So, I decided to not really do New Year’s Resolutions because every time I do, I break them. However, I am trying to do Life Resolutions – long term changes. I am starting off with ones that have to do with my business and then working on some personal ones. The first one I decided to work on is my organization.
First of all, if you’ve ever seen my house, you will realize that I am the most unorganized organized person. Contradictions, I know. I say this because even though there are things all over my house, I know where things are. It’s my own brand of organization. That is until I try to organize and I realize that I can’t find anything because it’s not where it belongs. And this is because I have no true home for anything.
Which is why organization is number one on my list. I thought that to keep me on track with what I want to do for my business, I better come up with a way to remember everything. I often have all these great ideas about projects I want to do or videos and/or blog posts I want to complete and then once I actually get the time to do them, I forget what that great idea was! Or, even worse, I remember and then I have no time because I haven’t scheduled my time. Great on the idea part, terrible on the execution. That should be my tagline!!
To rectify this, I decided that I would make a cork board calendar and keep all of my ideas on it. If there’s a product I want to use or a sketch I want to create a project from, I can just add it to the board! Genius. So off to Michael’s I went. I picked up two packages of 12×12 cork board tiles to create the calendar. I knew that I had a glue gun, scrapbook paper and ribbon at home so the only other thing I needed were thumb tacks. I didn’t see any I loved, so I just grabbed some silver ones because I figured I could dress them up with jewels or ribbon or something cute.
Once I got home, I started creating the project. I opened the first pack and started to hot glue to pieces together. BAD idea. The hot glue caused gaps in the pieces and then I ripped one trying to take the pieces apart. This is why I was glad that they were Buy One Get One Half off because I already had a second pack to open and try a new approach.
For the second try, I decided to go with scrapbook paper. I found some sheets of what I think are American Craft glitter paper that I got from Joann’s. (Honestly, I buy TOO much paper so I can’t keep track of all the brands I buy at different places. I know – woe is me!! LOL) It is a little larger than 12×12, so I cut the paper down a little and used some ATG to glue it to the cork board. I then took some American Crafts glitter ribbon and make a cross to adhere all four pieces together. I then proceeded to get my ruler out and figure out how big each rectangle needed to be. I figured I would need five weeks and I needed eight rows at the top (one for each day of the week and the first one for the month name – maybe?)
I took the glitter ribbon and started to cut the pieces I would need to make the columns and rows, but I soon discovered that I didn’t have enough glitter ribbon. Back to the craft room to see what else I could find. There I found some rolls of Recollections glitter tape in black. I cut them into the same length pieces as the glitter ribbon and assembled my chart! I really was liking the way that it turned out – nice and glittery!!
For the days of the week, I used My Favorite Things dies that are the days of the week. I originally bought them because we had wanted to do a pool for when my sister was going to have the twins, but after I ordered them she ended up in the hospital with contractions and almost didn’t make it to her own baby shower, so we decided against that. The dies sat in a bin, unused, until now! I took some Die Cuts With a View Shimmer Stack paper in purple and cut the days of the week out. To adhere the days, I used a Zig Two Way Glue pen. They stuck, but it took awhile for them to adhere. Glitter paper is tricky to get things to adhere to. I may need to revisit this adhesive method at some point, but for right now, the days are stuck where they belong!
The last thing I needed to do was to figure out what I was going to use to write my ideas for each day on. Since the spaces are roughly 3 x 4, I thought that I could use my journaling card die from Lawn Fawn. I cut one out and it fit perfectly!! Problem solved.
Today, I decided where to hang it. For right now it is hanging above my Cricut Expression that’s on one part of my L shaped desk. I can add or take down the papers with different projects on them so that I always know what’s going on for the month. There will always be something on Sundays, as I am starting up my Sketch Sunday series again tomorrow. Here is a picture of what it looks like in my room:
There are two more projects I am working on. One is a grateful journal. I am using the same 3×4 Lawn Fawn journaling die to cut out those rectangles and using a combination of stamps, dies and handwriting to capture one thing from each day that I am grateful for. I think I am going to put together either a journal or a mini album at the end of the month with all of the cutouts so that at the end of the year, I can see what fantastic things happened each day!
The last project I am working on is a visual way to see how much weight I need to lose versus how much I’ve lost. I saw something on Pinterest and wanted to recreate it. You take two jars and put something in one that represents how much weight you want to lose and once you lose a pound, you put one rock or stone or whatever you chose into the pounds lost jar. It will be so good to see the first jar empty and the second jar fill up. I have a hard time staying motivated, so I am hoping this helps.
In the near future, I want to put together a bill book so that I can keep track of all of my household bills in one place. I have a bad habit of forgetting to pay a bill because I throw all my mail into a pile. BAD idea and a terrible thing for your credit. UGH! I hate admitting and writing that, but for 2015 I am going to get better!!
Thanks for stopping by. To see a video of the first and second project, head over to my YouTube channel where I posted this video:
http://youtu.be/kldPAHrhECE Feel free to leave comments or questions and subscribe if you aren’t a subscriber!
Michele
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