New Year New Goals

Happy New Year everyone! I know I'm a bit late to the party, but I have spent the last four days trying to make some big decisions, and I wanted to have all my ducks in a row before I came here to talk about it. The start of a new year is always a good time to set new goals for the  year and decide where you want to go for the coming months. I've never been really good at resolutions, I either set unreasonable goals, or I don't plan properly, and things fall apart really fast. So as I was lying in bed the other night, wondering if my 2 hour nap earlier in the day was the reason I couldn't sleep, I decided to spend my time wisely and write down what I wanted to happen this year.

I knew that in order to be successful, I would need to be as specific as possible in what I want to achieve, I would also need to be realistic. I can't be a millionaire by the end of the year, but I may be better equipped to handle running a household on a limited budget. I won't be able to fit into a bikini, but maybe I can have a healthier lifestyle. It is these distinctions that I hope will lead to success. For more tips on setting goals check out this awesome post by the Empress of Dirt

My goals for 2016
Below are the big goals I decided on initially

• Become more organised
• Quit smoking
• Lose weight
• Manage my money better
• Grow my blog

Now those goals are too broad on their own, so I needed to refine them further and make them more achievable. Below is the more specific list of goals.

• Learn to manage my house like a pro, and become better at time management
• Be a non-smoker by the middle of the year
• Learn to love exercise and healthy living
• Find a budgeting system that works for me, and be closer to being debt free by the end of the year
• Increase my page views to 500 per week, and start writing more regularly

Now all of these things appear to be achievable. They are clearly outlined, and there are definite destinations to reach. Now all I needed to do is break all of these goals down into even smaller chunks, to make them less daunting and easier to implement. Below are just some of the smaller goals involved in the bigger goals.

Manage the house like a pro & time management

• Set up a manageable cleaning schedule and stick to it
• Implement a one in, one out system to reduce clutter
• Aim to send at least one bag per week to the charity stores
• Create a personal planner system and use it
• Write to do lists, shopping lists, cleaning lists, list lists, anything to make objectives clear.

Become a non-smoker

• Try patches
• Try gum again if I have to (I really hate the gum)
• Discuss my desire to quit with my doctor, get help
• Find a quit app that helps
• Learn different ways to distract myself when the urges hit
• Talk to other people who have quit, and see what worked for them.
• If I slip up, keep trying, don't give up giving up until I get there

Love exercise and healthy living

• Cut down on the junk food (notice I didn't say stop entirely, even I realise that's an impossible task)
• Start exercising regularly
• Get outside and run around with Miss K
• Start snacking on healthy options
• Use the fitness app on my phone

Find a budgeting system and be closer to being debt free by the end of the year

• Research budgeting systems, and find or make one that works 
• Find different ways to bring extra income into the house
• Quitting smoking will save $6,700 per year (woo hoo)
• Organise payment plans for all outstanding debts

Increase my page views and write regularly

• Create a bank of writing ideas for when inspiration is lacking
• Start writing posts in advance when I am feeling creative to help fill in the blanks if I'm having a slow week
• Set aside time for writing every day/every other day

So that's how all of my goals have been broken down so far. I am already implementing some of my ideas, and I hope to share my progress here with you guys over the coming weeks. Of course a lot of the time I'm not going to be reinventing the wheels, so I'll be including links to resources if ever I come up with something that works. If you check out my Pinterest boards, I've already started pinning a heap of stuff which I plan to use regularly. 

Have any of you set any goals to achieve this year? Do you have any tips to share on how to make this journey happen? Please leave a comment below and let me know.

Guess what I've been doing

Can you guys guess what I have spent the past two evenings doing?? I'll give you a hint...

No I have not spent the last two nights staring at a t-shirt hanging on my door handle (on a truly horrible and old fashioned crocheted clothes hanger too) I have actually spent the last two evenings making this lovely kimono top. This was actually the hardest sewing project I have undertaken to date, for several reasons, first of all it wasn't just squares of fabric of different sizes sewn together, and secondly that bright green strip you see running across the top of the shirt is actually bias tape, and something I have avoided at all costs before now, with good reasons too. I always knew the first time I sewed with bias would be horrible, and I wasn't disappointed. The biggest problem I came across with the bias is that I actually bought tape that was too small for what I needed, meaning that I had to do a lot of fiddly messing around with the tape to make sure it fit on the top properly and didn't look ridiculous either. That took me three hours to do. Three very long and frustrating hours. So the next time I do this top, I will be making sure I use thicker bias tape which hopefully will make everything go a lot smoother.

Yes you heard me correctly then, this is only the first of hopefully many kimono tops I will be making. This was really just a practise run to make sure I could actually follow the pattern and have it resemble a piece of clothing at the end. Because of this the fabric I used here was a very cheap and thin cotton (that I found for $5 at our local Spotlight store, can anyone else say bargain??) which as my little sister told me made this top look like it is meant to be hospital scrubs and not a gorgeous Japanese inspired piece of clothing. But I'm not too worried because the next time I attempt this it will be in a softer, possibly more stretchy fabric. And because I made plenty of mistakes this time around, I have learned what not to do next time so I should get it done a lot quicker too. And the first thing I will be doing next time is making sure I don't have the iron on too hot when I press the fabric because the very first thing I did was melt one of my cut out pieces of material while trying to iron out the creases made while the material was stored in its shopping bag. Luckily I hadn't even pinned the pieces together yet so I didn't have any unpicking to do as I had to scrap that piece and cut out a new one. Luckily I bought way too much material for this project, so I still had more than enough left over to cut another piece out. But it does mean I now don't have enough to make a matching pair of pants to go with this top. 

Hopefully I can return tomorrow with photos of it being worn by Miss K. Sadly by the time I had made the final finishing touches on it tonight, she had been in bed for 3 hours and I couldn't bring myself to wake her up just to make her model her new top. But I know she will be super excited to be allowed to wear it tomorrow, as I let her try it on a few times today while I checked hem lengths and made sure it fit her properly, and every time I made her take it off again she cracked the poops at me big time. Fingers crossed I can get her to sit still long enough to get some decent pictures for you guys too, but I have a feeling I'll have to wait until she's strutted her stuff on the catwalk (our lounge room floor) several times first. 

Well until then I am super duper tired now and I need to go to bed. I will hopefully be back tomorrow with new photos, but until then stay awesome my lovely readers and for all of my American readers I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving full of good food and happy families.

A Scrooge's Christmas planner

Hello again my lovely friends, I hope that you are all well and healthy. Don't I just sound like a sappy motivational speaker right now?? Just wait a second and I'm sure I can find more platitudes to throw at you while confusing you with my vocabulary of large words...

Or I could get right down to the heart of what I've come here to share with you wonderful people today. Now as I promised right before the batteries in my camera died, I am going to share with you all my version of a Christmas planner. But as always because money is more of a rumor than anything around here, it will all be done on a budget, using things that I already had lying around the house.

Just some of the things that go into making a Christmas planner

Now if you are like me, you obsessively stalk follow a lot of blogs. And if you're lucky like me, you'll have found some incredibly talented and disgustingly smart people out there who can make magic happen every time they put their hand to something. The lovely ladies at the blog Eighteen25 are three such ladies. So naturally when I saw that they had put together a gorgeous book for organizing all things Christmas, I had to rush over to their website and check it out. (You can do the same here.) They have even been so kind as to offer free printables for anyone who wants to make a Christmas binder in the same style as them. Now sadly as I am currently without a printer, I had to make do with admiring their binders from afar and then use whatever I had on hand to make my own instead. (Sigh) But as you will see, I have managed to create something that is entirely my own, with small touches of homage to the lovely ladies at Eighteen25 simply because some of their ideas were so great, I couldn't not include them.

I have to stop and brag for a second now, because I am pretty chuffed with the finished product here. And the cost of the whole project was pretty impressive too, as the only money I ended up spending was $2.50 on a notebook to decorate. Everything else that you see here comes from what I had in my stash of crafty supplies, making this not only a pretty way to get organised for Christmas, but also a thrifty project. It has the added bonus of making my compulsive hoarding of papers and ribbons now look like an economical plan instead of the crazy actions of someone who just loves shiny things.

The papers I have used come from various places, the red background paper was a freebie with a scrap booking magazine I bought a few Christmases ago, the green paper and the red and white striped papers are offcuts from old projects. The shape of the green paper was made by tracing around a piece of die cut chipboard and then cutting out the finished product. If you are creative enough to be able to draw things free hand (which I am not) then this should be easy enough for you to do without the chipboard, otherwise there are always things lying around the house that you can use to create shapes for your projects.

This metal plate is something I got in a goody bag a few years ago when I went to a scrap booking retreat with my sisters. I have been searching for years for a good use for it, and I am so happy that it finally has a new home. But if you are not lucky enough to have something like this, paper or cardstock is a good replacement. The flower and pearl brad again were items I picked up in bulk packs ages ago and have had sitting around just waiting for the right project. I made the title with my trusty old Dymo labeller and some green Dymo tape that is actually very hard to find these days. Now that Dymo has gone digital my old hand held labeller is looking very old fashioned, but I love the look it gives. 

This ribbon is a recent purchase that I made, it came in a pack of 20 reels of ribbon for $20, but I think I may have been a bit too mean in my cutting because there is apparently such a thing as not enough ribbon to make a bow with. So if you are going to put ribbon on your book to keep it closed, don't forget to be generous with your measurements. Or make sure you have really skinny fingers because already I can tell that bow is going to be a pain in my rear end. Ribbon is one of those wonderful things that can be found absolutely everywhere. I have lots of pieces of ribbon in my stash that were used in packaging, on clothing and even from bunches of flowers I have received over the years. My family know that they are not allowed to throw any pieces of ribbon away as I can always find a use for them.

I only did four sections in my book; to do, gifts, menu and calendar. There are any number of other sections that you can include in your own Christmas planner, like cards, traditions, travel, or anything else you can think of, but really everything you see here is all I need to worry about so I didn't think it was necessary to add anything more. Maybe one day I will have a need for extra categories in my Christmas planners, but for now I think less is more. Again the tabs were made out of card stock that I had in my stash. I made sure to use a folded piece of card stock, and stick one side of the piece on each side of the page, just to make it a little stronger and more durable. If you don't have card stock, cereal box cardboard would be a good replacement, covered with wrapping paper or anything else to make it look pretty. The shape of the card stock came from tracing around die cut chip board again, but I'm not really happy with it, so next year I may have to think of something new. The pages are blank at the moment, but I will be decorating the front page of each section with something cute. For the gifts section, it will probably be a banner with the words "making a list and checking it twice" or something equally Christmassy, and I'll think of something else for the rest of the sections soon, I just couldn't wait until It was completely done to share it with you guys.

And of course no Christmas project is complete without an elf running around and getting into everything so here is one I prepared earlier.

Geddit???

If only she got as excited about the cleaning up as she does about making the mess.

So before I go, a few tips for you guys who are looking to make some Christmas themed projects on a budget.

• Get creative with the supplies that you use. Christmas themed wrapping paper is super duper cheap and in abundance at the moment, and it can be just the thing to brighten something up
• Don't feel that you have to go out and buy exactly everything that some one else used to make something, sometimes using the things you have at hand can make a result that is just as beautiful and even more personal to you
• Always make sure you use a good quality glue though because you don't want everything falling apart before you have a chance to use it. (I recommend Tombo latex glue, because it dries pretty quickly, but not too quickly that you don't have a chance to re-position something if you didn't do it right the first time. Plus you only need to use the tiniest amount because it spreads pretty far)
• Don't forget that Christmas is not about spending money, it's about spending time with your loved ones, so don't stress too much if everything has to be done on the cheap. Just remember that it is so popular that these days it's not called being a cheap-ass, it's called thrifting. 

Well that's all from me for today, my little sister Natty has been very patiently sitting in my lounge room for two hours now waiting for me to stop being anti-social and entertain her so I'd better go look like I'm interested. I'll be back again soon with something else super thrilling I'm sure, so stay awesome till then.

*Editors note: This blog post has been linked to the following link parties;

One Project at a Time  

The Creative Spark 

Blissful and Domestic