A little review of 2014

While often the most helpful, it's also sometimes the most painful: looking at last year's goals & resolutions, seeing how many you slipped on. Oh, the list of things I did not achieve... goodness. But that's no fun to share, so let's focus on the positives!

Business-wise, we had our greatest year yet. It was a whole year of running inviting full-time (even though I did get a retail job for a few hours a week,) my printing skills improved even more, our first wholesale catalog was released in June, we got into some great handmade fairs with exposure to new audiences, and even got a little publicity in the stationery blog world for our Snarky Parking cards.

Sold an insane amount of these in 2014!

Personally, some of my achievements are that I finally enjoy running (thanks to Zombies, Run!), read a few good business books, and have been more ruthless about purging the home and office- several trips to Goodwill were made and there will be many more in the future!

Of course, then there are all of the things that I did that weren't on my lists, like travel! T and I went to Washington DC, saw family in El Paso, and visited his family, with a side-trip to the beach. While family trips weren't a huge surprise (though learning to shoot on one of those sure was), the trip to DC was a proper touristy trip- no family, no friends, just us and the city. I also said Yes to more things, which is one of the whole points of having your own business.
I've had a quote on my wipe board for a while: We create our businesses so we can create the lives we want. (Jenny Shih) While it's hard to break away from the work, sometimes it's best to in order to live the life you want. 

Us in Washington DC, August 2014

This week, I've gone back to work full-time for a while so it feels like I am stepping back from that, but I know that working really hard at both the day-job and my dream-job will help me live the life I want. 2015 is going to be an amazing one, though I know the juggling act of essentially two full-time jobs will be rough, but I've made my list of goals and resolutions for this year, personally and for the business, and now it's just time to make it happen.

Cheers,
ashley