Woooo! It’s the end of the week! Nothing can spoil this Friday feeling can it? I’ve logged onto emails. Order emails, 1 newsletter and 1 Etsy conversation. In business, just order emails. Samantha’s response to my last email asks me to contact the retreat hotel with a query regarding our liability insurance.

I open Etsy, ready to be amazingly helpful and read:

“Hi. Something’s gone wrong. I wanted the red bag, as the photo shows. The pattern you’ve sent me is for a blue bag.”

Oh dear. With as much politeness and charm as I have (and I don’t have much charm!), I explain that the pattern does make the blue bag as well, they are all made from the same pattern just different fabrics. I also direct the customer to the photo of the blue bag on the same product they bought to show that they are the same pattern. 

Friday’s regular tasks include social media and blogs. I create and schedule Facebook posts for big events such as Bosses Day, the most important day of the year, on the 16th October. Today, as well as creating a post for Black Friday I also need to create a discount code on Mrs-H.com for the event. After that, I check out social media to look for some of the beautiful bags that have been made this week using Samantha’s patterns which can be shared on Samantha’s Facebook page. I also look at upcoming blog posts and create Facebook posts for day they are released. 

After that I spend 15-20 minutes on my most mundane job – transferring old blogs to Mrs-H.com. We’re hoping to complete the full removal of blogs and tutorials to Mrs-H.com soon, but whilst we’re waiting I am gradually transferring the bulk of Samantha’s blog over. She has had an awful lot to say over the last few years!

The Bag Retreat planning has come to the top of the to-do list! Retreat planning is one of my favourite tasks because it’s almost as if I were planning a holiday for myself, and doing the research and key tasks to have a wonderful weekend. Samantha and I thought we were going to have great fun at the beginning of planning, when we were looking for a hotel to host the retreat. However, the reality was far less glamorous. It was Tesco/Sainsbury sandwiches eaten in the car park, hours in traffic jams (we would go look at hotels on the hottest day of the year!), and 30-60 minutes in each hotel asking serious questions about electrics, finances, room dimensions, lighting. 

But since then, it’s been hard work but great fun! What do I need to do today? Talk to the hotel about our liability insurance, proof-read one of the exclusive patterns and finish writing the next monthly newsletter. I always proof-read new patterns, often twice. I have absolutely no idea if they make sense from a sewist’s point of view but I do in the syntactical and grammatical sense. Samantha and I have joked that I can spot a single typo in 500 words she’s written but I can’t tell the difference between two bags made from different patterns with different materials and (apparently) different shapes. I call myself “bag blind”. The last two bags to evoke that response were these (I genuinely thought the one on the right was the one on the left, even after Samantha queried it):

My email to Samantha is full of information today – the Thanksgiving and Black Friday Facebook posts, the answer from the retreat hotel about our liability insurance, notification that a newsletter is ready for her beady eyes and finally my updated version of the pattern I’ve proof-read, with a couple of questions about things which make no sense to me but may to sewists.

The final count

The end of the week has come and it’s time to review what’s happened to my to-do list. I started off with 24 things on my to-do list. On Monday I took 2 items off. On Tuesday Samantha put 2 items back on. On Thursday I took 1 item off. On Friday Samantha put 1 item back on, but I took 3 items off! I think that gives me a net result of 21 things on my to-do list. This has definitely been a successful week!

**As you may have already guessed, I have used artistic licence within this blog but EVERYTHING is based on something that has actually happened within my last few months as Samantha’s Office Manager.**