Happiest of New Years

It's been a busy and productive year at Castle in the Air, with a lot of changes for the store and many, many new friends and acquaintances. I hope you can say the same about your year, and that 2010 is greater still. The shop will be closed this coming Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday for our annual inventory, and when we open our doors again you'll be able to see us transformed yet again, this time for a brand new decade. Happy New Year!

Fanciful and Fresh for 2009

We got a request from a faraway friend for some photos of Castle in the Air now that inventory's done. Happy to oblige!

















To me, inventory is a natural and necessary extension of the holiday season. Without resting from the buildup to Christmas and New Year's Eve, every January we dive right into the transformation of Castle in the Air from a Yuletide fairytale back into an everyday (albeit marvelous) shop. In fact, for the past three days the store has looked just like a living room on Christmas afternoon, with exploded paper and boxes everywhere and fantastic treasures scattered underfoot, just waiting for someone to find them a home. We welcome the new year by restoring our house--the shop--to order. It was after midnight last night when we put the final touches on the new displays, and this morning we opened our doors to the world once more.












The end of inventory always leaves me feeling a sense of spaciousness and refreshing calm. Castle in the Air is now something special and new not because of visions of razzle-dazzle, but because after weeks of the blinding glitz of Christmas we can finally regain sight of the quieter, simpler objects in the store. The shelves are cleaned and restocked with new wonders. Sometimes these are old favorites, but there are always a few fantastic products that somehow slipped between the cracks during the course of the year. Now is the time for them to all get a new lease on life. Our front window now features a delightfully whimsical seller of baskets and birds. Simple wickerworks and sweet warblers are just the right speed for the beginning of the year!

A Little Help from Our Friends

Every January, just after the New Year's confetti is swept up and the party hats are put away, we roust the gnomes for help with the first big job of the new year. Because it's every January that Castle in the Air closes for three days to sort and stack and count absolutely everything in the store.

You might not think that fairy creatures would be into helping modern-day retailers with inventory, but the gnomes have a natural knack for this sort of work. The little workers love gathering knowledge -- in fact, they are thought to have been named by the 16th-century alchemist and philosopher Paracelsus, who derived the word "gnome" from the Greek word for "intelligence." And besides, they're small enough to get into all the corners of the store and count all the wonderful things we'll be bringing out in the new year.

So, Monday, January 5 through Wednesday, January 7, Castle in the Air will be closed for inventory. Come by on Thursday to see the new displays!