Dear friends,

Isn’t it fitting that Christmas closes out the year? With all of its gatherings with family and friends, its sparkle in the dark of winter, its uplifted spirit, its season of hope…it seems the perfect choice to herald in the new year to come, with its sparkling promises. It would seem rather strange to celebrate the holiday that has just passed, in July and then move onto finishing out the rest of the year with no pomp and circumstance. Our spirits are uplifted at this time of year, our hopes renewed in the good of fellow man. One only needs to watch the seasonal, It’s a Wonderful Life or The Christmas Carol, to have these concepts affirmed and to ride on them into the New Year.

As you ride into the year of 2016, we here at Life’s Patina wanted to let you know how deeply we appreciate your support and the ways you have enriched our lives. You have done so in a variety of ways and we thank you for each and every one of them. You have enabled us to grow and to bring more people in who share our same passion. You have caused us to strive to be better at what we do. Your conversations have broadened our lives and helped us to reevaluate things that are going on in them. You have given us value to keep doing what we are doing and motivate us on a daily basis to keep “aiming for the stars.” Without you… there would be no Life’s Patina and for that, we are truly grateful.

As we embark on our celebration into the year that is about to unfold, I would like to compare the days of this upcoming year to the pages in a book that we are the author of. We create the story line given the cast of characters that are most present in our lives, introducing new ones into the plot. Our story is one filled with hope for all the best in this new year, a clean slate to change things that we might have wanted to do differently from the last, to advance the characters into their best life moments. To surround the ones we love in a protective web, keeping them safe from harm. We know that not all the pages of this year will be filled with goodness and light for there are other writers in this book as well, ones that will spin our penned storyline out of its intended course, almost ripping some of those pages out of the spine of the book, but those pages will remain, eventually making us stronger and more resilient. Our response to those authors is up to us. We pen the pages each and every day. We awake to new days and have the opportunity to fill those blank pages with all of their possibility.

Our wish for you, as you enter a new chapter of your book is that the pages that You author are filled with all the things that you hope for your cast of characters. That their stories are uplifting and filled with promise, fueled by your passionate wishes for them. That all the people and things you love are present in those pages. May the outside authors treat you kindly and may their writings only cause you situations to learn from and draw strength from, not bring you chapters of heartache and sorrow. May your story this year be filled with lessons learned and the wisdom gained from your prior pages. May it be your best story yet!!!

We look forward to creating some pages in your book in the new year, be they tiny moments you experience at a Life’s Patina event or a larger moment, where you host a page of your book here. Wherever the story takes us, we hope to be a positive piece of your story line.

~ Love from Meg and the cast of characters at Life’s Patina