Bernadette Gee - Magnolia Kitchen Design

CONTENTS

SINCE WE LAST SPOKE

I wanted to catch yall up on what has been going on for me and Magnolia Kitchen since I put finger to keyboard for the last book back in 2018 (released in April 2019).

I recently celebrated the first anniversary of Magnolia Kitchen: Inspired Baking with Personality . (You should all know by now that the personality in the subtitle is code for I SWEAR IN THE BOOK.) I honestly hadnt even realised that it had been an entire year since it hit the shelves! Someone on Instagram had tagged me in a picture taken when I launched the book at the General Collective Market, adding the words 1 year bookaversary. To be honest, it was the furthest thing from my mindon 1 April New Zealand was in its first week of Covid-19 FULL LOCKDOWN. I was busy stressing about the pandemic, juggling kids at home, trying to figure out how Magnolia Kitchen as a business fitted into all the lockdown rules... What a time!!

Realising that my book had been out for a whole year made me so happy and so overwhelmed all at once. I mean, still selling a year later?! To celebrate, I decided to do a live lockdown reading on Instagram. I lined it up, then I sat in a comfy chair in the sun and read through the chapter titled The journey to becoming Magnolia Kitchen. It was fun to revisit what I had written, and it also brought up so many emotionsall the emotions I felt when I was writing that chapterand yes of course I cried (haha). I havent yet been able to read it once without crying! I am apparently not alone, though, as a fair few of you have cried reading it too.

While reading the chapter live to you all I realised how much had changed since I wrote it; I actually felt blown away with what I had achieved in that time. So of course its a no-brainer to fill you in (and who knowsmaybe there will be some inspiration in there for someone).

Lets kick off with September 2018... the news was out that I had a book coming and it was so exciting to be sharing that news with my community. It had been hard keeping the secret for about a year while I was writingI had literally wanted to scream it from the rooftops. Life returned to semi-normal after the book was sent off to the printers and all we had left to do was plan for the launch the following April, which seemed an interminable time away.

My little James started school in October 2018, which was a huge milestone. Actually, before this book comes out even Edward will have been at school for a couple of months. WHAT?!! All you school mumsI know you hear me when I say 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. is not enough time to get any real work done. By the time you walk them into school, then get to work and get a coffee and settle in, its practically 10.30. Then youre up and out by 2.30 p.m. to get a park so you can walk in and wait by the class and have a chat to the teacher... I am still adjusting now, and its halfway through 2020!

I still remember Magnolia Kitchen Sweet Cafe ramping up for Christmas 2018. Christmas always being our busiest crazy time of year, it passed in a blur. By this stage Id added more tools to my product line alongside my sharp-as-shit scrapers and had released my Magnolia Kitchen icing spatula set, cake detailing palette knives and denim aprons. The ideas around tools, more retail products and merchandise were endless, and also included online coursesof which I now have 16! I have continued to create and develop products throughout 20192020 and hope to have a full range of our baking kits available internationally (along with this book) by the end of the year.

Early in January 2019, the news went viral that my book was available for pre-order online in a few places. The fact that I hadnt even offered pre-sales on my website was a bit of a faux pas , but Id underestimated just how keen youd all be to instantly pre-order my book from wherever you could. I hustled, and a week later got my own pre-sales going through the Magnolia Kitchen online store.

I cant even begin to explain the whirlwind of those early months of pre-sales. People instantly discovered that there were preview recipes available as part of the advertising. One day in January I was working late; having just popped out to get KFC for dinner and parked back at Magnolia Kitchen, I took a quick peek at Instagramand found that someone had tagged me on a picture of MY Signature Rich Chocolate Cake that they had just baked from the preview available online! Nothingand I really mean nothing could have prepared me for the overwhelming emotional roller-coaster that hit me as I looked at the very first picture of someone making one of my recipes. I literally burst into tearsnot upset, just overwhelmed happy tears. I couldnt believe that I had written a book that people were going crazy pre-ordering and waiting months to receive AND that someone had actually used my recipe and made it look as perfect as it should. So many emotions, and so much gratitude for how my community had yet again supported another journey within Magnolia Kitchen. The trust everyone has in my products and recipes is just insane but also hugely heart-warming.