November: The Cozy Edit 🕯️☕️

Welcome back to the Stomping Grounds newsletter! November is upon us, spooky season is behind us, and retail holiday fun is fast approaching, and there’s no better place to stock up on cozy goodies than Stomping Grounds.

A quick reminder, Small Business Saturday is November 29th. Mark your calendars and get ready to shop local!✨

Want to get to know the lovely people of Stomping Grounds? Allow us to share our favourite ways to stay cozy in the winter months, featuring our fave products:

If you know Beth, you know that she lives for the winter months. If there’s a chill in the air, she’s thriving. Beth loves a fun beverage, so she made a delicious chai spiced white hot chocolate from our popular Winter Drinks book!

We are a store full of cat ladies, but Alison might take the cake. Cozy for Alison means cats, blankets, candles and a glass of wine or cup of coffee. Particularly if said cats are the snuggly kind, not the evil kind (looking at you, Pittenweem).

Get snug as a bug like Alison:

Our resident creative queen, Chelsea, gets into the winter spirit with some cozy morning journaling. She likes to get up first thing in the morning and grab a beautiful foiled SG notebook (of course), light a candle or turn on her fairy lights, and start her day with a little journaling. Good for the mind and soul!

Shop Chelsea’s journalling routine:

Although she is definitely a spring girl, Barrow loves nothing more than a hot tea, a wintery candle (under a candle warmer, of course, because she doesn’t want to set her dorm on fire) and her never-ending knitting project, which will allegedly become a sweater.

Shop Barrow’s cozy faves:

Molly loves to spend her time crocheting gifts for Christmas (a multi-talented queen) while enjoying our famous hot cocoa mixes with a bit of condensed milk. Don’t knock it til you try it!

Shop Molly’s delightful treats:

Small Business Holiday Madness is fast approaching, and we are packed FULL of holiday gifts. Since Thanksgiving comes late this year, you may want to pop on down to Stomping Grounds before then! We have a plethora of new products for you to shop this holiday season, including seasonal candles, new dining room treats, and pretty much every puzzle you can think of…

Check out some fun framing from recently:

Geneva recently welcomed a new addition to Exchange Street, Working Class Coffee! WCC was started in Canandaigua and recently opened a second location in our lovely town. Be sure to check them out at 486 Exchange St for some expertly made drinks—this mysterious newsletter author particularly recommends indulging in a Dubai chocolate matcha and a breakfast crunchwrap.

In other local news, beloved friend of Stomping Grounds, Daniel Schonning, recently published his debut poetry collection, As When Waking. Deeply moving and clever, this book is a beautiful journey from start to finish. We might be a bit biased because we love Danny, but it’s probably one of the best poetry books ever. You can pick up your copy at Stomping Grounds (if we aren’t sold out!).

As the Best Bookshop in the Finger Lakes (Finger Lakes Times said it, not us), we have quite a few books we want to showcase as a part of the newsletter, so our staff will be reviewing a different book each month! Enjoy Beth’s review of this month’s read:

Flipping through TV channels as a child one afternoon I stumbled into the movie The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie starring Maggie Smith. The movie was over my head back then, but I remember finding Miss Brodie's character vibrant and inspiring. I wished I went to a private girls school in Scotland where Miss Brodie was my teacher. I wished my classes were held on the school lawn under a beautiful old tree lawn where Miss Brodie lectured about her romantic adventures traveling through Europe. Fortyish years later, when a used paperback copy of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie turned up in the store, snippets of the Maggie Smith movie returned to me. I decided to take the paperback home and read it.

Originally published in 1961, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is a short novel set in 1930s Edinburgh. The title character is a progressive minded teacher who gathers around her a favored group of girls, known as "The Brodie Set." Miss Brodie refers to these girls "the creme de la creme" and sets them apart as her special protegees. The girls defend their beloved teacher against traditionalists at the school who see Miss Brodie's freewheeling methods as improper and potentially dangerous. Miss Brodie never guesses which student betrays her or why.

On the surface the book is short, funny, and easy to digest in an afternoon. Beneath that, however, the story challenges every level of traditional authority: religious, educational, economic, political, and patriarchal. Miss Brodie is full of ironies. She's an inspiration to her students. She shapes their realities and designs their futures. We admire Miss Brodie's vision, passion, and commitment to teaching even as we are forced to confront her poisonous hypocrisies. She is a pageant mom who thinks she is Joan of Arc. She is a fascist play acting a liberator, a killer dressed up as a savior. 

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is a complex and important book. It contains challenging themes and was recently banned in Orange County, Florida (along with nearly 700 other titles.) I have added it to the selection of banned books we offer for sale at Stomping Grounds.

- Beth

We encourage you to get ahead of the holiday madness and come visit us soon while we’re still fully stocked. Our holiday makeover starts November 12th, so come take advantage of the new and exciting merchandise!

Any requests for what you would like to see in our newsletter? Let us know in-store or by responding to this email.

See you next month!