February Wrap Up

I think I mentioned this in my Weekly Wishes post, but I can't believe this month is already over. I decided towards the end of each month, I want to put up a blog post summing up the month: what's going on, maybe some Instagram posts (because it's like my favorite app in the world), links I found interesting, etc.

What's Going On 

February was a great month! I had a wonderful Valentine's Day and so far have been enjoying my last semester of college. My Senior Show is in March, so I've been working like crazy to get everything done since I have to send projects off to the printer soon. I developed some personal branding, which I'm so excited about. And I re-branded Salut Greetings! Ahhh!  I'm planning on launching the new branding soon and also putting up some new cards in March.

Instagram

I joined Stacia's #shakeitupdaily photo challenge this month. It was so much fun! I'm planning on printing those photos out to put in my scrapbook.

Top Left: Snow on Valentine's Day / Top Right: My kitten Charlie
Bottom Left: A sunny day in winter / Bottom Right: Part of my senior project

 Links 

– I'm so looking forward to doing this once spring comes and the snow melts: DIY Pressed Flower Prints
– I found this so incredibly helpful and have used these resources a few times since reading this post: 30 Free Stock Photo Resources For Your Blog Posts
– I've been reading Kory's blog for a while and love this post about what she learned from her 3 years of blogging.
– Hand lettering is becoming my new favorite thing in the world. This post really helped narrow down what tools you may need to do some hand lettering yourself.
– Elsie from A Beautiful Mess blogged about her trip to Charleston, one of the places I'd like to visit one day.

How was was your February? What do you have going on for the month of March?

Weekly Wishes 02.23.2015

Hi everybody! Ready for the last week of February. I totally am! Weather wise, this month has been blah – so much snow. I'm ready for some warm weather. It was beautiful out today though. Hopefully that means spring is coming sooner rather than later. Speaking of the end of the month, that also means Stacia's photo challenge is almost over too! If you haven't joined in, you should. It's been a lot of fun!

My goals from last week:
• Make time to read: I remember reading once total this week. Once is better than nothing I suppose. I made it a personal goal to finish Wild by the end of the month. It might take me a little longer.
• Paint my nails: Done! I painted them this color by Essie.

This week's goals:
• Put up new cards on my Etsy shop: I made a bunch of cards the other week, but haven't been able to put them up on the shop. I'm thinking of putting up a box set of thank you notes. I also made a bunch of birthday cards – actually I made maybe five or so of the same kind of birthday card, so I was thinking of selling those as a box set as well. What do you think? Would you buy a box set of birthday cards?
• Get stuff ready for my "smashbook": I have a bunch of old notebooks lying around that I decided to make into my own smashbook/scrapbook. I've fallen a little behind with this, but my spring break is in a few weeks and I'd like to work on it then. This week I want to print out all my pictures and embellishments that I want to include so once spring break starts I'm ready to go!

What are your weekly goals?

Get The Most Out Of Pinterest

It's ok, you can admit it. You stayed up until 1 or 2 in the morning on Pinterest pinning all those clothing posts and healthy recipes. We've all been there. But what happens after that? Usually nothing – those pins just stayed pinned. Those recipes never get cooked. That craft never gets made.

So check out your Pinterest boards. Is your board too broad? Let me give you an example...

I'm an art student so I pin a lot of art related things, but all I had was one board called art and design. I still have that board, but I created more boards – subtitles or subcategories if that makes more sense. I now have a fonts/typography/lettering board, a branding board and a photography/photo editing board. I keep the generic art and design for pins that may fall into different categories or for more fine art pieces.

Why does this matter? Because I can find things so much easier now. If I'm working on a project and need fonts, I can just go to my font board. If I'm searching for new photo editing techniques, I go to that board.

It may take some time to re-organize your boards. Trust me though, it's totally worth it. Next up for me is my food board. I think I'm going to break it down into desserts, snacks, meals and gluten free food (in case you are wondering I am gluten free).

Weekly Wishes 02.16.2015

I can't believe it's the middle of February already! I hope you guys had a wonderful Valentine's Day! My boyfriend and I made dinner together (we love cooking together). In case you are wondering what we made, it was this recipe with some alterations. This was our second time making the taco skillet and both times we made it differently. Afterward, we went to see the SpongeBob movie and it was great! Such an awesome day!

Here were my goals from last week:
• Don't fall behind on my schedule for my Senior Show: This is iffy. I feel like I'm keeping up in some aspects, but not in others. I'm pretty content with how far I've gone with my personal branding, but for my senior project and reworks – not so much.
• Find some new chili recipes: Nope. I did make more chili, but more or less based it on the recipe I first made.

And my goals for this week:
• Make time to read: I spent a lot of this past weekend reading and I think I got in around 100 pages total. That's a lot for me! I like reading, but don't get to do it often unless I'm on summer or winter break. I'm in the middle of Wild and I really want to finish it before the end of the month.
• Paint my nails: I just need to do it.

Guys! You need to check out Stacia's photo challenge for this month. It is seriously so much fun!

Winter Essentials

 Bottom Left Image from Keep Cup | Bottom Right Image from L.L. BeanIt's been snowing here at least once a week and freezing. And I mean freezing. There's ice under the snow. I'm not a fan of the winter – I much prefer the super hot weather in the summer, but there's something kind of nice about bundling up in layers and sipping hot chocolate.

To keep myself from hating winter all together, I put together a list of winter related things/essentials. I need (yes, need) one of those head bands from Monroe & Harlow. Socks and Bean Boots have been my staple lately and I just recently learned about Keep Cup. I don't have one (yet), but what better way to drink your coffee, tea or hot chocolate and you can design one yourself on their website!

Top Left Image from Monroe & Harlow | Top Right Image from American Eagle

Bottom Left Image from Keep Cup | Bottom Right Image from L.L. Bean

What are some of your winter essentials?
Or what's on your winter wishlist?

Weekly Wishes 02.09.2015

It's already the second week of February. I have about 6 weeks until my Senior Show and roughly 14 weeks until I graduate from college. Just to put that in perspective for myself. This week started out crazy – we had a freak snowstorm on Monday and it made traffic a nightmare, but it ended nicely with a relaxing and productive weekend. Yay for those kind of weekends!

So now for last weeks goals.
• Attend two yoga classes: I made it to one! I was going to go a class last Monday, but couldn't because of the weather and this weekend's classes were all booked up. I'm happy I made it one though!
• Make atleast 5 new cards: Done! I made a bunch of cards on Saturday and in the next week or two I will be putting them up on my Etsy shop. (Question: How do you feel about a pack of birthday cards together or would it make more sense to include a birthday card or two in a variety pack?)
• Get ahead on my typography journal: Done! I was able to get a lot of writing done earlier in the week and then over the weekend I printed out a bunch of images and glued them into my journal.

Goals for this week.
• Don't fall behind on my schedule for my Senior Show: It's only 6 weeks away! Ahh!! I know that may seem like a long ways away, but there's so much to do. I spent a majority of last week working on my personal branding. You might've seen that on Instagram.
• Find some new chili recipes: Lately I've been loving chili! If you have some chili recipes, let me know what they are or where I can find them. I'm not a vegetarian, but I usually lean a little more towards a meatless chili.

What are your goals for the week?

Keeping Up With Goals and Resolutions

Now that it's officially February the excitement of the new year may have worn off. That said, the excitement of our New Years resolutions may have worn off too. To be honest, I didn't really make any specific New Years resolutions and that was probably the best thing I ever did because I feel like I've accomplished a lot more this year than past years when I've made a full out New Years goal.

And I think that's because I didn't make one overly large (AKA extremely scary and overwhelming) goal. Instead, I broke it down into littler goals that will help me achieve my overall goal.

Take this blog for instance. I knew I wanted to dedicate more time to it. Instead of just making that my goal, I started by making it a goal to put up one blog post a week for the month of January. This month I want to increase that to two blog posts a week by incorporating Melyssa's Weekly Wishes into the mix. (You can see my first Weekly Wishes here.)

I wanted to get healthier – not lose a certain amount of weight or anything, just get healthier, get active, get moving. Alright, what smaller goal can I achieve to get to that big goal? One of my Christmas gifts was a 10-class pass to a yoga studio. That pass makes me want to schedule in time for a yoga class.

Let's make the most of 2015 and accomplish our goals. They are never too big or too small and you can do this! Hope this was helpful! Comment below if you have any questions or want to share your goals/how you keep up with them.

Weekly Wishes 02.02.2015

 

Hooray for my first Weekly Wishes! I've been a fan of Melyssa's Weekly Wishes for a while and I am so happy to join in on this series. This may or not may not be a Weekly Wish (I guess it depends on how you look at it), but my blog goal for February was to post my own Weekly Wishes every Monday. I've been wanting to blog more consistently (I must sound like a broken record now for the amount of times I've said that), so instead of jumping in head first, I thought a better approach to that was to add a blog goal for every month. I'm so excited about this one!

I'll stop with the rambling now. Here's my Weekly Wishes:

• Attend two yoga classes: I joined a new yoga studio and attended my first class the other week, but with the snow and not feeling so well, I let my yoga attendance slip.
• Make atleast 5 new cards: I opened up Salut Greetings on Etsy last month and sell handmade greeting cards made by yours truly. I'm planning on setting aside a few hours to get a couple of cards made and up on my Etsy shop. I'm curious: what kind of cards would you be interested in seeing (birthday, thank-yo
u, etc.)? Let me know! I would love your input!
• Get ahead on my typography journal: I'm in my last semester of college and taking an advanced type class. One assignment we have throughout the semester is to find examples of type and write about them. I've been into making my journal look pretty, but haven't been doing so well in the writing part of the project. (Oooh, would that make a good blog post in the future?!)

Thanks for stopping by and checking out my Weekly Wishes and good luck on yours!
One more thing, I'm following the #shakeitupdaily photo challenge on Instagram this month from the Paper Swallow Events. Here is Stacia's post about the challenge. You should totally check it out!