Here I am, sitting on my desk, having a little bit of trouble writing because my stomach is doing craaaazy things.

Last night, David and I went to the Christmas market after wrapping up our projects. Of course, in typical festive cheer, we got our hands on some of the greasiest food & a few too many cups of mulled wine. It was fun at the moment. We were both…let’s say…very MERRY!

The consequences this morning were not the most enjoyable, in fact I am dedicated to sipping my healing-superfood-detoxifying beetroot juice right now (balance is everything), but it was well worth it.

We’re really enjoying this pre-Christmas feeling. Work-wise, it’s a bit of a stressful period, as it seems that ALL of our projects have deadlines before the Christmas holidays, so in order to stick with that and make sure everything turns out fine, we have to manage our own time and also keep our clients on this timeline to make sure that nothing comes in too late from neither of us. It’s a LOT of juggling around, but it seems the mulled wine is available right on time! Well, not just that, but all of the other wintery goodnesses as well. Just when it gets a little stressful and tense, it’s good to know that a few hours later, you can just unwind, grab yourself a blanket and create the ultimate cozy atmosphere. Candles, isolation and all.

I mean, it’s important to not get caught up in this stressful period, because we might be missing some of the good things associated with it! Yes, we have a little too much work at the moment, but we’re not going to miss going to a Christmas market, or enjoy a little bit of a wintery ambiance because of that. It all serves as a warmup to the holiday period and it’s there to temporarily warm our hearts and prepare us somehow.

I feel quite happy realizing this now and not later (or too late), because I did let myself get caught up in stress lately. I guess I’m pretty vulnerable when it comes to that, because I have a bit of a “control freak” temperament. It’s easy for me to just start prioritizing everything else but my own happiness, and start missing out on the small authentic moments in life. To be honest, this is why I engage in meditation and such practices. Sometimes, they’re the only things that I can do to help myself be PRESENT in this beautiful ephemeral thing we call life.

Writing these “journal-like” blogposts from time to time also truly helps me realize how far we go, week by week, and be grateful for how many things we achieve and embrace daily.

This week, we went to our local greenhouse, the “Geméisguart” in Esch, and actually filmed footage for the second video in the series we are launching with ONKRAUT. We met the people who are in charge of this wonderful social project and they were all really lovely. We actually wrote another blogpost about this place when we had first visited it, as we fell in love with it, you can read it here. We are currently putting all of it together and editing the second video, which we’re planning to launch before the holidays.

There was also plenty of web-work this week. We finally launched the very first e-shop we have been working on, called AFROLIA, which is something very exciting for us because we’ve been working on it for a while. It’s been a project during which we learned so much, and we’re super grateful that Djulia, the owner, trusted us with it. We’ll be dedicating a whole blogpost to it next week, so stay tuned 🙂

We are also currently working on the website for a lovely shop in Luxembourg city which has kid’s toys & decoration, called Le Showroom. We’ll be posting more about it soon, as we also worked on their graphic identity!

And, last but not least, we are almost ready to launch the blog design we did for local blogger Olivia, from The Olivia’s Way.

One of our clients, Michael from De Masseur (as mentioned  earlier in “this” post) officially launched his business this week, which is also very exciting for us. It’s a massage parlor, in which he offers “tailor-made”, custom massage in an different way, to fit each person’s needs. We love that, because the fact that it has its alternative element allowed us to think the design more alternatively. We worked on plenty of things with him, such as his graphic identity, his website, plenty of printed materials and plenty of signage design to make his place look nice!

Awesome photo & DIY creations are from our lovely friend Lynn from Cosymore – follow her instagram 🙂

Wednesday was definitely inspiration day, as we ran a workshop with our side project, Orla Collective. For those of you who don’t know it, Orla Collective is a self-initiated project of ours, which we take care of during our free time: it’s a community about mindful living. It unfolds in two ways, online, with a collaborative blog/online magazine, and offline, with organizing workshops and activities. Lately, we’ve been meaning to find ways to organize those workshops more often, but this is often quite hard for us, because it takes time to prepare them and this can be hard when you’re trying to keep it all as a “side project”. So the best way for us to keep doing that was to involve people, and this actually enhances the community aspect of it all. So we collaborated with Lynn from Cosymore, a very inspiring crafty girl, and on wednesday, we organized a workshop about DIY Christmas gifts. Lynn led the workshop, sharing her best ideas for handmade, sustainable Christmas ideas. The workshop was fully booked, and it seems everybody loved it, which is so great!

There’s something that Lynn said that really stuck with me: “crafting is my meditation”. And I think I wasn’t the only one who got extremely inspired by this saying.

So many of us are constantly on a mental highway, getting multiple things at a time and racing around the clock. What’s wrong is that we don’t even realize anymore what it feels like to focus on ONE thing at a time. As a creative person who likes to make things herself (very beautiful things, just take a look at her blog), Lynn is often taking time to embrace the full attention and artistry required to make crafts. During this time, she’s not getting distracted by anything else, but rather giving herself entirely to this task. Of course, the feeling associated with that must be extremely peaceful, and it must help enormously to cultivate gratitude and awareness of the present moment. Like meditation.

I want to take some time to process her saying and see how I can apply it, little by little to my own life. I don’t know how yet, but I guess I’ll figure it out. Let’s say it will be my homework for the weekend 🙂

Have a lovely weekend everyone!