My One (Two) Little Word(s) & A Year of Creative Habits

Sunrise

I read a LOT of blogs and one of my favorites is Enjoy It by Elise Blaha Cripe.  She started a podcast last year called Elise Gets Crafty and I love it.  Its focus on small business, creativity, and motivation has gotten my butt in gear about opening my Etsy quilt shop.  

She does one episode a week, but I like to let them build up and listen to several in a row.  So last week I listened to the most recent few and to the first two episodes of a different podcast that also has a small business focus (Being Boss).  I had been stalled since September and those hours of listening inspired me and I started a quilt that day.  I also decided that I would launch the shop in April and share that with the world to make sure it happened.  #makeitpublicmakeithappen

Elise's episodes for the new year focused on daily creative habits and goals.  She had Crystal Moody on an episode who everyday last year did one sketch and posted it to her Instagram.  She started a hashtag called #yearofcreativehabits for it and inspired a lot of other people to start a daily creative habit.

Another episode starred Ali Edwards who pioneered the idea of "One Little Word" to inspire your year.  You can read more about it here.  "A word to focus on, mediate on, and reflect upon as I go about my daily life"

So as I cut fabric & sewed that day I thought about what my daily creative habit could be and what my One Little Word could be.  I ended up deciding that I would post a picture to Instagram with the hashtag #sew365 and sew (or cut fabric, just something that involves working on a fabric project) something every day this year.  My goal isn't to finish a project a day, but to do a little work on a project each day.  Hopefully I will mostly be working on quilts as they sell in the shop, but I also like the idea of finding other little things to work on to use up scraps or just to take a break from quilting and find inspiration elsewhere.

#sew365

I usually am someone who struggles with being even, I mostly accomplish things in marathons.  For example, instead of doing dishes each day, I let them pile up and then I have a day of doing a million dishes.  Or a quilt sits there and sits there and then I marathon sew and finish it all in two days.  Or I have a super lazy week where I get nothing done, and then in one day I do a week's worth of errands and to do list items.  

#sew365

So I want to push myself to be someone who works a little more evenly.  This #sew365 goal will help me and I am so excited to see all the projects that get finished by the end of the year.  I will post it mostly on Instagram (you can follow me @katie7487), but I will probably do some round ups here (maybe as projects get finished?).

I wanted my One Little Word to also help me with something I struggle with.  The best example of what I was going for was that in July and August I got very excited about opening a quilt shop.  I made a lot of lists and thought a lot about what I would sell and how things would work.  I researched about selling on Etsy and listened to lots of small business podcasts.  I even asked my graphic designer cousin to design a logo for the shop and website. And then nothing happened.  I got scared and froze and never started quilting. 

I am very good at coming up with ideas and making lists and plans, but when it comes to actually doing them I have a hard time.  I struggle with following through with my grand plans and ideas.  So I wanted my One Little Word for this year to focus on following through.  With my shop, with my plans for exercise, for sticking to a cleaning schedule for the house, for the bigger looming home improvement projects (the kitchen...dun dun dun...), for everything, really.  I thought and thought about one word that meant following through.  The thesaurus didn't help much.  Complete, conclude, consummate, pursue, and see through either didn't feel right to me or were also two words.  So I decided to stick with a two word One Little Word:

follow through

The theme for me with 2015 will be to Follow Through.  Make a plan and actually accomplish it.  I know that things will take longer and I will miss days and reschedule things, but I want to actually get it done within a reasonable amount of time.  Just to give you an idea of my procrastination skills, I got married in June and still haven't sent in the name change paperwork.  It is printed, and filled out, but not sent in.  

This is Elise's goal tracker available here.  I procrastinated starting the year (I struggle), but now I am determined not to break my chain of Xs

2016 will bring a new year, a new word, and hopefully a new me with a year of practicing following through behind me.

I've been walking at sunset because the beauty helps me deal with the cold hurting my face.  I've been posting those sunset pictures to Instagram as well

Crafty Homestead Garden Notebook

Today was a very good mail day because my two new journals came!  I used Christmas money to treat myself to expensive custom journals.  They are from Paper Source and could not be cuter or more awesome.  When I finish my current To Do List journal and my writing-thoughts-down journal I will replace them with Paper Source journals.

Things I Love About These Notebooks:

• my pens fit into the spiral
• pens don't bleed through to the other side of the page
• they are spiral so they lay flat and can be folded in half
• they are so pretty
• I got 10% off the order

One journal (pictured above) is for all things garden.  When we were house (originally land) hunting I had a notebook that I kept everything in.  As we saw properties & took notes on them and made various lists everything was all in one place.  It was so nice to grab that notebook and know that anything that I would want to reference was in there.  No lists or notes were lost along the way.  I also do that for my To Do lists now.  I love having them all in one place and I love buying cute notebooks!

So I customized the cover of the notebook with "Crafty Homestead Garden."  I didn't put 2015 because it has so many pages I am sure we get at least two years out of it.  I picked grid paper for the inside because I want to sketch out garden bed plans in it among other things.  This way as the summer goes on and I want to write myself notes to reference when I'm planning next year (too much zucchini, move pumpkins next year, etc) they will all go in one place.  And when I want to remember what exactly we planted in that corner over there, I can flip back to the beginning and see the plan that I sketched out in Spring.  

For now I have two pages used already.  One is a list of what we want to plant this year and one is a list of goals for 2015 (based on what I struggled with last summer).

In case you can't read my handwriting I typed them out.

What To Plant This Year:

• tomatoes - grape, black krim
• basil
• cucumbers - regular, pickling
• carrots
• kale
• lettuce
• zucchini
• butternut squash
• pumpkins
• onions
• garlic
• green onions
• peppers
• brussel sprouts
• potatoes
• broccoli
• cauliflower
• sweet potatoes

2015 Garden Goals:

• stay on top of trimming & harvesting the basil
• make enough pesto for the year
• stay on top of weeding
• work on tomato bursting
• regular, deep watering
• try succession planting
• expand the garden dramatically
• check zucchini daily to avoid growing crazy monsters
• do fall planting again
• more than just garlic?
• keep track of how much we plant so we know how much more/less to plant in 2016
• do more from seeds than last year
• (which was zero) 

I want to get to the point where we are growing most of the vegetables that we need for the year.  So storing potatoes, onions, & garlic in the basement and freezing broccoli florets and canning tomatoes, etc.  I know it'll take several years to figure out how much we need to plant of each kind so that we have enough for the whole year, and documenting how much we plant this year is the first step.  Once we know how much to plant to feed ourselves the goal will change to planting enough to have some to sell.

My other notebook I personalized with my initials and used datebook pages on the inside.

 

This will be my planner.  A lot of my To Do Lists will move in to this notebook, along with meal plans for the week, and hopefully soon a work schedule.  It has lots of pages so it should be good for at least a year if not two.  I love that the Month spot is blank so you can start using this whenever you want in the year.  Plus if you miss a week you won't be wasting any pages.  The last column on the right is just a "Notes" column and I like having space that is not assigned to a specific day.  I used this week's blank spot for the grocery list :)

2015 Goals

1. Earn money
2. Redo the kitchen
3. Learn to knit

These are somewhat connected: me earning money helps to finance the kitchen remodel.  My plans to earn money include selling quilts and getting a job.  2015 will be interesting!

I have wanted to learn to knit for 10 years and 2015 will be the year it happens!

I'm keeping them short & sweet this year to help make sure I actually reach my goals.

Spring Project Goals

This Spring we want to:

• take off the snow plow and put the mowing deck on the tractor
• replace the basement windows & turn the old coal chute into a window
• replace the broken living room window
• strip the paint off the front door, stain it, and put on the new door knocker
• completely rework the front porch (this is the Big Project for my 9 days of Spring Break)
• spray paint (with ORB [oil rubbed bronze] spray paint) the front railings
• spray paint the mailbox to match the railings, fix the mailbox post
• plant everywhere! Let there be garden beds all around the house! Let there be a living privacy fence!
• put grass seed all around the well head & the north side of the garage where ComEd messed it all up
• powerwash the house
• wash the windows
• regravel the driveway (this might not happen but I really want it to)

Then we'll move in, get married, and get going on our Dreaming & Scheming projects!

Winter Project Goals

This Winter I want to finish up as many inside projects as we can before Spring comes and we have to get planting. Here's the list:

• take off the mowing deck and put the snow plow on the tractor
• change the lock on the back door
• finish up the bathroom (I have a whole separate list & post for that coming Friday)
• fix & paint the ceilings in the bathroom, dining room, living room, craft room & bedroom #1 
• paint the walls in the bathroom, dining room, living room, craft room, & bedroom #1
• probably paint the floor trim & door trim in all the rooms (but not the window trim or the doors themselves)
• strip the paint off the doors to the bathroom & bedrooms #1 & #2 and then stain them (they are painted white on the bathroom & bedroom sides)
• put new handles on the doors when we rehang them
• finish updating the electrical supply to all the outlets and the ceiling lights

That should hold us through March!  We'll revisit this post when Spring comes and see how we did.

The house from the South