Happy Holidays! A Year in Review

The past few weeks have been busy over here with my little Etsy shop, and I wanted to stop in to say thank you to everyone who supported my little handmade business this year. I have been working non-stop on new orders in my free time in the late evenings, even enlisting the help of my husband a couple of weeks ago. With a new baby and being back to work during the daytime, my life is very full. I'm very appreciative that I have sewing to help give me the opportunity to take time to make something creative.

This has been one of the best, if not the best, year for Lina and Vi. We added a new partner, Made Metro Collective in Dearborn, and continued to receive orders from our existing partners Bundled, Birch Wood Boutique, and Roos Roast all year long. The handmade community only exists because of the desire of our customers to buy something that was made by hand by someone locally who took the time to dream up, create, and sell their items. Handmade is definitely not the most efficient way to make a lot of things, but the character it brings cannot be replicated in mass production.

2017 was one of the most challenging years for me, both personally and professionally. As many of you know, I spent most of the year preparing for a new baby that arrived in August. Our lives are more blessed with her in our family, but along with it came some major changes in our day to day life. You may also know that while I sew everything in the Lina and Vi Etsy shop, I also work during the daytime in software development. While I do not "make" things per se, I help to manage web application projects that recently became increasingly technical in nature with the acquisition of the company I worked for in late 2016.  My position remained mostly the same, but the content of what I worked on changed, and I have had to learn new concepts that have kept me on my toes. My personal and professional life were all about changes this year, and while I did not always have the grace to handle them perfectly, I have learned a lot of lessons that I can take with me in the future. Through it all, I have continued to keep up with sewing burlap items for Lina and Vi and managing larger and larger wholesale orders this past year.

I enjoy the end of a year because it is a reminder to me to reflect on what the past year was and what I want the next year to look like. This time last year there were a lot of unknowns in my future. A year later, I am thankful for the journey that has led me here today.

With that, I hope you are enjoying some time off to spend with friends and family this holiday season. A big thank you as always for reading this blog and for keeping up with Lina and Vi.

Happy Holidays,
Erica