Finding Merry

Hey, folks.

How are you doing? If you're thinking "It's the ghost of Kate!" I don't blame you. I have not been active in the Kate Space lately.

That doesn't mean I haven't been busy. In fact, S!WK had the busiest months ever this July-October. Great for the business! Not great for my social media postings. I was coming home and just collapsing, which is normal when you're a mostly one woman show. Then November happened. And now it's the winter holidays, and I, like many of you, am trying to get myself organized (yes, we need to do it for ourselves) while helping my clients and still managing the daily stuff. My dining room has half of my husband's wood shop in it, because he re-organized his office (without me! On his own! I am so freaking proud of him!) but in the meantime, he had to move a bunch of his tools out of it, so now they are...in our dining room. Less proud of that.

My storage space is holding the things clients have given me to sell and donate on Facebook Marketplace, and it's also where I have had to put some of the Christmas gifts for our friends and family, because (ahem) we used to just put them in my husband's office. But now we're not going to use that space as a dumping ground because it's unfair to him.

As I type this, it's December 12th, and my house has ONE Christmas decoration up. It's our wreath, and I put it up this morning. I was not feeling ashamed (because if you have been around here any amount of time, you know we don't do that here!) but I was feeling guilty. Which isn't great either.

Last Christmas was really shitty for my family. My son had to have life-saving surgery on Christmas morning, and then again on New Year's. He's 100% better now, but I said I would make this Christmas the best ever, and the other night I was lamenting that I had failed.

Obviously, I haven't done that. To set so high an expectation was not a great move on my part, but my teenagers and I have done some nice, fun things together so far, and we have more planned. They don't care what the house looks like as long as they can find their stuff. So, we're coming back to the whole point of SPACE! with Kate. My kids may be weaving around boxes of tools, bins of repurposed things, and secondhand couture right now, but they don't have to worry about where their gloves are! They don't have to worry about their health. Merry doesn't have to be big. When I figured that out, I breathed a big sigh.

Part of the Festival of Trees, in Exeter, NH.

When they were little, they got excited by Santa. As teenagers, it's the artistry of the trees.

"That's the one, Marv. That's the silver tuna."

We past this as we walked back. That Frosty was MASSIVE.

I have no idea what this season is like for you. Maybe it's full of Joy! Maybe it's really hard. Maybe it's just another season. But I hope you can find little bits of merriment in your life.