Weekending: Golden Rainbows Edition

"Golden Rainbow Edition" make it sound like I spent a lot of time with unicorns this weekend but (unfortunately) that is not the case. My weekend centred around two main events, my grandparents 50th wedding anniversary and our Spark/Brownie Enrolment ceremony. Now is also a good time for a friendly reminder that it was not Thanksgiving here in Canada...we celebrate Thanksgiving in October. 

Friday we were busy decorating the hall for the anniversary open house on Saturday. I also squeezed in a little bit of 'Black Friday' shopping on this side of the border. I took advantage of everything being half off at Old Navy and ordered a few more gifts (and a pair or pyjama pants feature kittens wearing boots for myself, because that is something I need in my life) and ordered some planner stickers on Etsy and cut myself off because I do not need anymore stickers. 

Saturday was the open house and even though it was technically only two hours it was a busy two hours. When we counted the names in the guestbook afterwards over 100 people had signed, which I guess is what happens when you're married for 50 years. When everyone had left and the hall was cleaned up our immediate family went back to my grandparents to watch them open their cards before we all headed home. I was exhausted and even though I had originally planned to Skype with H. & R. I cancelled and went to bed early. 

I had anticipated Sunday being a pretty low key day apart from Sparks/Brownies but as it turned out I went to the elementary school's Christmas Market in the morning and then to town with my grandmother, her friend and my cousin in the afternoon before Sparks/Brownies in the evening. It was a shorter meeting than usual but it was fun to have the girls' parents there to watch them officially become Sparks/Brownies and they were so excited to get their badges. Heck, I was excited to get some new crests for my camp blanket! We had cake & lemonade to celebrate and that was that. 

I was home with plenty of time to Skype with H. & R. who filled me in on Gilmore Girls, I had been seeing some "Can't believe the ending!" posts on social media and wanted to know what the surprise ending was, but didn't actually care enough to look into on my own. I stayed up way past my usual bedtime getting calendars finished for my grandparents and uncle before I missed out on the Black Friday sale and watching Oak Island.

I'm cautiously optimistic that I will be able to finish the rest of my Christmas shopping this week. And get some cards ready to send out.

Linking up with B Loved Boston.

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Bloom Where You're Planted {Thankful Thoughts}

For as long as I knew it was a possibility having a full time, year round job working at camp was my career goal. When I first set off to university with that goal in mind I had visions of returning to the camp I grew up at making some changes and helping it grow to it's full potential. Things changed pretty quickly, as they often do when church politics and wills get involved, and so I found myself transplanted to a place I'd never planned on planting myself. 

There were times (many times) that I didn't want to be planted there. I wanted someone to come along and pick me up and plant me somewhere else. Ideally a nice vase with fresh water where the soil wasn't so rocky. As fate would have it though that's not how things turned out.

Last spring the first opportunity to move on popped up just as I was preparing for my fifth summer, something I never thought I'd see. Parts of me were giddy with thoughts of pretty new vases but the idea of being uprooted still felt hard. I would miss certain nuances, the gophers, the sheds, eating ice cream with a fork because all the spoons had disappeared (again). As it turned out though I wasn't what they were looking for, instead of the pretty vase I was shoved back into the rocky soil on the side of a cliff (at least that's what it felt like).

Towards the end of the summer the second opportunity to move on appeared on the horizon. This time it involved a full on gold vase encrusted with diamonds. After a particularly stormy summer, in the rocky soil, on the edge of a cliff I was ready to make home in the fanciest vase that would hold me. Except I wasn't what they were looking for either, although I was closer this time. 

Fast forward a few weeks and I've found another option. Except this one doesn't feel like a vase, more like a nice terracotta pot you put on your front porch. It's sturdier than the cliff but still exposed to the elements and maybe a little rough around the edges. I have an interview the second week in December and hopefully there will be a nice terracotta pot with a red bow and my name on it under the tree. Even though I never planned on planting myself there it might just turn out okay. 

I'm thankful for the places I've been forced to grow and for the ability to look around and think that even if the view isn't perfect there's still reason to bloom. 

Stuff & Things

What's Up Wednesday: November Edition

What I'm Eating This Week: Breakfast for Supper, perogies, chicken, stuffing & veggies, hamburgers & broccoli salad and an experimental naan bread grilled cheese that turned out delicious!

 

What I'm Reminiscing About: Nothing in particular, November isn't a very noteworthy month. 

What I'm Loving: Global Warming is pretty terrible but I can't deny the fact I'm loving the warm fall we've had. I'm also rekindling my love of making pizzas. 

What I've Been Up To: November was SO much better than October. I'm in the hiring process for another job that is pretty far out of my comfort zone but if it works out I'll be super excited. So keep your fingers crossed that this is the one!

What I've Been Dreading: I'm dreading the possibility of this latest job prospect being another no. #realtalk 

What I'm Working On: Christmas shopping! I had shopping in huge crowds and feeling rushed so I'm trying to get it all done. There are still a few things I need to get or am waiting to arrive that I ordered online but I've put a good dent in my list. 

What I'm Excited About: The possibility of this latest job prospect being a success! 

What I'm Watching/Reading: The Curse of Oak Island is back on, which makes me so happy. I've also taken to watching Degrassi because all of the morning talk shows are terrible. On Netflix I'm watching How I Met Your Mother and I haven't read any novels this month. 

What I'm Listening To: Lately when I'm getting ready or doing something else I have Plan With Me videos playing in the background. I'm excited to put my Happy Planner to use in the new year.

What I'm Wearing: It's been unseasonably warm here so I've been wearing my spring jacket a lot along with jeans  and a long sleeved top whenever I venture outside.

What I'm Doing This Weekend: Celebrating my grandparents 50th wedding anniversary and having our Spark/Brownie enrolment ceremony. 

Via

*She may also move to the mountains

What I'm Looking Forward to Next Moth: Hopefully getting some good news on the job front! 

What Else Is New: I feel a little less stressed and overwhelmed this month. I still don't have any real answers about what happens next but I feel a little more okay with that. As long as I keep reminding myself that everything happens for a reason and what is meant to be will find a way.

What's My Favourite Thanksgiving Memory/Tradition? My favourite Thanksgiving tradition is blog readers being surprised to find out that in Canada we celebrate Thanksgiving in October.

Show & Tell Tuesday: Want, Need, Wear, Read

Want: I'm always happy with scrapbooking supplies or stationary, particularly I am eyeing stickers from the Etsy shop Abundance of Erica. In terms of less tangible things, I would really like a full time, year round, permanent camp job. 

Need: I have a really hard time with this category because honestly there's nothing I NEED. To me a need is something that I can't function without and I am functioning quite well. In the interest of preserving my photos I do need an external hard drive so I can back up my photos. 

Wear: Here's a fun fact about me, I take really good care of my things. I buy pretty plain/basic articles of clothing and don't often buy new stuff unless I absolutely love it or genuinely need it. Up until last week I was rocking the same three pairs of black yoga pants I've had since university (we're talking 5+ years here). And then two pairs ripped within two days. One had to go directly in the garbage, the other is acceptable for wearing around the house but is in rough shape. All that to say I'd like some black yoga pants. Technically, this might be more of a need but I'm opting for wear. 

Read: Simply Tuesday, The Wilder Life: Adventures in the Lost World of Little House on the Prairie, The Tao of Martha. Or any of the other 200+ books on my Goodreads "To Read" list. I'd also like to have The Pioneer Woman's recipe books. 

I've been told I'm a very hard person to shop for, which could very well be the case but I happen to think I'm pretty easy to please. Give me a big bag of pretzels, a notebook and a new pen and I'm a happy person. What's on your list this year? Are you easy to buy for or do you fall into the hard to buy for category like me?

Linking up with Show & Tell Tuesday.

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What I Learned From My First Year of Project Life

I set off this year to do Project Life on a monthly basis but then decided that during the summer I would make a separate album for camp and document each session individually,  so I inadevetrly got a taste of two of the most popular methods. I really like the weekly method and it worked perfectly for camp. I don't have a significant other, children or close friends that live nearby my life isn't that exciting so I'm not sure that weekly is the answer for the full year but I am tempted to give it a try. There's also the logistics of printing photos every week, if I do dive into the weekly method I will probably still print photos once a month but it will change the way I put my spreads together.

Keys to Success:

Organizing photos regularly. As often as possible I uploaded photos and got them organized. I kept a folder on my desktop labeled "PL - Month" and whenever I uploaded photos from my phone or SD card I looked through them and added the ones I thought I'd like to print for my album into the folder. At the end of the month I went through the folder and deleted some photos if I felt like there were too many. Occasionally I would go back through all of my photos and add more in but for the most part I had chosen plenty along the way. From there I roughly decided what photos I wanted which size. The easiest to choose were always the ones I wanted to keep 4x6 the others I just sort of filled in where needed. When I first started out this tutorial taught me everything I needed to know to resize photos using PicMonkey. Once that was done I put all the photos for the month on a jump drive and printed them off at Wal-Mart.  

I had a system. Once I had my physical prints I roughed them into my album (like plumbing, only with more glitter). I put them into pockets and chose filler/journalling cards creating a bunch of rough drafts. Then once that was done I went back and worked on the individual cards/pages. Is this a time consuming way of doing things? Absolutely. Is there an easier way? Absolutely. But this is what worked for me. 

I love Project Life. This system works for me, it might not work for you. Just like anything else if you don't enjoy doing something you're probably not going to keep doing it. It definitely took me some time to find my groove (honestly, it probably wasn't until camp season when I was doing things weekly that I really figured out my style).

One other thing that really helped was watching process videos on YouTube. I know they're not everyone's cup of tea but seeing what others are doing got the creative juices flowing and helped me figure out how to get started, because getting started is always the hardest part! My favourites are  Annie LuMaye, Froggie251 and Mercy Tiara.

This is a roughed in page. The photos and cards are slid into the pockets but nothing is glued down and I haven't added any journalling or embellishments. 

Bumps Along The Road:

I fell behind. (Sort of.) As I mentioned before, when camp season hit I started a new album just for camp and documented after every session, because there is more than enough stuff to document on a weekly basis during the summer...sometimes I could have done a page each day. While I was focused on my camp album I neglected my monthly album. And once camp ended it left me figuring out how to fill in the gaps from May-September without repeating myself. I decided that I would use the leftover photos from the summer (Some PL-ers pre-plan pages and exactly what they need for each page, that's not my style so sometimes I end up with extra photos) and call it done. The end result of this is that for July and August I only have two pages, which sort of bugs me but it solved a problem so I went with it.

I'm kind of boring. I eluded to this above, but there were months (February & March) where I really didn't do a whole lot other than work. At that point I was even working overtime on Saturday and Sunday so I wasn't left with much to document. This is my biggest fear in switching to the weekly method. There might be weeks when the only photos I take are what I ate for supper one night, a screen shot of my phone and a handful of cat photos.

I went a little overboard. I really tried to start with just the essentials. An album, some page protectors and one core kit. Less than six months in I had three full core kits along with half a dozen mini kits plus all of my traditional scrapbook stuff. It was/is excessive. If I could do it over again I would have subscribed to a monthly kit and invested in one core kit or started the process earlier of cutting my 12x12 pages into Project Life sized cards. Eventually I will use the cards I have but I fully recognize that I didn't need that many to start.

One thing that is certain is I will 100% keep up with Project Life. I absolutely love the concept and how relatively easy it is. I love the finished product and will happily sing the praises of Project Life to anyone who will listen. Full Disclaimer: Project Life has no idea who I am, while I have given them a lot of my money over the past year they have given me nothing in return (other than great memory keeping products).

Blogging, Crafting & Adulting

Anyone else feel like they blinked and all of a sudden it was Friday?! Tuesday evening we had an 85th birthday party for my great-aunt, Wednesday I helped with set up for an event at church this weekend, yesterday I spent the day making cards for the craft table at said church event and today I need to finish those up and bake some cookies for the bake table. 

The Back to Blogging Challenge wrapped up this week and Alyssa compiled a list of some of her favourite responses. I was pretty excited that one of mine made the list and I loved getting to read some of her other favourites that I had missed over the course of the challenge. 

And in other blog related news I hit 100 followers on Bloglovin'!

I totally recognize that 100 is peanuts compared to a lot of bloggers but 100 was the number I wanted to reach this year based on my 52 in 52 list. So it's a milestone worth celebrating.

I had grand plans to take lots of cool photos of the Super Moon but it was so foggy that that my ambition was short lived. This week it's really started to feel like fall, it's been rainy and foggy and when it's not actively rainy it still feels damp. I've gotten to wear my rain boots on a daily basis though so I'm okay with the weather. 

Last night I made a quick trip to Michaels and determined that the only thing better than a good browsing session at Michaels is when the weather outside dictates you get to stroll the aisles in your rain boots. I was on a specific mission since the Project Life albums were on sale for buy one, get one free. I scooped up two of those to use for 2017, in 2016 I ended up using one album to document life monthly and then another that I did session by session during the summer. I (probably) won't do it exactly the same in 2017 but I think I am a two albums per year documenter which was a happy surprise. 

Another happy surprise is a follow up to something I mentioned on Monday regarding a job application I was working on this past weekend. I got everything finished and sent off and yesterday got a reply along with some potential interview dates. I'm still a little  a lot overwhelmed and panicked about the thoughts of moving across the country but it's not worth getting myself worked up over until it's an actual possibility. Keep the prayers & good vibes coming through because it is an awesome position and I'm uncharacteristically optimistic about the whole thing.  

I was supposed to be at a Guiding event all day Saturday followed by a lot of Guiding on Sunday but the event on Saturday was cancelled due to poor enrolment I might brave the mall and finish off my Christmas shopping. I ordered a few things online so I'm keeping my fingers crossed they get here on time but figuring that I should be safe since I ordered from within Canada and there's still over a month to go before things need to be under the tree. This is the first time I've done any sort of 'bulk' online shopping and it kind of makes me feel like I've unlocked another level of adulting! 

Linking up here & here. 

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Things I've Learned From Boys

One of my favourite books is Why We Broke Up by Daniel Handler and as I work on NaNoWriMo this month I've been thinking a lot about my favourite books. I've really only had one 'traditional' breakup but I'm no stranger to relationship catastrophes, failures and heartbreak. The good news I've learned a lot along the way so today I'm sharing some of that wisdom. 

Buddy Holly

It's important to be on the same page about where things are headed.

Summer Romances are the most fun.

Heartbreak is a funny thing. (After the fact, in the moment not so funny.)

Weird Flirty Boy 

First impressions are important. 

You really can tell a lot about a person based on their footwear choices.

Trust your gut. 

Family is always more important than money. (More of a confirmation than lesson, but worth noting.)

Drummer Boy 

High school drama is brutal. 

Girls are mean.

It's okay to let things go. 

Christian Drummer Boy

Timing is everything.

When you're over someone you really are happy to see them doing well.

Dr. Spaceman

Timing is important. 

Somethings will always remain a mystery.

Mr. Know-It-All

Camp Goggles are real. 

What lessons have you learned from your successful or not so successful relationships? 

Linking up with Weekly Lessons.

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Remembering, Eating & Weekending

My weekend started on Friday, which was Remembrance Day here in Canada. In this part of the world stores are closed and most people have the day off work. I attended the community Remembrance Day service at church with my Sparks/Brownies. It was a lengthy service but the girls held it together and sat through the whole thing. I only had to remind them once that they could look at the Bibles and the hymn books but they weren't to be used to hit their friend sitting in the pew in front of them. So I'm calling it a win. I was back home early afternoon and spent the rest of the day helping Mom put together some things for the church tea & sale next weekend. 

Saturday I made a trip to Michael's where I bought more washi tape (apparently I have an addiction) and treated myself to Starbucks. I could care less about Pumpkin Spice Lattes but Creme Brule Lattes are a completely different story. Happiness in a cup. I made Thai Chicken & Rice Soup for supper, which if you saw my Instagram post, is the soup that makes me forget that I don't like soup. I start with the soup mix from Campbell's but then I add a bunch more veggies and the end result is delicious. I put the finishing touches on meeting plans for Sparks, we were finishing off the My Community badge and starting on Being Healthy so our meeting included learning about 911. (The printable above is from here.) I started doing this activity last year and I'm still so surprised how many kids have no idea what their address or phone number is, it really is important information they should know. 

Sunday mom made spaghetti & meatballs. I've made meatballs so many times but they are never as good as my mom's. She doesn't really use a recipe and doesn't have any secret ingredients but even when I follow her instructions I still can't get mine to taste like hers. I spent the afternoon working on my Project Life album. I'm ready to start October, which means I am essentially caught up! The photo above is of my cover page, it started coming together organically when I realized I had feet pictures for the first three months of the year so then I kept taking them and the result is a fun opening page. I have a post written about what I learned from my year of documenting using PL, I just need to take photos which has been on my to do list for almost a month now. 

I also spent time this weekend working on yet another job application, only this time I've leaped out of my comfort zone and have decided that I would be willing to move across the country for this particular position. If you've got some spare prayers and positive vibes I'd love if you would send some my way. 

Linking up with B Loved Boston for Weekending 

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Show & Tell Tuesday: Lottery Edition

First off, it's important to know that since reading this prompt "If I had $1,000,000" by The Barenaked Ladies has been stuck in my head. If you have no idea what I'm talking about I'll assume that you did not grow up in Canada. Since $1,000,000 doesn't go as far as one might think (and I'd like more than a nice chesterfield or ottoman) I'm going to follow Andrea's  lead and assume the winnings are essentially limitless. 

First off, I wouldn't tell anyone until I met with a financial advisor and made a long term, sustainable plan. There's no chance I would be one of those people shouting it from the rooftops the second I found out! 

Once all that was taken care of I'd get down to business (quite literally). I'd buy a piece of property and then build my dream camp. That would take up a considerable amount of time and money but it would be a labour of love so I really wouldn't mind.

The other thing I would do is go on an epic Girls' Trip to Disney World! 

Simple enough right? Now I just need to start buying lottery tickets! 

The Hard Times Put The Shine Into The Diamond

Towards the end of 2015 I declared that my word for 2016 would be RISE. I was all gungho to participate in Ali Edward's One Little Word prompts and spend the entire year rising. I wrote out specific ways I wanted to rise during the during and how I would incorporate the word into every aspect of my life. I wanted to focus on being more successful and more confident. Connecting with nature and rising above. That was in January. Eleven months later I'm starting to find the humour that the vast majority of the rising I did this year was not really about success... 

In the beginning the two things that kept reappearing as I searched for quotes that contained the word rise were this quote:

"Don't carry your mistakes around with you. Instead, place them under your feet and use them as stepping stones to rise above them. Never regret, if it's good it's wonderful, if it's bad it's experience." 

And the song 'Riser' by Dierks Bentley neither of which was what I was looking for, but they kept coming up over and over again. At one point Riser was playing on the radio every time I got into the car. The quote that I officially picked was "If you're going to rise you might as well shine" which my mind had interpreted as "If you're going to get up in the morning you might as well be confident, talented and noticeable." 

It's only in the past few weeks that I've started to accept that Rise did not play out the way I wanted, but the universe was trying to manage my expectations from the very beginning, I just chose to ignore them. I envisioned climbing a staircase, easy and intuitive. Instead, I built the staircase...and I will be the first to tell you that carpentry is not my strength (or of any particular interest). 

The opposite of rise is descend and although rising didn't look the way I wanted it to I don't think I did much descending this year either. 

This year rising looked like birds...

And radishes...

Not a staircase in sight. And maybe it would have been nice to know that a year ago I like to believe that there's a reason I didn't. Things aren't as intuitive or straightforward as I imagined but I chose the word rise for a reason and I'm glad that I did, even if I didn't know what I was getting myself into. 

Linking up with Alyssa's Back to Blogging Non-Challenge//One Thing About Today You Wish You Knew A Year Ago.

A Week Worth Celebrating

I am just so happy that October is over and done with, there were some good moments among the disappointments but I was more than ready to change the month on the calendar. Even though Monday was still October it was still a pretty decent day. I made treat bags for the trick or treaters and some of my Sparks came which was great, they were very excited to meet my cat and get treats from Raindrop (Raindrop is my Spark name). 

Big Kitty was more interested in the empty box I was trying to put the finished treat bags in than anything Halloween related. Peyton complied and wore her Halloween themed collar but she was equally as uninterested in the whole thing. Halloween is pretty low (if not the lowest) on my enjoyable holiday list but as I kid (and university student) it was great so I'm happy to play along for the sake of others.

This photo is kind of terrible, but it's the best I have so I'm using it. I ordered my first planner stickers off of Etsy and they arrived this week! They're from a shop called Blanket Planner and I'm excited to use them once I start using my Happy Planner in 2017. I'm trying not to buy a whole bunch of stickers because I already have a whole lot of stickers but this particular set was tie-dye like and was on sale so I let myself splurge a little. I've also been eyeing stuff from Abundance of Erica but I'm going to hold off a little longer since I won't actually be using anything until January. 

The weather here has been flip flopping back and forth between normal October/November weather and then nice warm days. One night this week I happened to look out my window and notice the sky was full on purple. I thought it was really neat and I like it when the sky does weird things. I would have taken more photos but I was in the middle of making supper and decided it was best not to walk away from the stove on a quest to take sky photos. 

Yesterday I had to run to town so I brought pizza home for super. I am of the belief that donair pizza is the perfect food combination so I made the executive decision to get one of those. I'm excited to eat the leftovers for lunch this afternoon. I also bought a chicken because they were on sale and it seemed like a good idea and more economical because I also bought the necessary ingredients to make pad thai and Thai coconut chicken soup. Apparently I'm on a bit of an Asian kick? I also impulsively bought Campbell's Pho broth...I'm not exactly sure what I'm going to do with it but I'm (fairly) confident I can figure it out and make something delicious. 

What are you celebrating this week? 

Linking up with Momfessionals and Sept. Farm.

November Currently

Reading... I am still working on finishing Prophet's Prey. It's been 

Playing... I've rekindled my interest in Sims FreePlay 

Watching... This Is Us, The Office, Friends, How I Met Your Mother, Criminal Minds, Moving The MacGillvarys, Leave It To Bryan. 

Trying... To finally complete NaNoWriMo! 

Cooking... I've been very into making   

Eating... I've been snacking on a giant bag of Munchie mix that I got last week at Costco but my actual meals have been all over the map lately. 

Drinking... Coffee, Ice Water with Lime, Pop and tea. 

Pinning... Planner inspiration and most recently how to teach kids their phone numbers because apparently that's something they don't do in school anymore but we're doing it at Sparks! 

Going... I don't have any trips planned right now. 

Loving... Sparks, grocery shopping, writing. 

Hating... Decision making. 

Discovering... Somehow I always manage to surround myself with disorganized people and  I don't understand how it keeps happening but it's annoying. 

Thinking... I need to stop worrying about a game plan and accept that I can't control everything. 

Feeling... A little defeated, a little lost, a little frustrated and overwhelmed. 

Hoping (for)... Clarity? A way to avoid moving to the city? 

Listening (to)... Soul on Fire by Third Day has been my jam lately. 

Celebrating... I haven't totally sorted out the mess from the office job yet but I'm 75% there, it's a small victory but after seven months it's worth celebrating! 

Smelling... I was burning a 'Flannel' candle but then I decided I wasn't ready for fall so I went back to something more summery. 

Ordering... I ordered some stickers for my planner on Etsy and I've got my eye on a few more but I'm holding off because I really don't need any more stickers. 

Thankful for... Girls weekends, notebooks, blankets. 

Considering... Christmas gifts, usually I'm more on the ball with this but the only thing I've bought so far is an ornament for my brother. 

Starting...  NaNoWriMo! It's only day 3 but I've written everyday so far and that's what I'm focusing on opposed to word count numbers. 

Finishing... Hopefully being caught up with Project Life by the end of the month. 

linking up with Gretch and Kristen.

Oprah Wasn't Built In A Day

If you're a regular listener to Stuff Your Mom Never Told You you probably listened to last weeks podcast that talked about failure. I happened to listen to it on my drive home from visiting H. & R. this weekend and it was scarily accurate. In the last six months I've either completely failed or partially failed at a lot of things. In the past six weeks alone I've encountered upwards of a dozen disappointments and I'd be lying if I said I was handling it well. I was handling well, I had nothing but hope and optimism and I even channelled all that positive thinking/secret/law of attraction stuff and went ahead and sticky-noted in the dates for camp sessions for a job that I really wanted. And now I mostly just feel defeated. Which isn't to say that I'm miserable because that's not the case either. I'm so happy that I went with my gut and didn't wind up unemployed in an apartment in the city. I'm thankful that I'm no longer in a relationship with someone who doesn't get camp or own work boots. And being home will always beat being anywhere else (I don't really want to relocate to Labrador). I'll always acknowledge the silver linings but that doesn't mean I'm ignoring the massive storm clouds. And that's okay.

This time next year I hope that the things I've sacrificed have been worth it. I hope that the successes outweigh the failures and I can see the completed puzzle, because right now all I see is a pile of disjointed pieces. I don't know how to make the pieces I have fit together and it seems like each time I   start to make some headway I discover that the pieces I'm working with belong to a different puzzle and get taken away. So I need to start again. 

I want to remember how satisfying it is to complete a puzzle and how boring it is when the puzzle is too easy and only takes a few minutes to complete. Because the truth is maybe this time next year I'll still be working on the puzzle and I need to be okay with that. I want to remember that it's okay to keep working on things but sometimes it's okay to move on too. 

I know that there are bigger lessons to learn from all the recent disappointments but as the saying goes 'Oprah Wasn't Built In A Day' and I can't expect things to be handed to me on a clipboard or learn everything from one disappointment.


Linking up with Alyssa for Back to Blogging/One thing about today you want to remember a year from now. 

November Goals & October Check In

First let's check in with my October goals.
October Goals:

1. Finish Project Life album for camp. 

Album is totally finished!

2. Get caught up with 'everyday' Project Life Album (April - September)

January - April are 100% complete
May is about 75% complete
June - August are 25% complete
September is 50% complete

I'm confident that I will be fully caught up by the end of the year and likely will be caught up by the end of November. I have everything printed and put into pockets it's just a matter of embellishing and journalling which I tend to do in smaller bursts. 

3. Organize & De-Stash Project Life/Scrapbooking/Planner supplies.

It's not perfect but I did cut down some of my 12x12 paper to PL sizes and I made a separate storage box for Happy Planner supplies.

4. Finish 2 books.

I started and finished The Secrets of Midwives and Proof of Forever.

5. Map out NaNoWriMo.

Done. And it was much more of a reflective process than I was anticipating. I don't know when I became scared (for lack of better word) or writing but somewhere along the way it happened. I need to stop worrying about being perfect and just write stuff. It's NaNoWriMo not NaNoWriABestSellerMo. 

6. Take photos during Thanksgiving, Spark Camp & Friendsgiving.

The most positive thing that has come out of my newfound love of Project Life is that I am so much more motivated to take photos, it was a slow process but I have a lot of photos and that makes me super happy. 

7. Publish Blog Posts!

I published 13 posts in October. It could be better but it averages out to about 3 times a week so I think it's a pass.

Overall I completed 6.5/7 goals so it was a pretty successful month!

November Goals

1. Participate in NaNoWriMo.
I (probably) won't write the next Harry Potter book this month but I will write and I will write more than just grocery lists.

2. Become a Lady With A Plan (Again).
This is sort of vague, but in the past two months I have honestly cycled through Plans A-Z without any of them coming into fruition. I'm usually really good at having back up plans for back up plans but right now I'm at a loss. I need to regroup, strategize and figure out what comes next.

I'm a little light on the November goals but it's by design. Those are the things I want to focus on this month and hopefully by only focusing on two things I'll be more likely to accomplish them. 

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