Ready or not…2019 is here!!

Some years we slowly coast into a new year with everything being same-old, same-old, but NOT this year.

The first four months of the year are going to be SUPER exciting!!!   Besides it being my uber-busy tax season, there are two fun events to look forward to.   The first is our Guild Quilt Show the first weekend in March and I am show chairman this year.   This is the 3rd time that I have acted as chairman or co-chairman and it is a super job to have. 

Then, just 4 weeks after the show, our daughter Jenny is getting married!!!   We are really looking forward to the event and are excitedly planning and organizing for the big day.  Even today I was working on prototype table decorations!!

Now the problem with having two fun events placed smack in the middle of a busy, busy work season is the possibility that I will get to the end of April and will not have been engaged in either event……they will have come and gone without my taking the time to notice.

SO, my goal for these first months is to simply “EMBRACE THE CRAZY”…..

Now lets backtrack a bit to see how I came to this revelation….. it has been years since I have used a paper planner, having gone to digital a long time ago. 

But, while we were in China, I started listening to a podcast by Ruth Soukup of “Living Well, Spending Less”.   She talked about setting goals and putting the first things first and it started to resonate with me that I wasn’t doing that!!   She also has a planner that helps with goal setting and I decided to give it a try. 

It arrived in September and I  immediately started to use it and have found it to be a great addition to my life!!    The biggest help for me is learning  to do “block scheduling”……looking at the week as a whole and finding blocks of time that can be devoted to various tasks, both work and fun.

As I was thinking about my goals for 2019, I realized that I REALLY wanted to “up” my game with quilting.   This realization came after seeing the quilts at Houston and how, seemingly,  “perfect” they were.   SO, I have decided to block out a short time each morning to work on creative things with a specific plan to work on my machine quilting.   My goal is to add a lot of free-motion designs to my repertoire and then to work on my ruler work.

To help with this goal I have purchased a cheater cloth top from Spoonflower and have also asked our Guild Charity bee for a couple of tops that I can practice on.  

Now, I know that I have said before that I wanted to make time for creative pursuits  each morning but I have failed miserably!!  So I used Ruth’s suggestion and started my New Year’s resolutions in December and have been fairly consistent in getting to my studio for at least 20 minutes each day.

The trick will be for this to continue during the super hectic months to come but I feel sure that those few minutes each day will help to keep my sanity in tact.

So, I will end this post for now and wish you all a….

BRING IT ON…………