A little behind-the-scenes look at Salt & Thread Mercantile, Nourish Her Wild, Faithful 45, and what happens when life decides to throw a broken oven into the middle of all your plans.
If you could see my kitchen counter lately, you’d have a pretty good idea of what life looks like around here.
Yarn and half-finished ideas.
New pieces for the Mercantile.
Notes and plans scattered across notebooks.
Things being tested in the kitchen.
A laptop that’s open more often than it’s closed.
And usually a cup of something nearby.
There has been a LOT happening around here lately.
Some of it planned.
Some of it absolutely not.
(Looking at you, oven.)
But somewhere between crocheting new pieces for the Mercantile, working on something I’ve been quietly building for September, experimenting in the kitchen, writing, planning, learning, and figuring things out as I go, I realized something:
This little thing I started is beginning to grow.
Not overnight.
Not because I suddenly figured out some magical business formula.
And definitely not because everything has gone according to plan.
It’s growing because I keep showing up and building the next thing in front of me.
And lately, there have been quite a few next things.
Salt & Thread Is Finding Its Way
When I opened Salt & Thread Mercantile, I knew what I wanted it to feel like long before I knew exactly what would live inside it.
Useful things.
Beautiful things.
Things made thoughtfully.
Things that make ordinary life feel just a little more special.
Some would come from the kitchen. Some from my crochet hook. Some would probably be ideas I hadn’t even thought of yet.
And honestly?
I think that last part matters.
I didn’t want to build a business where I decided everything it would ever become before I gave it room to become anything.
I wanted to pay attention.
Make things.
Test things.
See what people respond to.
See what I actually enjoy creating.
Then build from there.
This week, three new handmade pieces made their way into the Mercantile.
Two envelope-style Wander Book Wraps and the new Harvest Wander Book Sleeve.
The Harvest Wander may be one of my favorites so far.
It’s made in this gorgeous burnt-orange yarn with a dimensional shell stitch, a wooden handmade-with-love button, a little leather-look heart detail, and a braided cream-and-rust tie that ends in the cutest little tassel.
It feels like fall without screaming pumpkin spice at you from across the room.
And it’s useful.
That matters to me.
The Wander pieces are designed to protect the books, Bibles, Kindles and other little things we carry around with us. They’re pretty, yes, but they also have a job.
That combination — functional + beautiful — is becoming a pretty clear thread through Salt & Thread.
Pun completely intended.
Meanwhile, My Kitchen Had Other Plans
Because apparently creating new products and building a business wasn't enough excitement for one week, my oven decided it no longer wished to participate.
Naturally, it waited until after I had prepared stuffed peppers, mixed dough for two loaves of sandwich bread, and made two different kinds of banana muffins.
Excellent timing.
Really impeccable work by the oven.
I had bowls of muffin batter ready to bake and bread dough already doing its thing.
And no oven.
So I had two choices:
Throw my hands up and waste everything I had already made...
or figure it out.
You can probably guess which one I chose.
I pulled out the air fryer.
The first batch of chocolate chip banana muffins became the experimental batch.
And by experimental, I mean they got a little more... bronzed than originally intended.
Still delicious.
Just aggressively sun-kissed.
But they taught me something.
In that smaller cooking space, I needed to lower the temperature about 20–25 degrees and shave several minutes off the baking time.
So I adjusted.
The banana streusel muffins went in next.
And those?
Beautiful.
There’s something incredibly satisfying about learning something in real time because Plan A has completely left the building.
But then I still had all that bread dough.
So Apparently We’re Air-Frying Bread Now
I couldn't exactly fit two sandwich loaves in my air fryer, so the loaves became buns.
Because sometimes the plan changes and dinner does not care about your emotional attachment to the original vision.
Eight at a time.
Which means this was not exactly the efficient bread-baking operation I had envisioned when I started.
But they were getting baked.
And that's kind of the point.
I think we have a tendency to believe progress is supposed to look like everything working.
The right equipment.
The right timing.
The right circumstances.
The perfectly executed plan.
But most of real life doesn't work like that.
Sometimes progress looks like standing in your kitchen staring at an air fryer and thinking:
Well... let's see what happens.
And then adjusting as you learn.
That applies to a whole lot more than muffins.
I’ve Been Thinking About That A Lot Lately
Building Salt & Thread has been an exercise in exactly that.
Try something.
Pay attention.
Learn.
Adjust.
Keep going.
There are things I thought I would sell that I've already decided aren't the right direction.
There are other ideas that started as a random what if I made this? and suddenly make perfect sense.
There are products being tested.
Recipes being tweaked.
Handmade pieces evolving.
Articles being written.
Photos being taken on my kitchen counter while I'm actually doing the work.
And I don't need every answer before I take the next step.
That might be one of the biggest things I'm learning in this season:
You can build thoughtfully without having everything figured out.
Planning matters.
Learning matters.
Preparation matters.
But eventually you have to make the thing.
Publish the article.
List the product.
Test the recipe.
Put the idea into the world and see what it teaches you.
Sharpen the ax, absolutely.
But eventually you've gotta swing it.
And Then There’s Faithful 45
There’s another project taking shape on those notebooks scattered across my counter.
Faithful 45.
I've been quietly working on this one because I don't want it to become another complicated wellness challenge that asks women to overhaul their entire lives on Monday morning and then makes them feel like failures by Thursday.
That isn't what I'm building.
Faithful 45 is about 45 days of intentionally showing up for yourself — body, mind, and spirit.
Faith.
Fuel.
Movement.
Learning.
Building.
And the small daily choices that begin changing the way we live when we actually repeat them.
Not perfection.
Not punishment.
Not trying to become an entirely different woman in 45 days.
It's about becoming more intentional with the woman God already entrusted you to steward.
I'm building it around things I'm actually practicing myself, because I have zero interest in creating something from theory and handing it to someone else like I've got life completely figured out.
I don't.
I'm doing the work too.
Some days beautifully.
Some days with a broken oven and eight buns crammed into an air fryer.
Both count.
There will be much more coming about Faithful 45 very soon.
For now, just know I'm building it carefully, intentionally, and walking through it with the goal of creating something women can actually live.
Nourish Her Wild Is Growing Too
When I started Nourish Her Wild, I knew I wanted it to be bigger than food.
Because nourishment is bigger than food.
What we eat matters.
But so does what we read.
What we listen to.
Who we spend time with.
How we speak to ourselves.
How we care for our homes.
How we steward our bodies.
How we use our time.
What we believe.
What we tolerate.
What we keep consuming simply because we've never stopped long enough to question it.
That's why you'll find an article about fire cider sitting beside one about outgrowing the life you built.
It's why we're going to talk about ingredient labels and homemade food, but also faith, habits, money, relationships, learning, building businesses, and whatever else belongs in the conversation.
Because nourishing a woman means nourishing her whole life.
And we're just getting started.
Maybe This Is What Building Actually Looks Like
I used to think building something meant having a beautifully organized plan and then executing it step by step.
And sure.
Sometimes it does.
But sometimes building looks like crochet piled beside your laptop.
A notebook covered in highlighted ideas.
Three new products finally listed after living in your head first.
Muffins cooling on a rack after you had to completely reinvent how you baked them.
Bread dough becoming buns because that's what the equipment could handle.
An idea for a 45-day challenge slowly turning into something more intentional and real.
And a kitchen counter doubling as headquarters.
I'm learning not to underestimate these seasons.
The ones that don't look particularly polished from the inside.
The ones filled with testing and adjusting and learning and trying again.
Because this is where things are being built.
Not just businesses or products.
Capacity.
Discipline.
Wisdom.
Confidence.
The ability to encounter something that didn't go according to plan and say:
Okay. What can I do with what I have?
Maybe that's the thread running through all of this.
Salt & Thread.
Nourish Her Wild.
Faithful 45.
And apparently my adventures in unauthorized air-fryer baking.
We don't need perfect circumstances to start building something better.
We need enough wisdom to prepare, enough courage to begin, and enough flexibility to adjust when the oven inevitably breaks.
Because sometimes Plan B turns out pretty darn good.
And sometimes it teaches you something Plan A never could have.
Now it’s your turn.
What are you building, learning, changing—or figuring out as you go right now?
Tell me in the comments.
Bonus points if your appliances are cooperating better than mine.
0 comments