Projects in Progress - An Update

This week on the podcast, Christen asked us about our current projects, and we got into a lengthy discussion about what we’ve been working on, unfinished projects, and projects that we finally gave up on. I thought this would be a great opportunity to share some updates on several of the projects and topics we’ve covered since we began this podcast and blog last November. 

December Daily: I just posted an update on this project in August, but in case you missed it, yes, I am still obsessed, and yes, I did get up early on August 31 to order my kits. I got almost everything I wanted, but I was very disappointed that a set of stencils was already sold out by the time I added it to my box and checked out. Now it’s just a waiting game for November to arrive so I can start the classes that go along with all the fun supplies I bought, and I’ll probably also begin making a few foundation pages so I can just print photos and add some quick journaling once December finally comes. Until then, I can start sketching out a few ideas and I can get this craft room cleaned up so I have someplace to work! But that’s another project altogether….

One Little Word:  I’m still working on my OLW project. September’s prompt feels particularly difficult to me because it is a photo prompt, and I am having a hard time concentrating on how best to capture the prompt phrases with photography in a meaningful way. I don’t have time to get out the camera during the day when the lighting is right, and everything I’ve tried to capture so far has not done the job. I think part of the problem is that I just haven’t had the time to sit with my feelings and my camera, and so the photos I’ve taken have not been anything more than superficial and bland. In the meantime, I just keep taking pictures and hoping that when I come back to them at the end of the month, I will have captured the essence of the prompts and will be happy with them. I usually am, but it’s just so hard.

PowerSheets and Happy Planners:  December Daily isn’t the only project with product launches in the fall.  In the past few weeks, I’ve also scoped out the new planner I will be using for 2023 – this gorgeous disc-bound beauty from Happy Planner. I love that it is minimalistic with neutral colors so I can personalize it to my own tastes. I also love the hard cover, which makes it much more sturdy and portable than the traditional Happy Planners. 

The 2023 PowerSheets won’t launch until October 12, but coming up on October 1 is the quarterly refresh. I’ve been thinking a lot about what goals I will revise, drop, and adopt for this last quarter of 2022. I started the last quarter with most of the same goals I have been chasing since the start of the year and I was all geared up to blast through them with a surge of productivity and motivation, but before July was over, I received some news that had me changing my perspective. Suddenly, many of those goals were on hold or were not important at all, and other priorities took their place. Now, I’m taking a hard look at where I spend my time and what is really important to me, and I’m thinking a reboot might be in order.

Christmas Cards:  I have a confession…I did not send Christmas cards last year. Yes, we did an episode about cards, and I talked about how I send dozens of them every year, but when push came to shove, I just didn’t get mine done in time. Blame it on the time-consuming project of moving my mother out to a memory-care facility, moving our dear friend, Koy, in, tending to Koy’s medical and social needs, our bout with COVID in November, or even the remodeling project that that started in November and didn’t end until January, I just did not finish my cards. So here they still sit, waiting for me to finish them and send them out this year.  What I did do last year was to write a nice letter (with an apology for the lack of cards) and call it done. I also spent some time this summer reassessing the design of the cards to lessen the assembly time, and I picked up where I left off. This was a good thing, because I made a critical mistake when I cut one of the pieces, and I had to cut about 150 pieces over again. Needless to say, I am still working on the cards, bit by bit, and hope to have them finished in November.

Mindful Messages Journal:  I think I mentioned this on the podcast, but I’m not sure. Last year for Christmas, Amber gave me a deck of “Mindful Messages” oracle cards. This lovely deck features suggestive reminders to stay positive, grounded, and grateful while encouraging independence, authenticity, and individuality. I started the year by adding them to my daily card draw along with my tarot and oracle cards, and I quickly decided I wanted to use them as a jumping-off point for a little creative journaling each day. An A5 dot-grid journal made a perfect canvas for a little stamping, and I’ve tasked myself with journaling a positive and meaningful affirmation every day, illustrated by a stamped or hand-drawn image. The artwork is doubly useful: it helps cement the affirmation in my memory and mindset, and it is forcing me to use the thousands of stamps I’ve collected over the years, some of which have never been opened. When I can’t find a relevant stamp, I either piece an image together using multiple stamps, or I sketch an appropriate icon or symbol. It’s been a fun and creative challenge for me, and I often flip back through previous pages, further embedding the positive messages in my psyche. It truly is a win-win!

Cleaning and Organizing:  Yeah…no. The plan in January was to get my house back in order after all the renovations and the revolving door of housemates, but everything seems to have taken so much longer than I thought it would.  I finally got my curtains hung and my living and dining rooms pieced back together just in time for our recent Labor Day BBQ, but I still have a stack of artwork and photos that need to be hung in the spare bedroom, and my garage is still stacked waist-high with boxes. I ask for help, and I get crickets. On top of this, my craft room/office/studio is still overrun by boxes of my mother’s mementos that need to be sorted, cleaned, and…well, I’m not sure what I’m going to do with all of it. This “organization” project (or projects) is going to have to stay on hold until I finish my most pressing project – my taxes. More on that later….

Weight Loss:  Okay, so here’s one project that has been going pretty well. I’ve talked about my struggles with weight loss, diabetes, arthritis, and my busy schedule. I may have even mentioned my extreme dislike for exercise or anything that causes sweat, but did I tell you about my love-hate relationship with medication? On the one hand, there are some pretty fantastic medications that help me with my blood sugar, but on the other, they are very, very expensive. Many medications cause a plethora of side effects that are miserable enough to make The Hulk cry. One such drug had the horrible side effect of causing severe edema in my legs and feet, and the drug itself was so ineffective (but cheap!) that it didn’t even really work. I wound up gaining 35 pounds that immediately started to drop off again once I changed medications, albeit very slowly.  I’m still 12 pounds over where I was this time last year, but it is coming off. Still, it’s very frustrating to see your hard work go to naught, and to have the medicine that is supposed to make you better actually make you worse. All in all, I am very fortunate to have settled on a drug cocktail that is working well, with (mostly) tolerable side effects, and although I am going to have to get more diligent if I’m going to meet my year-end weight loss goal, I could still do it.

Unfinished Craft Projects:  This topic ties into so many episode topics that we’ve already covered…self-care, balancing home and work, motivation…the list could go on and on. I have a craft room full of unfinished projects, many of which I still want to tackle if I could only do a better job of managing my time. I keep telling myself, “If I could just finish…” then I would have time for…but I’m not sure that’s even true. Things, tasks, responsibilities, people, and problems always seem to have a way of appearing at the most inopportune time – it never ends. And while everyone agrees that self-care is important, it does not pay the bills, wash the laundry, or write that business proposal, so most of the time, that self-care or downtime (or whatever you want to call it) has to wait. I did manage to sneak in some mindless diamond painting while I edited podcasts, finishing a piece I started at Christmas last year, and I have almost finished binding a table runner I started about 18 months ago. I’ve also been trying very hard to catch up on (or at least not get further behind with) my weekly Project Life photo album. I’m going to have to start working a little faster if I’m going to get caught up by the end of the year.

Travel Business:  After a nearly two-year hiatus due to COVID, my cruise business is finally picking up again. Last month, I signed on with the GreenMan Studios in Southlake to organize a holistic cruise, and I’m working with a couple of scholastic groups for scholarship fundraiser cruises. Families are starting to want to travel more, too, so I’m staying pretty busy. I’m not complaining because this is the kind of work I love to do, and I’ve been missing it. Still, it’s hard to get back into the swing of things, and with so many other projects demanding my time, I’m worried about what might have to take a backseat. You can bet it won’t be something I want to pass off to someone else or just drop altogether. It will likely be one of those fun creative projects I’ve been looking forward to finishing up. Oh well….

Bookkeeping and Taxes:  I hate, hate, hate, hate, hate this right now. Do you get that I hate it? Normally, this would not be a big deal, but when my mother moved in with us in January 2020, I was just getting ready to sit down and dig into my 2019 taxes. I kept trying to work on them, but she was such a distraction, and then COVID happened. Not only was I incapable of working on the 2019 taxes, but the 2020 weekly bookkeeping fell woefully behind, and I didn’t get 2019 finished until my extension expired in the fall. Then I started in on the 2020 bookkeeping but still had the same problems…there were too many people in my house, too much noise, too many distractions, and I just got further and further behind. I finished the 2020 bookkeeping just in time to file my taxes in October (thank GOD for extensions!), and then I started on 2021. That’s where I am now. I don’t have all the same people in the house, but the distractions are still there…cleaning up and restoring order after the renovations, medical appointments, more medical appointments, friends, family, and now it looks like I might need to move Mom again in the next few months. I’m currently adding the July receipts into my accounting software, and I think I have about two weeks to get it all wrapped up so the accountant can get it sent off to the IRS in time. It takes a full 12-hour day of work with no distractions to do one month’s worth of bookkeeping. I have no idea how I will get it done.

So that’s the basics of all the projects I’m working on right now. There are probably a ton of little things I forgot, but I think you can see the bigger picture…I’ve got my hands in a lot of different pies. Some are golden and delicious, and some are pure mud, but I guess that’s the essence of life anyway, isn’t it? We have a lot of stuff we must do in order to afford the stuff we want to do, or maybe just so we can appreciate the stuff we really enjoy. In the end, it’s all just stuff and it is what we make of it.

Are you as busy as I am? Do you have a lot of projects in progress? Are there projects you hate but you still have to do them? Tell us about it in the comments, or start a conversation on the MMC Chat Facebook group.

 

My, How Time Flies!

Welcome to another week of the Modern Musings podcast and blog. If you’ve been listening to the podcast, you’ve probably heard us tell the tale of how Amber, Christen, and I had each thought about hosting a blog, vlog, or podcast of some sort, and how we came to the inspiration of doing one together. That was about a year ago, and it feels like a whirlwind came along and swept us off our feet, because here we are, counting down the days until we launch our 50th episode this Wednesday. Yes, you read that right – FIFTY episodes!

Somehow, while we were busy recording, editing, writing, posting, and living our lives, we managed to launch 50 episodes (that’s counting all the bonus ones like Eckhart Tolle and “Excuse Me While I Read My Tarot”), and we are simply amazed at how quickly the time has flown by. For the podcast this week, we thought it might be fun to share a “look” back at some of the hits and misses, laughter, tears, and even snoozes that happened while we were busy having all this fun. We’ve talked about a lot of different topics in that time, and many things have happened and changed since that magical day last November when we launched that less- than-impartial discourse about December Daily. I thought now might be a good time to fill you in on those changes and updates, and maybe talk a little bit about what’s coming up.

To get us started, I want to circle back to where it all began – with December Daily. I told you when we started this thing, I am obsessed with December Daily. I’d have to be, right? Only someone obsessed would talk about a one-month project all year long. But I swear, I am not the only one! A quick search on Facebook reveals 20+ groups, both public and private, before I quit scrolling, the largest of which is the “official” group with upwards of 13,000 members. Likewise, a quick look on Instagram revealed more than 20 hashtags that I know are linked to the project, with likely dozens if not hundreds more that I don’t know about – the most popular among them being the simplest #decemberdaily with 366,000+ posts.

One of the reasons we started with December Daily was because of timing. Christen and I wanted to share our enthusiasm for this project, and it just so happened that a December Daily event was going to occur on November 6 – the Saturday after our first podcast launch. But really, the excitement for December Daily begins for us in August, when Ali Edwards, the creator of this phenomenon, announces the launch date for her line of December Daily products. And that’s one of the reasons why I wanted to talk about it here, today. As of this writing, my cohorts and I are eagerly awaiting the introduction of her new products so that we can jump online on release day (August 31 here) and scramble to grab all the merchandise we want for our album projects before it sells out. It’s a big game of hurry-up and wait because the products won’t even ship until some time in October. Once we receive our orders, we have to wait some more until November, when the classes launch. From then on, we are working on our albums, often setting up pages in advance so that all we have to do is add photos and a bit of journaling when December rolls around. 

That’s the plan, anyway, but I always seem to wind up so busy that I get behind about mid-December, and then it takes several more months to get it finished. In fact, I didn’t finish my 2021 December Daily  album until June (watch for a YouTube flip-through coming soon), and some participants deliberately hold off on finishing, dragging it out all year so as to be “done by December” in time to start again. I admit, December Daily may not be it for everyone, but it definitely is a big deal to a lot of crafters, and it’s something I look forward to all year, which is why you’ll hear me reference it a lot. 

Three other topics that we talk about on the podcast from time to time are our One Little Word projects, Happy Planners, and Cultivate What Matters PowerSheets®. All of these projects also have fall “launch” dates that enable participants to purchase kits and supplies in advance of the new year. I like to get my planners and PowerSheets® set up and ready to go by the end of December so I can get right to work on January 1. I also usually choose my word of the year in the fall, so that I’m ready to start living my word with the new year. I’m already starting to think about my word options for next year, and I’m thinking I may take Christen’s lead in choosing something a little less challenging for 2023. The last few words have been a lot of work for me, and while they’ve brought about a lot of change in my life and my outlook on life, I think it might be time to look at something more fun or easy. Alternatively, I might try something like create or craft, which both have multiple meanings but embrace the idea of digging into my art a little more purposefully. I’m sure we’ll do another reveal sometime in the fall and we hope you’ll share your words with us, too!

Rereading “A New Earth” by Eckhart Tolle was not in my original plans for 2022, but what a powerful book this has been in my life this past year! When I first read it, I felt like so much finally made sense, and I was so excited to share it with Christen and Amber (and with the world) that it was worth reading again, this time with a more studious eye. I often worried that it was just a bit too much because we presented it in such a drawn-out way. There was so much information, so many concepts, and such deep thoughts that it sometimes felt like we were just shoveling it into a big heap on top of our listeners. I can only hope that as you read along with us, you were able to decipher what we felt so challenged to share. I only know that it has been an instrument of profound change in my life, more on which I will share at another time. 

Now, as we head into fall, I am excited and looking forward to all these familiar patterns, routines, and habits, but I am also looking forward to all the fun topics we have coming up in the next 50 episodes and beyond. Amber, Christen, and I sat down a few weeks ago and started brainstorming new ideas for topics in 2023, and I’m really excited about all the conversations we’re going to have about everything from Disney Princesses to menopause, and from horror movies to making your bed. It’s going to be interesting. We hope you’ll hang around to share it with us.

Share your thoughts about our first 50 episodes below or join us on Facebook in our MMC Chat group.

December Bucket List

Hi everyone, thanks for stopping by today. My name is Christen Hessler. I hope that everyone is enjoying your fall and living in every moment. I am sure that many of you are just now winding down from Halloween and haven't even begun to think about Thanksgiving, but before you know it, Christmas will be here and gone! So really, truly make sure to live every moment while you can. Today, I want to share with you a fun way to enjoy all the things around the holidays and specifically December’s festivities. Since we have been talking about December Daily, I thought this would be a great time to discuss this because you can incorporate some of these everyday activities into your December Daily. 

December has many fun things to offer for my family: not only Christmas and Hanukkah, but my mother and husband’s birthdays as well. Let’s not forget some of Hollywood’s best movies come out between Thanksgiving and Christmas too. Our daughter, Reyna, is out of school, so we get to spend more quality time with her, and to wrap it all up neatly at the end, there is New Year’s Eve to celebrate as well. 

When it comes to December, or any time during winter really, I like to think up all the fun things that my family and I really don’t do any other time of the year, and we start planning who we might want to include in those fun activities. I really do enjoy planning out my holidays. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a rigid schedule of events, but there are just so many traditions and holiday activities that I enjoy. I know if I do not plan at least some of it out, I will end up missing a lot of things that I wanted to do. It is easy to get caught up spending each weekend watching Hallmark movies. The worst is when you want to do something fun with the family, or you have relatives in town, and you stress yourself out trying to find something exciting to do at the last minute. 

The best remedy is to have a bucket list! That's right, I said it. It is completely ok to have a bucket list, and let me just preface this with a reminder that you don’t have to do it all. Now, if your family is down for a challenge, that's an activity of its own, trying to knock out as many “Christmas clichés” as humanly possible. I did that one year and it was a blast - but you don’t have to make it too complicated. 

Over the years, I have compiled a massive list of fun things to do that have helped me live in the moment during the month of December. I wanted to share this list with you because I have implemented it in my December Daily scrapbook in order to capture all the little moments and quirky traditions that my family has cultivated over the years. I have captured and documented those moments so that we can look back at them and reminisce. Below are some of the bucket list items I wanted to share with you today to get your mind buzzing and to hopefully give you a starting off point towards creating your very own list. 

• Enjoy a favorite beverage from Starbucks or local coffee shop

• Coordinate matching buffalo plaid outfits with co-workers, friends or family.

• DIY ugly Sweaters

• Make handmade Christmas ornaments

• Host or attend a cookie/candy/ornament swap

• Make handmade holiday greeting cards

• Build a fort in the living room

• Bake cranberry bread

• Wear festive jewelry (the gaudier the better)

• Grown-up hot cider and snowplows

• Take the dogs/kids for a snow hike

• Create your own holiday music playlist

• Buy a gift for the “angel tree” or a community gift program

• Send over some homage baked goods to your neighbors

• Christmas pajama fashion show

• Make paper snowflakes

• Make paper garlands

• Decorate gingerbread houses or gingerbread men

• Tip the mail carrier and other service providers

• Holiday themed mani-pedi

• Read Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol”

• Share the “Gift of the Magi”  with the children

• Holiday themed family or pet photo shoot

• End of year letter to friends and family

• Watch a scary or nontraditional holiday movie

• Go to the movies and see a December blockbuster

• Go ice skating or play hockey

• Family game night

• Go see a performance of “The Nutcracker”

I hope that this list gets you inspired for the holiday season! There is a FREE downloadable version of this list that you can print off and add to your holiday planner, family binder, or even stick to your fridge! There are so many creative things that can be done with the list. You can add them to your December Daily as an actual bucket list or simply use the list you create while planning out fun activities for your family during the holiday season. I personally love the idea of using the list as a starting point for capturing the memories during the festivities. I would love to hear what some of your must-do activities are during the month of December. Is there anything that you are hoping to try differently this year? Please make sure to add to the comments.

 

A Little Christmas in November? Oh My!

Hi! It’s Cindy Murray again, and I’m here with our first official blog post to discuss one of my favorite topics – December Daily®. Why, you may ask, are we talking about December in our very first blog post when it's only November? Well, it’s sort of a long story, but if you’ve got a few minutes, I’d love to share it!

I have long been a “Christmas Purist”. I love the holidays, but I feel like Halloween should be celebrated in October, Thanksgiving in November, and Christmas in December. I don’t listen to Christmas music until after Thanksgiving, and I get really annoyed at Hobby Lobby and other retailers who start pushing Christmas decorations in June, but then only offer Thanksgiving décor for a few short weeks in November. What’s the deal with that? Either offer it all year long, or only at the appropriate time…but I digress….

 

I know this makes me sound like a total scrooge, but really I’m not. I love Christmas. I love everything about it, and I like to go all-out from the Friday after Thanksgiving until January 1^st. We have family activities all month long, and my kids sort of move-in with me again for a couple of weeks while we celebrate. We decorate the tree together, bake cookies, make crafts, and just about every other cliché Christmas activity you can name. On top of that, my birthday falls in December, and who doesn’t want to celebrate their “birthday month” in grand style? As far as I’m concerned, December truly is the most wonderful time of the year.

 

I’m also a scrapbooker, shutter-bug, and burgeoning genealogist, so it’s always been important to me to document our family history, recording as many details about our family exploits as I can possibly capture. So when a friend told me about December Daily® (also sometimes called “December Documented”), I was fascinated. The idea is simple…December is about so much more than just Christmas day, and by only focusing on December 25, we miss out on all the other things that happen in December. I can totally relate to that, because, as just about anyone with a December birthday can attest, our special day tends to get overlooked in all that merry making. Rather than make a scrapbook or photo album that only includes Christmas, December Daily® prompts us to capture the spirit of the holidays by telling one story every day for the entire month.

 

I started my first December Daily® album in 2019, and I loved it so much I did it again in 2020. You can see flip-through videos on my Crafty Neighbor YouTube channel. My daughter, and co-host, Christen has joined me both years, and we’ve even coaxed my 10-year-old granddaughter into participating. We enjoyed the process so much that we quickly adopted it as one of our favorite holiday traditions. We even have a tradition of going to Starbuck’s on December 1^st to kick off our documenting with a tasty beverage before heading home to get crafty. But the fun of December Daily® really starts long before December 1^st.

The creator of December Daily®, Ali Edwards, has been facilitating this fun project since 2007, and through her company, Ali Edwards Designs, she offers high quality memory-keeping supplies geared towards this project, including stamps, papers, and a wide assortment of ephemera and embellishments. She also offers online courses to help inspire participants with new tips and techniques. Her products and classes are wildly popular, and many of her fans make a whole production of getting ready, prompting Ali to begin a December Daily® Prep Day tradition where participants join in live streams with Ali and her design team. 

 

The 2021 Prep Day is scheduled for Saturday, November 6, and I, for one, am super excited to spend a day in November doing something that I once would have refused to do until December. Does that knock me out of my membership in the Christmas Purist club? I’ll let you decide…I’ll be too busy crafting Christmas layouts for my December album while I snack on all the leftover Halloween candy.

For more information about Ali Edwards Design, Inc. or December Daily®, visit AliEdwards.com

To see a flip-through video of my 2020 December Daily album, click here:

2020 December Daily Flip-Through