We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Heather Kuehne a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Heather, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

I’ve always had a creative mind. Art was my passion growing up, exploring different mediums and experiencing the ups and downs of each one. Life sometimes gets in the way of what we are passionate about, however, and I found myself wanting to find creative spaces every chance that I could. Deciding to make this business a reality was really dream conceived rather rapidly during Covid, when we all were trying to fill now empty spaces with something positive. That’s how Peppered Willow Home came to fruition. I had a lot of time to think about what path I wanted to pursue creatively while still allowing myself to set goals and grow.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My name is Heather Kuehne and I am the owner and creative mind behind Peppered Willow Home. I started Peppered Willow Home in 2020 as a stay at home mom looking for a way to express myself while exploring a new business venture that I could mold around my life as a mother. Peppered Willow Home is a design brand focusing on the entryway to our most sacred place, home. I wanted to combine a love of flowers with a passion for home décor and bring folks something unique, something that welcomes them home. I make wreaths, door hangers, and more, but more importantly I make something that connects the customer to their home. A lot of times our front door is the first thing we see when we come home and I feel it should reflect the feeling and life we live behind that door. I spend a lot of time bringing ideas to life for my customers and making that specific goal a reality. Whether it’s a bright spring wreath full of opportunity in the season ahead, or a character wreath that showcases a customer quirky interest, each doorway is as unique as the person living behind it.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

This is such an important question that I often find myself thinking about. While I feel overall where we are currently in how society views creative jobs is miles from where it used to be, we still have some hurdles to overcome. Being in a creative job has opened so many doors for me, but not without a lot of hard work and sacrifice, just like many other jobs. This job takes a lot of time and energy and shouldn’t be viewed a hobby. Hobbies are what we do to relax, where we find enjoyment and while this job gives me so much, it equally takes as much. I guess what I would love to see is more support for the business aspect of creative jobs, to be taken more seriously, and to show that creatives work just as hard for their passions as the conventional worker. With that comes the mindset of others to support people in these jobs. Shopping small, sharing on social media, word of mouth, attending local markets for creative shops, all of these things come into play when we think about supporting small creative businesses and people. We live in a big world with lots of folks trying to find ways to be seen and all it takes is a little footing with the support of people in their communities.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

Something I think is really difficult for most people is learning balance in all things. Being a small business owner and working from home would seem to many like a flexible, make your own hours type of job, and for many that may be the case. However, I have found it to be a challenging one to tackle. Going from past jobs where the hours were set meant working my hardest during those time slots, but knowing I would end the day with that portion of life. When work ends, it ends. This job however isn’t like that at all. It’s working a lot in small time slots that still allow me to fulfill all of my duties as a mother, wife, friend, business owner, etc. I’ve really had to shift the mindset of work having set hours and adjust the work life to fit the rest of my life. While I still set aside time for work only, I have to be flexible with how life plays into my job. Finding that balance took some time and some unlearning so to speak that not all jobs have to be 9-5, Monday through Friday and can be more reflective of what each day brings.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pepperedwillowhome/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pepperedwillowhome
• Other: https://www.etsy.com/shop/PepperedWillow