Friends, we often joke that we humans of Hazel Village are professional Christmas elves, and it’s true that we do a big part of our business online in November and December. We are really a well-oiled machine getting your packages out the door within two business days. We wanted to give you a behind-the-scenes look at our elf life. 

We are still cutting and sewing doll clothes! Our advance planning has really improved in this department, so we don’t have to do much emergency production at all. We did just finish some Sugar Flowers dresses, but mostly we are working on new stuff for January! As a chronic procrastinator, this blows my mind.

When all the sewing is done on doll clothes, Zack goes through them, snips the stray threads, and double-checks that the quality is good. Before I became a professional doll clothes maker, I wouldn’t have thought this was a separate job that takes a lot of time, but it is!

Megan packs and ships almost every order. First, she prints the packing slips, looks for special customer service requests, and makes a list of all the monograms to do. When all the parts of the order are ready, she wraps everything up in our standard wrapping or in a gift box, puts the items in a shipping box, and prints the shipping label. 

A lot of people work on monograms these days. We got a little backed up after Black Friday (the stack of packing slips was more than a full ream of paper! It was crazy!) but now we are caught up again and monograms are adding no more than a day to our standard processing time of two business days. 

We help Megan by keeping the baskets of animals dressed and tagged, and keeping all the doll clothes and kids’ clothes stocked from the basement. 

Once a package is ready to ship, we put it in one of these reusable bags that the post office gives us. Specifically our package pickup guy, Mac, sometimes gives us a giant new bag of bags. And lately, we give him back several full bags every day! 

This is how it was, the weekend after Black Friday. 

Most days, if you call or email the store, Maddy will help you. She is the nicest and most elfin of all! 

So as you can see, we are working very hard and keeping up with your holiday orders! There’s still time to place an order of gifts for the holiday season.

If you order by our 2019 shipping deadlines of 12/16 (standard US shipping) or 12/18 (priority US shipping), we promise to get your order in the mail in time for the USPS’s shipping cutoff dates. After that, it’s a whole 'nother system of elves and all any of us can do is wish them well. Build your own gift here!