The End

Today I closed missgracie.co.uk and I am feeling both proud and sad. Proud because I have a full-time job which is challenging and stretching me in an industry I never envisioned being clever enough to work in. But a big lump of sad sits on the pride. I closed the website because I have to accept the end of an era. 

My husband and I have the most splendid daughter. My neighbour uses the word splendid and it always sounds so good when she does. This may be due to a combination of her enthusiasm and accent but hearing her say it never fails to make me smile. Our daughter is splendid! For the past ten years she has been the namesake of Miss Gracie. I was a stay-at-home mum, the type who never wanted to be anything but - and my little girl is my world. 

I conjured up Miss Gracie when she was barely two. The little hair bows that suited her so perfectly, they were like a bow topping a present - the hair bows made her complete. Wearing pretty dresses, overalls or jammies she never seemed to be without a hair bow. Then came the compliments and mums asked where the hair bows were from. At the time there were few hair bows to be found in the UK shops, this was prior to the joys of Etsy and Not-on-the-High-Street, I had retail experience so it made sense to start a small business.

For the first few years of Miss Gracie my daughter and I took orders at playgroups, then the school gates and then we launched our first website. It was perfect - I was a Mumpreneur.  I met a circle of mumpreneur friends and learned the basics of marketing and social media. Our daughter grew up, her role changed from model to cartographer sticking pins in the map to see where in the World the hair bows travelled to (Australia and Japan were the furthest), to inventory manager (I like to think this aided her colour recognition and maths skills) and then she was capable of manning the till and labelling orders. She still wears the occasional hair bow but with a new found sophistication. 

Miss Gracie was something we did along side playdates, homework, Brownies, quiet afternoons, swimming lessons, birthday parties... all the things you do at 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 years old but not at 13. At thirteen our daughter is away from home near twelve hours a school day and my husband and I are at work. Full-time work. New schedules. A new era. 

I am sad to close Miss Gracie because it ends my era of being stay-at-home mum, my little girl being little and having those days when you wake up with a little person and wonder what shall we do today? But I am proud of us and happy. We did it. We had a wonderful time, we made new friends and we learned allot. We enter a new era, we'll do new things together and my daughter is more splendid than ever.

Over the years we named the hair bows after our pals. Thank you girls for lending us your names, your smiles for our photos and for wearing our hair bows:

Hannah

Esme

Mia

Claudia

Georgia

Amelia

Olivia

Ella

Isabel

Ruby

Yan Yan

Charlotte

Natasha
MacKenzie

Katie

Imogen

Simone

Bethany

Anna

Gabi

Mei Mei

Abby

Jade

Tenpany
Caitlin

Maddie

Emilia

Lexi

Elizabeth

and thank you to "Mr Gracie" who built our first website and learned more about hair bows than any grown man ever should.

  

  

"Trudy"

This is Big Dude aka "Trudy". We are thinking of sellotaping a bow to her head and making her the Miss Gracie mascot. Who is Trudy? Trudy, originally named Big Dude, was the pet of a family in California in the 1960s. In 1984 and with their children grown, Big Dude came to live with our family. As I recall, my parents, in a leap of faith, left their four teenagers alone while they took a much deserved three week tour of China. Leaving four teenagers for three weeks was risky but they returned to find we had all survived and the house was intact although... two tortoises, a rabbit and a bird had been added to the existing menagerie of a dog, two cats and a tank full of fish. Our mother gave her usual reply of "as long as you feed them", we had either worn her down over the years or she was ridiculously tolerant. 

Most small pets don't have much of a shelf life but a tortoise I recommend. Not only do they hibernate for four months of the year, a towel and a box is all that is required from November to March, but they are particularly good at devouring the left over veg, carrying a beer can (we were teenagers) and are easy to catch. Big Dude was free to roam around the house and garden and often accompanied us to parties, the beach and she has even been sailing.

Big Dude is now known as "Trudy". We moved to England in 1994 and an animal loving friend with two young children offered Big Dude the perfect home in our absence. Big Dude had a new family and thanks to their research, we now know Big Dude is a girl - "Trudy". Eighteen years on, we are still in England and Trudy continues to live a charmed life in the California sunshine.

Pancakes, 7 Kids & the Neighbours

I have a crazy schedule and as you can see from the inventory levels, I have not squashed in the time to order hair bows - woops! I work freelance dabbling in my pre-child career. Recently the requests for me to work more have increased and rather good prospects have landed on my desk.  It is tempting; the set hours and regular pay but then I snap a photo like this:

Do I really want to miss Pancake Afternoon?

We're Back!

Whew! After two weeks of reading manuals and emailing Help (I could think of other words) Desks, Miss Gracie is finally trading online again.

Simple & Practical

Customers talk about our hair bows and often what they have to say is about the clips and the quality; how well they stay in and how beautifully they are made. We have taken the suggestion of creating sturdy, simple clips for school. A variation on the Chloe clip, a two prong pinch clip covered in simple saddle stitch ribbon. More colours plus mini dot ribbon will be arriving soon and best of all they are made in the UK!