Ok, so I do consider myself to be somewhat of a blog lurker. I read tons of blogs on just about everything. Recently, I came upon a post that I enjoyed. This author was giving suggestions on ways to have some family fun online this season. Most of the sites listed I've seen before, but I thought it would be nice for me to share with your too. So, here are some of the suggested sites and a few that I threw in on my own:
Only 11 days, 18 hours, 47 minutes and 29 seconds left in the countdown to track Santa as he delivers gifts to children around the world!
http://www.noradsanta.org/en/home.html
Christmas caroling is a great way to spread cheer to friends and neighbors. At Emoticarolers site, you can create your own virtual Christmas carolers. You can pick up to 4 emoticons to use as the carolers, then select your songs and you are on your way!
http://emoticarolers.com/
Enjoy the joy and magic of Christmas in Santa's Secret Village. There are many free activities like writing letters to Santa, read stories, enjoy karaoke, send e-cards, find recipes, play games and puzzles, print stories to color, and many more!
http://www.northpole.com/
See the scenic Northwest area where your Christmas tree grew up! Make tree decorations, color, play games, match holiday shapes, and meet Ev'rett the friendly Evergreen tree and sing-along. Also, you can enter a decorated tree photo contest to win an Oregon's Mt. Hood Territory vacation package.
http://www.visitmytree.com/
Create your own Christmas story. Fill in the blanks (Mad-Libs style) to help write your own Christmas story. When you're done, read your story starring you!
http://www.blackdog.net/cgi-bin/story/xmas.cgi
Send Happy Holidays or Christmas ecards to your friends and family for free. 1000's of cards to choose from and there is no registration required.
http://www.free-ecards4u.com/
Make yourself, friends, family, and even your pets into dancing elves. This is pretty fun and is hilarious to watch the final product. Definitely do this for a good hearty laugh!
http://www.elfyourself.com/
Have fun, and have a happy and safe holiday season.
~ Hilary
Posted Friday, December 12, 2008 by
Hilary Lee
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Posted Tuesday, December 2, 2008 by
Hilary Lee
Hello! When I got into work today at 7 am, there was already so much hustle and bustle going on in our warehouse that I decided to snap a few photos and share them with you. We are really busy prepping for the holiday rush, so our shipping department is pretty busy building gifts as orders come in for holiday shipments. Below is a picture of a few pallets of Santa's Surprise gift towers ready to be packed into their respective shipping boxes. I thought these towers looked like pretty red Christmas trees!
Below is a picture of our new custom gift printer in action. We can print full-color photographs and logo's on to our newly designed gift bands. This form of customization is a new process for us, but has been very popular so far this year. Our corporate customers love that they can order custom boxes with no minimums and they get free matching logo gift cards as well.
Hope you enjoyed this behind the scenes peak at Fairytale Brownies. Oh and by the way, I hope you caught us on News Channel 3 this morning from 6am - 9am. We had a great time with April Warnecke and the Good Morning AZ film crew.
~ Hilary
Below is a picture of our new custom gift printer in action. We can print full-color photographs and logo's on to our newly designed gift bands. This form of customization is a new process for us, but has been very popular so far this year. Our corporate customers love that they can order custom boxes with no minimums and they get free matching logo gift cards as well.
Hope you enjoyed this behind the scenes peak at Fairytale Brownies. Oh and by the way, I hope you caught us on News Channel 3 this morning from 6am - 9am. We had a great time with April Warnecke and the Good Morning AZ film crew.
~ Hilary
Posted Friday, November 21, 2008 by
Kari Gayes
Being in the food business, we love the Food Network here at Fairytale Brownies. We especially love Unwrapped, and are very lucky to have their camera crew here today filming for an upcoming episode. It is very cool to be here and see how the process works and how one of my favorite shows is made, so I wanted to share a behind the scenes look at our Unwrapped segment.
Here's Fairytale Brownies Co-Founder Eileen Spitalny answering questions on camera. Notice the monitor that shows the cameraman how the shot looks? So cool!
And from the other angle. Here you can see the interviewer.
And some custom boxes we made especially for Unwrapped!
Stay tuned for an airdate for our episode, entitled "Get Comfy"! In the meantime, keep coming back to the blog for more behind the scenes action.
~Kari
Here's Fairytale Brownies Co-Founder Eileen Spitalny answering questions on camera. Notice the monitor that shows the cameraman how the shot looks? So cool!
And from the other angle. Here you can see the interviewer.
And some custom boxes we made especially for Unwrapped!
Stay tuned for an airdate for our episode, entitled "Get Comfy"! In the meantime, keep coming back to the blog for more behind the scenes action.
~Kari
Posted Tuesday, November 18, 2008 by
Hilary Lee
Hello! Friday is almost here. It is a big day for us because we are expecting a film crew from The Food Networks 'Unwrapped' to film an episode entitled 'comfort food' featuring Fairytale Brownies! A few years back, Fairytale Brownies was featured on The Food Networks 'Food Finds.' It was very exciting for us and was an honor to be chosen for the episode. We are just as excited for The Food Network to be back and looking forward to a 'comfy' episode of Unwrapped. As soon as we have an air date, we'll let you know. Oh, and check out our Food Finds video below from back in the day.
Oh, and don't forget, we have lots of other video's from behind the scenes at Fairytale Brownies on Fairytale Brownies YouTube channel...check them out!
Posted Thursday, November 6, 2008 by
Hilary Lee
We just made available on You Tube several of our Fairytale Brownies videos. Visit www.youtube.com/fairytalebrownies to see our channel. We are still fine-tuning the Fairytale Brownies Channel and will be adding in more videos from behind the scenes and an upcoming episode of The Food Networks "Unwrapped" featuring Fairytale Brownies soon.
Below is a video of how we bake our gourmet brownies gifts from scratch. Hope you enjoy watching!
Below is a video of how we bake our gourmet brownies gifts from scratch. Hope you enjoy watching!
Posted Tuesday, November 4, 2008 by
Kari Gayes
Ever wonder how we get all those 2 million catalogs mailed every year? Well, here's a behind the scenes look at how we address catalogs for our mailings. This photo is from a local mail house that is sending a 50,000 piece mailing for us this week:
That machine is inkjetting addresses onto the catalogs from a list that has been presorted to get us the best possible postage rate. Pretty cool to see it in action, huh?
Look for a Fairytale Brownies catalog in your mailbox next week, and if you're not on our mailing list click the request a catalog link on the right to sign up!
~Kari
That machine is inkjetting addresses onto the catalogs from a list that has been presorted to get us the best possible postage rate. Pretty cool to see it in action, huh?
Look for a Fairytale Brownies catalog in your mailbox next week, and if you're not on our mailing list click the request a catalog link on the right to sign up!
~Kari
Posted Monday, November 3, 2008 by
Hilary Lee
Food Start Ups Advice: One of the most common mistakes I see with new startups is the failure to protect their intellectual property (their "brand") through trademarks and copyrights. One of the first things a new business owner does is choose a name for the venture. Often these new owners register the business name with their Secretary of State and then think they own the exclusive rights to the business name - this is not the case! In order to fully protect the use of the name (and more importantly ensure they are not infringing on someone else's name), it is critical to secure a federal trademark for the business name.
One option for securing a federal trademark is to hire an intellectual property attorney. But this can often be very expensive.
The less expensive route is to search for and apply for the trademark yourself with the United States Patent &Trademark Office. To begin the process, go to http://www.uspto.gov. Click on "Trademarks" in the left column, and then click "Search TM database (TESS)." Finally click on "New user form search (basic)." This is your starting point to search and make sure that somebody else is not already using the name. It can be very costly if you skip this step and find out down the road that someone else owns your business name (especially if it is a large business with deep pockets).
Once you determine that your business name is not already in use, you'll want to begin the application process to secure your own trademark. Start here to get an overview of the process - http://www.uspto.gov/web/trademarks/workflow/start.htm. This web page has many other links where you can learn more details about how it all works. Filing a trademark registration only costs $325, so it is well worth your time and money to take care of this early on in your new business venture. Good Luck!
~ David
One option for securing a federal trademark is to hire an intellectual property attorney. But this can often be very expensive.
The less expensive route is to search for and apply for the trademark yourself with the United States Patent &Trademark Office. To begin the process, go to http://www.uspto.gov. Click on "Trademarks" in the left column, and then click "Search TM database (TESS)." Finally click on "New user form search (basic)." This is your starting point to search and make sure that somebody else is not already using the name. It can be very costly if you skip this step and find out down the road that someone else owns your business name (especially if it is a large business with deep pockets).Once you determine that your business name is not already in use, you'll want to begin the application process to secure your own trademark. Start here to get an overview of the process - http://www.uspto.gov/web/trademarks/workflow/start.htm. This web page has many other links where you can learn more details about how it all works. Filing a trademark registration only costs $325, so it is well worth your time and money to take care of this early on in your new business venture. Good Luck!
~ David
Posted Thursday, October 23, 2008 by
Hilary Lee
We are starting to get busier as the holidays gets closer. Today the Shipping Team was busy at work building the Fairytale Tower gift to fulfill orders that have been placed. We thought that the assembly line of towers looked like a toy shop (by the way, the picture doesn't really do it justice, it's much more impressive in person).
Check it out:
The end of the assembly line here is where the gifts get packed into Fed Ex boxes and get shipped to those lucky gift recipients about receive a yummy gift of gourmet brownies!
We hope you enjoyed this 'behind the scenes' look into the Fairytale Brownies warehouse. We love to hear customer feedback, so don't be shy and leave us a comment :o)
~ Hilary
Posted Thursday, October 16, 2008 by
Hilary Lee
We just recently discovered Yelp here at Fairytale Brownies. Yelp is the fun and easy way to find reviews and to share your thoughts and insights on all local businesses and services. It is the ultimate city guide, and Yelp makes finding reviews fast and easy by collecting and organizing recommendations in one convenient place.
We found that Fairytale Brownies has been reviewed 15 times by different Yelpers. 11 of those reviews received a 5-Star rating, a perfect score! Click on the Yelp image below to read our reviews.
It is pretty fascinating to read the customer brownie stories! There are some pretty die-hard Fairytale Brownies fans out there! We love it, so keep those brownie stories coming!
~ Hilary
Posted Monday, September 29, 2008 by
Kari Gayes
We've been hard at work over here at Rick Gayle Studio taking photos for our Spring and Summer 2009 Fairytale Brownies catalogs, and we wanted to share a few behind the scenes photos of what we do here during our photo shoots. We brought about 1200 Brownies, Sprites and Magic Morsels to take all the pictures you'll see in our catalogs and on brownies.com next Spring. When we finish shooting tomorrow, we will have taken over 60 product photos and 6 catalog cover photos in 7 days. It's a lot of work, but we have a really good time shooting with Rick (our photographer), Kim (our food stylist), and their assistants Ken and Jill. They make our gourmet brownies look so good you can almost taste them!
The set for the Spring catalog cover:
Rick & Kim working on the Summer catalog cover shot:
Kim using her dental pick to make the brownies look beautiful:
The set for the Spring catalog cover:
Rick & Kim working on the Summer catalog cover shot:
Kim using her dental pick to make the brownies look beautiful:
Posted Thursday, September 18, 2008 by
Hilary Lee
Hello!
My name is Janet and I am on the Human Resources Team here at Fairytale Brownies! I just celebrated my 6th anniversary with the company.
Right now I am half way through my busiest time of the year for Human Resources. From July through November, I recruit and hire about 100 seasonal team members for baking, shipping, and customer service. I will bring on the last of the seasonal team members in late November to help get us through what we call our " three week peak". The "three week peak" is the first 3 weeks in December when all of the magic here at Fairytale Brownies happens! We work almost 24/7 during that time selling and shipping gourmet brownies worldwide for holiday gifts. By offering bonuses and incentives to seasonal team members, they come back year after year to help us during the busiest time of year.
Well, there's a look at Behind The Scenes of our Human Resources Department! Be blogging again soon!
-Janet
Posted Friday, September 5, 2008 by
Hilary Lee
It's September 5th, and WE'RE LIVE!
You may have noticed that we've changed our look! After two years of planning and a lot of hard work behind the scenes, we have completed a packaging update across our product line. We examined every box, band, bag and bow, and are happy to finally unveil our new gift packaging to you. New bands added to our product line this fall are the "Welcome Baby" band and the "Patriotic" band.
Don't worry! Our 50-year-old brownie recipe and all-natural ingredients we use haven't changed a bit. We're still committed to providing you with the highest quality gourmet brownie gifts and customer service we possibly can.
We've not only updated our packaging line, but have also updated our website as well. We've improved our navigation and shopping cart to provide the best experience for our online customers. We're excited to finally unveil these new improvements to you. Enjoy!
You may have noticed that we've changed our look! After two years of planning and a lot of hard work behind the scenes, we have completed a packaging update across our product line. We examined every box, band, bag and bow, and are happy to finally unveil our new gift packaging to you. New bands added to our product line this fall are the "Welcome Baby" band and the "Patriotic" band.
Don't worry! Our 50-year-old brownie recipe and all-natural ingredients we use haven't changed a bit. We're still committed to providing you with the highest quality gourmet brownie gifts and customer service we possibly can.
We've not only updated our packaging line, but have also updated our website as well. We've improved our navigation and shopping cart to provide the best experience for our online customers. We're excited to finally unveil these new improvements to you. Enjoy!
