Oh geez! Where has the time gone?! We had no intention of taking a nearly month long break from blogging, but as soon as we listed our handmade ornaments in the shop and posted a few pics of them on Facebook and Instagram, it was off to the races! The orders poured in, and literally overnight we found ourselves working 17 hour days. Next thing we knew, weeks had passed, Christmas showed up out of the blue, and in that blur of weeks this poor little blog sat here all alone…not a post in sight.
Hundreds of ornies took over our lives.
Cutting and cutting and cutting. You'd be surprised at how physically demanding it is. Oh man were our necks sore! And our hands had blisters and cramps. I'm sure many of you fellow makers know all about it. We're all guilty of "hand abuse" for sure.
The ornies you see above are in the "rough cut" stage. We use scissors for this stage, and then use an x-acto for the final fine cuts. Then each is hand sanded like crazy, and some even get hand painted details to finish them off.
We are so happy when we get to this stage…all wrapped up in their cellophane sleeves, with pink shred and shimmery stars.
All set and ready to be shipped off to all corners of the globe.
Our tiny studio quickly overflowed, so we set up a big folding table right in the middle of our living room.
And it wasn't just ornaments. There were lots and lots of diecuts too.
The end of each day looked like this.
And this.
And this.
So we were surrounded with all this Christmas cheer, but by the end of each day it was packed and shipped off to other homes. We honestly thought we wouldn't have the time to decorate our home for the holidays. But little by little we started to pull it together…starting with our fave wreath vignette.
And we simply couldn't imagine not putting up the tree. We pulled out our vintage ornaments, and stole as many decorating minutes as we could each night.
We woke our sweet pink haired angel girl from her year long nap…and she took her place of honor atop our tree.
We didn't hang as many ornaments as last year...but I think we still managed to achieve our ideal balance of magical and sweet.
Honestly, our studio, kitchen, dining room, and half of our living room was absolutely overcome with work stuff. So we made sure to reserve this one corner of our home as our own personal magical holiday refuge.
We love the addition of our falalalala banner.
Our fave decorations of all…first up, our little peanut, Lt. Dan.
And our little old man Carlos, the copycat…I mean, dog.
So we worked hard right through December 23rd, and then spent Christmas Eve cooking and baking. Our families depend on me to provide the Red Velvet cupcakes. And I love baking them.
We spent Christmas day over at Aar's parent's house, and as always, we had a super great time. And on the day after Christmas we went to my brother's house. My parents drove all the way down from upstate NY, but my brother Jason had to stay up there because he had to work. It was a bummer not seeing him for Christmas. : ( But we will make sure to make it happen next year. We had a great time. Our niece Olivia has grown so much. Like all girls her age, she's Frozen obsessed…and oh boy, do you see that frosting up above? Well, lets just say Olivia had her fair share of it…and she was absolutely zooming on sugar…hilarious!
This is a Flipagram summing up our year.
2014 was definitely a year we will remember. We launched our first paper collection, got to see our book in stores everywhere, we made a whole lot of new artwork and shipped it all over the world, worked on some important home projects, traveled to some awesome teaching events, and made lots of new friends! We also will remember the year with both sadness and joy...we lost our beloved little Jack, but then we turned utter heartbreak into pure happiness when we adopted Lt. Dan. And our old man Carlos is thrilled to have his new baby brother.
We like to keep our holiday decorations up until New Year's day. But we'll make little changes here and there…like changing our falalalala for this Happy New Year banner.
I guess we'll bring this blog post and this year to a close. It really was a pretty special year, but we look forward to making 2015 as awesome as possible.
Thanks so much to all of you for sticking with us, and reading this blog, and keeping up with everything we've been up to. We hope to see you lots more in 2015!
Happy New Year!
xoxo, Jenny, Aaron, Carlos, and Lieutenant Dan!
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