craft

Sleepy Sunday

The weather today has kept me feeling quite lazy, which makes me happy that I decided to go grocery shopping last night. I had today to just relax; my boyfriend and I went out for breakfast at our favorite place which always makes the day a good one! I love just spending time with him. He recently starting listening to Dr. K on YouTube, which in turn means I have been listening to him as well.

Dr. K is a psychologist and he does streams with gamers/streamers and discusses mental heath. The videos are typically 1.5 hours or more, but honestly when I am listening the time seems to go so fast. He does Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and I honestly feel like I have been learning so much more about how the mind works and what questions I should be asking myself. I am excited as I get to see my therapist this coming Friday and I feel like I am truly in a good state of mind where I can make some good progress.

I have been busy crafting and adding new items to my Etsy page; I’m definitely having fun making different Christmas Sweatshirt designs and thinking of gifts to make my friends/family. At the same time I am also being conscious of money so that I am not super stressed after the holidays are over, and I am not overspending on anyone. My boyfriend and I have tattoo appointments the day after Christmas, so those are our gifts to ourselves for this year! That reminds me, I need to email my tattoo artist! I hope everyone has a good upcoming week and you’re all finding a way to relax during this holiday season.

Happy Sunday.

Today I woke up and made breakfast for myself and my boyfriend, and we enjoyed a calm morning together. I spent most of the rest of the day crafting, preparing for my first small shop drop on September 10th! Since not too many people I know follow my blog on here, I want to share a little sneak peak of the drop items on here!

I want to do a relatively small drop for my first one, as I have no clue if people will be interested/participating on this one, and I already have 17 items available for purchase! I am excited about everything I’ve made, and I’m feeling a lot more creative and confident about my crafting!

I’ve been feeling a lot better about my decision when it comes to work, and I am excited to start my new job in a couple of weeks! The goal is to get into a new routine with my job, workout out, crafting, and reading. I want to make sure that I am progressing in life and moving toward my goals, I deserve that for myself.

I am excited for the week ahead, as I feel only good things coming up. I hope that is the same for all of you as well!

Indecisive

I have been going back and forth trying to make a decision about what to do with my job situation. I currently have a job that I like, but I have not been getting my full 40 hours for several weeks now, and it is starting to become stressful. I recently had my manager from my last job reach out and asked if I wanted to work in the billing department for her, and offered $1 more an hour, steady 40 hours a week, no weekends, and give me my vacation time back immediately as if I never left- the issue is the insurance is more expensive as they are a smaller company. So although I would “make more money,” it would be going to my insurance. The one good thing is it is a little closer to home than my current job. I am trying to see if I can get on my boyfriend’s insurance without being married, as we do have a joint account and are both on our current mortgage. If I can do that, that may sway me into going to that job.

On the other hand, I work for a company that wants to keep their employees, and I told them about my offer and how much I would want to get paid to stay and transition into being in their billing team; I had to keep in mind that it is quite a bit further of a drive to work. However, they can let me work from home two days a week once I am fully trained, and I would also have steady hours and not work weekends. I know a lot of people don’t care about the drive, but I just keep thinking about having an hour commute to work and then back, but also how it’ll be even longer in the winter.

In the midst of all of this stress, I came up with a craft drop schedule for my small shop! I will post it with this blog, that way if anyone wants to follow along on my Instagram or Facebook page! I am really excited to take this leap and give myself deadlines; it is important to set goals if you want to reach them! I can think about stuff I want to do as much as I want, but until I put in the work, all those thoughts will ever be are just thoughts. I keep reminding myself that you cannot rely on motivation as it is temporary, you have to rely on yourself, which requires discipline. I set up a crafting schedule so that I am constantly working on projects and being creative; I work well with routine and schedules, so as long as I put it on the schedule it will get done. Also, posting publicly about it also gives that added incentive to get it done and do a good job, as I can just hope someone is waiting to see what I’ve made!

I am open to any thoughts/advice anyone has, and appreciate any who are here reading this! I hope you all have a great week.

Rainy Monday

Today is supposed to be my productive day, and it did not start out how I planned. I had a few things on my to-do list, and this morning I was starting my day at UPS to ship off one of the orders I got over the weekend. It was raining when I left the house, and by the time I got to UPS (which was only six minutes away) it was down-pouring!

I got soaked getting out of my car and when I got in to find out shipping prices I was in shock! $45 to package and ship a couple of mugs to Miami! The girl at the counter was even shocked by the fee and said that Florida rates are high right now. Luckily the girl who ordered from me was understanding and paid for the shipping, but I was shook! Now I had to tell the other two people who made orders how much their shipping costs are and I’m waiting on their responses.

I got very lucky over the weekend and one of my cricut creations was recognized by the Official Cricut Instagram account and they shared my post to their 1.4 million followers and tagged me! I gained some followers on my crafting instagram, my etsy shop got favorited a couple of times, and I had three people place orders with me! So even though this shipping thing is annoying, I’m so grateful that this happened, and am happy to be learning the best ways to ship as a small business!

Now that they shared my work, I have been more confident and motivated and I now want to make/post at least one project weekly! I have been following more pages and hashtags to get inspiration, and I want to start making some fall items! I know it’s still summer for now, but kids are going back to school and fall is right around the corner! I’m also thinking about having a Halloween party again this year and going all out with crafting/decor!

I am going to start planning out projects and times to do certain things as I find it easier to stick to a schedule. My boyfriend and I are also making a list of updates we want to do on the house over the next couple years so we can plan for those. We are still without AC right now but it should be fixed this week- I really hope it’s soon because it’s going to be in the 90s for the next three days!

Overall I’ve had a lot of stress coming up, but also a lot of excitement! I am trying hard to focus on the positive things and be grateful, rather than let the stress bring me down. We will always have stress and not-so-great things that happen to us, but as long as we remember to practice gratitude and be aware of what we have, I feel that can only benefit us in the end.

I’m attaching the photo from instagram that was shared! If you have instagram, go ahead and check out some out the items I’ve made (@jenamadeitems)!

Productive

Yesterday I spent most of the day making gifts for my friend’s upcoming bachelorette party! She asked me to be her maid of honor so I decided to take on making all the goody bags for the party and it’s super fun!

I started my new job at the end of last week and I am feeling very good about this company and office I will be working for! As silly as it may sound, I am excited to have my own little desk/office area and I want to decorate it all cute LOL. It really is the little things.

I keep telling myself I am going to make fitness a priority in my life, so I am going to. I need to work on weight lifting and toning my body; I also want to be stronger in general. I should get working on it while I’m young and make it a habit so life isn’t so hard later in life (going up stairs, going on long walks, etc.) I am on my period right now so I’ve been exhausted, but I can at least stretch and do some yoga.

I am over the cold weather/snow already, I just want it to be nice outside again so I can go on walks regularly and just enjoy the sunshine. Hopefully winter just flies by!

Positive thoughts = positive outcomes (hopefully)

I’ve been thinking a lot about how people manifest great things into their lives and I’ve been trying to do the same. I still need to make my vision board but I am debating getting a new printer and getting printable vinyl or just buying magazines and finding pictures like I used to as a teenager LOL.

I know that I have a purpose, and I don’t know 100% what it is yet, but I know that I like to bring people joy and I want more people to feel in control of their emotions and I feel like I need to help people in some way. Granted, I am nowhere near perfect and I still breakdown and have bad days, and I will always be working to improve myself; but in reality that is everyone, we’re all human.

We need to stop being so hard on ourselves and be more encouraging, as we are to our loved ones! We have no problem telling others that “everything will be okay” and “nobody is perfect, don’t be too hard on yourself,” but we can’t seem to cut ourselves the same slack. Why not?! It is important to have goals and high expectations in yourself, but that doesn’t mean you have to hate on yourself the whole way there!

I’ve been having fun and also getting discouraged with my cricut. I see other people doing awesome projects of much higher skill level, and I see projects where I don’t have the materials I need right now, but that doesn’t mean I won’t be able to get them in the future! And I will always be able to learn these new skills that I am seeing! I just need to remember to be patient and kind with myself, as we all should be with ourselves.

Manifest it

Today was self-care Sunday which mainly included being lazy around the house and playing with my cricut! I made a few small projects and I am so impressed with how easy this is to use! This is going to make Christmas so fun this year!

I am going to meet up with an old coworker/friend sometime soon so she can give me some old magazines so I can have some images for my vision board that I’d like to create! I want to start manifesting some greatness into my life, and what better way to start than getting a little crafty!

I want the board to have different themes in different parts of it such as a part for health/wellness and a part for wealth/financial goals, and I definitely want to include some inspirational mantras that I will constantly read. Some people swear they benefit from vision boards, and honestly it couldn’t hurt to try! Not to mention it’ll just be fun to create!

Below I’ll post the first project I made today, which is clearly not perfect, but please don’t judge and do as it says! LOL