Let’s talk planning. Are you a planner or a fly by the seat of your pants person? I’m an uber planner married to a flyer. Every day I get up and look in my planner at my pre-planned plan and am ready to start checking those items off. Almost everyday since Christmas those plans have been thwarted, misconjoled, bumfuzzeled and thrown out the window. Between the crazy of the school schedule and the fact that my DH’s employer took the whole month of January off, nothing has gone as planned and I will soon be pushed over the planner’s edge.
Granted, we have gotten several projects done that needed to be done, but all at the expense of my daily plans. Sooooooo, I am at least two weeks behind on artwork I had planned out and listing items in my eBay and Etsy stores. The weather has had some influence on the plans as well. Yesterday I just threw out the day’s entire list because the weather was warm and sunny. We have not had many of those and I desperately needed some Vitamin D. Instead of paying the bills and photographing artwork, I pruned Mom’s apple trees, cleaned out some of my bee supplies, etc. Anything to be outside.
Today I am working through yesterday’s list because winter returned with a cold wind and we are barely above freezing. Unfortunately we did not get any of the predicted snow. Tomorrow we have one of the grands for the day so I have minimal plans made. Maybe Saturday I can get caught up.
Once again I have moved my pile of art supplies. Now that DS and Girlfriend have moved out, I have again migrated to the guest room. It’s still not optimal, but the lighting is much better. The positive side of DH being home for a month is that serious progress has been made on my attic studio. I would go take more photos but it’s freezing up there at the moment. One section is drywalled and mudded. He is at this moment building some doors to cover some storage areas. When he has that done I can actually go up and start painting walls and organizing some supplies.
That’s my update for this week. Not much artsy stuff, but our garden has a layer of fresh compost, my new bee yard is set up, our lower pasture has been bush hogged for future fencing, I have picture ledges installed in our hallway for family pictures, we have discovered a farmer we can get raw milk from, I made butter and farmer’s cheese and Mom’s apple trees are pruned. It’s been crazy, but I guess I can’t complain about my plans going awry.
Well, I guess we can all say that the party is over and it is back to work. I don’t know about you, but by the time the holidays are over I am more than ready to pack up the decorations and get back to a schedule. Like 2020 though, 2021 is not coming with anything close to a normal schedule. DH is off work for another week and a half, the niece is home this week still and will only be going to school in person two days a week like last semester and the son and his girlfriend are still living here and waiting to hear from job applications. The crazy continues.
Before the end of 2020 I set a goal of getting back to work for at least 20 hours a week. “What the heck does she actually do?”, you ask. I closed my graphic design/print broker business back in 2018 to basically take on full time parenting again after our niece came to live with us in 2017, then my Dad got sick and I made myself available to help with him and take on the whole packing and moving ordeal. Now that DN is in high school and has learned some life skills and Mom seems to be in a good place now that Dad has been gone a year and we have the major remodeling done on the house… I can get back to…
Back in 2017 I started selling my “stuff” that I no longer needed on eBay. Clothes, household items, etc. That sort of morphed into selling vintage “stuff”. Sometimes I sell “stuff” for other people who don’t want to deal with it themselves. It has been a nice, consistent, small stream of income that is very flexible. I have been able to put my store on vacation when we moved and when Dad got very sick, then pick it back up when I had time again. No, I don’t make lots of money with it, but it is one of those things that the more time you put in, the more money you make.
Take a wild guess! Yes, it is time to paint and draw in quantity. Over the holidays I started painting some wood scraps from our barn with seasonal subjects and not only had lots of fun doing it, but sold enough to cover our Christmas expenses. Many, many times I have started this only to have to stop and deal with life stuff. Every time it makes me sad and depressed, but then I have to tell myself that doing something is better than doing nothing. So, once again I am trying my best to set regular work hours this year. Some of the time to paint and draw just for fun and practice and some of the time to put work on some of the sites that I sell my art work on. There is some tired artwork of mine floating around a few places that desperately needs updating!
“So, what the heck does she do the rest of the time?”, you ask. Let me give you an example of a not-so-unusual day that actually happened yesterday.
12:15 am – Dog has seizure #1 (I have spent a week trying to get his new meds ordered and it has been a nightmare). DH and I jump up from a sound sleep, stay with the pup until seizure passes and then wait the next 45 minutes for his disorentation to wear off.
4:15 am – Dog has seizure #2. Same routine. We go back to bed to doze for about an hour.
6:00 am – Go to sunroom to feed cat and realize she is sick. Very concerned and call vet. They can see her if we drop her off by 10 am. This trip fell to DH thank goodness!
8:15 am – Go with my Mom to take her car to get an oil change. Got back home at 8:45.
8:45 am – 11:30 am – Package up three eBay orders and one Etsy order (I have one eBay store and two Etsy stores).
11:30 – 12:30 – start eating lunch, then stop to help pup through seizure #3 (he has never had 3 seizures in 24 hours before), then realize I need to leave for…
12:30 – 2:00 – drop off and pick up library books for DN and drop off packages at the post office. Then head to nearby town (45 minute drive) to pick up son and his girlfriend.
2:00 – 2:30 – stop by vet to pick up cat on my way back from town with DS & GF. She’s fine. Slight cat cold.
2:45 – slide into the driveway long enough to drop of DS & GF and their stuff, pick up DN to get her to band practice.
3:15 – leaving from high school, get a call from Mom that her car is ready. Pick her up, drop her off to get car and head home where I manage an hour of rest before…
5:15 – 5:45 – I go to the high school to pick up DN and head home. Thank goodness DS cooked dinner and DH and I crashed into bed around 7:00 pm to try and recover from our 4 hours of sleep the night before.
And that is where the rest of my time goes. Sometimes it is running Christel’s Taxi Service. Sometimes it is Christel’s Diner. Sometimes it is Christel’s Painting & Handywoman Service. The list goes on.
Ok, enough of that insanity. The other work in progress around here is my attic studio. DH has the insulation up. Not great photos, but we don’t have the lighting up yet so this is as good as it gets. Today he is starting on the drywall. I’m so excited I can hardly stand it. Currently I am trying to do creative stuff from my chair in the living room or the kitchen table. Not optimum conditions, especially where the people who live with me can actually see me and request help with something or have a few dozen questions that need answering. Concentration is difficult. When I finally have a finished studio I am putting a lock on the inside of the door and hanging warning signs!!! I love these people, but…
Next week I will fill in more details about the actual work, but I’m tired from reliving my yesterday.
I’m doing my best to get back on schedule here. Today is going to be a major driving and errand day, but I have a couple of hours before I have to hit the road. This week I realized just how much I drive when I noticed a slow leak in the one tire I had not replaced in the past couple of months. I try very hard to keep up with my car maintenance because I do spend so much time on the road, but this poor tire was literally leaking air from the paper thin rubber! I don’t know how I missed replacing the tire earlier. Usually my mechanic is good about letting me know when something needs replacing so I suspect this tire looked ok the last time I was in. We have driven to Charleston and I’m pretty sure I put about a thousand miles more on the car since we got back so there went the last tire.
We are in full selling, building, moving mode now. Lots of lists of when what needs to happen and I’m already starting the decluttering process (never ending) as I go through each room. We have made ourselves a promise to NOT MOVE all the stuff in storage so there will be boatloads going on eBay, Facebook Marketplace and Letgo in the very near future along with stocking the shelves of several non-profit thrift stores.
I think I’m in pretty good shape for Thankgiving this coming week. I’m heading to the grocery store today with a detailed list. The Christmas list is made and a couple of gifts bought. I’m hoping we can arrange a baby shower in January but the schedule is up in the air on that one. I have preliminary plans in case it comes together . I do have a baby knitting project in the works that goes with me everywhere so I can knit when I wait. Once I get through Christmas I plan to stock the freezer with meals for D. and Miss L. so I can go help out with Baby T when he makes his appearance.
D. and I attended the wedding of one of my best friend’s son this past weekend. Over many years there are three of us that have gotten together on Veteran’s Day weekend to catch up on life and have some R&R sans kids and husbands. We have been close friends since college. We didn’t get the weekend together but we did get to spend a few celebratory minutes at the reception. So many stages of life we have celebrated and struggled through together. So many tears and so much laughter since 1980! I love these two to the moon and back.
Now that summer is gone and what seems to be never ending rain, has set in, I am squeezing in some art time here and there. This is an experimental drawing/painting I managed to finish and there is another one in the works. The goal is to create with as little mess and space used as possible! If the new house floor plan we want works out…THERE WILL BE A STUDIO FOR ME IN THE HOUSE!!!! It won’t be huge, but it will be a dedicated space just for me to do my stuff. If it were huge I would just make a bigger mess! Prayers people. I need prayers that we can pull this off! I think of all sorts of cool things I could do including some possible tutorials on here, but right now just do not have the room. My head spins with ideas all the time.
That about wraps things up for this week. I guess we all survived the elections, hopefully with friendships still intact. It’s sad how our right to elect our government has become so distorted and ugly. My prayer is for us to be kind and civil to each other as well as demand better behavior and service from our elected SERVANTS. They forget that they are there for service, not power and greed.
Have a great week. Stay warm if it’s winter where you are and Happy Thankgiving for my United States readers. We do still have much to be thankful for!
I may have to call this “The Three Week Post” to cover last week, this week and next week. Soccer, never ending yard work, regular work, appointments and the fast approaching annual family gathering are keeping me very busy. This week alone involves three days of appointments. That may not sound too bad for those of you who live in civilization, but from here everything is an hour drive to the destination, the time taken by the appointment, then the hour back. Most of the time I have to work in necessary errands as well because, well, everything is an hour away! Pretty much one appointment shoots the whole day. By the time I get home it’s time to cook dinner and feed the humans and the critters.
Today looks like it may finally be the beginning of actual Fall weather here. Impending cold and dark brings on a flurry of activity to A) get everything cleaned up and ready for our chicken stew gathering and B) get all the dwellings ready for cold weather, including wood cut for our wood stove. We really don’t live in the Arctic like it sounds, but when the weather gets bad here, there is not a Lowe’s Home Improvement right down the road. Gotta be prepared.
For a couple of months I have been working on some knitting during my copious down time and finished a small triangular scarf just in time for cooler weather. I will show the finished product when I get it washed and blocked into shape (hopefully that won’t be NEXT winter).
I also dug out a colored pencil drawing that I started ages ago and never finished. No judging the photo. It’s still in the early stages. I can’t paint right now because I just don’t have room and it’s asking for a disaster to even try. Drawing is safer and takes less room. It takes much more time though. I have yet to be able to do a simple drawing. I get sucked into the detail vortex and can’t get out. But the disaster factor is lower. As long as I remember to keep the pencils out of the reach of the dogs I’m good.
If you all will bear with me for a few weeks, I’m going to be taking a blog vacation until the beginning of November. I have a great deal on my plate right now including some behind the scenes stuff that I will eventually write about, but it adds to my To Do list. We have a trip planned the weekend after the family get together so I barely recover from that and then have to pack. I live and breathe by deadlines even if they are self imposed so right now it is stressing me out trying to find the hour + that it often takes me to write this. Yes, I agree that is crazy of me but I don’t think I’m going to change at this point. I am getting better at accepting my brand of crazy finally…after half a century.
So, when I get back I should have all sorts of things to write about INSTEAD of why I’m so busy. Have a great few weeks, I hope the weather is good (my thoughts and prayers are with those of you in hurricane Michael’s path) and Happy Halloween!
I am writing this in the wee hours of December 30 and hope to finish it before the end of the day. My whole week has been this way. Yesterday almost the entire day was spent on the road making deliveries to clients and running errands though I did get lunch in with my son before he left town to finish his Senior year and some visiting with long time friends who are going through a rough patch.
I hope you all had a lovely Christmas and holiday season. Ours was good. Lots of cooking, visiting and dogs. Lots of dogs.
This is the week I usually do my new year planning. Luckily, I started early this year because there has not been much time this week for reflection and planning. Here is the list I’m starting out with as 2017 rolls in.
1) Review business expenses. The past two years my business expenses have increased rather drastically and I now need to see where changes need to be made. There is going to have to be a price increase for my clients unfortunately, but to limit that, I think some expenses can be cut or reduced. Not a fun project but necessary if I am going to stay in business.
2) Regular exercise. Ha, this one is on my list every year. I stop and start all year long.
3) Way(s) to improve income. Somewhat related to #1. As D. is about to retire we are looking at EVERYTHING and know that 2017 is going to be an adjustment, but until the the first retirement check comes in we won’t know exactly how much of one. We need flexibility at this point in life. I’m working on some ideas that I will share as they take shape.
4) Focus. This year has been all about adjusting to my new life. Included in that adjustment has been lots of artistic experimenting. Things are finally beginning to gel (I hope) and a path is appearing. Keep checking in this coming year to see if I’m making progress.
I left you hanging on my last post about a book I was reading. Sorry, but I am going to leave you hanging for one or possibly two more weeks. It is going to take more time and thought than I have right now and I am considering an out of the box New Year’s day event for me and will want to let you know about it if I pull it off.
We are winding down at D.’s shop as deer season comes to an end. We are both very tired from all the extra hours of work and the brain just isn’t firing as well as I would like. A few much needed naps are required I think to get more quality thoughts out of my head.
I wish you a wonderful New Year. Thank you for visiting and reading the wanderings in my head. This year has been a bad case of “winging it” and now I hope to improve what I put here for you in 2017. I would love to hear your plans and goals for this new year. Let’s see how we do and what fun we have for the next 365 days!
I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season. Sorry, but the fun and games are over now and it’s time to get back to the routines of life. I have my new 2016 Chihuly planner ready to go and suspect this is going to be an intense sort of year.
Do you make New Year resolutions? I do and have for as long as I can remember. I like the feeling of a fresh start. I am one of those weird people who like change. Boredom sets in easily with me so I like to shake things up. I usually start in November looking at what has worked and what has not in the year then adjust accordingly.
This year includes my wedding and a move so the first half of the year is going to be hectic. The wedding is very simple, but the house remodeling before the move is not. Bear with me. The plan is to keep getting my posts done each week, but we all know how those best laid plans go.
Work/art (They are one in the same by now.) is getting simplified in 2016. I was all over the place in 2015 and felt very scattered. It was fun to experiment with many different things, but I couldn’t get focused. It also hurt the bottom line of my business a little. So this year the artwork gets back to the basics of drawing and painting. The drawing also feeds back into my design work as I focus more on the illustration/design again where there is more profit than just the printed products. I have recently started to have more sales of my clipart in my Etsy shop and would like to add to those items.
Here are a few quick pieces I have worked on since mid-December. Over the past, uh, couple of decades (where does the time go?) I have had very limited time/space for painting and my skills have suffered. I am feeling the need to paint again and am happy to report that some of my past skill level is returning. It just took a few hours of concentrated focus to get back in the swing of wielding a paintbrush.
I am working small right now. That cuts down on the intimidation factor of a big white canvas and gives me a sense of accomplishment to finish a painting instead of having a large one lurking in the corner mocking me when I am piled high with work or life events dominating my time. Hopefully some of these paintings will land in my Etsy shop or in my extremely neglected Fine Art America shop.
The usual “need to get more exercise” and “keep up with all the filing” are still on the resolution list. I REALLY need help with the filing. It’s not in the budget yet for help so if anyone has any suggestion on how to stay on top of filing I would love to hear it. Since I am in the printing business I have a paper heavy filing pile all the time. I do as much digital filing as I can though I could do better with that as well. My email runneth over!
I will continue to post projects and let you see what is going on around here. Maybe I should post a weekly photo of my desk to force myself to FILE. Desperate times require desperate measures!
Best of luck with your resolutions. Let’s see if we can make it into February with them!
Pencils, Paint & Paper 