January Recap and on to February Goals

Before opening the image I created for my January goals, I was feeling pretty good about things.

Then I reread them

1.  I have made a LOT of progress on one of the baby blankets.  Unfortunately it's taking longer than I anticipated given it's size, and had to rip out almost the top 1/3 because I needed to go down a hook size to get closer to a square.  This is before I started my "ruffly" border.  Have any of you ever crocheted a ruffle border?  It looks adorable, but good golly it's taking me forever!!! 

2.  Basically haven't touched by craft room since my original post about January Goals.  Started out giving myself an F on this, because it felt like I deserved one, but I did get [almost] all of my yarn put away early in January, and I have been able to get in there to access yarn when needed, so I'm not calling it a complete failure!

3.  Eh.  Early January I put away our Christmas decorations and got out my Valentine's Day stuff - which was amazing because I hadn't seen any of it since 2013, possibly 2012 (I can no longer remember which holiday I decided to make my last with decorations pre-move to WNY).  We also got our coffee pot set up with the fridge, but has been more hassle that it's worth when we don't have any water access on our side of the house just yet.  But the fridge is nice to keep beverages cold from when we're watching TV!  My in-laws left to go south for the next 3 months last Wednesday, so we primarily spend our evenings watching home downstairs in their living room since our pups are down there, and they have cable, which we do not on our side of the house!

4. The pattern continues - I haven't opened my gift-giving spreadsheet 1/8/15 (according to the last time it was saved).  I've had gift ideas running through my head for Valentine's, and Jon's birthday which is in March, but I haven't taken (or HAD) the time to go in and add things in as I think about them.

5.  TOTAL SUCCESS!  On January 11th Jon and I went skiing for our first time together as a couple, and my first time in almost FOURTEEN years!  The lift tickets that were removed from an old ski coat that still fits me were from March 2001.  Craziness.  My equipment is pretty old.  No joke, my skiis were likely purchased around 1997 and are JUNIORS skis.  Jon wanted to buy me new gear this year, but I told him it made more sense for me to ski with what I had (once it was graced by the local Ski Shop) this year to make sure I was still going to ENJOY skiing - after all, 13+ years is a very long time.  Well, I loved it!  After making Jon go down the Bunny Hill with me twice I was off and skied every run at Peek'n Peak that Sunday night.  It was as much fun as I remember skiing, if not more!  And I was skiing better than I ever remember skiing in high school.  I couldn't wait to go back.  We went back on the 18th with another couple, and I did not have the best of times.  It was super icy which I've always hated, and it made my knees very sore.  I ended up having to call it quits before anyone else was really ready to, but I was skiing terribly and didn't want to get hurt.  Our third trip skiing didn't happen until this past Saturday.  We went with the same couple as before, but this time we did a day trip up to to Holiday Valley.  It was AMAZING.  Just enough fresh snow to have an amazing time!  The next time we go, I want to rent equipment so I can try out a pair of parabolic skis.  Don't know when it's going to exactly be, but I.CAN'T.WAIT.

Hard to believe it's already February, isn't it?  I'd originally planned to do my January recap and February Goals as separate posts as to not make either too long, but it's already the 3rd of February so bare with me, cause I'm plugging along!

1.  I wasn't 100% successful in January, but I can't give up now!  Realistically I doubt I'll finish all 3 with such a short month, but hey, a girl can dream [crazy dreams] right?  right.

2.  I feel as though I've talked about this before, but last November after our whirlwind trip to NYC I felt amazingly rejuvenated.  On the drive back to Panama we were discussing this weightless feeling that I had, and we talked about saying that one day over every weekend would just be about us.  Maybe a little laundry if need be, and it could be with another couple but no remodeling with my dad, no major overhauls of rooms, etc.  Just Jonathan and Holly time.  We're not always the best and keeping true to this every weekend, so I'm hopeful that 4 consistant weekend's this month could make it a habit!

3.  I'm tired of feeling like I live in a mess.  Overall it's not going anywhere anytime soon, but I'd just like to feel like there aren't piles of clothes waiting to be put away in the bedroom and piles of yarn stacked on the caught and a mess lining the walkway in the hall and projects that are way overdo that I still don't have done.  Just want to feel more on top of things come March 1st!

4.  I've definitely caught the bug, and want to keep skiing while the weather is good.  Yesterday I totally wanted to play hooky and go skiing in all that amazing snow we got over night, but I was a good girl and went to work.  I definitely foresee  Jonathan/Holly time in February also being skiing time.  And I'm okay with that!

5.  This one probably got a big WHY out of many of you.  Well, the next show that I'm going to be in is "Boeing Boeing" this March at the Lucille Ball Little Theatre of Jamestown.  I'll be playing Gretchen, the German flight attendant.  We've just started blocking this week, but I'm very excited about the challenge of this part, and being apart of this hilarious production.

Here's a peak at the Broadway revival in which Mary McCommack portrayed Gretchen and recived a Tony nomination:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7AE07B1C90&feature=youtu.be

^This 2nd video is better, but Blogger won't let me embed this, but please, take the 4 minutes to go in and watch it, you will not be disappointed!

So there you have it.  I'm going to try my best to work on all of these goals during the next couple of weeks, but it's not surprise that rehearsals are going to take up a lot of my time, especially in the evenings.  Add to it that I'm also working to choreograph not 1 but 2 different high school musicals ("Damn Yankees" and "Anything Goes") which both open in March.  Throw pesky little work in there, and the fact that I actually need to sleep and my schedule is F-U-L-L

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!

January 2014 - Goals

Starting off 2014 with a prompt BANG!  Per my last post, I bring you by goals for January:

1.  Over a month ago I posted for the first time in a very long time, and I promised a catch up post to happen over my Thanksgiving break.  When it didn't happen over the 4-day weekend, I returned to work and made a list one day over lunch breaking down how I wanted to update everyone without putting you all in a coma with a 15 page paper on my life!  I broke everything down into categories like "Prop Hats", "Baby", "Holiday", "Move & Update", "Anything Goes", and "Misc".  Now that you're intrigued what what these categories may or may not mean, I'm going to try my best to write and post these 6 update posts in January!

2.  I opened by ETSY shop about a year ago.  I've posted items that were already made twice and have yet to have success in selling these items.  What I have sold has been to local friends and family, where my Facebook page and ETSY shop have served as a giant advertising campaign.  I have kept my fingers extremely busy over the past 2 1/2 months crocheting custom orders, both for friends & family, and those who have found me on Facebook through my Crafty Holly Louise page.  As I continue to make a serious dent in my current custom order list, I'd like to post three Custom Order options in my ETSY shop by the end of January with the intentions of having the time to make and ship these orders within a 2-4 week window.

3.  I have done basically zero cooking since we moved in June.  Right before the move I was really into making special dinners, and had a strong desire to share these recipes with you.  While I likely won't be doing any more cooking that I have been (Jonathan works from home the majority of the time, while I'm in an office from 8-5 Monday-Friday), I do hope to at least get myself organized enough to share 3 of my favorite recipes here for you to enjoy with your family.

4.  More coming in my update posts on our newest family members, but long story short we now have 2 very active puppies in our home.  They do a great job of wearing each other out daily, but they also LOVE going for walks outside.  So, the goal is to take one long walk each weekend with the pups - let them run and play and spend some quality time in the woods with Jonathan.

5.  Lots to share on our house remodel since these pictures (coming in the "Misc" post).  We moved into our bedroom officially on December 12th but with the holidays, I haven't had the time to do much more to transition us into our new additional space.  I hope that by the end of this month, we will have made a big "shuffle" of everything that we have in storage in order to gain a temporary living room on our side of the house.

You can also see that I'm in the process of a major blog overhaul.  A big goal of mine in 2014 is to continue to grow my business and brand (more on that in the coming posts/months).  I'm starting with a bit of a "clean slate" with my blog in hopes that the focus will now be on the content I'm providing, not the fun backgrounds I find online.  Stay tuned....much more to come!

2014 is gonna be a GREAT year!

I couldn't RESIST sharing a photo of our adorable little babies!!!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year's Eve that is!

I’ve never been big in making and/or keeping New Year’s Resolutions.  I mean, when wrapped up in the moment of NYE (which someone usually has to wake me up at 11:58 p.m. for…..not one minute earlier either, cause I will fall back asleep if left unattended!) I tell myself things like “be healthy”, “do this crafty thing that I’m not that good at”, etc. but they’re never very specific and I rarely follow up on them throughout the year, let alone remember what it was I was thinking was a fantastic resolution back on Dec. 31^st/Jan 1^st.  I will say that I probably don’t remember them cause I’ve been asleep for 2-3 hours and was just woken up 2 minutes earlier for the ball drop, and will promptly go right back to sleep at 12:02 a.m.

Over the past year Rachel over at Maybe Matilda has done a monthly Goal list which included crafts, health, her family and home.  You will also see that at month end she would follow up on her successes along with what she would continue to work on in the following month.  I really like this idea!!!  Make a list on the first of the month of what you want to accomplish in the next 28-31 days.  When you only have 30ish days to accomplish the task at hand, you’re much less likely to make a totally unobtainable goal (think “I’m going to train for and run my marathon in 20__” on NYE vs. “I’m going to run 3 miles 4 times a week in the month of January June”).

So, I guess my Resolution for 2014 is to make a monthly goal list, which I will share here on the first of the month and follow up at month’s end to report back on how I did!

Be sure to click on this to see a larger version - there are lots of teeny-tiny photos included, many that haven't made it on here or Facebook!

I started this picture collage as a “background” for my New Year’s Resolution Overview.  I thought I’d use a few pictures, and then plop a white box with an overview list of the things I want to work on in 2014 on top.  As you can see, there wasn’t enough room for my list so below is my basic overview.  This is all just off the top of my head, a little last minute now cause I’m exhausted from formatting all those pictures!

1. Finish one WIP a month
2.  Christmas gift I-O-U’s from 2013 (hopefully before mid-year!)
3. Start working on Christmas 2014 gifts in January
4.  Try one new pattern a month 
5. Continue to increase my custom order sales, especially through ETSY 
6. Start cooking again - and share my favorite recipes with you
7. Be better at blogging (both frequently/consistency of my posts and what/how I’m blogging) 
8. Continue to work hard on our house re-model in hopes of having closer to 4 or 5 rooms finished by the end of 2014

Additions and details will come each month.  Looking forward to tracking this goal process throughout the next 12 months and see if a year from now, I feel as though I’ve accomplished more than previous years.

I must also say that by the time I was done formatting this chaotic collage, I realized that this display of previous projects (no, there are not all 2013 projects, just the pictures that I was able to easy pull off my computer) is very representative of all the crafty ideas that run through my head on a daily basis:

REALITY - You only have ‘this’ much time to work on and/or finish a project.

HOLLY’S DREAM WORLD - but, I want to crochet ALL THE THINGS in half the time!

SIMILARITY - I must have deleted 25 pictures that I tried to cram in with what made the cut

Maybe I should add “be more realistic about how much crocheting you can get done in a given evening” to the list above….eh, there’s always 2015!

2013 was a challenging year for me.  One that I feel was the best yet and one of the worst hardest.

I wish you all the very best in 2014.  Happy New Year!