An Almost New Years Reflection

I know that it isn't quite New Years yet, but this afternoon I found my self reflecting back on where I've been this year and how I got to be here ... blogging ... and selling crafts on Etsy.

Last year at this time I was just your normal average American girl. I had just bought our first home with my then fiance. I was pulling my hair out during a long and arduous kitchen remodel (so worth it!!!). I was knee deep with planning our wedding and sorting through what seemed like millions of pictures of flowers and cake. I wasn't doing too much in the crafting realm. Until that point I had lived in small apartments that got even smaller when I moved to Chicago. Quilting meant having to take the table cloth off of my sewing table, pull out the machine and all of my tools from storage spaces in craft boxes that also dubbed as end tables. God only knows where my knitting needles were and if I had any matching sets.

It was Christmas last year that I met my husband's cousin-in-law that sparked my crafting world back into life. She is a seller for Stampin' Up and brought her collection of cards home for the holidays. Now at about this time I was also sorting through millions of wedding invitations and getting very frustrated that nothing was exactly what I wanted. After looking through her cards I thought about how silly it was to pay someone to make invitations that weren't exactly what I wanted when I could just make them myself the way I wanted them (yes I'll admit I have control issues ...). Well, two weeks later I started going to card making classes at Archivers and the wedding invitations were under way! That snowballed into stationary sets as thank you gifts to bridal shower hosts and eventually into the bud vases favors.

Isn't it funny how seemingly small things in life can change the direction that you're traveling? All you need is the inspiration to get moving.

The rest is history. Now here I am ... married for 7 months ... living happily in our new home (which does have a fabulous kitchen) .... with all of my crafting supplies sometimes organized in my very own craft room ... dreaming about a day when I could have unlimited time to just sit down and make all of the things that are floating around in my head. In my dream world I would have a whole collection of hats and scarves, my own stationary line (hand stamped of course), a collection of mittens made from old sweaters (a project that I have started .... more details to come soon I hope), and maybe a fresh batch of cookies every couple of days.

I went to Close Knit, local knitting store the other day and they were also selling knitted items and I thought, "How cool would that be?? To see something that I made ... for sale in a store??"

So that's where I am today and I hope that next year at this time I can report back that my dream world is coming a little closer. I've had 12 sales in lama works since I opened September 1st and 103 people have marked my store as a favorite. Definitely a positive start right??

So here's to the dreamers in all of us!! Happy Holidays everyone!!

Until next time ...
The girl behind the lama
~LMM