Word of the Year and 2020 Goals

Last year my word of the year was FOCUS. 

I am afraid I was anything but focused last year. I did get 20 cross stitch finishes and read 431 books (okay, listened to 431 books, same thing) in 2019. In some ways I was very focused. I have never read that many books in a year in my life. But in May I lost my stitchy bug and had a stitching drought that lasted until sometime in September.

I keep looking at all the shiny and new patterns and wanted to keep starting things and it is mighty hard to just keep working on my current WIP pile. They seem old and dusty and well… old. I wanted something new. 

Some projects are so close to a finish I can taste it but there is this little part of me that doesn’t want to finish them. I am going to get over that this year. That is why my word of the year is COMPLETION. 

To me completion means to finish things. Not just stitching them in the normal sense but going that extra mile to fully finish them. Frame them or make them into a pillow or something else  more exciting. I have never been the greatest at doing that. That is why I have a huge box of finishes that are just sitting there waiting to be displayed in my home. 

Completion is not just for my stitching. I want to get rid of many paperback books in my house and to do that, I need to read them. Most all of the books I read this last year were on my Kindle. Now I need to shift my focus a bit. I do read a lot for publishers and this year I will be a lot more discerning about the books I choose. I have a huge backlist of titles I said I would read and haven’t yet. I have like 461 ARCs to read in my collection. Plenty to keep me busy while still tackling my paperback problem. I plan to read at least half of the ARCs I have. My new Goodreads goal for 2020 will be 290 books. That may be a stretch but I plan to keep reading at the pace I have been and even if I drop back a bit, I should be able to easily reach that particular goal.

My stitching goal is to get from 34 WIPs (works in progress) to 12 WIPs. Eventually I want to have only 3 or 4 WIPs going at a time so the finishing of them will be even easier. Currently, I want to work on the WIPs that are closest to completion and move out from there.

Here are the WIPs I most want to focus on:

1. Tiger Wildlife

2. Morning Lake kit

3. Oranges by DMC

4 Flag Girl (aka Liberty Angel) by Leisure Arts

5. Patriotic Angel by Joan Elliott

6. Mama Christmas by Joan Elliott

7. On the Beach klt

8. Life kit

9 Folk Art Angel by Lesley Teare

10. Four Seasons Chairs (the winter chair)

11. Black Capped Chickadee

These projects are some of the oldest in my collection and getting them done and dusted will go a great way to give me some peace of mind. Basically, I am going to feng shui my life in a big way and make room for a whole bunch of newness to come in and flood me with great feelings of bliss and accomplishment.

What is your word for 2020? Have you even thought about it? What do you want to accomplish in 2020? The beginning of the year is a great time to rethink things and make plans. Let me know what you are thinking about accomplishing next year and what your word for 2020 will be. I look forward to your answers.

Blessings.

DIY Book Sleeve

The Journey of a Joy-Filled Book Sleeve Creator

I have seen these book sleeves all over Instagram. They looked pretty nifty but I never thought of using one myself before today. I was watching a new to me Flosstuber (a cross-stitcher who posts videos on YouTube) and she spoke about how she used these cool and very trendy book sleeves to hold her cross-stitch projects, especially the smaller ones.

I thought that was genius!

The Flosstuber's name was Joy.Filled Stitcher. Thank you for introducing me to that. Much appreciation to you.

There was another YouTuber whom I can't remember the name of who used small zipper pouches that her friend designed on Etsy. Those were cool too. They had the gal's artwork of animals on them. Super cool and ultra cute!

So, last night I thought I would try and make one of these myself. I searched YouTube, as you do when you want to do something yourself and I watched a few videos about the process.

It seemed easy enough. I am not much of a sewist but I do have an ancient sewing machine that does a pretty good job when I need it to. After watching I got to work. Mind you, I only have the fabric I needed, but the foam wasn't something I normally keep in my stash. I substituted sticky backed craft foam. The type I had wasn't the right size, obviously, so I put two together to get the job done.

Instead of fabric on the front I used a cute, Thanksgiving themed hand towel from Dollar General. They are out now in the DG's near me. I can't believe Thanksgiving stuff is out already. Heck, what am I saying? Christmas stuff is out too!

I hacked the towel apart and cut up my fabric for my lining and got to work. I think my end product turned out pretty good. Since that was my experiment version, I want to try and create a real one with all the right ingredients. I might even try to whip up a quilted version and see how that turns out.

All that matters is that I had fun and I now have a cool book sleeve to keep my books in.

If you are into crafty things, try making one for yourself.

-- Toni

What is the point of voting?

We voted for the ability too burn leaves in the city... and it passed.

Then the City Council, Mayor or whomever was responsible said, "No, you can't do that. It's too dangerous." 

Why was it on the ballot then a few years ago? Shouldn't our vote count for something? We the People, and all that. Isn't the voice of the people what really counts in America?

Now we vote in a new Mayor by a literal landslide and the City Council is there again voicing their opinions that he is not qualified due to a technicality. They want to assign their own flunkie to be in power until 2021. Really?

What is the point of voting if the City Council can do whatever the heck they want to do after the fact?

Ramey has been supposedly resigning since 2017 and Ashby is out in August. Jones doesn't want to be interim . Looks like the classic rats fleeing a sinking ship. And if that is the case, what was the point of this whole charade?

You let them get away with overturning the burning leaves issue, they go for bigger things and take the Mayor-elect out of the picture. What is next? Where will this madness end?

The Life Decluttering Begins...

My 2019 word of the year is FOCUS and my theme is the YEAR OF WOW! 

Here is what I want to succeed at in 2019:

• I want a joyful job that delights and fulfills me and allows me to make a great income while still keeping my stress level low and my happiness quotient high.

• I want to be able to sing with joy and project how great it is to love my Lord to everyone that hears me.

• I want to feel like I am doing a great job and know I am succeeding at maintaining my parent’s health and keeping them happy and worry-free in their later years.

• I want to maintain a balance between my hobbies and not obsess over one craft or another

• I want 2019 to be the year I declutter everything that is not serving me in life and then organize everything else in a way that supports my new healthy, happy lifestyle.

• I want 2019 to be the year I focus on me and my own health. I want to exercise more and feel better in my own skin.

If I want to live up to these things I am prescribing for myself at the beginning of the year, I have a lot of decluttering to do in my life. Currently, I am not succeeding at any of the above bullet points. I am not happy. I am overwhelmed. I am tired. And I really have no patience for most things that are stressors in my life. And that has to change.

My backstory...

I am currently trying to take better care of my parents... I am watching out for their needs, cooking most days and doing a lot of things I haven’t done before. This weighs heavy on my mind… especially this past year when many things came to a head late in October. My mom went into the hospital for a week (ICU for three days) with low oxygen levels. I am learning all about how to deal with the equipment for oxygen management and how to maintain all the various things that have invaded our house due to this new diagnosis. This also includes making sure Mom keeps the oxygen hose on her nose, has the unit turned on and has adequate water to keep her airways hydrated.

The overwhelm continues with my job which seems to get more stressful as time goes on. And that may be due to inadequate staffing as well as my ability to deal with BS the newspaper industry offers. My ability to handle BS has nearly reached its limit, I’m afraid, but I must soldier on. I know a lot of that is my own mental health issues and ability to handle stress. I am dealing with that by taking my evening hours to craft, cross stitch and crochet.

This leads me to my involvement with the worship team at church. I have not been happy there for a long time. And I have been thinking about quitting even before we got our current director. I do my best to deal with a leader who seems to try and verbally knock me down whenever he gets the chance and I have tried to learn how to deal with him, but he is a very closed off individual and I feel, not open emotionally at all to most people. This is my own opinion and experience and maybe not an opinion held by others but I haven’t done a poll.

I try my best to follow the lead the director takes each week but he is very inconsistent with singing songs the same way from one time to the next. I try to roll with the punches and yet stand up for myself and my co-singers when he tries to bully us into submission on how he wants to sing a song. 

At a recent worship team meeting, there was mention of how we all didn’t follow the lead of the director and sing a specific part the way he did. Even if we point out that we didn't learn it that way, we still do it like he wants. So I am not sure why it keeps getting pointed out to us that we need to submit to how he does things. Currently we practice a song once. And if we don’t get it perfect I feel we are looked down upon... Even though we probably haven’t sang that particular song in five weeks or more. 

I do my best every week. I try and roll with the punches but singing on the team does not make me happy. I do not feel joy when I do it. All I feel is the massive stress and assumptions of everyone as to why I am not doing better, singing better or being better.  I really don’t feel appreciated for my contribution; even when I try my best, I am found lacking, I struggle just like everyone else. Life happens and I don’t have time to practice, have an off note or whatever. But I feel like the hammer comes down on me when I am less than stellar even when others are constantly off key and get no corrective notes.

I am not sure what to do at this point. Where does the rubber meet the road and when will my patience run out completely. Only time will tell. I just know that I want to live a more happy life and live that life on purpose. And this is telling me that a happy life for me does not include the worship team.

So, where do I go from here?

The life decluttering begins. 

I will work on me and my 2019 aims bulleted above. I want to strive to be more happy and fulfilled in all I do and if I cannot find that feeling, remove that thing from my life until I can find a way to make it delight me in the future.

It is all a process. We stumble, we fall and we pick ourselves up again.

I pray 2019 is the year that I can take back my life and live it to its fullest. I hope you can too.

Blessings.

2019 Goals, Resolutions and Word of the Year

2019 is about to roll around and that means, yep, the dreaded ole RESOLUTIONS. I like to think of them as goals. What are your goals for 2019. What do you want to accomplish this year?

For me 2019 is THE YEAR OF WOW! (Work on WIPS - works in progress). That means for me to not only finish as many of my ongoing cross stitch projects I have going but also crochet projects I want to tackle too. 

The last few years I have been slacking on my reading and I want to make 2019 the year I read more books than I ever have before. I have a #readingchallenge goal to finish the 70-80 books piled up in my room. But the ultimate goal would be to surpass the 153 books I read in 2015.

And to do all this I need... FOCUS! Not only focus but BALANCE & MODERATION. 

I don't want to make it a year of only cross stitch projects because I am more than that. I like to do so many things and I want to dive deep into all of them this year. 

That includes fiction writing. Back in the day I was really into writing and I let that fall by the wayside... as I have many of my hobbies like watercolor and drawing.

I have been encouraged by many over the years to make my The Legacy original fiction into a book. And I think this is the year I will begin plotting a real story arc that makes sense and really fits into the 21st century.

I have a lot of "wants to do" in 2019 and I know sometimes it can all seem impossible but it's all about DREAMING BIG and learning to fall forward and let life catch you and surprise you about what you can indeed accomplish.

I hope  you all choose a word for 2019 and let that guide you to create goals for yourself. I hope 2019 is a great YEAR OF WOW for you too!

Unexpected Blackout

Unexpected Blackout

You don’t realize how much you rely on power until it is gone

The lights went out last night.

There was a pretty bad storm. The wind blew hard and we heard from the news prior to the blackout that there were possible tornadoes in the area. Scary stuff. Oddly enough this was the day my brother-in-law wanted to stop by and see mom and dad. Not really the best day to visit, as it turned out.

You don’t realize all the things that use power until it is gone.

No television, internet or wifi or information in general to keep us updated on the storm.

No air conditioning on one of the hottest days of the year. (It was pretty humid too. Not good for parents with COPD)

No telephones (at least of the wireless kind) Only the landline worked. And I just snagged the phone number of my brother-in-law with the last bit of juice in one phone with Caller ID. Without power to the base unit, the phones were useless. 

The radio was of no help either since it was basically canned music with no staff on site. (Both local radio stations) No live minute to minute updates on the progress of the storm or how soon we might get our power back.

None of us have what I would deem a “real” smart phone. So using that for info was out too.

It was all just a little frustrating.

We spent our evening out on the porch watching moths commit harry-carry by dive-bombing our candles. The only sound on the block was the drone of a very loud generator belonging to one of our neighbors. I went to bed early but had a hard time getting to sleep. Too much on my mind apparently. But rest did come.

Needless to say, there is not a lot you can do without power. It makes the night seem very long. People with insomnia have an even tougher time dealing with things. Too much time to think about things and not a lot to do to occupy your time.

So, I say all this to say that we are really thankful for the power we do have every day. It makes all our lives easier. And to all the crews who spent their evening braving the storm and getting our power back by 5:15 am THANK YOU!

When things go awry on a holiday ...

I guess I should be happy as we move into a new year… but I’m not.

I have been disillusioned in regards to my relatives. I usually try to give them the benefit of the doubt. People say I should be nicer. I should overlook their imperfections …and then when things go missing, I should go and buy new ones. I have too much anyway and I should share the wealth. 

I am done with that line of thinking. The people who tout the “Be nice. You have more than you need. You need to give to others.” mantra are usually the ones who sneak in when no one is looking and suck you dry of whatever is on their radar that day. 

But there comes a point where it is no longer giving. It becomes taking, and taking and taking again… without permission. In the real world we call that stealing. Kids should be made to realize that you don’t steal from people no matter if you think they have more than they need; and you need that thing they have so why not take it. No one is looking. No one will know. 

But we do know and we feel icky as we realize we are related to a thief and wonder if this person will walk the path of the good or the path of evil. Now is the time in their lives when it is when they decide if they will be a good person or a bad person.

I, for one, hope they pick the right path. Because what they may find down the other road may be more than they bargained for.

I guess I should pray for them. It is the right thing to do. And I will pray for me too that I have a grateful heart for all the blessings I do have. I thank God for that.