The weather was bitterly cold for our part of the world. Oklahoma is not known for the temperatures in the teens. The snow is pretty but under the snow is a nice coating of ice.
This is the view off of my front porch.
Here is the back deck and yard. The ice isn’t as bad as it was last time but it is colder.
I stayed in and thought about goals, deadlines, chores and menus. Then I thought of this!
Yes, I am procrastinating on my cleaning! A basket liner for my favorite large yarn basket. It has turned out better than I thought.  Why is it that the New Year starts and we all get the organizing bug! Anyway this isn’t much of a tutorial more of a how to do it  yourself for your basket. The tutorial will come tomorrow.
As I look at my computer/internet. I find myself being challenged to change, to remember and to continue marching forward. I don’t know about you but as a stay home mom, I have struggled with isolation. I have struggled with loneliness and feeling like the only one home in this huge neighborhood. This was never so true as when the kids were babies. I am old enough to have experienced life before the internet and cell phones. Life is is better with both.
Allow me to explain…
Pinterest allows me to indulge my need for new information in bite sized pieces. I can be challenged to remember to exercise, to restart that old habit, to find a new way of doing things. Just this week I remembered how easy it was to freezer cook. I simply cooked twice as much and then froze the extra.
Strange that I had forgotten how easy it was. I have tried new ways of doing things. Flylady.com keeps nudging me and reminding me how easy it is to clean/home repair in little easy baby steps.
I also have to confess that I am a visual person so, I tend to keep projects out where I can see them, along with lists, books to read, papers to deal with. That tends to keep things very disorganized. So, once again baby steps on the cleaning. I can fold one load of laundry. Run one load of dishes, wash three pots, sweep the floor and wipe down the bathroom. Â Even if I am still not into routines, I do have things cleaner than they were. JUST remember, that if you drop by the house was clean until it sensed you coming and then it self destructs.
Facebook keeps me plugged in with friends and family. I see faces of friends and get encouraged to keep plugging ahead in this life. Heartwarming stories scroll down the screen and  remind me that the world is not always a cold place. It isn’t an answer to everything but it does help keep the odd lonelies away. The ones that come on is a rush when things are quiet. Which seems to be happening more and more these days as the kids are growing up and away.
I get blog updates from different folks that remind me to stretch, to achieve, to reach out and grow. I get tidbits of information on all kinds of different topics from new craft ideas, to organizing, to parenting and marriage and tips on managing our family finances. I love having lots of resources to pull from. These little gadgets will make my life so much easier. Everyone has cords and what to do to keep them separated….now I can color code the kids’ charging cords. Incredible idea!
A new year is here and staring me in the face. Â I can’t get away from the fact that another year is starting, with it comes all of the hope of a new start. So as I get out the new calendar there are things I want to improve or change.
I have two Jon Acuff books that I want to read. They won’t take long and will inspire me toward more change. I also have several Beth Moore books that I want to read as well.
I have a some crafty things that I want to make for my house.
There are some home improvement projects that are “needing” to be done and some that NEED to be done.
I have a ton of crochet patterns that I want to write.
A garden I want to plant, sow, harvest, can and eat from.
Some computer skills that need to be learned.
Some bills to pay off.
2 sets of braces that will come off this year.
So my year is going to be full to overflowing and yet time marches on. I need to be careful that I spend time doing the right things or the busyness of life will overtake me and the important things will get lost in the shuffle of papers.
 https://www.etsy.com/listing/75996440/adventure-time-block-print-in-bold-blue
It is time for the adventure of the New Year. Are you ready?
Looking back at 2013 so many things were accomplished and marked off my list. I feel so incredibly productive. I keep a running list on my computer of what has been completed and what is left to finish. The list is enormous, but here are some photos of the year.
These are some of the blankets that I crocheted this year. Some are not in the collage and the other items from the shop are not shown at all.
We drove to our daughter’s college in Texas and back – 5 times. We had one trip to Kansas, and one trip to Houston, Tx, and one trip to the Waco, Tx area.
We had one wedding, one wedding shower, one major surgery, 3 months in a boot or cast, one set of wisdom teeth removed, and all the love and laughter that comes from living in a family of six.
It has been a spectacular year and I have loved almost every moment of it. There were some hard times but there are always some hard times in every year.
It has been a  Merry Christmas at our house! I hope it has been so at yours as well. I always have mixed feelings about the Holidays. It is a time when I remember my Dad and now my Mother in Law. So, it is hard as I grieve but it is also a great time for family, fun and a chance to build new memories. We have been fortunate this year to have some time together with much of our immediate family.
These are our outside lights that were covered in the ice from the storm. The ice is almost gone by now as it was warm yesterday but they were so pretty covered in ice that I had to include this photo. We have neighborhood  free range Guinea hens that come by the house  nearly every day. They tend to get on the front porch and I have been wanting to take some close up photos of them but this is the best I have done so far. They can get loud and we have watched the flock grow from four to about 20 or more.
Passion is quite frankly over-rated. I am really down on passion these days. Passion is a flash in the pan, a moment in time never to be attained again in precisely the same way.
Now that I have your attention I will say that following your passion in business is over-rated. So  are the statements “create what you love and you will do great in your artistic life”, “be true to yourself”,”be who you are”. All of those statements are truthful to a point but the real truth is that  unless you put old fashioned HARD WORK you aren’t going to make it. Hard work is what keeps you making that one item the hundredth time. Hard work will keep you creating when you are tired and worn out. Hard work and not passion is what keeps musicians practicing in tiny rooms for hours at a time. Passion might put them in the room but hard work is what keeps them improving and practicing for long hours with no audience.
“Create what you love and you will do great in your artistic life”. Hmmm, where do you think the term starving artist came from? Â If you are doing your art or craft to pay bills, you might have to compromise your vision with what the people will buy. It is a terribly tiny line that you walk between earning money and following your dream. Somewhere between your dream and reality lies the middle line. Your job as an artist is to find a middle point that fulfills you as an artist and provides a living. At least until you have made a name for yourself. I know that there are people that will disagree with this, but if you are going to spend time and money creating, then you need people to buy your items to finance more creating. What do you think?
It has been an icy weekend here in Tulsa, OK. While we certainly weren’t hit the hardest with the ice it was certainly icy and cold.
My clothes line covered in tiny three inch icicles.
Our deck and a volunteer tree.
The oak tree in back was hit pretty hard.
It is a Shumard oak and drops it’s leaves in the spring. We will have to trim some branches back. It has been pretty cold and the dogs are hanging out inside most of the time. We are staying pretty cozy with home made soup and family games.
Do you ever get frustrated at the speed of life? I know I do, sometimes life seems to crawl along and other times it is moving at light speed. I wish that I knew the secret of keeping life at a steady pace. When life is zooming by me, I tend to feel like I am missing something important. When life is at a snails pace then I feel that life is passing me by.
Well, I think this all boils down to one thing contentment. Learning to  be content with our lives and not reaching for the one thing that is out of reach will help us to live in the here and now. When times are slow I need to prepare myself for the days when spare minutes are non-existent. When times are fast I need to learn to slow down enough to enjoy the ride. I feel that God wants us to learn to lean on him throughout all of the times of our lives. Thankfully life’s speed tends to ebb and flow like a river during the seasons.  It is ok for life’s speed to change we just need to be ready to work or rest depending on what our life speed is.
When I list out my goals it tends to look a lot like a To-Do list of a type A incredibly organized person. I have needed to scale back on my To-Do lists and just write the most important items down.
Family
1. Make cookies with the kids
2. Pick up the college girl for Christmas break
3. Take youngest DS driving so he can get his license
4. Bake Banana bread
Home
1. Do a basic clean sweep of the house.
2 Â Organize the Laundry room
3. Touch up the paint in my bathroom
Studio
1. Get shipping ready every day
2. Pick up the clutter in the studio
3. Work on custom orders every night
Personal
1. Water Aerobics once this week
2. Read pinned information about blogging
3. Complete devotional times
4. Plan 2 Christmas dinners….and see what needs to be done!
5. Complete Christmas shopping
6. wrap gifts
Ok, I just need to stop. This list is huge already and I keep tacking things on.
The great thing about having facebook is the links that people post are often interesting. This one really spoke to me, in fact it spoke so much that I have asked for the book for Christmas. It talks about the opposite of being fragile or Antifragile. The book is Antifragile:Things that Gain from Disorder is written Nassim Nicholas Taleb. I am taking my understanding of Taleb’s book from this website; http://www.artofmanliness.com/2013/12/03/beyond-sissy-resilience-on-becoming-antifragile/
The article discusses the opposite of fragile. They discuss the fact that the opposite of fragile isn’t robust or resilient. As being Anti-fragile should put you ahead of where you started before the bad time happened. Instead of breaking during stressful personal or business times we should become stronger.
I have come through a time recently when I felt very fragile and I am continuing to feel fragile. So this concept is very attractive to me from a personal standpoint and as a small business owner.
The article touches on how large often equals fragile due to red tape, an inability to swiftly react to market changes, or icebergs in the case of the Titanic. Â It talks about being optimized to make use of every resource. In my case it would be a calendar with no extra time for the daily life occurrences that happen ie a flat tire, a sick child, medical emergencies that all play havoc with our calendar, budget and life. Â People try to reduce this randomness in life by planning it out. An example of this in real life are parents that try to keep their children from experiencing small hurts like Johnny doesn’t want to play with Jimmy. The author states that stress strengthens us and removing stresses from our children’s lives weakens them.
Resilience or the ability to bounce back while a great ability to have is useless if you do not grow from your experience. Growing means that you have moved beyond randomness or become anti fragile.
The great news is that Taleb feels that being small is great for being antifragile! Small business are more able to change direction.
You really should read the rest of it and gather some great insight but here are some insights that I gathered from this article.
1. What doesn’t kill your small business should make it stronger. Will you learn from your mistakes? Change your focus if it is needed!
2. Have a back up plan! Having more than one critical piece of equipment isn’t a bad thing, for my business this would be to have more than one sewing machine that works well.
3. Add some stress to your life! Â You can do this by changing your work schedule, or how you do things. See if there is a new way to do what you have always done. Stress strengthens you as it forces you to change.
4. Play it safe and also take risks. In a small retail business this might be continuing to sell your best selling items while you learn a new skill or sell something else just to see how it goes.
5. Don’t take advice from someone that doesn’t also do what you do.Why would you take advice from someone that doesn’t also run a small business?
6. Reduce the negatives. Remove things that are detracting from your business or life. Do you have bad habits or debt? Get rid of the debt and work on the bad habits.
7. Keep your options open. So,keep some money in the bank for the slow times. If your best selling item stops selling then stop making it and move on.
I am excited to get to read this book as it reinforces what I have always known; What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger! We just have to decide that we are going to grow from what has happened and move forward or in a completely different direction.
Here is the back deck and yard. The ice isn’t as bad as it was last time but it is colder.
