2013 Goals: February

I can’t believe it’s February already! That means it’s time to see how I did with my January goals. Turns out I actually got a few things done, which kinda surprised me…

1. Paint my craft room (the new house comes complete with room for a craft room (woop, woop and woop again!), but it’s currently a kind of manky green colour which needs to go before I fill it with my junk craft stuff)
2. Organise and photoshop my New Year’s Eve photos
3. Join in with 52 Weeks of Happy
4. Complete 2 items from my 101 Things list (ish). I did some of my regular monthly items but didn’t tick off anything new.
5. Finish 5 snowflake blocks

I’m super happy about getting my craft room painted. It makes such a difference having got rid of the manky green colour and I can’t wait to get some pictures up of the change. I’m also pretty please I ticked off the snowflake blocks goal because as of Wednesday I only had 3 done so it was a bit of a race to the finish. But I got there and probably wouldn’t have done so if I hadn’t set myself that goal.

So on to February…

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1. Tidy my craft room, unpack the remaining boxes and generally make it look pretty
2. Finish 5 snowflake blocks and my chunky cowl
3. Make cushions for the living room
4. Complete two unstarted items from my 101 Things list
5. Order the new radiator for the (not so) snug room so that it can start to live up to its name

52 weeks of happy: 4/52

A little late, but it’s time for some more happy photos…

• Having forgotten an ingredient for a planned recipe (yes, I meal plan – I like my lists!) I randomly picked this one for meatballs and a spicy sauce and it was ace. It’s totally on my must-make-in-the-future list…
• Snow days. It had been snowing all morning at work so I went out at lunchtime to take pictures. I always forget to bring my camera to work when it’s snowy, but I finally remembered. Soooo pretty.
• I finished painting my craft room! All the manky green is gone and in it’s place are lovely light, bright, white walls 🙂
• An awesome weekend comprising a cake outing with my Mum (om nom nom) followed by successful jeans shopping (a huge victory), a Burn’s Night celebration in the evening (om nom nom again) followed by watching Scott Pilgrim vs The World for the first time (how have I not seen it before?!) followed  by seeing the Strictly Come Dancing live show in Glasgow (wow – those people can dance).

52 weeks of happy: 3/52

Time for more happy…

• A Pandemic session with friends
• Snow!! All light and fluffy and not-yet-slushy
• Profiteroles to accompany the Pandemic session. Om nom nom!
• An awesome housewarming present – Ninja matryoshka dolls. This is off the chart on the coolness scale!

52 weeks of happy: 2/52

Time for more happy…

• Red and yellow tulips. You can’t go wrong with a vase of tulips…
• My first snowflake block in ages. It feels good to get going on my blanket again.
• “I’d rather still be in bed”. So true! I’ve been eyeing up this picture for ages and found it at 50% off when I popped into town yesterday. Awesome 🙂
• The first Crafty Club of 2013 with Sarah and Anna. It was good to catch up and be crafty. New yarn may have also been involved…

52 weeks of happy: 1/52

I came across 52 Weeks of Happy a week ago and think it’s an awesome idea for focusing on the high points of each week. I recently started logging one good thing a day and I think it’s helped me feel more positive as I’ve never failed to find something good to write down, even on days which have seemed pretty rubbish. So I think bloging four happy things a week is a way to have my happy in picture form!

So this week, four things that made me happy were:

• Cocktails on New Year’s Eve. So green. So good.
• Replacing a missing shelf in one of the kitchen cupboards. The supports were there, but the shelf wasn’t for whatever reason. I’m ridiculously happy about the new shelf – I think there was jumping up and down, clapping and possibly excited squealing when it went in!
• Getting started on painting my craft room so that it no longer has manky green walls. That photo really doesn’t do the colour justice. It’s far more manky in real life. But the first coat is done (yay). I think it needs two more though (boo)…
• Reading the Young House Love book I got for Christmas. If you haven’t found Young House Love then I would check it out- it’s an awesome place to spend some time.

2013 Goals: January

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I’ve come to the conclusion that new year’s resolutions and me don’t really work. I have no idea what my 2012 goals were and I suspect if I look back I didn’t do many/any of them, so I’ve decided to remain in blissful ignorance!

This year I’m going to try setting shorter term goals, so here’s my plan for January:

1. Paint my craft room (the new house comes complete with room for a craft room (woop, woop and woop again!), but it’s currently a kind of manky green colour which needs to go before I fill it with my junk craft stuff)
2. Organise and photoshop my New Year’s Eve photos
3. Join in with 52 Weeks of Happy
4. Complete 2 items from my 101 Things list
5. Finish 5 snowflake blocks

I think that’s all pretty do-able. I just need to get on with the doing bit…

Happy New Year!

Here’s to an awesome 2013!

Some recent “101 Things” things

I recently had a look through my 101 Things list and it doesn’t make for very good reading. I’ve got about 9 months to go and I’ve only completed 18. Eighteen??!! Yoikes.

I think #59 Move somwhere with a garden… can be ticked off, given that I’ve moved somewhere and that somewhere has a garden. Although I should probably have finished #22 Make something for each room in the house before I moved somewhere with more than double the number of rooms. Schoolboy error, that one!

#73 Eat fresh pineapple was there for the taking, but I didn’t follow through.

In fact that’s twice I’ve had a pineapple sitting in the kitchen for the sole purpose of being eaten in the name of #73. And that’s twice I’ve let it sit there until it’s too old to eat. Total fail. Although I do like the picture

I have been continuing, somewhat haphazardly, with #69 Try 2 new recipes every month. I tried a a new gluten-free-adapted pear cheesecake recipe and a new welcome drink at Christmas (prosecco + cranberry juice + passion fruit juice = yum) because clearly there’s no time better for trying new recipes than when you’re also trying to cook Christmas dinner for the first time, for 12 people *facepalm*.

I also made chocolate orange cupcakes for a pot luck party, complete with chocolate orange buttons as decoration. Yum

In a couple of cheats, #16 Finish the bedroom curtain is done. Not because I finished the curtain, but because I moved house and the curtain is no longer required. Loophole? Definitely! But my list doesn’t have any small print

I’ve also swapped Diablo III for Torchlight 2 in #48 Play Diablo III.

They’re both RPGs so I figure they’re close enough. Plus Diablo III requires an internet connection and I didn’t have one for 5 weeks (did I really survive that?!) after moving house. Torchlight 2 was kind enough not to require that, so it got my money instead

Anyway, although this is a somewhat longwinded post, it’s unfortunately not down to me completing lots of things. I really need to step up my game in 2013…

Christmas Catchup

It’s been a pretty memorable Christmas here at whatktmadenext. Not content with moving house, Richard and I decided to host Christmas. It started out with Richard’s parents, one of his sisters and his uncle, then expanded to include my parents, then expanded again to include my brother and his wife, then expanded again to include my brother’s wife’s parents! So having never cooked a Christmas dinner in my life, I ended up cooking for 12!!

The day was awesome! I love a big Christmas and this one was no exception. It was lovely to show off the house and share the day with lots of family. Plus the table looked so pretty all decked out in blue and silver with cute snowflake place names, courtesy of Richard, who spent what seemed like several hundred hours on the PC (or maybe it was just one and he was hiding so he could avoid peeling potatoes. I’d do that!).

Plus the Christmas pudding was on fire (literally). Richard’s Dad clearly has the knack for flaming puddings, whilst I am clearly missing the knack for taking decent photos!

All in all, I think the day was a success and as a bonus, that’s something ticked off my rather neglected 101 Things list: #77 Cook a proper Christmas dinner with all the trimmings on Christmas day.

Time for a change – part 1

Oh dear – my poor neglected blog! Well, I’m back and it’s time for an update.

So I’ve been a bit off the crafty scene for a while. I’ve been reading blogs and pinteresting but actual craft and blogging has taken a massive back seat to house hunting. Over the last 6 months or so, hubby and I have been gearing up to move. We’d outgrown our flat and the commute to work combined with noise from downstairs and some not so lovely local families had slowly been driving us mad. So it was time to move. Somewhere quieter. Somewhere closer to work. Somewhere with space and a garden.

And finally we found a house and moved in last week!! It’s nearer work, has 3 bedrooms, a garden, a garage and 4 (four!!) hall cupboards for all our stuff. When the seller opened the first one and said “this is where we keep our shoes”, I knew we were on to a winner!

So that’s the first change that’s in progress. There’s more to come…