Hello 2017!

Hello there stranger! It’s been such a long time since my last post!

I didn’t mean to stop blogging. I love my little blog and I love the community I have built up with it over the last 4 years. I’m made some amazing friends and I love looking back at old posts that have captured some wonderful memories. Somehow, life got in the way however, and we drifted apart a little. A lot of the faces have changed since we last caught up, and I’m sad to have lost touch with some of the amazing bloggers I got to know, but with the New Year I am looking forward to a new challenge and meeting some new faces.

2016 was an amazing year for me. I got to travel to San Francisco, Orlando and Seattle. I became an auntie, I changed jobs to become a Business Development Manager. I have thrown myself into voluntary work, including completing my 5th blood donation and spending my Christmas with an isolated elderly person in addition to my weekly volunteering with the Royal Voluntary Service. I also ran three 10k races for Macmillan Cancer Support. Oh, and I discovered a love for geocaching (but more on that later…)

As you can see,

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November 2015 Goals

November already! Is anyone else finding they blink and a whole month has gone? We’re getting scarily close to Christmas now! I hope you’ve all had a good few months – sorry I missed my monthly goals again in October! I was only getting round to updating my goals by the middle of the month so I decided to hold off a couple of weeks so that it lined up with the beginning of the month again! Hopefully things will get back on track now! Anyway, here is the summary of how I faired with my September goals, and the goals I am setting for the month of November. Enjoy!

September/October Outcomes:

Once Upon A Time Sampler – I had really hoped to get that banner in but I have been so off cross stitching recently…I think the Barcelona Sunset took it out of me! At the minute I am just about keeping up with the monthly designs (not that it was finished when I took the photo but it is now, I promise!) which isn’t too bad, if the banner has to be added as a late addition then so be it!

Cut Thru’ Caravan – I was really hoping to make serious progress on this over the last few months but since I lost my cross stitch mojo it’s just not got anywhere! Sadly I’ve accepted that it isn’t going to be ready in time for Christmas (it would have been a tight squeeze anyway!) so it has been put to one side for now while I focus on other Christmas gifts and I will complete it for Christmas 2016 instead!

September 2015 Goals

Blimey, where are the weeks going??? Once again, we are in the middle of the month before my goals are going up and it’s been four weeks since my last post again! Time seems to be galloping ahead without me at the moment but I’m desperately trying to rein it in and get posts up more frequently! But for the meantime, here are the outcomes of my August goals, and the goals I have set myself for September.

August Outcomes:

Once Upon a Time Sampler – In August my aim was to get the two remaining frames stitched in as well as the design for the month and I completed this so I was thrilled that it is almost up to date! I even managed to make a tiny start on the banner at the top…can you see it? Also, a sneak peek of the September design there too – this month is Black Beauty!

Cut Thru’ Caravan – I also managed to finish the page of the Caravan pattern that I was working on! It is coming together nicely but I am starting to realise that meeting my deadline of Christmas doesn’t look likely to happen – especially with all of the other presents I still need to make!

August 2015 Goals

So sorry I’ve been MIA for a few weeks now! July turned out to be a really stressful month in the end and unfortunately something had to give to help me maintain my sanity (or what I had left of it anyway!) Blogging just wasn’t a priority for me while I had so many other things demanding my attention but luckily I now seem to be getting myself back on track. As always, while I was on my blogging summer break I have been busy with all sorts of things that I have ready to share with you! But for now, I’ll recap on those goals I set way back at the beginning of June! Plus I have risked setting some goals for the remaining two weeks of August (when did it get to the middle of August???) so we will see how I get on with those this month…

June/July Outcomes:

Once Upon a Time Sampler – This one was a success! I managed to get the frames for June and July filled in with no problems…it stitched up really quickly! I do love working on the little design each month to give me a break from my bigger projects!

Barcelona Sunset – My aim for June was to finish stitching the lizard (achieved!) and to stitch half of the wall (not achieved.) However, although I didn’t get the wall stitched in, I did make a start on the backstitch. I know, I always go on about how much I hate backstitch! But in comparison to stitching the solid grey mass of the wall, backstitch seemed favourable! I have completed three quarters of the backstich for the whole project now which is really spurring me one! So I didn’t completely achieve the goal in June, but I did beat my overall target for the project (to finish by the end of August) by finishing it at the end of July! I never thought I’d see the end of it but I am thrilled with the result!

June 2015 Goals

Hello!

I hope you’re all doing well 🙂 I can’t believe June is here already! Where is 2015 going??? Almost half way there already! Anyway, here is the roundup of my May goals so you can see how I did, as well as my goal setting for June – these lists seem to be growing and growing!

May Outcomes:

Once Upon a Time Sampler – In May my aim was just to fill in the square for that month and I managed that without any problems. I seem to fly through these at the beginning of each month then it gets shelved and almost forgotten until the next month comes round! It’s a shame because it is such a lovely project and I do want to dedicate more time to it to get all of the extra elements in but until the Barcelona Sunset is out of the way it will have to wait!

Barcelona Sunset – This month I wasn’t too far off my goal. I still had some of the third quarter to finish off which I did, then I wanted to complete half of the next quarter. Ideally, I wanted to get the lizard stitched in so that I just had the big grey wall at the bottom to finish off this month. I didn’t quite make it there due to illness and various other things taking up my time in May, however, I’m really pleased with what I achieved. If I hadn’t been full of cold for the last five days I would have managed to fill in that grey section that I’m working on, and I would have felt satisfied with that, but I’m prepared to let it go because I still feel rubbish!

May 2015 Goals

Hello!

A little later than anticipated but here is my round up of my April goals and how I did! Also, goal setting for May too!

April Outcomes:

Once Upon a Time Sampler – No progress on this one sadly! I didn’t manage to get those last two frames in because I was spending all of my time working on my Barcelona Sunset as that is my priority right now. I am staying with my parents this weekend though so I am packing my sampler with me since I obviously can’t work on my Mum’s present! I have saved this month’s design to stitch while I am here but if I get that done before the end of the weekend I might have time to add a frame too.

Barcelona Sunset – I am so close to finishing this quarter right now! i just have a block of grey across the bottom that no matter how much I stitch it just doesn’t seem to get any smaller! However, I should be on track to finish this quarter by the end of next week at the very latest (since I am losing this weekend!) so then I’ll be ready to tackle the final one.

Bank Holiday Shopping, Cocktails and a Catch-Up!

Hello! Did you all have a lovely bank holiday weekend? I had a great time! Particularly on Saturday when I was having a much needed catch up and shopping spree with a couple of my school friends!

I’ve known Becky since primary school, and we met Catherine when we were in the same form at high school. We saw each other on and off throughout University but the three of us haven’t all got together for almost 5 years! Me and Becky now work in central Leeds, so Catherine made the trip over to West Yorkshire for us to all get together for some retail therapy and cocktails! We had lots of fun with lots of gossip and some good food…we were all shattered by the end of it…we need some more practice I think!

And here is a sneak peek at my shopping:

April 2015 Goals

Hello!

Last month I set myself some monthly goals to try and achieve everything that I wanted to in March. By setting myself the deadline of the end of the month I hoped that I would feel motivated to complete everything on my list to get it all done. Overall it didn’t pan out quite as I had hoped! However, I’m not going to let that put me off setting monthly goals; here I have written a summary of how my March goals worked out (or didn’t!) and what I want to achieve in the month of April. Hopefully although I didn’t get as much done as I was hoping to last month, I will still be able to achieve big things this month!

March Outcomes:

Once Upon A Time Sampler – Last month I set myself the goal of stitching the four remaining frames on the bottom of the sampler. Unfortunately I didn’t get all four done but I did manage two so that it something! Easter Weekend also spurred on my productivity with this project as I dedicated it to stitching this month’s design so I feel like I am off to a good start with this one in April, even though I didn’t manage to do everything I wanted to with it in March.

Barcelona Sunset – Again, I had hoped to get a bit more of this done than I did. You can see from the photo below that I did make progress, but I was hoping to have that big gap in the middle filled in by the end of March! I just really wasn’t in the mood for cross stitching in March for some reason, but I do seem to have been bitten by the bug again the last few days so hopefully April will see a lot more productivity!

March 2015 Goals

Writing my 23 Before 23 Review last week has got me motivated to set some goals for myself. I’m the kind of person who works much better if I have a deadline and I am super productive if I set myself a challenge. I have set myself some long term goals to achieve this year which I will blog about shortly, but I have also decided to set myself some shorter monthly goals too. These monthly goals will sometimes be ones that help the general progress towards my long term goals, or will otherwise just be shorter goals or jobs that I want to complete before the end of the month. I have tried to pick a range of goals from different areas of my life such as crafts, reading, fitness and blogging, to help inspire me to achieve everything that I want to achieve by breaking it down to regular milestones each month.

Crafts:

Once Upon A Time Sampler – So far I have been making good progress with my sampler and keeping up with each month well. This month I want to stay on track and complete the design, I also want to add the bottom row of 4 frames which I am still yet to add. So far I have stitched the first 8 frames, so if I can add the last of the frames this month, it only leaves me the banner at the top to complete at a later date ,then I am definitely on track to complete each design per month! If I can keep up with my plans, this will be the first year that I don’t have to play catch up…fingers crossed anyway!

Barcelona Sunset – February was a good month for this project! I have been working on a ‘2 month’ basis for each quarter of the project, meaning that I had given myself February and March to get to the half way point. Luckily though, the quarter that I chose to do featured a lot of the sky, and as this feature large blocks of the same colour, as well as some blank areas, it stitched up a lot quicker than expected. This meant that I flew through this quarter in only one month! I was thrilled to watch the progress but the project is starting to take its toll now. I’m struggling to find the motivation to press on with this project, and as the remaining half features a lot of colourful areas that will require a lot of colour changes I know that progress will be slow. However, I don’t want it to go on the back burner since I am working to such a tight deadline, so this month I just want to complete half of the next section to feel satisfied.

Total Couch To 5K!

Recently my Facebook wall has been covered with people taking part in various Couch to 5K running programmes, which are designed for people who do very little or even no exercise, to get them running 5K in just a few weeks! I used to do a lot of running when I was going to the gym 4 times a week but then a lack of time and money intervened! Since then, I’ve put back on all of the weight that I had spent months working off at the gym and then some *sigh* but I have decided that I’d quite like to lose some of the weight again, but mainly I’d just like to feel healthy again! When I was doing a lot of running I completed the Race For Life 5K race in about 25 minutes so it would be nice to be able to accomplish that again!