Good-bye January! Hello February!
One month of the new year is now gone. Other than keeping up with my goal of blogging everyweek, I've been doing good elsewhere.
A) Pantry Challenge/Weight Loss
As January drew to a close, I had lost a total of 7.5 pounds since I began this challenge. I will soon be entering a new "decade" and I can see "Wonderland" in the near future! "Decade" refers to the 10 pound range (110's, 210's, 180's, etc.) and "Wonderland" means the first digit of the weight is a 1 (ie: 197 vs 244).
Pantry Challenge - is going strong. I have not spent more than $25 per week on groceries. In fact, I've been going 10 - 14 days between shopping trips. I'm still going fairly strong against the forbidden 9 - I've had a couple of weak momments, but the next day I am back on that horse as it were.
Unfortunately, I have not been cooking up as much as I had planned and had a couple days were I did not have enough prepared meals ready to go. I did order "Chinese" from a local place near werk BUT I insisted on NO RICE and asked for extra veggies instead of RICE. The meal was large and I was able to split it and have the "leftovers" the next day for lunch. Stayed away from the battered and fried dishes and chose a simple dish. Tasted wonderful and I managed to stay within my program. It proved to me that I can order out once in a while and stay on program.
Now, with Tax Season underway, I really need to focus on getting more cooking done and prepared meals ready to go packaged up and stockpiled. I will be having a few late nights and saturdays where I'll be working. I can't eat out, so I'll need to make sure I am stocked with the proper food in advanced.
B) HPCKHC Crafting
1) Finished Objects:
I did manage to sew up a regency corset.... in fact I am wearing it now as I type this. Fits perfectly. Wore it a bit yesterday, not all the way laced tight, and today, it's laced all the way (the side edges are touching). Even laced tightly, I can still breathe quite fine.
Yes, I finally got my dressmaker's dummy up and working. I also finished a couple more squares and a Hat for Quidditch!
2) WIP's
I currently have one more block on the needles. Squares are going to be my staple project for a while as I try to use up some odds and ends and remnants of yarn balls. My OWL is racing along. The Veil of Isis is past my 50% points so I've set that aside to work on the Haruni - which must be fully completed and blocked for the 50% goal for the OWL. I ended up having to pick about 75% of the row I worked on last night because I realized I did something wrong and I really had to go back and fix it. I'm hoping to have the knitting done real soon so I can reach the 50% OWL by the middle of the month. Then back to the Veil (or otherwise known as "The Beast") for the finish line.
3) Plots, Plots, Plots.
February is a new month. New classes. New Quidditch challenge. From the review of the classes, there are no non-rav craft choices, so, not much in the way of sewing this month. I'm working on matching some square patterns and yarn colors to some of the classes this month. Still trying to figure out what to do for the Quiddtich this month - the bonus points are hard to resist! MUST GET ALL THE POINTS! So, I'm leaning towards a sweater or two for the boys - my nephews. As my sister may read this blog, I'll be reluctant to post pictures of items I make to keep the "surprise". It seems when we were growing up, every Christmas our grandmother (now deceased) would present us with a new sweater. In fact I still have many sweaters, vests that were knitted by her. It appears, I am keeping that tradition with my nephews. Granted I am not their grandmother, and since their grandmother no longer knits, guess "Aunt Shelly's" handknits will have to do.
C) Other Crafting
Not much in "Crafting", but I have undertaken a reorganization of the craft room to provide better storage, more storage, and free up space to work. I started with the Fiber area. I went from this:
All my fibers are sorted by type, color, and each box is labeled. I can see what I have. I was able to pull fiber stored all over the room and put them here freeing up space everywhere in the room. As I had extra space, my Etsy inventory is now here and the large cardboard box that was hiding under the cardtable is now gone. I currently plan on expanding that system - another column of 6 and whatever will fit along that wall to the window, but not going as high. I kinda want a bit of shelf to store equipment not currently in use.
D) Ebay/Etsy
Again, I have not done much here. However, as I have time today, I plan to reopen the Etsy shop. (In fact, I did that before writing this blog post!). I have not relisted everything. I plan to relist one item every few days in an effort to keep the shop "refreshed" in hope it comes to attention of shoppers. I also have a new colorway that I created from my Potions OWL last fall that needs a name, pics and labels and uploaded and listed.
I am toying with the idea of putting up skeins of my homespun up for sale in addition to the fiber for spinning. Not sure, but am thinking.
Ebay, I have some items lying around so this afternoon I plan on taking pictures, and then creating listings and uploading them this evening. I'm still looking for a good selling product to take inventory of. Probably should research the drop-shipping route again. More listings = more sales = more profits = more cash in my pocket (to help cover Etsy's expenses).
E) Random Randomness
Werk is crazy busy and I try to get my volunteers trained, tested, and certified for the VITA site. We open TOMORROW! YIKES!
Yes, it's February and the madness is now upon us.
Keep Calm and BREATHE. All this will soon pass.
Have Fun!
Seashelly
A) Pantry Challenge/Weight Loss
As January drew to a close, I had lost a total of 7.5 pounds since I began this challenge. I will soon be entering a new "decade" and I can see "Wonderland" in the near future! "Decade" refers to the 10 pound range (110's, 210's, 180's, etc.) and "Wonderland" means the first digit of the weight is a 1 (ie: 197 vs 244).
Pantry Challenge - is going strong. I have not spent more than $25 per week on groceries. In fact, I've been going 10 - 14 days between shopping trips. I'm still going fairly strong against the forbidden 9 - I've had a couple of weak momments, but the next day I am back on that horse as it were.
Unfortunately, I have not been cooking up as much as I had planned and had a couple days were I did not have enough prepared meals ready to go. I did order "Chinese" from a local place near werk BUT I insisted on NO RICE and asked for extra veggies instead of RICE. The meal was large and I was able to split it and have the "leftovers" the next day for lunch. Stayed away from the battered and fried dishes and chose a simple dish. Tasted wonderful and I managed to stay within my program. It proved to me that I can order out once in a while and stay on program.
Now, with Tax Season underway, I really need to focus on getting more cooking done and prepared meals ready to go packaged up and stockpiled. I will be having a few late nights and saturdays where I'll be working. I can't eat out, so I'll need to make sure I am stocked with the proper food in advanced.
B) HPCKHC Crafting
1) Finished Objects:
I did manage to sew up a regency corset.... in fact I am wearing it now as I type this. Fits perfectly. Wore it a bit yesterday, not all the way laced tight, and today, it's laced all the way (the side edges are touching). Even laced tightly, I can still breathe quite fine.
Yes, I finally got my dressmaker's dummy up and working. I also finished a couple more squares and a Hat for Quidditch!
2) WIP's
I currently have one more block on the needles. Squares are going to be my staple project for a while as I try to use up some odds and ends and remnants of yarn balls. My OWL is racing along. The Veil of Isis is past my 50% points so I've set that aside to work on the Haruni - which must be fully completed and blocked for the 50% goal for the OWL. I ended up having to pick about 75% of the row I worked on last night because I realized I did something wrong and I really had to go back and fix it. I'm hoping to have the knitting done real soon so I can reach the 50% OWL by the middle of the month. Then back to the Veil (or otherwise known as "The Beast") for the finish line.
3) Plots, Plots, Plots.
February is a new month. New classes. New Quidditch challenge. From the review of the classes, there are no non-rav craft choices, so, not much in the way of sewing this month. I'm working on matching some square patterns and yarn colors to some of the classes this month. Still trying to figure out what to do for the Quiddtich this month - the bonus points are hard to resist! MUST GET ALL THE POINTS! So, I'm leaning towards a sweater or two for the boys - my nephews. As my sister may read this blog, I'll be reluctant to post pictures of items I make to keep the "surprise". It seems when we were growing up, every Christmas our grandmother (now deceased) would present us with a new sweater. In fact I still have many sweaters, vests that were knitted by her. It appears, I am keeping that tradition with my nephews. Granted I am not their grandmother, and since their grandmother no longer knits, guess "Aunt Shelly's" handknits will have to do.
C) Other Crafting
Not much in "Crafting", but I have undertaken a reorganization of the craft room to provide better storage, more storage, and free up space to work. I started with the Fiber area. I went from this:
to this
D) Ebay/Etsy
Again, I have not done much here. However, as I have time today, I plan to reopen the Etsy shop. (In fact, I did that before writing this blog post!). I have not relisted everything. I plan to relist one item every few days in an effort to keep the shop "refreshed" in hope it comes to attention of shoppers. I also have a new colorway that I created from my Potions OWL last fall that needs a name, pics and labels and uploaded and listed.
it spun up to look like this:
Ebay, I have some items lying around so this afternoon I plan on taking pictures, and then creating listings and uploading them this evening. I'm still looking for a good selling product to take inventory of. Probably should research the drop-shipping route again. More listings = more sales = more profits = more cash in my pocket (to help cover Etsy's expenses).
E) Random Randomness
Werk is crazy busy and I try to get my volunteers trained, tested, and certified for the VITA site. We open TOMORROW! YIKES!
Yes, it's February and the madness is now upon us.
Keep Calm and BREATHE. All this will soon pass.
Have Fun!
Seashelly
Comments