My thank you, what a year!

Wow it has been quite the season...year for that matter! I am finally comming up for a little air as the Christmas Season has been pretty much delivered and is now being sold. We made over this Summer and Fall the amount of mittens that we made in the whole of last year (now I know why I'm tired!).
 I was thinking about how this came about...hard work, marketing marketing marketing...endless hours on the computer marketing marketing marketing, long hours embroidering embroidering embroidering and a fantastic salesman who pushes me into the next bracket every year.

  But most of all it is friends and family who have helped me get this far. I am lucky, very lucky to have a great network of supportive women friends and a husband who has litterally built me a working shop (the owe me factor huge in this house ;-))
 And this lil cutie pie on the left, my mom.
 Mom built a family business with our Dad while raising two teenagers and two little kids, she'll be 80 next year and she still gives me advice. She came for a month this summer and worked with me saving me HUGE money and it was fun to work with her. Now I know how hard it was to build that business (which by the way is still successful and still in the family!) and has watched struggle with growth with quiet reslove just letting me talk and vent. Every tuff issue I came up against she would say...tomorrow, deal with it and move on, tomorrow it will all look different and in five years you'll look back and laugh at what spazed you out today.
 Thanks to my girlfriends they have been patient and have listened to me on the good days and the bad days they have been rootin for me all the way. Sometimes even kidnapping me for a day out of the shop. Each one of them strong, independent, creative and funny as heck. I hope that I support them as much as they have supported me.
 Thanks to my workers, low pay, wierd hours, great music and sometimes some totally off the hook days. You gotta love what your doing to keep showing up wondering what your boss is going to do next (or maybe they just wanted to see "just how far will she go, till she cracks?")
 Thanks to Miss Jodi my super knitter and my financial savior, she works very hard doing beautiful knitting for me and she lets me pay her in the Winter when money is better and time is on our side. We talk and discuss next years plan we move forward in our freindship and work relationship laughing and trading our funny life stories and bizzarre happenings in the work day.
Thanks to my family: Both of my brothers and my sister, all four of us have our own businesses (see what our parents started) We trade stories, support, skills, and we trade great times with our mom.
My kids: hard workers for others and for me, I know when I grow up I'll be all right because my kids turned out to be awesome adults, ask and they will come and help and they too are crazy funny (my side of the gene pool).
My husband, he's not a big talker, he's a big doer he is the calm balance in my crazy creative mind; throw it out there he will build it. On my worst day when I was at my wits end with no money left and materials that needed to be purchased he just said..."we can do this, I know it's hard now, but we can do this" we ate snak ramen like college kids and have stayed in endless weekends so far "we did this." Thanks Gary I love you.

 A successful business starts at the very core with successful relationships, if the people surrounding you are supportive then I assure you, you will be successful. I look forward to next year, new adventures, new struggles and new ideas.