Hey y'all, and happy first Friday of 2025. Sadly I did not get to do any crafting yesterday; I took Ryan to the pool at the rec center so he could go swimming with a friend and burn some energy and then after dinner I worked on my new stitching project for him and watched one episode of Criminal Minds. I've only seen an occasional episode of the show but I bought the entire series when it was on sale for $25 on digital, so I just started watching that.
Anyway, I do have a card to share today:
I made this card way back in fall of 2022 but by the time I got it done the color challenge I had made it for had closed out and so then it just languished in my draft posts until today. I think Starry Sky is my favorite In Color in the history of ever, which is why I stocked up on cardstock and ink refills when it retired. I do use it quite a bit on scrapbook pages.
Supplies, all SU!
Stamps: Kindest Gnomes
Ink: Starry Sky, Stampin' Blends in Highland Heather, Starry Sky, Balmy Blue, Petal Pink, Smoky Slate
Paper: Starry Sky, Thick Basic White, Storybook Gnomes DSP, Highland Heather DSP
Accessories: Gnomes dies, Stylish Shapes dies, Dimensionals
Okay, it's time to do my annual goals/intentions for 2025. You can see 2024's post here. You know how some people choose a word of the year to focus on? For the last several years my word has been balance, which is something that I think needs to be worked on continuously, but this year my word is going to be FOCUS. Focus on my family, focus on creating, and spend less time doom scrolling on social media : )
Scrapbook layouts: I made 86 pages in 2024, not counting the work I did on my wedding album. I did put together a lot of pages, and they're even IN an album, but I need to do some accents on some of the layouts and I want it to be perfect which is slowing down the process a lot. I ordered some hydrangea dies which should be here tomorrow and I'll see if that will give me the look I want. I'm going to do just a teensy bit of stamping and journaling on some of the pages, but for now I didn't count that book in my 2024 done column. So a few scrap-related goals for this year:
1. FINISH the wedding album. Once I decide what I'm doing it shouldn't take very long, I just need to buckle down and do it. I'd kinda like to give it to the hubs for his birthday or our anniversary this year; I haven't shown him anything that I've done on it so far.
2. Make the other wedding-related album. I have pictures from us getting ready before the ceremony and the snaps that we took on our own cameras; the wedding album is just the professional pictures.
3. Make 100 scrapbook pages, wedding-related or just general layouts. That's always my annual goal.
Organizing pictures: Dismal failure for 2024, I don't think I did anything on this goal for the entire year. Plus now I need to download pictures from my phone and the hubs' phone for 2024 and get them into folders. My other goal with this is to find a place to print out pictures for scrapbook pages; I'm working on August of 2021 right now and I only have pictures printed through December of that year, so I need to print three years' worth of pictures for future pages. I was inconsistent about scrapping last year and I want to do it more regularly this year but pretty soon I'm going to need more photos to do that.
Reading: I read about 80 books in 2024 and out of curiosity I looked at the list and THIRTY of them were re-reads. No wonder my TBR pile keeps growing so fast ; ) though to be fair quite a few of those are books I read to Ryan. On January 1, I was at 996 unread books on my Kindle but I think I'm at an even 1,000 today. I set a goal on Goodreads to read 80 books this year (75 was my goal last year) and I'm going to try to make more of them be new reads. That said, I just started The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe with Ryan and I like to start the year by rereading an old favorite, so right now I'm rereading Green Rider for at least the seventh time because I love it and I like to start the year off positively. I'm going to start some new books as soon as I finish that one. Looking through the list of what I read last year, it was a bit depressing how many of the new reads I just didn't like much. No wonder I kept rereading things...
Stitching: I have three WIPs now: a duckling for Ryan (which I think will be a birthday present in February), a shooting star quilt pattern in autumn colors, and a witch. My goal is to finish all three of those and then we'll see what I feel like working on next. The quilt pattern is super soothing to work on because it's all diamond and triangle shapes; I love it so much that I've bought similar patterns in 15 other color palettes.
Health & Wellness: I have been in a routine for years now that I work out every weekday morning and most of the time on Saturdays as well so I feel like that is very well-established and I'll continue on that. Here's my other goals:
1. Work on my nutrition because even with working out regularly, I've gained some weight over the last couple of years and I know I've been eating way too much sugar. I'd like to get back to where I was when we moved to Germany in 2020.
2. Find an eye doctor and a dentist because I haven't had checkups since we left Germany and I know for a fact that I need prescription reading glasses. I've just been procrastinating about finding new offices since we moved.
3. Keep working on flexibility (yoga) but also do more weights for workouts. I did actually buy some 15-pound hand weights last fall because I needed to go up in weight for some exercises : )
So that's my general plan for this year. I think my goals will require discipline and dedication to achieve, but they're totally doable. With that in mind, I'm going to take Daphne out for a walk and then get to work on that scrapbooking goal : )
