep pushing the bubbles together as you go along so that they’re in compactly. You will also want to fluff the bubbles a little as you go along so that you can make sure you’re sufficiently covering the wreath frame. You don’t want any of it showing from the front.  It should very quickly start to resemble something like this:

When you get to the end of a roll of the burlap ribbon, knot it onto the wreath frame, like this:

Again, make sure the tail of the knot is pointed towards the back of the wreath frame, like this:

Then, tie the new roll onto the wreath frame & continue just as you have been, ensuring that the bubbles cover up the knots you’ve just tied.

This is what mine looked like after two five-yard rolls:

And that’s when I started to panic. It was apparent that each roll did about one-fourth of the overall wreath, obviously meaning that I would need four rolls. The problem was that I bought three rolls of a darker burlap and five rolls of a lighter color of burlap. I was using the darker burlap to this point and knew it would look insane if I did one-fourth of it in a lighter burlap. I also knew that I was not about to do another two-hour round trip drive back to Hobby Lobby just to get one roll of darker burlap. And I didn’t want to undo all the work I’d just done. So, I kept pondering my options as I worked towards this point:

And then I knew it was decision time. As I slightly perspired over the stress of it all, it dawned on me that I had also bought a couple of rolls of chevron-print burlap ribbon, which I’d intended to use for another purpose. But, sacrifices must be made. And that’s how it ended up like this:

In the end, I decided I really liked having that chevron accent section. I also got positive feedback about it when I took it to the Krafty Kade retail space today. Several people commented on how much they liked the combination of the two, so it turned out to be a good mistake in the end.

Step 6:

Affix your embellishment(s). I don’t have a picture of how I did this, but it’s going to vary anyway depending upon what type of embellishment you go with. You may need to use florist’s wire to attach the object, or maybe hot glue will be best. For me, I just twisted the end of the flower pick through the rows of the wreath frame and it holds it in place perfectly. (Plus, I positioned it such that it covers the knot from the end of the chevron-print burlap and the knot from the beginning of the first roll of burlap.)

In case you’re wondering, the back of the wreath looks like this:

That’s it!  Oh, I guess I did miss one step—hang it wherever your heart desires! I think I’m going to try making some smaller ones next time and may do a trio of them on one wall, each positioned at different heights, hung by wide ribbon. That could look cool. Or, at least it does in my head anyway. Reality could be a whole other story.

I can’t give you a good estimate on how much time this takes to make, but if you’re not stopping every five seconds to take a million pictures in hopes one of them turns out good enough to be used in a blog post, I imagine it’s a pretty speedy process (i.e., 15-30 minutes, depending upon how distracted you get & the size of the wreath). The other great thing about this particular project is that it’s one you can easily walk away from and get back to later, if need be. You don’t need to do it all in one sitting.

At any rate, that is how to make a super-easy burlap bubble wreath. If you make one yourself, please come back and share pictures and any pointers you picked up along the way that I may have overlooked!