The $8 Box of Wine

There was an $8 box of white wine at Publix that I could not add to my cart.

Not once. Over and over again, I would stand there, look at it, and put it back. We had three boys, all under the age of four, and I was a stay-at-home mom. Every dollar was accounted for before it was spent. An $8 box of white wine was not in the budget, and that was that.

That kept happening. And every time it did, something in me got a little louder.

I know Dothan, Alabama was never supposed to be permanent. We were there for twelve months. Our youngest, Paxton, was born there, and my husband Drew built his very first thing alongside my father while I was still in the newborn fog, a large solid wood dining table that barely fit through the doorways. We eventually hauled it back to Texas, and it became the workspace where I started a business. It is on my back porch in Austin now. I just knew then that it was solid and it was ours.

We moved to North Padre Island just before my youngest turned one. I stayed home with the boys for six years total, and I would not trade a single day of it. But by the time they were two, four, and six, I knew I had to do something. I did not know what. I did not have any extra money to fund a business. What I had was six hours a week, and what I knew I loved was making jewelry and selling at markets.

My friend Anne and I worked it out. Our youngest boys were one week apart, and she was also building her business. One day a week, I would take both boys and go do something fun all over Corpus. On another day of the week, she would take them, and I would have the whole day to myself while my other two boys were in preschool and kindergarten. If you have ever been a stay-at-home mother of small children, you know what six uninterrupted hours feels like. It feels like oxygen.

That is how Tula Blue started. Six hours at a time.

I had made jewelry before. Years earlier, in Hawaii, I worked the Kailua Kona farmers market for two years, five days a week, and it was hands-down my favorite job I have ever had. This is after five years of undergrad at UT Austin, one year of a fully funded grad program I walked away from, and a full-time office job in Hawaii. It just was not my calling, and it was all leading me here. I would set up my tent before the sun was fully up, lay out everything I had made, and spend the day talking to people and making pieces on the spot. I made money doing it. More than that, it did not feel like work. That memory will never leave me.

So when I got back to the table on North Padre Island, that is what I was reaching for. Not a business plan. That feeling.

I started experimenting, making earrings again. My family had finally kicked me out of the kitchen after they had gotten tired of eating dinner on the living room floor. The large table that Drew had built lived in our bedroom - we were renting my parents' home on North Padre Island, and it already had a dining table, so the big one landed exactly where it needed to be. I had pinned up two lines of yarn across the bedroom wall and hung all the earrings I had made from them. I would invite people over.

The boys were at school or with Anne. I had my hours. I used them.

The first thing that earned me a little money was setting up at the Art Center of Corpus Christi. I had made a whole collection of earrings, the rope had not entered the picture yet, and it all stayed there for one month. I got 70% of sales. That was the start. Not a market, not a launch, not a website. August 1, 2014. A slow, sustainable reintroduction to creating something with my own hands. We will be celebrating our 12th anniversary on August 1st.

The markets came after. I welcomed people into my home, did pop-ups at friends' houses, at small businesses, at the local coffee shop, wherever I could get a table. And I remember the very first Tula Blue rope necklace with a single pearl that I ever sold. Read the full rope story here.

She had come to my home to shop and walked right into my workspace, which was also our bedroom. Her name is Karen McCaleb. She is the Dean of the College of Graduate Studies and a Professor at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. She picked it right off the wall. She still comes to the markets on the island.

One more thing. My first rope spinner had two jobs. I would text her a grocery list, and she would stop at H-E-B for me before driving over the bridge to North Padre Island, because there was no curbside or delivery at the time. Then she would spin rope in my kitchen for an hour, and then she would help me fold laundry or whatever else I needed around the house. Carley, if you ever stumble on this, I would love to reconnect. You helped me so much.

So good.

I did eventually buy the $8 box of wine.

I do not remember the exact moment I realized I could. I just remember that at some point it was in the cart, and it stayed there, and that felt like something.

Almost twelve years later, we are still making jewelry on the Texas coast. We moved home to Austin in 2019 and built the Tula Treehouse, a real space for Tula Blue that just so happens to be in my backyard. Best commute ever. You can come visit either workshop. We open them each two days a month. Check the events calendar here.

Still bootstrapped. Still doing it on my terms with my family first. The table is on my back porch in Austin now. Need to build it some benches. Our boys are almost 14, 16 & 18 now. Wild. And Karen McCaleb still shows up at the market.

Some things do not need to change.