Some days in the shop are glamorous. Most days are just real. Today was one of those real ones — and honestly, those are the ones worth talking about.

We started the morning with a workout, swung through Walmart for a few Easter things, and then got straight to work. Jeremy was already at the press when I walked in. If you know Jeremy, you know that is just how it goes.

The Main Project: Personalized Embroidered Towels

The big project of the day was embroidering personalized towels for our daughters, I picked up some towels at Walmart and the plan was simple — monogram them, make them cute, and send them off with a little love in every stitch.

I handle the designs. Jeremy handles the hooping. That division of labor exists for a very good reason, and we are both at peace with it.

For stabilizer, I used tearaway on the back and water-soluble mesh on the front. Once the machine finishes, you pull off what you can and hit the rest with a little water — it dissolves completely. No fuss, clean finish every time.

Makayla got her full name embroidered in purple. Makenzie got hers in a seafoam color. We also did matching hand towels with their monograms, and they turned out really well. Already thinking about making some for myself and I have my eye on a striped beach towel for the next experiment.

Two Years Into Embroidery

Jeremy has been running the embroidery machine for two years now — I kept saying one, he was right, it has been two. We both know how to sew and we always kind of avoided embroidery. Now it is a solid part of what we do and honestly it has opened up a lot of product possibilities for us.

One thing nobody warns you about when you get into embroidery is the software. If you are a designer and you want to create your own files, you will need embroidery design software — and it is not cheap. I made payments on mine because I genuinely was not sure I could learn it. Spoiler: I did. But it took time, it cost real money, and that is just part of building this kind of business the right way.

Wholesale Orders and a Busy Press

While I was working through the towels, Jeremy was pressing shirts — including some of our duck lake tees on ivory Comfort Colors. That design is one of my favorites. It looks stitched but it is a transfer, and the quality on that shirt is just really nice. It also comes in a hat and we have stickers too.

Later in the day he switched over to finishing a quarter zip order for a dance studio out of New Jersey. Both adult and youth sizes. Resizing designs for youth apparel is something people do not always think about, but it matters. Pocket placement, back design sizing — everything has to shift just right so it looks intentional at every size. We adjusted about an inch in height and width depending on the size and they came out really clean. Youth quarter zips might be something we add to the shop soon because they are genuinely adorable.

On Saying No as a Small Business

We talked about this one on camera today and it felt worth writing down too. We get a lot of requests for one-off custom work and right now we just cannot take most of them. Not because we do not want to help, but because the volume of work we have does not make it fair to anyone — including the person asking — for us to say yes and then take forever.

If you are a small business and you cannot take something on right now, just say so. People respect honesty a lot more than a delay with no explanation. And if you do the actual math on what a truly custom one-off piece costs in time and materials, the number surprises most people. A custom tee is not a Walmart tee. There is design time, production time, and real skill behind it. It is okay to protect your time and price your work accordingly.

The orders we do take are the ones that make sense for how we are set up — bulk work, wholesale accounts, and designs already in our system. That is where we can do our best work right now.

The Rest of the Day

Chicken from Sergeant Pepper's for lunch. Tagging shirts for a wholesale store at Grand Lake. A UPS run at the end of the night because that is just part of the deal when you are shipping every day. It is not always exciting but it is always moving.

That is what a real production day looks like for us. We are a working business — outdoor, lake life, leisure and recreation — and some days the behind-the-scenes is just as much a part of the story as the product itself.

If you want to see the full day, the video is up on our YouTube channel. Come hang with us.

https://youtu.be/oloAgotPcdo