named.

the etsy shop has a name.

the etsy shop has a twitter.

the etsy shop has a pinterest.

the etsy shop name is named after my blog but does not have the same name as my blog. i'm sticking with a theme of figuring out life and finding my wings so to speak.

this blog is about my life. my life with my husband. my life as a woman. my life as someone who creates. someday i hope to mention a kid on this blog once and awhile (this will not be a baby blog).

i am so excited about this and i cannot wait to share everything here with you.

for now, follow me on pinterest and on twitter to get the latest updates for everything. i will be posting when the shop opens and when i have a sale, but that's about it for the shop promoting on this blog. there will be links on the sidebar so it will be linked to this blog.

this is a huge deal for me. i'm so excited to share this here and hopefully grow my audience.

happy weekend!! i'll hopefully be back to a regular blogging schedule next week. 2012 has the potential to be great.

resolutions.

i'm not into resolutions.

i am continuously making goals for my life thinking about where i am headed, where i want to go and what i need to do to get there.

this year i decided to approach things differently. i have goals that i always want to achieve and things i always want to do. these aren't resolutions. but as the new year approached i decided to think about what i wanted the year as a whole to look like and if my goals were going to fit with that or if i needed to make some changes.

ben and i talked about what we wanted for ourselves and our relationship as well as what the year will look like for us in terms of events, vacations, etc. i really liked having a conversation about it, even if i had to twist ben's arm a little to get him to participate!

i also chose a word of the year to remind myself what i need to be focused on.

my word is change. i know there's going to be a lot of change this year and i'm totally on board with it.

this blog will also hopefully change this year. i have a direction i'd like the blog to go in and some ideas for regular posts. this will make it easier for me to blog and more interesting for the 0 people that read this thing ;)

i have talked about opening an etsy shop for over a year. it's really time to get myself in gear and actually do it. i finally have a list of things that i want to sell and feel comfortable enough making to sell to other people. we are moving in february, so once i have a space to create and i'm not packing i will get the shop up and running. the shop will be announced here and hopefully i'll be able to promote it through twitter, and maybe even other blogs. i would like the shop to open up by april. earlier would be great but i am trying to be realistic.

i'm really excited about where this year is going to take me and i am staying positive about all the change that will happen.

2012.

happy new year!

ben and i stayed home, ate chinese food & watched lost. at 1145 we turned on that silly nye show to watch the ball drop and promptly fell asleep. i thought it was fun! i'm not a big nye person.

tomorrow i'll be back with goals for this blog and for my life in 2012, and some thoughts about making goals. i started this blog talking about goals and i would like to talk about how different things are now!

i think 2012 is going to be an exciting and eventful year.

goal tending.

I think most people must have some sort of space that inspires them. For some it may be a boat on a lake, for others it may be a mountaintop. For me, my “space” has always been the beach. I love the smell of the salty air, the sounds of the foamy waves as they crash to the shore, and the pale color pallet of white sands and a gray blue ocean. This calm and peaceful place always centers me, reminds me who I am, where I am, and where I’m going. I love the beach so much we even got married there at sunset (I didn’t plan the sunset part). So, it should come as no surprise that going on vacation to the beach would center me and remind me of who I am.

Vacations usually inspire me, regardless of where they are. I think it’s the break from reality that it offers. I’m not thinking about a to-do list, vacuuming, doing laundry, or running errands. On vacation I simply exist. We don’t really plan out our days; we just go with whatever we feel like doing at that moment. I think this break from reality really charges me and helps me think about how I’m doing in this journey we call life. I feel more refreshed and ready to go, which is the whole point of vacation, isn’t it?

I always read when I’m on the beach to pass the time. I have an e-reader but I felt wary about bringing it to the ocean so I picked up a book at Barnes & Noble called The Happiness Project. I have an ever growing list of books I want to read and this was somewhere on it, so I purchased it and planned to read the whole thing that week. Well, I made it through about 200 of the 300 pages, which is honestly remarkably slow for me (one of the perks of vacation). This book is incredible so far, though I’m still reading the end of it.

In The Happiness Project, the author discusses how she thinks she could be happier. She knows she is already happy, and there is no great tragedy going on around her, but she knows she could be a better citizen, daughter, sister, friend, employee, wife and mother. I identified with this sentiment, because while I am generally happy I know that I could be a better citizen, sister, friend, and wife.  So, the author sets small goals on a weekly & monthly basis. I recommend you pick up the book to know more about it, because this isn’t intended to be a book review, just a basis for something I want to do.

The author uses her small goals to make up what she calls her “Happiness Project”. My vacation thoughts combined with this reading had me thinking about doing something similar on my own. I have small goals I’d like to set and keep setting in the future. I think that these smaller goals that go under some overarching themes would certainly make me happier (though, like the author in this case I am definitely happy). I guess you could call it my own Happiness Project, but I am averse to being labeled or labeling things I do, so let’s just say I’m setting goals.

I will be mentioning these goals as I go along, because somehow writing it out will keep me accountable and able to evaluate my progress somehow.  I want to do things like go to bed when I’m tired, do more yoga, stop swearing, go to the dentist more, give more compliments, make smarter purchases, and not mention the socks. I want to do these things to help me stay centered, especially as many big changes happen around me. 

First up: more yoga. I picked yoga first because I feel great when I do yoga and I want to regularly have that sense of feeling so centered, peaceful, and energetic. Those feelings will give me motivation to continue on with my other goals, and other goals will probably happen naturally as a result.