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!

Valentine's Day: Etsy Finds and Printables

Nineteen day! Yupp, that's right. Nineteen days until Valentine's Day. I thought I'd pick out some of the Valentines-related Etsy finds I like as well as some printables from Paisley Petal Events and Pumpkins & Posies. These are the ones I'm planning on using in my monthly calendar spread in my planner – check out my planner tips and tricks from last week.

If you follow me on Twitter, you might've seen me participating in some Twitter chats. The products featured below are some I've come across during those chats. The bottom two cards are from my Etsy shop, Salut Greetings.

Top Left Image from SamahStudios | Top Right Image from HarrisSignStation

Middle Left Image from HookYarnAndHooper |  Middle Right Image from ThreadedGoodness

Bottom Left Image from Salut Greetings |  Bottom Right Image from Salut Greetings

What Valentines-related items have you found Etsy? Any printables?

Planner Tips and Tricks

I am obsessed with planners, planner printables, tips and tricks on how to improve my planner. Anything planner related, I probably like it. Just look at my "Because I Like To Be Organized" Pinterest board or my "Printables" Pinterest board and you'll see what I mean.

About a year ago, I got into color coding and coordinated my class schedule that way, but after watching countless YouTube videos, I got into decorating my planner and improving my planner system. So, I thought I'd join in on the planner obsession and share what works for me and how I decorate my planner.

I bought my planner at Barnes and Noble (I couldn't find the exact one. The only difference between the linked one and the one I bought is the color. Mine is blue!). I knew I wanted a spiral bound planner because I wanted to include my own inserts.

The only thing missing from this planner were monthly views, so I found this one from Scattered Squirrel and I glued it onto pages I wouldn't use. I knew I wanted a monthly going across two pages, but there are plenty of single page monthly views out there! To reinforce the glued pages, I used washi tape to cover up the edges that way the pages would fall off as I used my planner.

Then I used these printables from MsWenduhh to add in holidays and birthdays. I found a bunch of other printables to include onto to my monthly view. I decided to decorate each month as the year continues, so right now I only have January decorated, but probably in the next week or two I'll decorate the February spread.

Organization wise, I have a color coded system in my paper planner that coincides with my iPhone planner. The only differences between the two is that for workouts: it is pink in my paper planner, but red in my iPhone planner only because pink wasn't a color option in my iPhone. Also, in my iPhone planner, my classes are all under one color (blue), but in my paper planner, each class is written down in its own color.

I tend to use the monthly spread for an overview of when things are/deadlines and the weekly view as a to-do list/steps I need to take to complete the deadline, etc. In the weekly view is where I write that color coded class schedule, but I also include appointments and meetings.

Some planner extras...

I use paper clips to mark off where I'm at in the planner. This planner comes with little tear-offs in the corners that can help you keep your place, but I decided to used the paper clips. I've seen some people add bows or other embellishments and I would love to do that, but I throw my planner in my bag, so those would probably break off.

I created my own inserts after watching this video from MissVickybee. I needed some pockets where I could stick coupons and some of my printables that I know I'll use more often. All I used for mine were envelopes and some washi tape on the side to keep it strong enough to handle the holes I punched in to match up with the spirals. Behind those inserts are an exercise/workout calendar I printed from Balancing Home.

I've also seen some planners that have an elastic band to help keep it closed. I thought that was a fantastic idea! I had some left over elastic and I made one myself. I'm not sure how to decorate it though. Any thoughts??

Hope this was helpful! That was a lot of information- if you have any questions/comments, let me know. And feel free to share how you utilize and decorate your planner.