New LOWER PRICES across the board at Cottontails!

Online retailing has changed enormously in the thirteen years I've been running Cottontails. There is now far, far more competition and many more shops selling way below RRP. In the past I've relied on a lovely brand, a comprehensive range and good old fashioned customer service to carry Cottontails, but it's been a bruising couple of years and it's time for me to get a little more business savvy if I'm to compete in this evermore more cut-throat market place.

 So, time for a few changes... LOWER prices, REDUCED delivery charges, but of course the same trustworthy, friendly, personal service!

Very competitive prices for Moulin Roty and Maileg

Although I've only ever sold things at the RRP, there are now so many competitors consistently undercutting the guide price that I simply have to join in the game. So I've combed through item by item and cut prices to a bare minimum.

Almost everything has dropped by at least 10%, and I think this makes me the most competitively priced major retailer for Moulin Roty and Maileg in the UK. I'm pretty chuffed with this and hope you will be too!

Delivery charge reduced!

A new LOWER delivery charge! I have reduced the delivery charge by nearly 25% - so standard UK delivery is now just £3.50. And don’t worry there are still options to upgrade to an express service if your order is urgent.

Simple, affordable, trustworthy

As ever, when you order from Cottontails you are dealing with just one person… me! I will process your order from start to finish, from the moment the email pings into my inbox, through to the drive to the post office to get your parcel on its way. This means if there is an issue with your order, I will pick up on it and personally let you know. And if something disappears in the post or gets damaged– because these things happen – I will always sort things out for you.

 When you order from Cottontails you can relax – because a real person takes ownership of your order and makes sure you are happy.

So, all in all, I hope that with the keen new pricing and the lovely old customer service, Cottontails will be hopping into a brighter future... Please hop and shop with us!

Top Drawer 2016 - and what is a trade fair?

"What exactly is a trade fair?" people often ask when I say I'm heading down to Top Drawer, or Pulse, or up to the NEC for the Spring Fair.

Simply put, it's like shopping for shops. Trade fairs are where retailers go to view products and place orders.

They're not open to the public (you have to register in advance and tell them about your business, so they know you are a legitimate buyer and not just somebody trying to do a bit of personal shopping) and in fact it's impossible to buy anything there and then - it's all about placing orders to be delivered in the future.

They're also incredibly inspiring and happy events. For retailers like me, who work alone, or even for those in small high street shops, it's just lovely to escape the shop / office and meet other people with a similar vision. It reminds me that I'm part of something bigger.

It's also a chance to see samples of all the new things coming on to the market - so it's pretty exciting.

Sunday just gone I traveled down to London for one of my favourites - Top Drawer. Held at Olympia it's a pretty beautiful, discerning fair - to my mind it's the best fair for seeing all the nicest, most inspiring manufacturers together, and there are lots of smaller companies too so it's a great place to find new suppliers.

Back in the office I'm sorting through the bits and bobs I picked up, and below are some of my highlights...

 

Some of the catalogues and samples I collected

 

Back in the office and working through the show guide  

 

Moulin Roty - always a *joy* to visit

(and I had a nice cup of tea with Tim, the UK head of Moulin Roty)

The Maileg stand - separate post coming up about their new collection

  

Some inspiring displays...

 

...and it's great to touch and feel the products 

Finally, one of my favourite new finds - these guys make the loveliest linen children's aprons

The Cottontails Spring Sale is now underway

I know, I know, it's a bit late... but I have finally launched the post-Christmas / January / Spring Sale. And I think it was worth waiting for as there are plenty of fabulous bargains to be had....

I over-ordered a bit this Christmas - gosh it's so hard to get it right - which is bad news for me, but good news for you, as it means I have quite a pile of surplus stock, especially festive things.

And I hope this goes without saying - I do hope Cottontails Baby is a trusted toy shop by now! - but obviously a Cottontails sale is full of real, proper reductions - I don't buy in stock just to put into a sale, I don't inflate prices to then reduce them or any of those kinds of shenanigans. Heaven forbid!

So head on over to the sale department (I've split it into Maileg / Moulin Roty / Everything Else) and have a look around...

And as I always say, Cottontails is a small shop so I don't have vast quantities of anything. Often just one or two items... so don't dawdle if you see something you like, as there is a very real chance that it might be gone next time you look.

Happy sale shopping!

A day out at the WiRE conference 2013

I had a day out of the office yesterday, to attend the Women in Rural Enterprise (WiRE) annual conference.

As anyone who reads this blog regularly will know, I am not one of life's natural networkers but one of my resolutions this year was to try and 'get out a bit more', so last month I took the plunge and joined WiRE. And this month I decided to plunge a bit deeper and attend the conference, a day of speakers and networking at Harper Adams University in Shropshire.

Things kicked off with coffee and mingling. I can drink coffee for England but the mingling bit I find harder - and yes I did a fair bit of standing around, feeling awkward. But to make things easier some WiRE members had stands around the room, so there was the opportunity to shop and chat to stall holders. My favourite stand belonged to Sam Morris of Cow Art. Do visit her website if you have a hankering for a cow painting. Sam is lovely.

And then early in the day I met Josephine Murray who runs Rains Starts Play, an online children's clothes and toy shop. Obviously we had lots to chat about and it was really nice to find someone with an interest in similar things.

The first speaker of the day was Alison Howell, the really inspirational woman behind Foot Trails, a walking holiday company with a difference (think more cashmere socks than hiking boots). She spoke with a real humility about the ups and downs of business life, and I truly enjoyed listening to her.

And the last speaker of the day was a lady I already know through social media - Rosemary Jameson from Rosie Makes. Some years ago now Rosie had a section on her website on cordial making and kindly shared one of my little films on her blog.

(And here it is again, just in case any of you haven't seen it...)

And in between we had more coffee, a talk on PR, lunch and cake, a talk on branding, a Q & A session, and more coffee.

And there was a goody bag! Mainly leaflets etc but two exciting items - a packet of seeds from Sage the accounting people (I spent ages wondering what the seeds were before it dawned on me - yes, of course, sage) and a little bag of chocolate coins from another lovely woman, Jo Dale at Flourishing Incomes Streams - she is the woman for you if you want help finding nice clients for your business.

Today I have felt a bit exhausted - 6.30am to 7.30pm is a long day out of the house for someone who rarely travels further than the local post office! And I am also feeling quite reflective - the conference raised quite a few questions for me, but that's a good thing, and all in all it was a great experience.

Oh, one last thing. I posted a profile on the WiRE website today (which even involved an impromptu photo session so I could include a pic of me and Rudolph - cue an hour of faffing around with camera on timer mode etc) so do have a look. And browse through some of the other members on the marketplace, it's a great business resource.

 

And if you are a woman working for herself - and I know there are some of you reading this blog - I would so encourage you to think about joining WiRE. It's really not that scary. And there's plenty of coffee :)

Working from home - the spare bedroom

People often assume I have a little warehouse somewhere, or at the very least some proper premises, but no, I work from home, currently squeezing Cottontails into a spare bedroom.

This is not a permanent solution - we are going to sort out some kind of office in the garden. (You can see the post here which outlines one of the possible options - although I think we might be having a rethink and building a new garden office).

But for now, I am just across the landing in the spare bedroom. I quite like it. The journey to work takes about 3 seconds. But it is an almighty squeeze and frequently descends into chaos.

I had a big tidy up over the Easter weekend, and here are a few before and after photos. It probably doesn't look that different, but at least I can move around without having to breath in!

  

Desk - before

 

Desk before (yes, there is a desk there)

  

Before - from doorway

 

After. I told you there was a desk. 

 

Look, there it is again

 

After - from the doorway

 

Even Rudolph's corner is neat and tidy

The 'John Lewis' model

Last week Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg urged companies to follow the 'John Lewis' model and offer shares to their employees - apparently it will improve productivity and unlock growth.

With this in mind I have decided to offer shares in Cottontails to Humphrey and the ducks.

New shareholder: Humphrey

New shareholders: Mary, Dick and Jim

Also, from now on Humphrey will be sitting on the Cottontails remuneration committee - to make sure I don't award myself any huge bonuses at the expense of employees' carrots, corn etc.

Humphrey consults other workers ahead of remuneration committee

This will surely be the start of a new period of unprecedented productivity and growth at Cottontails!

Me, a bit of history and how (not to) open a shop

I get asked quite a lot about how Cottontails 'came to be', so I thought I'd write a little bit about my story...


I have worked in retail since I left college, never anything managerial or anything just normal shop work. To be honest it was the only thing I knew to do. I had a degree in Sociology but that didn't exactly lead to an obvious career, and I didn't have much confidence. Besides, I always liked working in shops and was quite good at it, 'good with people' as they say.

(In fact maybe the story goes back even further - as a little girl my favourite games always involved playing shops. I am an only child and my long suffering mother must have spent years being my only customer!)

I worked in a few shops but my favourite shop was definitely Waterstones where I worked for a few years as a bookseller. I ran the children's department at Stratford upon Avon for quite a while and loved that.

But about 10 years ago I started to get itchy feet and wanted to try something else. I tried a few office things but wasn't happy. I despaired of myself at the time, but looking back now maybe some of it did have a purpose - for example I worked part time at a little design agency and also spent 12 months teaching myself web design - both of those things are really useful today.

Around the same time someone I knew opened a little shop selling second hand films and music. Not my kind of thing at all but I helped out there some times, and I guess more than anything it made me realise that opening a shop was possible.

In 2002, feeling more lost than ever, I decided to give it a go. I had about £1000 in savings and put together a business plan to get a bank loan for the rest. My full start up budget was £10,000. (I extended the loan a couple of years later and am still paying the damn thing off today...)

At first I was going to open a nice bedding and bathing gift shop with a nursery section and looked for premises in lots of small market towns, but when I eventually found a nice empty shop in Pershore there were too many 'general' gift shops already there. As such I amended my plans - took the nursery element of the original plan and added baby and children's clothes.



We opened in 2003, but to be honest I had a pretty appalling first year. The relationship I was in broke up, I was a mess and not really coping. I didn't know if the shop was a blessing or a curse but at least it kept me going.

For the next six years Cottontails traded at 60, High Street, Pershore. My mum worked in the shop with me (often more than me!) and we sold mainly baby clothes and some gifts and toys. I started selling surplus stock on eBay and in 2005 I launched the website to sit along side the high street shop.



And it's about here that Cottontails started to look more like the business it is today. The toys sold really well on the website - much better than the clothes. I was selling a lot of Moulin Roty toys - remember this was only 2005, the internet was a lot less saturated.

Over the next few years it became clear that the shop was barely supporting itself / losing money whereas the website was (a bit) more successful. Early in 2009 I took the decision to close the shop and focus my energies online. At the same time I took a p/t evening job as a receptionist to help pay off a massive VAT bill (a nightmare story - guess who crossed the threshold without realising and had two years of back pay to find) and bring in a little extra cash.

For a short while I worked from my home in Pershore, then in Summer 2009 moved over to Herefordshire to move in with my partner Mike. He works from home too (he is a cider maker - www.henneys.co.uk) and didn't really fancy sharing a working space with me (not to mention my enormous stock of soft toys), so the office in the garden was built and that is where I work today.



I don't have any storage facilities apart from the office which is packed to rafters with toys, and some space in the garage for the big items, and I don't have an IT department or a marketing department or anything like that. Oh what a dream that would be! But it is a lovely space, and although it has its challenges and I miss people, it's nice to work from home. Also I am able to 'use' the garden and the surrounding countryside for inspiration. Since moving here, Cottontails has become a lot more interested in nature!



I work on my own apart from Humphrey. He is my rabbit, who I have had since 2004 and who I love to bits. He is a house rabbit but I carry him over to the office every morning and he mainly hangs out under the desk. Every so often he hops out to try and nibble something. He is also a huge inspiration. Rabbits have been a passion of mine all my life and I think that is obvious in Cottontails.



There are some people who support me though and who are a big part of Cottontails:

My mum, who was there from the beginning, picking up the pieces when I was falling apart during the first year of Cottontails and quickly pretty much managing the shop, even though just weeks beforehand she had been terrified of using the till. What a star. These days she still helps out in the busy few weeks before Christmas.

Tamsin - who has been my web designer since day one. I knew her as the woman behind Rabbit Rehome - a website she had set up to help rescue rabbits - and emailed to see if she would help with Cottontails. We have never met! We do everything by email and she is amazing for general technical support too.

And, more recently, Kaitie at Leaff Design, who has just worked with me on my first catalogue for Cottontails. She has been lovely to work with, has really 'got' the Cottontails brand and it has been an absolute pleasure to have help with something. I am so used to having to do everything myself - it has been such a novelty to have someone quietly getting on with something in the background.

As for the future, well sales are growing steadily each year which is something given the current economic climate (although believe me, it continues to be a bit of a struggle financially) and my plans for the future definitely include more handmade and ethically produced toys. I dream of making some toys of my own too... it might happen.

Finally, I get asked a lot specifically how I set up the website, how I find stock, how I manage the marketing. Well I don't want to give all my secrets away and obviously things have evolved for me over nearly 10 years, but here is a quick general guide - and honestly, anyone can do this.

1. Probably do not open a high street shop!
2. Look at other websites / shops for brands you like
3. Work up a brand and proposition for yourself - a name, look, feel, make a mood board, logo. put a little creative proposition together to take to potential suppliers
4. Contact the manufacturers directly - ask if they supply wholesale
5. Also go to trade fairs to source stock from bigger suppliers - they are free to attend if you register as a potential business. Top Drawer is my favourite.
6. Start selling on market places like eBay - save any email addresses of your customers to make a database
7. Based on your eBay sales decide on one or two areas or brands to do really well - to be really good at - it could be a brand (like Moulin Roty) or an area (like toy rabbits!)
8. Get your own website designed - I can't recommend Tamsin enough for this, she is friendly and reasonable
9. Email your database to promote your website
8. Use Google adwords to drive traffic to your website for the specific things you do well in
9. Use Twitter, Facebook and a Blog to promote
10. And, well, that's it really!



Of course there are hundreds of details to think about, but this is the essence of it really.

If anyone has any questions, do email me - I am no super businesswoman and will never be a millionaire but somehow, amid the personal crises and mistakes, I seem to have created something that just about works and I am happy to share any experiences and help anyone.

The working from home thing

I'm not having a good working week, which has prompted me to think / write about the whole working from home thing.

Generally I love it and am very, very grateful that Cottontails is what I do. And it's fair to say there are loads of positives to working from home, just off the top of my head:

- I don't have to get up early (not a morning person)
- I can work in my nightie if I want to
- I can have Humphrey at work with me
- Friends and my mum can pop in
- I'm here to take deliveries and things at home

But a lot of these positives have another side:

- Not having to get up early means, well, that I don't... and am often a lazy article
- I miss having to put a bit of make up on and wear nice clothes
- People pop in, I pop out. Discipline is lacking
- I get distracted by household chores - washing up, watering the garden
- I miss having someone to talk to about worky stuff (apart from Humphrey)
- I don't have set working hours... i.e. here I am writing this in the evening

It's a funny thing when work and life are as mashed up as mine are. Mainly I love it, but just sometimes I miss the structure of working elsewhere, the sense of 'coming home' in the evening, the proper 'switching off'.

Right now it's 7.30pm and having had a really lackluster couple of days I am still out here in the office, kind of half-working. Feeling guilty that I've been lazy for a couple of days. Feeling like I don't deserve an evening off because I haven't really had a day 'on'.

Must try harder.

But, I wouldn't swap it. And when all else fails, I just look at my long eared colleague sleeping under the desk and can't fail to be grateful.

Spring Fair and buying stock

I've been meaning to write a post for a couple of weeks about buying stock... Customers quite often ask me where I get my stock from and probably about half of it is sourced through trade fairs.

A trade fair is kind of like shopping on a giant scale. Manufacturers and wholesalers display samples of their goods for retailers to look at and order from - but it's not quite as simple as that as there are usually certain 'rules'. For example, most manufacturers are quite choosy about who they will and won't supply, and certainly won't supply more than one shop in the same town, a lot won't supply Internet-only businesses plus there are often hefty minimum orders so you have to be prepared to spend several hundred pounds. Moreover a lot of what is on display won't actually be available for several months so you have to try and plan ahead. I find the whole thing quite daunting to be honest, and it is so easy to get carried away!

Perhaps the biggest trade fair in the UK is Spring Fair at the NEC in February. It is spread over numerous halls and lasts for five days - I think you could probably go every day and still not see everything.

I used to go for a couple of days and spend ages wandering around looking for inspiration, but now I am much more focused and just pop up for an afternoon to visit the suppliers I particularly want to see. I save inspiration-hunting for less overwhelming situations.

When I went this year - just a couple of weeks ago - I had my afternoon all planned out and kept it to just three suppliers (plus a couple of pit-stops for coffees and muffins). Two of these were companies which I've been 'eyeing up' for quite a while but which are brand new to Cottontails (more about them soon) and the third was Moulin Roty, who had such a lovely stand - just like a gorgeous Moulin Roty shop really!

I took some photos on my phone so the quality isn't great, but it's nice to get an idea...

Here is the stand - you can tell how big it is from how tiny the rocking horses look, standing on the top shelves:


This is one of their wooden baby toys - it's really nice to be able to wheel things around and try them out:


This is a new range of soft toy bunnies which come in their own gift boxes - and they really are soft toys, very floppy and tactile. I think Humphrey might want one.


And this is me brandishing a Moulin Roty garden rake! We have a LOT of gardening goodies due any day now....


Oooh, before I go... I wrote a couple of weeks ago about Ernest, the soft toy rooster who is currently making his way around 'Blogland', and am delighted to announce that he is coming to stay at Cottontails for the week! His last 'host' emailed me last night to say he is on his way so I am half expecting him to arrive tomorrow. As soon as I hear a pecking at the door I'll let you know!

Saying sorry, making amends..

I'm not sure how many of you have been watching the Hidden Eloise / Paperchase debacle unfold on Twitter and various other social media today, but I think it's it's been fascinating.. In essence, an independent artist, Hidden Eloise, claims that Paperchase have a) plagiarised some of her work, and b) all but ignored her when she brought it to their attention. She has twittered about her experience, the story has gained a following and traveled around the world like wildfire today, as readers are stirred by the injustice of the matter.

The reason it has caught my eye - apart from stirring my own sense of injustice and the incredible power of social networking - is the articles and speculation around how Paperchase should and could handle this 'PR disaster'. I read a really interesting article suggesting that the best way forward would be a heartfelt apology and a 'what can we do to make up for this' approach. Judging by their statement issued earlier today that's not really the route they are taking - this sounds more like worry over losing customers than any genuine sense of concern or regret regarding the artist:

"Above all, we would like to apologise to any customers upset or angered by this allegation against us."

Anyway, why am I writing about this you might be thinking, and there is a reason. You see, within the last few days I have decided to try taking a genuinely concerned, helpful and apologetic tone to any customers who aren't totally happy with any aspect of anything at Cottontails. And to really mean it you know? Not just to grit my teeth and bear it when people want to send things back for example, but to be as helpful and friendly and concerned as I can possibly be - to see it as an opportunity to help someone rather than an inconvenience to myself.

It was kind of sparked off when my first phone call of the week, on Monday morning, was from a lady who wanted to return a couple of toys because there were a few problems with them. Not a great start to the the week and I'll be honest, my heart sank. So whilst I was polite and efficient in telling her how to return them and so on, I perhaps didn't hide my disappointment / frustration very well. (It's hard for a small business, having to absorb things like this). Afterwards I felt rotten. I even tried to call her back and say I'm sorry if I didn't sound happier - imagine that, probably not the sort of service you'd get from many retailers! Because the thing is, she was 100% right - the things I sell are expensive and of course she should expect perfection - of course she should, and anything less than that is up to me to sort out.

As it is I have done everything I can and will be sending her a little extra with her replacements to make up for the problems... And I feel good about it now. I hope she will be happy and will remember the experience and that, ultimately we'll both feel good.

So that's my little change in approach this week - to try and truly, meaningfully do everything I can for any customer who is not 100% happy. It's very free-ing and satisfying to say a genuine 'sorry' and to be absolutely as helpful as you can be, even at a cost to yourself.

I'll let you know how I get on (and hope this won't turn Cottontails into some kind of Marks and Spencer where everyone sends everything back all the time!!) As it is I get very, very few returns as the things we sell are of such great quality - which is why I'm not in the habit of handling problems I suppose?

Gosh, this is a serious post. Something more fun tomorrow I promise, with a few toys thrown in...

********UPDATE*********

Since I wrote this post last week I have done all I can to resolve things with the lady I mentioned (the one who had some problems with her toys), and yesterday I received this lovely email from her:

Dear Charlotte,

Many thanks for all your help, received everything today including the lovely little mouse!

The Prncess and the Pea was for my daughter but I love it just as much!

Thank you again for being so thoughful, I will use your company again.

I am just so pleased she is happy, and that 'doing the right thing' has had such positive results. Hooray!

I survived a networking event!

I did something way out of my comfort zone yesterday and attended a networking event - and not only that, it was a breakfast networking event and thus involved getting up at 6am. A far cry from my usual mid-morning stumble down the garden path...

I once had a job where I had to go to these things quite regularly and always swore that, working for myself, I wouldn’t put myself through it. But the topic sounded interesting and as much as I struggle to ‘network’ it can be quite inspiring to spend a few hours with other people from time to time. I love working here at home by myself but brainstorming sessions with Humphrey can be limited affairs.


The event was a Designing Demand workshop, part of (to quote the literature) "a national support programme developed by the Design Council to help businesses use design to improve performance".

I inadvertently arrived half an hour before the event itself got underway (the dreaded networking half hour) and after spending as much time as possible faffing around with my registration badge and then hiding in the loo, I finally had to muster courage and join in. Picking a table at these occasions is always a lottery – especially when ‘interactive exercises' are suspected - but I was very lucky and ended up sharing a table with two very nice men who ran a coffee machine company and a chap who I think was an art director on film sets (very glamorous if so, but I may have misunderstood this?). A breakfast buffet was available but I skipped this – if there’s one thing harder than talking to strangers early in the morning it’s doing it while eating a large breakfast bap.

Our ‘facilitator’ (what a word) kicked off proceedings and after a bit of an introduction we had our first interactive exercise - we had all been asked to take along an example of design we either liked or loathed and had to discuss this with our table. I took the lovely new Belle and Boo catalogue (that’s a ‘liked’, obviously). The film chap brought a photo from the set of an iconic film I hadn’t seen, and the coffee machine makers forgot to bring anything at all so talked about their Blackberrys. This pretty much summed up the relaxed nature of our table which was such a relief.
Throughout the morning we heard a lot about the role of design and ‘design processes’ in business, watched one another eat yogurt (thinking about the minute processes involved), played games with bottles of water and 'Matchbox - a business development tool' and looked at how great design has transformed the fortunes of a sewage company and some sausage makers.

As far as Cottontails is concerned I am not yet certain what I will take from it – at the very least it has got me thinking about the Cottontails brand as opposed to the toy brands I supply, and I love the idea of taking inspiration from my 'environment' and making more of our premises – i.e. my home and garden. I think this might have a name - environment design? - and it sits well with some of the product directions I want to develop - for example, here I am working in a garden office, we have a beautiful garden, and I have a lovely range of children's gardening stuff due in soon. I'm sure there is a way to tie all this in, same with the house and kitchen and all our lovely play kitchen toys. I adore the 'french-ness' and 'scandinavian-ness' of the brands we support, but I'd really like to make more of how these can sit within an English countryside lifestyle. (With lots of rabbits thrown in too of course). Lots to ponder anyway.

Finally the networking part was nowhere near as alarming as I thought it would be and I met some nice people who I said I would mention:

The coffee guys - otherwise known as Cafe Marseilles
A nice photographer called Julian Grant
Simon Washbrook from Alkaline (who has a 9 month old baby boy, come on over to Cottontails..!)
Mark Treverton from Marksman Leisure (outdoor fun activities) who was very proactive and brought leaflets around to everyone - I was too shy to hand out catalogues.

If anyone is interested in attending one of these events, they are being held all over the country and are free - there are details here on the Designing Demand website, and finally here are a few pics I took on my phone:

Networking in action - everyone looks very smart don't they? I, on the other hand, wore a flower in my hair (it was 'business-like black' though).


Here's our table playing the 'Matchbox' game and trying to use it to help the coffee guys design a new machine. Fortunately a nice lady from Designing Demand joined us to bring a bit of professionalism to proceedings.


And this, apparently, is the answer to the coffee machine problem. Simple!

Moulin Roty in a sea of mud!

It's only 11.15 and I am already feeling exhausted after battling with an enormous Moulin Roty delivery.

I work from home and it is always a fiasco when large pallet deliveries arrive because we live at the end of a drive which is too small for articulated lorries. I always request a small van at the time of order but about half the time instructions are ignored and lo and behold a week later the delivery arrives care of some poor driver with a vehicle far too big to get anywhere near the house.

To make matters worse at the moment we are having our drive landscaped and it is a terrible mess of mud and sand and digging machines, so my heart sank this morning when I spotted - through the pouring rain and across a sea of mud - a giant vehicle parking up at the bottom of the drive. Sure enough it was a pallet for Cottontails.

The driver was very decent and dragged the pallet up the drive for me - thank you driver! - but even then it was abandoned in the middle of the mud. Then one of the landscapers, Kevin, was very kind and helped me to split up the pallet and bring the boxes into the house. Thank you Kevin!

In the urgency to get everything out of the rain it all ended up in the hall in our house - and I work from an office behind the garage - so I spent the next hour manfully heaving boxes down the garden... and now I am flaked out and ready for a rest, not a days work!

Ah well, mummy has just arrived to help pack up all the orders in this delivery, and she looks fresh and full of energy... :-)

Parcels, parcels, parcels...

It's a parcel packing frenzy here in Cottontails 'head hutch'... too busy to write much but have captured a few pics while having my coffee break...

Here is mum in a packing blur (no coffee breaks for her!)

Here is my name sake (Charlotte the cow) being wrapped in tissue

..then she is added to the rest of the order...


...wrapped in foam and a sturdy Business Post bag and later today she'll be heading off to her new home. (I suppose I could take a snap of the Business Post driver but he may not like that!)

Thanks for everyone's lovely comments and I plan to sit down later tonight and do some proper catching up.

Charlotte
xx