What's been going on in my life this month and a VSS check-in

Yesterday marked exactly five months since my last birthday. It's staggering how quickly time flies, one month tumbling into the next, life a series of moments and emotions, smiles, highs, lows and memories. I'd hoped to get a new outfit post up this week, but there was no way that was going to happen as the days progressed.

This month has been - and will continue to be - staggeringly busy. The most jam packed, hectic one of 2015, topping even October, and while there will be outfit posts as the weeks progress, again, there was just no way for one to be squeezed in at present. Soon though, including a couple of stellar holiday season dresses that I can't wait to show you guys!

Since getting back from Vancouver last week, I've been crazy busy both vintage Vintage Secret Santa happenings, as well as packing up and shipping out a ton of wonderful Etsy shop orders that have been pouring in recently. I had some requests from blog readers for such to cover payday today, so I've extended the 25% off VSS coupon code there until tomorrow.

If you'd like to purchase anything for your VSS match, yourself, or someone else, you can take 25% off all orders when you use the coupon code VSS25 at checkout until December 12th.
 
Keeping pace with those happenings has been the holiday season itself, which as we all know, usually only gets busier and busier as the 25th draws nearer!

Also, before the end of the month, as a small business owner I need to file my Canadian PST and GST tax reports, which essentially means doing all of my 2015 taxes (in order to generate the precise numbers for each) this month, too. Not exactly what one wants to be dealing with for several days during Christmastime, but it must be done, so no sense in bemoaning it too much.
 
Further on top of those things - and very exciting - Tony and I recently decided that the time had come to get a new (be actually brand new or just slightly use) car. Our current one - which was actually our first car ever - was bought secondhand for a stellar deal back in early 2012 and has served us well for nearly four years now.

However, for a myriad of reasons, it's no longer the best fit for our current lifestyle (a big one being that we need a great deal more room than it provides, including for Annie, our energetic 65+ lbs dog, as well as for when we travel and for when I sell in person at vintage shows) and so this month we've been pouring our a lot of time, thought and energy into researching, test driving, and hunting for our next vehicle.

{The models – and prices! – might change, but the act of buying a car remains much the same as it did back when this photo was taken around the start of the 1950s. Vintage auto dealership image source.}

 
We haven't found "the one" yet, but we're getting closer and are both incredibly excited about this prospect. We've needed a bigger vehicle for ages and knowing that one will soon be ours is giving me some much needed pep to get through these crazy busy weeks!
 
Back, for a moment, to the VSS. For those taking part in this year's Vintage Secret Santa, 100% of the match emails were sent out to all participants by the (PST) morning hours of December 2nd. If you have not yet seen your email in your inbox (it should have been there about 1.5 weeks ago now), please check your spam (a lot of users who signed up with a Hotmail email are having their VSS messages land in their spam filters for some unknown reason - maybe Hotmail isn't in a festive mood this year ), deleted message, and archived message folders going back to November 30th.
 
If you don't see your VSS match email in any of those spots, please contact me by email right away and I get your match info out to you again. There's less than two weeks to go now until Christmas and if you signed up for the VSS, it's very important that you honour your commitment and mail out a gift to your match, who, just like yourself, is no doubt excited for, and expecting to receive, a festive gift as part of this fun online gift swap.
 
Definitely lots going on this month on our for sure, which is great! I've also been giving a lot of thought to the direction of my blog, my wardrobe, my social media accounts, and many other important aspects of my life and work as we head into 2016, so I've got oodles on my (vintage china) plate right now and am seriously excited to see how it will all play out in the coming year.
 
I hope that you're each having a terrific December and that, hopefully, yours is at least a bit less harried than mine!
 
Have an awesome weekend and countdown to Christmas, my dears!!!