A big Painted Thank you

With the children now broken up from school, the tree up (sort of), the decorations in unusual display around the house (thanks to my over-enthusiastic teenagers and their frantically busy mother not being able to keep a designed eye on them), we come to the last weekend of the working year at a furious pace, and when there’s time to sit and look back, we’ll wonder how we managed to squash it all in.

There are still commissions to finish, and newly delivered curtains and pelments to hang this weekend, and clients to see. And then there is the small matter of the daily Post Office visit – waiting in cheerful queues to deliver parcels. We have been overwhelmed with the response to our brand new online store and a big, big thank you to all have ordered and written and spread the word. There is much to build on in 2018, and I am looking forward to it with such excitement.

This week has probably been one of the busiest in Marmalade’s life-time and one of the craziest: Tuesday saw us hosting a location shoot for a natural dog food company and the arrival of 26 puppies and countless crew and dog handlers. It was, quite simply ‘barking mad’ but an enormous amount of fun, and the props we had painted and rooms we had cleared were put to full use. My daughter refused to go to school that day, and spent the day covered in puppies instead – her sort of heaven.

We also ran the last of our brand new course dates for the year – Colour Your Home – a full day of colour and interior design and as usual, the lovely ladies who came along not only went home with a mood board for their own planned design schemes, but having put the world to rights around a happy table of fun and lively people. We love our course days and all our new dates for next year are up on the website now.

This year has been so full and fun and busy – we were lucky enough to be shortlisted for the fabulous Creative Bath Awards in the summer for our design services, and asked to write many articles on colour, style and home for various magazines. Our most unusual pieces of furniture to paint was a carved wardrobe that arrived in so many bits, I had to put my logisically-minded, lego-fiend of a 15 year-old to help me work out what on earth was what,  before we started.

And so, there is now, the small matter of Christmas to attend to, and with my efforts so far stretching to one box of crackers, I need to find some time to actually go shopping. With three stockings to fill, a house full to cater for and an empty fridge, there need to be more hours in the day. Like all of us juggling home, and work and children and lifestyle, it’s a frantic race against time, but with most of the business world stopping for Christmas-time, just around the corner, the quietness ahead is waving like a little white flag.

I hope there is quietness and peace ahead for you and your families. A very warm and Happy Christmas to all our customers, clients, friends and work colleagues, and I look forward to New Year adventures with you in 2018.

Vanessa x