Unkempt with a Side of Snow

Wow.

To say that I've been busy lately would be almost laughable. I've been crazy occupied the last month!  That's what you get when you combine working in retail + holiday shopping time, so I'm not necessarily surprised. This is my fourth holiday season as an Etsy seller, and each year is just as awesome as the last.

However, I'm now burned out.

With the F*CKING HOBBIT coming out next week, this quote from Bilbo Baggins comes to mind and resonates with how I currently feel:

"I am old Gandalf. I know I don’t look it, but I’m beginning to feel it in my heart. I feel thin, sort of stretched like butter scraped over too much bread. I need a holiday, a very long holiday. And I don’t expect that I shall return. In fact, I mean not to."

While I shall return (aka: reopen my shop after the holidays), I will definitely be limiting my work load. I think I'll be taking about 20% the amount of orders that I'd regularly take. I need to decompress after the fullness of the past few months.  There are some plans I've had for the shop that I have put off for years, [years!], simply because I really haven't had a nice chunk of time to work on anything new. (Also, I need to get some of my guts tinkered with in January, and will probably need a little time to recover from that).

While I finish up the last batch of holiday orders from 2012, I'll leave you with some photos of my past few months:

 Light snow in October.

Catty being terrible.

Myself with Brother and Mim, stocking up on crap for Hurricane Sandy, even though we were only subject to windiness. >< (A stranger volunteered to take our picture, lols. We are from Georgia after all!) 

 December 1 Snow

 On my way back from the Post Office (I walk most days).

 My new phone case, engraved with a photo of my late grandmother. ♥

Leather dye disaster.

 Catty Bear/Poops MaGoops/Rasputin in his winter den.

Husband guy carrying a mannequin home on the train - at my request.

Our Thanksgiving meat. Our oven doesn't maintain a constant temperature, so I didn't want Husband Guy to have to deal with cooking a turkey in an unreliable oven (I was working most of the day and couldn't help him. He's such a dream boat!)

So...my plans for the shop for next year are a little up in the air. I admit, it will be nice to have more time to tend to the house: to have a clean house and clean clothes and clean dishes and a clean catty. I'll see how it goes from there.