January Goals

Time to breakdown what I'd like to accomplish in January:

1.  I know,  This almost feels like I'm already giving up on the possibility of crocheting a Christmas gift this month doesn't it?  Ok, well maybe not to you, and yes, I will certainly be crocheting more than what's listed under Goal #1 - I just feel like before I can start on any big project for 2015, I've GOT TO finish the not one, not TWO, but THREE baby gifts that were started over the past year and are not finished!  One is much smaller than the other two, and very close to being done.  And another is close to 3/4 done.  The other has a ways to go, but if, for once, I were to focus on these solely, I could actually get them finished by the end of the month no problem!  So far now, I'm holding off on starting a Christmas gift so I can get the monkey of these old projects off my back and out the door.  Besides, these babies need my crochet goodness to keep this warm this winter!

2. and 3.  These go hand in hand because there was a "great shuffle" of boxes and things over Thanksgiving weekend to give us a temporary living room in the 2nd bedroom we originally had demo/electrical/insulation work done to back in early 2013 (see the first set of before and afters HERE)

Here is what the 2nd bedroom/"storage central" looked like when we started in on Black Friday:

yikes, right?  

I know, it almost makes me twitchy.  I spent close to 18 months completely ignoring this rooms presence when I walked through the upstairs hallway.

Well after moving and shuffling and repacking and moving and labeling and shuffling and moving to the attic and the amazing super power that was having my parents helping us (seriously, I do NOT know what we'd do or where we'd be with out them), here's where we were by Sunday early evening:

As we rolled up an old mouse eaten rug from the room to replace with a remnant we purchased that weekend, we found this hole in the floor!  Crazy thing is, can't say any of us were all that surprised by this (other than the fact that I just thought it was a soft spot under the carpet when I would step there - not an actual, uncovered HOLE).  We've found this time and time again in the house where holes were cut in the floor for whatever reason access under floorboards was needed, and usually the fix was to just nail down whatever they had over it to cover the hole.  This would include tin can tops, parts to tin can tops and a 12" x 12" section of wainscoting (all were found on the original floors of our Master Bedroom)  The house originally operated as a Bed and Breakfast starting in 1885, though sections of the house are older than that (2 smaller houses were brought up on the hill by ox cart from the village and much work was done to build everything together into one large hotel.  When they demoed our Master Bedroom, in January 2013, there was newspaper being used as insulation from 1813 found in the walls - pretty cool huh?)  We believe many of these types of holes were created in the early 1900's when they would have been running electrical wiring in the house for the first time, and access was needed to hang chandeliers down in the 3 first floor parlors.

A few nights before we left for Disney, we had our couch, TV unit and coffee table from Maryland set up in our "new" temporary living room.  I snapped this very grainy picture with my cell phone on this night to post to Facebook:

It was my first time sitting back down on our couch since we had left Maryland 18 months prior and I was feeling all sorts of feels: sentimental for our old apartment, missing our friends and excitement for some progress on our side of the house.

I have cleaned blankets to use on the couch now, and my favorite couch pillows are out.  We even got a small fridge for drinks and a Keurig for morning coffee up there. I just need to clean up a bit this weekend before I can take some more after photos to share.

Moving all of my crafty things out of "storage" and quickly just into my craft room, meant my beautiful, almost finished craft room went from this:

(all that's missing is some moldings and my tile flooring - we decided to let me move everything in now and use the room as I can while work is being done on the bathroom, etc and that we'll get the tiles laid one of these days when we have professionals in working on the bathroom or something and Jonathan and my dad are in need of something to keep them busy! LOL)

to this!

Scary, huh...  

It's better than this now thanks to all my yarn being 90% put away (as I mentioned yesterday), but there is still tons to get put away so I can easily find things and use this room - including getting my sewing machine out of that box on the counter and start using it again!

4.  While I don't really knit anymore, I thoroughly enough reading Stephanie's blog.  Not only does she make me wish that I was a better knitter, but she's hilarious to boot!  One of my favorite times of year with her blog is during the month of December when she writes to non-knitters daily about what they can buy the knitter in their life.  Always amazing things that she researches and shares, many of which nicely convert over to use for a crazy crocheter like myself!

I'm always so insanely unorganized during the Christmas season (or, at least, it felt that way this year), and Stephanie's spreadsheets really spoke to me in my haze of just not knowing what I was doing for Christmas gifts.  Before Christmas was officially upon us, I had built out my own version of her spreadsheet to make sure that I had all the gifts I needed, and that I wasn't forgetting something stuck in a bag, hiding on the counter of my craft room behind a large tower of bins filled with yarn.....it was very interesting getting in there on Christmas Eve to find the Santa gifts which still needed wrapping!

Since wrapping up Christmas 2014, I have begun building my own gift-giving spreadsheet for all of 2015!  Whether birthdays, anniversaries, for Jonathan, my parents, sister-in-law, the puppies, or Bingo gifts for Christmas Eve; everyone has a row and every holiday a column.  It's still evolving (just yesterday I added in Mother's and Father's Day, and I blacked out any holidays where gifts aren't needed for particular people. I don't tend to buy my puppies Anniversary or Father's Day gifts, but I do spoil them with special treats on their birthdays, home-a-veries and on Christmas!  Nor do we buy my dad and father-in-law Mother's Day gifts - you get the idea)

I'd like to have, at least, a first draft of my 2015 spreadsheet well under way by the end of this month.  Mostly the crochet/sewing column - it's really the only way I'm going to effectively know what I need to make each month and stay on track, right?!?

5.  For those of you who don't know me personally, I skiied my entire childhood.  My parents were both on local ski patrol (my dad was actually on ski patrol at 2 different resorts) so I started skiing when I was 2 - which is actually 5 years before I even started taking dance lessons!  The last time I went skiing was my senior year of high school.  We used to come home from DC for the holidays thinking we'd get to ski but we'd run out of time, or the weather would just be too warm.  Now we're on our 2nd winter in WNY and we still haven't gone skiing.  That's changing this Sunday!  I'm excited and nervous all at once to pick something back up that I used to love, but haven't done for the past 12 years.

My boots still fit, my skis and bindings are being checked my a local ski shop.  Last night after work I stopped at Mom and Dads to go through what ski gear I still had that was usable.  Everything still fits or was in good enough condition (some mearly good-enough to get me through what's left of this winter) except for ski pants.  Turns out my hips are not as thin as they were when I was 18.  duh....I totally knew that 

There you have it - my January Goals.  Will try to remember to photograph my progress and completion throughout for a month-end recap!

Stay warm out there today.

2015 Goals

I'm a couple of days behind in getting this posted, esp when you consider the fact that I've had my 2015 goals set since New Years Eve!  Unfortunately, Jonathan and I got sick while in Disney mid-December and the "ick" that seems to be taking out any and all in our region has kept me down for weeks now - to the point where I didn't get off the couch or out of my jammies all day on New Years Day :-(

Last January I had big plans of keeping track of goals vs. resolutions throughout the year.  Well that was big flop long before I stopped blogging in March.  I'd like to try again each month to come up with around 5 things that I want to accomplish.  Some may tie into the 2015 goals I'm sharing with you now, while others may just be on a month by month whim!

1.  As I mentioned in my last post, this past Christmas I crafted far less gifts this year than for the past few years.  For a while I felt bad, almost guilty about this, but there came a point in December where I had to just "Let It Go" and remind myself that my family would not think that I cared less about them this Christmas just because their gift came from a store vs. my crochet hook or sewing machine!  I've certainly said it before, directly after the holiday stress and rush that I'm going to start crocheting Christmas gifts earlier next year!  Well, to make it seem a bit less daunting, I thought I'd just hold myself accountable to one gift per month.  In theory this means I should have 12 gifts made by Christmas 2015 - makes sense right?  We shall see how it goes!

2.  Shortly after midnight New Years Eve (well, technically Day) I proclaimed that this was my big New Years Resolution for 2015!  I had been thinking it for a couple of days at this point and hadn't shared with Jonathan.  For some odd reason I was bursting with excitement to share my level of commitment to this over the coming year.  Sadly, Jonathan's response was to scoff and say "what do I get if you buy yarn?" I was definitely disappointed that he wasn't taking me seriously (he later apologized, he's really not a stay up late kinda guy and was getting tired cranky).  It also fueled me to prove him wrong!  

Have no fear though, I will have ZERO problem crocheting lots this year while also keeping this goal.  This is, of course, because I quite possibly have the yarn stash to end all yarn stashes:

Mostly importantly, I'd like you all to please disregard the laundry and coats hanging in the doorway, and the bags stacked up on the floor.  My craft room is most definitely still a work in progress!

My yarn bin was designed by me, and fully built and executed by Jonathan and my Dad [who built everything in my craft room.]  The cabinet is deep enough that what's in there is 2 (sometimes 3 or 4) skeins deep right now.  As you can also see things like purple, veregated, baby, pound of love and cotton yarns are missing from my yarn cabinet.  There are 3 large plastic bins of veregated yarn along with 2 large plastic bin of purple yarn under the counter top just to the left of my yarn cabinet (bins are similar to THESE and were purchased at Walmart 2 summers ago).  My baby yarn is all stacked in a hanging cabinet in the corner of the same side of the room.  My cotton yarn and pound of love stash is in 3 plastic bins (2 of cotton, 1 of pound of love) in the floor to ceiling cabinets that were built to hold these sort of standard size Sterilite totes (20 in total, 10 pink and 10 silver if anyone truly cares other than me!)  And as I was telling my mom this morning this doesn't include the multiple bins and bags of yarn which is either part of a WIP or was purchased specially for something which I haven't given up on actually making one day...

So, as you can see, I will NOT be running out of yarn anytime soon this year, or next, or likely the year after that!  I have controlled the desire to walk through the yarn aisle at Walmart, or just swing by Michaels as I drive by, or even look at online sales for yarn so far.  Yes, I know, big whoop we're only 7 days into 2015!  But I'm trying.  I do foresee the possibility of needing more of a neutral like white, black or cream or a specific shade [say of blue] by mid year, but for now I'm really concentrating to use what I have!

And one day, what yarn I have will fit in my specially designed and built yarn cabinet.  It just won't be today.  Or tomorrow :-)

3.  I'm a bit on the fence on this Goal since typing these out back on New Years Eve.  It's taken me quite a few days to write this post around everything else in life, it's now January 7th and I haven't begun to pull together the materials to do this.  Heck, I haven't even come close to finishing my Mood Blanket from 2014!! As always around this time of year, everyone is talking about goals and projects for the following year.  First, I had to Google search what a Temperature Blanket even was.  Once I knew the answer to that, I felt a bit stupid for not putting that one together on my own.  As I kept looking, I found this pattern which got me exciting by the idea.  Now on the 7th of January, I haven't begun, my Mood Blanket hasn't been crocheted since last February (I have notes for every day of last year) and I'm starting to wonder if I want to bother....

The only thing keeping me holding onto the idea is 1. I love the pattern and it would allow me to try it out 2. I think this blanket would make an awesome Christmas present 3. if it gets to be too much, or I don't like the pattern after all I can always quit (keeping track of moods felt so much more personal last year that even when I had packed up the yarn for it, I still wanted to keep track of my moods throughout the year) and 4. think of all the yarn I would use up!

We'll see what happens.  Maybe I'll get some motivation over the weekend to dig in...

4. Cutting in dangerously close already, aren't I??  Can't believe my last post back was already a week ago!  Life has just gotten so busy lately.  Gonna try and be more organized and write with purpose in 2015.  Of course, if I have nothing interesting to write; I may miss a week, but I'm going to try and be more dedicated to the blog this year.  I write for me, and don't want it to be stressful, or feel like work - I just don't want to go 8 months between posts again!

5. I didn't read much at all last year.  I'd like to change that.  I have books on the shelf (and far more still in boxes), books on my kindle, books in my Amazon wishlist and even an Audible.com subscription so it's not that I'm not interested in books, or reading/listening.  More importantly, when am I going to fit reading into my day with everything else??!? 

Up next: My January specific goals.  I will try and make that post a little shorter too!

Make-up

No, this isn't actually about buying, applying or wearing make-up....I still feel badly about missing my first Warm Your Space Wednesday post. 

I also still don't have anything made for my "space" to share with you...

But I do want to share this with you as I plan to warm some space with it very very soon!

Last Friday, Rachel over at MaybeMatilda hosted a give-away from Ritzy Reba; who just happens to be her sister, and she's selling super pretty and fun art prints on ETSY!  Of course, in my ever busy, easily distracted life, I totally missed the give-away fun, but clicked through to Rebekah's ETSY page over my lunch and totally fell in love with her prints!!!  I definitely already have two in my shopping cart:

I think this would look super pretty in our new Master bedroom - the colors look to match our designs perfectly.  We've agreed to not hang ANYTHING on our walls though until we're 110% sure of what we want to do (other than the TV mount that went up 2 weeks ago)  Doesn't mean I can't download this now and get it all designed so Jonathan can't bare to say no, right?

By now, I would imagine that you all know that I started drooling over the Disney prints of Princess gowns!! And you know I have to have this Cinderella one!!!  I'm already envisioning where I could hang it in my craft room: next to our proposal pictures in front of Cinderella's castle and the shadow box with my wedding veil Mickey ears and a picture from our Honeymoon in WDW (still need to ask my dad to make me this.....gonna wait and let him get my craft room built first! LOL)

I hope you are inspired by Ritzy Reba's prints this weekend - whether to warm your space or to give as a gift for Valentine's Day, Anniversary or Birthday, I think there's something for almost everyone!!

Last weekend's project

Ugh....where does my time goes these days?


Oh yea, I'm planning a wedding :-)


Sadly very little time is spent crocheting since 2011 began.  When I do sit down with the "itch" to crochet I either HATE what is being produced or I'm too tired to work long enough to see progress...I'm working on a few birthday presents right now (one is over a week late because I couldn't even find the desire to crochet during the Super Bowl this year) which I hope to have done by Monday and I can then finally get back to posting about finished projects and those that I'm currently working on!

Around mid-January I decided that I wanted to reorganize my yarn stash.  I had my yarn in about 4 different places due to "what it was for" (i.e. crocheting, plastic canvas, current projects, projects started but never finished, etc.)  I started to notice that I was going to buy yarn I already had and after doing this 2-3 times you realize the system you have been using is no longer WORKING!  So I set out to store all my yarn together.  Regardless of what I bought it for, unless it was a project started that I knew I would finish soon, it was being put away by color.  This also required a LOT of frogging and rewinding of yarn.  Given how sore my right tricep and shoulder were on Sunday and Monday, I'm thinking I need to find a way to register for an electric ball winder as a wedding present!  Jon could care less, but I WOULD LOVE IT!

Here are some pictures of how Saturday's progress went (once I was home from picking up my mom's Mother of the Bride dress):

This is the "before shot" of my craft closet.  We currently live in a 2 bedroom apt. so the closet in the 2nd bedroom (which is our study/"the quiet room" as my mom calls it) is where all of my crafty stuff is "supposed" to live.  As you can see by the line up of bags on the bottom left of this picture, that doesn't really happen!

A good deal of my yarn was living in 5 drawers of an Ikea dresser than was purchased to store just that.  After about 2 hours of pulling everything out from the dresser, the closet and going through what was in the living room, separating it by color, and frogging projects dating back to when I was in college I was left with what you see on the futon in the 2 pictures above.  It's the same yarn in both pictures, just took pictures from each side as the blue and purple in front was too tall :-)  I proudly made Jonathan come into the room at this point to see my BEAUTIFUL collection of yarn because I do think it's beautiful and having a collection of yarn isn't something you get over night.  It's taken years of sales, unfinished projects and just a yearning for new yarn to end up with all of this.  Makes you feel like a true "crafter"....doesn't anyone know what I mean? Or am I just as crazy as Jon thinks I am?  He told me it looks like a yarn store and I proudly said "I KNOW!"  He just shook his head and went back to the living room :o)

By the time I took the 2 pictures above this ENTIRE project had been taking me much longer than I ever thought it would.  You should know that the poor quality of these photos is because it was now dark outside and my cell phone camera and flash can only create so much magic!

I LOVE THESE BOXES from Ikea.  Sadly I should not be bragging because Ikea has stopping selling them! I was devastated when I found this out and ended up having to buy something else, and re do my living room wardrobe storage in order to have the 9 sitting there full of yarn.  They work perfectly.  The yarn is not 100% as perfect as I would have liked it to be....some colors aren't paired how I would have liked them but I had to go with what would fit where.  They're all a tight fit for now, but I think that's a good thing.  As I start use this more and more there will be more and more room (either just in general, or to buy more - take your pick!)

 Here is the finished product for the night!  I cropped out the top half of the photo because those shelves weren't touch at all.  The 16 cubes have been redone in a way that I'm happy with for now but the study is still all tore up and I've got to figure out where all my washed material for sewing is going to go.  Thing is, if I could get the 2 boxes of clothes that are to the right of the book shelf out of this closet and back into the bedroom area where they belong I'd have LOADS more room.

Didn't do much with on this on Sunday, I really just did some picking up of my clothes and week old laundry from the bedroom.  Everything is in a state of chaos lately.  It drives Jon crazy and it drives me crazy too but I'm trying my best to get it all done and that's really all I can do.  I think we both appreciate it when I try.  I hope to work hard on all this again tomorrow (reorganizing really doesn't give you back more space, even when you're not throwing lots out - it's fantastic!) so that Sunday can include some "Holly time" (i.e. crocheting) and enjoying the 50 degree weather that's coming our way with a run and some suit shopping in downtown SS!

P.S.  Work has been mentally and physically challenging and exhausting this week and I just don't have it in me to sit here and proof read what I just typed.  I apologize for any grammatical errors, etc.