I Saw The Sign.

Early this morning, our new exterior sign was installed at PJP Nifong. When I arrived at 7:30 this morning, the installers were 90% finished mounting the sign into the new space. I jumped out of the car and stood in awe before it…until I started to feel completely overwhelmed by it all. I actually had to lean over, rest my hands on my thighs, and breath deeply.

And this action (plus some tears) prompted all the men installing the sign to stop and to ask if I was disappointed in the sign. Honestly, I couldn’t love the sign more. But goodness, looking at that sign made this entire experience feel so real. Uh, yeah.

So, if you recall, we opened PJP Buttonwood without a sign. That wasn’t so much a brave choice, but more because we were clueless and also, we couldn’t afford it. And when we could afford something, we were tempted by the siren song of a super artsy sign that someone proposed to make for us out of metal. For reference, PJP Buttonwood this morning:

While our love for this sign has never wavered, our hindsight helped us realized that visibility and readability are KEY. (Plus, this sign was supposed to light up and it never did.) As we approached the design of PJP Nifong, we knew that with our excellent frontage to Nifong Boulevard, a sign upgrade was key. And here you go:

After I calmed myself down (and spent 15 minutes on FaceTime with Jeanne), I was able to take a look at the pictures above side-by-side. And here is the thing: that first sign? That sign is small, not the easiest to read, and marks our storefront tucked away on Buttonwood Drive. And this new one? Well, it is bigger (just drive down Nifong to fact check that) and announces to the world that we are in that space doing some very big pie-selling things. Gulp. It is next level entrepreneurship and that is going take a hot second to mentally adjust to. Overthinking is my speciality.

Oh, and speaking of a hot second, we are on target for a move date in the first week of September if nothing goes awry. I’ll commence deep breathing now.