The Black Hole

I didn’t realize how many people were actually reading my posts until I dropped off the blog planet. Since the end of October I’ve had people asking me, “why no blogging?” Can it really be almost 2 months since I last posted anything!?!?!? I guess that statement alone sums up how our holiday season was… BUSY!

We were hopeful that Holiday ‘08 would be our best season yet. We tried to prepare well – bought an additional heat press, hired and trained more manufacturing help, added a part-time bookkeeper – and made sure my mother was “on call” to pick up any children on a last minute basis. My grandmother even contributed by dropping off “business essentials” from her weekly trips to Costco. I joked that she in fact may have had the single most important job as I’m not sure what business – regardless of industry – can thrive without coffee and toilet paper!! Once the season began (right around my last blog entry!) we hunkered down to make sure our new employees knew what they were doing, small orders didn’t get lost, inventory reorders weren’t forgotten and holiday shipping deadlines were met. In some respects, I felt like I was holding my breath for 6 weeks –ready to extinguish any fires that may have started – sometimes literally!

The preparation paid off. I won’t go so far as to say that it all ran smoothly all the time, but we did our best, got through it and were thrilled at all the last minute retail re-orders despite the fact that each and every one was contingent upon a shipping deadline! When the dust all settled from the holiday tornado, this past season was in fact our best so far. Phew!! I can now take a deep breath.

My New Year’s resolution (one of them anyway) was to start the blog up again (yeah, yeah I’m a few days late on that one). I want to get back to it not just because some of you are actually reading it (and BTW, thanks for continuing to check back to see if anything new has been up - the answer to which has been NO up until now) but even more so – at the expense of sounding selfish – for myself. Life’s busy. This blog has been therapeutic in many respects – a way to take a moment out of each day (or every few days anyway) to focus on what’s going on. What important happened with the business, my kids, my family, my feelings… I know Blog What You Like is rewarding for me now, but I also know that it will be an invaluable diary of sorts as I look back on this hectic, challenging yet incredibly rewarding time in my life. 2009, here I come.