Finding New Ways to Say Thank You

Have you ever had those moments in your life when you just weren’t sure how to thank someone for something they did for you? In this particular case what this person did was not exactly a ‘favour’, it was more of a business agreement. As in I gave her a brief, she gave me a quote and at the end of the day payment exchanged hands. Yet somehow it still did not feel like enough.

I have spoken about my friend Mich and her amazing design skills in previous posts. She was the creative talent behind the logo and label design for Manning Canning. She completely nailed what I wanted for my brand and by doing so gave me the courage to put the things that I make out there for sale and for other’s judgement and consumption.

The ‘giving me the courage’ part is what I have struggled with how to thank her for. Now don’t get me wrong, I am not giving Mich more credit than she deserves or undermining my own courage by feeling I need to thank her for the part she played.

Normally I would have just invited her and her lovely husband over for dinner, overfed them, plied them with drinks and desserts and in some way this would have been my silent ‘extra’ thank you. But you see Mich and her family no longer live in Ontario. Their dreams have taken them to Nova Scotia. So what else could I do?

I got the idea one day in the commercial kitchen when I was filling my 45ml jam jars in preparation for the market. The only way I knew how to thank her was to send her a sample of every product that I make and bundle them up in my small jars and mail them to her as a little surprise.

So over the weeks sample sized jars of peach jam, raspberry jam, pineapple jam, ploughman’s pickle, Zucchini relish, beer jam, onion garlic jam, rhubarb jam and some that I can’t even remember now got tucked aside. It took a couple of months for me to get enough samples made before I could send the package off. But I finally got it mailed in August.

Yesterday…this arrived in the mail and I knew that my ‘extra’ thank you had done just what I wanted it to do. I am smiling as I write this ;).