Goals for 2011

I love the start of a New Year. Mainly because it seems to be a great time to make changes. I love change... and at the first of the year I can make changes without too many people questioning me. Change is normal at the first of New Year, right?

I'm not big on resolutions - they never seem to work out for me. But at the first of every New Year, I do like to assess where I am and where I'd like to be. I try to give myself a few goals for the New Year to help me along the way.

This year, I have many both for myself, my family and my business. Of course, it's easier to make these happen if I put it in writing and commit. So, here it goes...

Personal Goals:

Improve my health. 2010 was a great year for my business... but it definitely took it's toll on my health. This year I hope to put more time, energy and care into my own health. This will include exercising and eating right. I'll work more on balancing my small business(es) with my personal life.

Become a better homemaker. Yep, it's finally starting to bother me. My lack of ability to keep a clean house, dinner on the table and kids on schedule. This is my year to be super mom & super wife (actually, I'll just settle for being a good mom & a good wife).

Family Goals:

More dinners together. This doesn't mean more meals out... we certainly had enough of those last year. I want more home cooked meals at our own table. It can be hard to get all four of us together at a decent time at night, so I'm aiming for at least two meals during the week with all four of us... the rest will have to be just three (my husband often gets home late... or I am often stuck in bed by 5). So far, so good. We have the table clear so that we can all sit at the same table without having to look over mounds of paper.

More quality time with the kids. This is hard working from home. The kids often get my filtered attention - if I'm not multi-tasking, my mind is elsewhere trying to figure out the latest issue with my business. But this year, I'd like to dedicate more focused time with each kid both together and separately. We will turn off the television and video games and we will do crafts again, we will play board games, and we will play outside. My husband and I will spend time with each of our children separately and give them a special day with one of us at least once a month.

Teach independence. My kids are spoiled... and it doesn't even occur to them that most of things they ask us to do for them, they could (and should) be doing themselves. This year I plan on making more of an effort to empower them... while I think this is going to be painful in the beginning, it's going to be good for all of us.

Business Goals:

Wholesale. With my business partner (mom) now retired, it's going to become more important that we have steadier sales. I'm hoping to achieve this through wholesale. I'm formulating a plan for this and hope to have it up and running my March. Stay tuned... I'll share details as I get them in place.

Plan ahead. I was fortunate enough to have a rockin' last several months of the year - and without doing holiday shows! But it took a toll on my health, so this year I am planning ahead. I'll do my best to spread the work throughout the first part of the year. Make more t-shirt costumes, bump up my popular items, work on a work schedule, etc. I'm still not clear on how it will all work out, but I'm starting to think about it now rather than in October.

Improved blog. This blog post will be posted both on my worldofwhimm.blogspot blog and my new on-a-whimm.blogspot blog. I'm starting fresh for the new year as I have new ideas and I'd like to try to make my blog a little more cohesive. This will be my final post on the worldofwhimm.blogspot blog... so please be sure to follow my new blog. All tutorials will eventually be moved over to the new blog and I hope to delete the old blog by summer (or at the very least, the end of year).

Of course, I do have more ideas of things I'd like to change... but this is a long list already, so I'll be reassessing in a few months.

I think I'll also make a one year bucket list... things I'd like to do before the end

of the year... a list of fun things :) I could use more fun in my life.

I'd love to hear what you have planned for the New Year as well!

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Ornament Exchange

This morning I have a mom's brunch and ornament exchange to attend. I'm looking forward to some adult conversation, some yummy food... and some ornaments!

I wasn't sure what to make for my ornament. Of course, I wasn't going to go and buy one since I have so many things on hand to make one. I decided to go with a miniature version of my tshirt tree. These little tree ornaments have a jingle bell inside them, they are just a cone shape. I've glued colorful buttons for ornaments (yes, normally I don't feel that fabric and glue should be used together, but I made an exception here).

I'm really not sure what to expect for this exchange since it isn't with my normal crowd of crafty people. I wonder how many will be handmade and how many store bought.

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Happy Holidays

It has been a very busy holiday season. This year we decided to stay home for the holidays rather than traveling to California. I'm happy with our decision, but this means Christmas at our house... which means a clean house (as close as I can get) and it means decorating for Christmas. So, of course, some things have to give. The blog is often the first thing to be pushed to the back burner. But it's not because I haven't had things to share.

First of all, today is the last day that I will ship for Christmas delivery in any of my shops. I hate the stress of knowing if a present gets to the recipient in time, the craziness and the post office and just trying to juggle yet one more thing before the holidays. I'll still have my shops open and I'll still be shipping... but I won't guarantee that it will arrive before Christmas.

Okay, on to the fun stuff. Crafting! House cleaning is not one of the things I do well. I get bored or I get absorbed and do more than my body can handle. So, I have been breaking up the house cleaning with a little holiday sewing for myself. First off... the trees.

I love these trees. I've made a forest (well, a forest of 5) for our HUGE mantle. I think these trees are the first thing to actually look like they are filling out the space. They are made from recycled tshirt scraps sewn onto cotton. I made the bottom of the trees so that I could easily stuff and unstuff them. And the genius part? They are stuffed with all the plastic grocery bags that keep building up because I forget to take them back to the grocery store (yes, I forget my reusable bags all the time). After Christmas, I can unstuff them and fold them away neatly. Yay for space saving decorations! I'm hoping to make some of these for the shop next year... and maybe even some in other colors for the rest of the year. They are fun to make and they use up the ridiculous amount of scraps I have built up. I'm fairly certain it's an illness of some sort not being able to throw away scraps. I made a huge step the other day and bagged up all my cotton and miscellaneous fabric scraps and gave them away to someone off of Craigslist. Hopefully they'll be able to use them since I can't seem to find the time. Of course, I kept the tshirt, cashmere and fleece scraps.

So I felt like the trees needed a bit of a back drop. Behind the trees I have shoved all the things that were already up there. This way, I didn't have to pack any of it up (it's all my Grandfather's pottery) and after the holidays, it would easier to set it all up again. My solution to hiding these things was to use what I have... presents. I wrapped our presents in white paper from the dollar store (not Christmas paper, I think it's wedding paper). Used silver ribbon and finished them off with a snowflake tag. They look great behind the trees, I got most of my Christmas wrapping done... and again, putting them away at the end of the holiday will take care of itself.

My daughter decorated one of the trees with one of her plastic star mardi gras necklaces. It actually looks really cute. These trees vary in size from 18" to over 2 ft tall. I love them :)

I've also made miniature versions of these trees. I plan on having the kids glue buttons on them and we'll hang them as ornaments. Perhaps I'll get around to taking pictures of those when they are complete.

And the last thing I wanted to share is our advent calender... or advent garland. We actually made this before December 1st - I think that's a first in history for me and advent calendars. I'm usually having to catch up a week or so into December.

This garland was super easy. My son helped me make it. I took some cotton yarn I had and made loops in it every 6 or so inches. I made 25 of them. My son took a bag of these super cute adhesive glittery stars I picked up at Walmart for $5 (one package was all I needed - they are similar to these, but came in a bag).

I bent paper clips to make loops and my son sandwiched them between to adhesive stars. And that was it! we made 25 of them. The one pictured below is the one he made for Christmas... he put an extra star in the middle to make it fancier :) You can also tell it was our last one because I stopped caring so much about getting the wire straight before I made the hook :) I mean really, who is going to notice (unless you take a close up photo and post it on your blog).

The kids have been very diligent about keeping it current... and by Christmas, we will have another completed decoration. Again, this will be easy to pack up - taking very little room (can you tell space saving is one of my big things right now?).

I'm also using the stars to decorate packages. I just sandwich the paperclip between the two stars with one end hanging out for the loop. Super easy and so pretty! I love pretty packages.

Next up will be a wreath from tshirt scraps. I have to use different scraps though, so it won't be the traditional green. I have a ton of red... maybe I'll make it a candy cane wreath and stripe it with red and white.

So now that I've taken an hour of cleaning time to post to my blog, I need to get back to cleaning. today my task is to get ready to bring the Christmas tree in. I know, it should already be up by now... but I hate having needles all over my house - especially while I'm still trying to clean it! Bah Humbug, right?

Have a great holiday!

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Halloween - better late than never!

Wow, I honestly had no idea that it had been a month since my last post. October was ridiculously crazy, I even had a bit of a breakdown at one point. And really, I wasn't very happy with my ability (or lack of) to handle the stress, so I wasn't about to blog about it :)

So, it has been brought to my attention that I didn't share my kid's costumes this year. And I didn't even talk about them... which is weird since we are normally discussing them several months in advanced. But this year, I feel like I got off easy... which was probably a good thing.

My daughter was Luke Skywalker (wearing black) and my son was Anakin (he didn't want to be the pod racer one - I thought the helmet would have been fun to make). I didn't make the pants or shirts, just the robe, tunics and belts. And yes, my daughter even got to have a lightsaber. This was a huge criteria for her and what costume she wanted since I didn't allow her to carry weapons last year. I think I was just weak this year and liked the idea of an easier costume.

We did all Halloween "stuff" on Halloween - including carving the pumpkins which is why they still look nice and fresh.

This year was a learning experience for me. After the chaos, I figured out that having two online shops that sell costumes - meaning twice as much business. Which is awesome... if I had anticipated it and been ready. I am happy to say though, that this Halloween was my best yet. And probably the most enjoyable in terms of creativity as I really liked making costumes from recycled tshirts. They added a bit of challenge. My favorites were the Bjork dress and the Queen of Hearts... both of which sold (yay!). I don't have great pictures of the Bjork swan dress (I made it too big for my daughter to model). But you can see the Queen of Hearts in my photos on my Facebook page for NueToMe.

I wasn't accepted to any big craft fairs this holiday season, so I've decided to mostly take it off and focus on my shops (and family :)).

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It's that time of the year

Warning... this is going to be a rambling post!

I'm busy! I think if I charted my blogging frequency, I'd find that August, September and October are three months where I blog less frequently. I'm just so busy. But it's also my favorite time of year. I get to make custom orders... where I learn more about the kids that are going to wear my costumes.

I've been busy enough that I've had to turn down a few requests. My favorite... the Lady Gaga Hello Kitty dress. But rest assured, this is going to be a side project for me - I just can't do it by Halloween as it will demand a lot of time to do it correctly. I think it'll make a fantastic display piece for my NueToMe shop when I'm at shows. Just as the Bjork swan dress has brought lots of people into my booths at shows.

My back issues keep reoccurring... which has definitely had an impact on how many custom orders I can accept. I think I have just about all I can handle since I need to allow at least a week to make costumes for my own kids. My daughter will be Luke Skywalker (last year she wanted to be Han Solo, but I talked her into Princess Leia because I refused to make a holster). She has been very specific as she has requested the black costume (to be honest, I didn't even know he wore a black costume... obviously this wasn't during the times that I was awake during the movies). My son has requested a velociraptor. I'm going to try to change his mind as I'm just not up to the challenge since he has already told me that he doesn't want it to be a cartoonish one... it needs to look real. Yikes! I think my kids are a little spoiled when it comes to costumes... and a little over confident in my abilities.

And finally, I need to share that EtsyRAIN's Pre-Holiday Craft Show is this month. We've been working very hard at making sure that this is our best one yet! I'll share more details a little later, but right now... mark your calendars for October 16th and 17th!

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