Christmas Shoppe 2024 Recap
February 14, 2024
First, we’d like to say “WOW” we cannot believe how much more our Holiday Shoppe has grown this past year, and it’s all because of you, so THANK YOU! We added a few more fun backdrops for your perfect holiday photos, the adorable Mrs. Claus’s Flower Shop, and even convinced Santa to take time out of his busy schedule to come visit us.
We absolutely loved seeing old and new families come visit us and the smiles on your faces are what we live for. We sold twice as many trees and wreaths this past year than the previous year, we also sold out all our workshops and even added 3 private ones, as well as had nearly 600 s’mores, over 300 cups of delicious hot cocoa, and almost 50 photo contest entries, and of course an infinite number of laughs and smiles. Holy cannoli what a jam-packed season!
Even though we doubled our sales on Christmas trees unfortunately, due to Thanksgiving being so early and Christmas trees only lasting 3-4 weeks a few folks had to really stretch it to get their trees to last for Christmas day. Some tips to help make sure they do last if you happen to get your tree early: make sure to trim at least an inch off the bottom before putting in a stand, feed the tree water and don’t let the bottom dry up, make sure the tree is away from a heat source, also you can mist the tree itself with some water.
We had so many new families come visit and share stories around the campfire. We loved seeing younger people help their older relatives as well as others with making s’mores or even a hot cocoa to deliver to them at the campfire. There was even a real sense of how magical this time of year was when we got to witness a group of people create a ramp for a woman in a wheelchair who wanted to go into Mrs. Claus’s Flower Shop but couldn’t due to the step.
Oh, and the babies! We saw so many new additions and couldn’t get over all the cuteness from all the children. Because we had Santa visit, we even added a mailbox just for Santa where children had so much fun writing letters or drawing pictures for him. Not only did we love seeing these human families, but we loved so many of you sharing your four-legged fur babies as well with us. Some of them even got lucky enough to take pictures with Santa, but they were all lucky to have such loving families and some extra love from the Samantha’s Gardens Crew.
This year we had the popular wreath making and centerpiece making workshops that sold out each time, we even had to add three private ones due to the popularity. On top of those we added a container workshop which went off amazingly and may need to add another time slot next year. Another new popular workshop was the addition of the Thanksgiving centerpiece workshop. We know our shop is mostly about Christmas time, but we wanted to try adding a Thanksgiving centerpiece workshop as so many people obviously host the dinner and may want to add a little something pretty to their table. These ladies absolutely killed it, and we definitely will have to do it again next year.
We hosted our photo contest again this season and cannot believe we nearly tripled the number of entries we received. It was impossible to choose the winners and honestly just wanted to give everyone a prize. Thank you to everyone who participated and for making our job extremely hard to choose the winners. Next year we hope we get just as many entries and will probably switch up the awards this time around. Congratulations to all the winners as well as all of you who submitted your entries.
Once again thank you for making Samantha’s Gardens Holiday Shoppe your family destination for the holiday time. Tell family and friends, bring them along, we love meeting new people and making lasting memories. If you have any suggestions for us, please don’t be afraid to let us know, we love new ideas. See you all next year!
