FOXBOROUGH, Mass. (WJAR) — Building a brand, sharing her funky graphic designs and garnering the attention of major brands and professional sports teams, Kate Weinberg has proven the power of social media, amassing more than 500,000 followers across TikTok and Instagram.

Her latest campaign, designing fresh merchandise for the NFL, has now resulted in a massive collaboration with the Patriots.

“The whole team has been amazing,” Weinberg told NBC 10 News. “They’ve trusted in my creative vision the whole way through.”

The collaboration is the result of months of planning, designing, and editing.

“It was hard to pull together so quickly,” she continued. “From coming up with the design and getting the production to happen and making sure they were approved by the league, there’s so much I’ve been learning.”

Weinberg says as a Massachusetts native and generational Pats fan, inspiration came naturally — the designs feature lobsters, sailboats, and everything uniquely New England.

“I try to make every design unique and tell a story with it … the story of the team,” Weinberg said.

They were placed on display just in time for the Patriots’ 2026 playoff debut.

“They went on display, Friday, right before the big game. Sunday was the big sales day, I think they sold out at 2 p.m.,” Weinberg said.

She said come this Sunday, she’ll be proudly repping her merch, while rooting for the Pats as they take on the Texans at 3 p.m.

For one year — just one year! — What if we all tried to be Mass. boosters, rather than Mass. criticizers, Mass. fault-finders or plain old Massholes?

What if we made that a New Year’s Resolution that we actually stick with until December?

If you’re a resident of Massachusetts, you can undoubtedly add to this list of problems that our state has: high taxes, pricey housing, unreliable public transit, bad traffic, cold weather, elected officials emitting hot air and residents voting with their feet by moving.

But if there was ever a year to look at the Dunkin’ cup as half full, I’d argue that 2026 is it.

A partial list of good stuff we could be bragging about would include:

• An NFL team that won its first playoff game with a quarterback who could be the season’s MVP, and an NBA team that surprisingly has a solid chance of making it to the playoffs.

• Boston is continuing to get better at enjoying winter, with Frostival and Winteractive. A Ferris wheel on the Greenway? A “street snowboarding” contest on City Hall Plaza? I’ll be there!

• The inaugural season of Boston Legacy FC, our new National Women’s Soccer League team, opens in March.

• Seven FIFA World Cup games will be held in Foxborough in June.

• Marking the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence on the Fourth of July and other Revolutionary happenings throughout the year.

• Later in July, a fleet of tall ships from around the world arrives in Boston Harbor for Sail Boston.

• Worcester and Auburn are getting ready to celebrate the 100^th anniversary of the birth of modern rocketry, with Robert Goddard’s early tests in 1926. In other nerdy news, the MIT Museum has plans to mark the 50^th birthday of the biotech industry in Cambridge. Just two of many major industries born in Massachusetts.

Most residents of other states would view two or three of those things as opportunities to boast or back-pat.

They’d invite friends and relatives from all over to come for a visit, and see it as an opportunity to show off their state’s positives — or at least to appreciate the work it took to bring these things together in a single year.

Maybe we should, too.

Traffic will be bad at times. Hotel and Airbnb prices will skyrocket.

And you could live up to the stereotype by bemoaning that. Or you could see 2026 as a pretty great year to live in Massachusetts.

A local woman who was denied a license to carry firearms because of her husband’s “violent and aggressive behavior” has won her appeal in state court.

Barbara Guinane applied to the Manchester-by-the-Sea police chief for an LTC more than three years ago.

The police chief ended up ruling that Guinane was unsuitable and denied the LTC application due to her husband. The chief noted her husband’s violent disputes with neighbors, resulting in police responses to the couple’s home, criminal charges, restraining orders against him, and his LTC being suspended.

Ultimately, the chief argued that issuing an LTC to Guinane would allow her husband to have access to weapons.

After Guinane lost her appeal multiple times in court, she brought her case to Massachusetts Appeals Court.

“We agree with Guinane that her husband’s conduct did not, in these circumstances, furnish adequate statutory grounds for the chief to find her unsuitable,” the Appeals Court ruled. “Therefore, without reaching any Second Amendment issue, we reverse.”

The Appeals Court ordered the police chief to grant Guinane’s LTC application.

She had applied for her LTC in October of 2022. Earlier that year, a neighbor had called 911 to report that Guinane’s husband “came to (the neighbor’s) property yelling about trash cans and was carrying a baseball bat and then smashed a light pole in a fit of rage.”

When police responded, they found the Guinanes sitting on their front porch, where the husband told them, “I know I smashed a light.” He explained that he believed someone had broken into his shed, and he had lost his temper.

The husband was criminally charged with vandalizing property, and the neighbors obtained a harassment prevention order against him. The chief also suspended the husband’s LTC.

Then, the husband and a second neighbor had a verbal altercation, leading to the husband being charged with threatening to commit a crime, and with assault with intent to intimidate based on the victim’s race, religion, color and/or disability. The second neighbor also obtained a restraining order against him.

When Guinane applied for her own LTC, the chief found her unsuitable because of his concern that her husband would have access to the weapons. The chief acknowledged that Guinane herself had no criminal record.

The chief agreed that if Guinane were not married to her husband, “she would be a suitable person.” The chief nevertheless ruled that “it may be a threat to public safety” to issue an LTC to Guinane.