2010. Time for the Best. Year. Ever.

It’s time!

Time for my annual moment of reflection as I look back at the previous year and look forward to the next twelve months. I don’t believe in resolutions, I mean who can keep up with that? I do believe in trying to improve ones life though and I’ve found the best way for me to keep on track with this is by keeping track. Every year I set goals for myself and I look back at the previous year and give myself a progress report. Sometimes a year isn’t enough time to reach a goal or to break a habit, but getting this down on paper (uh, er…”down on paper”) helps me see how far I’ve come or how much further I need to go.

I started this tradition in 2006 and if you’re curious you can read my annual reviews from the past four years here:
2006
2007
2008
2009

This was a big year and a lot happened so I thought I’d begin with a few highlights.
In February, I went to the New York premiere of Handmade Nation. The documentary is complete and quite awesome. And I made the cut! I’m in the documentary talking about how much I love the Renegade Craft Fair. Very appropriate because I do love Renegade!

Faythe, Christy, Deb at NYC Handmade Nation premiere.

There are two new babies in my life! Baby Katie-Mac, daughter of my close friends Margaret and Chris, and Baby Gregory, my new nephew and my sister and brother-in-law’s third child.

I celebrated 5 years at my job in April.

Also in April, I went to my 10 year college reunion. Hard to believe it’s been 10 years! I was elected class secretary. Why? They said because I update my Facebook status the most! I’ve enjoyed being secretary so far. I get nice emails from everyone each time I solicit the ladies for news and I have to say it’s a good thing I enjoy it because it is a five year commitment. Five years!

The other class officers and our beautiful campus.

I’m so excited and proud to say that we celebrated 7 years of marriage in 2009! Davis is the best.

Davis and Christy sittin’ in a tree….

I was published in Button It Up by Susan Beal, 1000 Ideas for Creative Reuse by Garth Johnson, in ReadyMade magazine and on VenusZine.com

We started eating meat again….it had been 17 years for Davis and 7 for me. I still believe in a low meat diet for personal health and for the health of our planet and I think it is important to be aware of where meat comes from and how it has been processed, but honestly I’m really into the concept of fewer confines on my life right now. And it tastes good.

Bacon in a glass at Leon’s

We spent a long weekend on Cumberland Island and I actually went hiking. It was about 7 miles with 40-ish lbs on our backs. This was very out of character for me, but turned out to be tons of fun!

Etsy and Hello Craft wrote about me. Fun fact, I was the 21st person to join Etsy. At Hello Craft‘s Summit of Awesome I was a speaker on a panel about how to organize a craft market and I also did a demonstration on how to screen print. It was a very exciting weekend!

We organized two more ICE events and Kraftwork every month of 2009.

In addition to these amazing events there were two very difficult occurrences this fall. In September, a tree fell on my mom’s house destroying so much of the structure that my family had to move out of the house while it was rebuilt. In December, my grandmother passed away. I will miss her so much. It has been good for me to make the above list of highlights because I think these two situations have made me think 2009 was a bad year, but I see in fact it was not! I’m so thankful that no one was hurt when the tree fell and that the house can be restored and that I had a lovely grandmother all the way into my 30s.

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So now let’s see how I did with 2009’s goals…
_ Loose Weight + Save Money = Go out to eat way less! – Overall, I did not go out to eat less, however there were periods of time when I was really good about not eating out and it was obvious how much more money was available as a consequence. I felt much more financially stable this year. I did not loose weight!
_ Debt – We continued to pay off a lot of debt and I’m currently one payment away from paying off yet another credit card. This feels so good! I highly recommend it!!!
– Bike & Walk – I did the usual amount of walking (which is quite a bit) but didn’t ever get my bike fixed so I failed on this one!
– Drink Water – I did pretty well here and there but wasn’t very consistent. I’ll keep up this new habit this year.
– Pack Lunches – I’d say the later part of the year I have 100% completely failed at this!!! I’ll try again.
– Be more organized – At first glance around my apartment I’d have to give this a resounding no, but I shouldn’t be so quick to declare my failure. I’ve actually adopted some new habits with online organization. I’ve started using the Gmail task list a lot and this has helped me tremendously when it comes to lists of things to do. In the past, I would have one million scraps of paper with lists, and they’d all get lost or end up at the bottom of my purse. With the task list I can keep track of what I need to get done, and I have multiple lists so that I can put items into different categories. I downloaded an app for my phone so I can keep up with my lists all the time. I’ve also started using Google Docs to keep track of my revenue and expenses for a bardis. This is helping me be much more organized.
– Write More – I have started writing my book! Whoohoo! I have my friend Hannah to thank for this. We started a writing group (we like to call it a group and then laugh because it is just the two of us!) and met many times this year to critique each other’s writing. In addition to working on this project I also wrote the above mentioned articles for ReadyMade magazine and VenusZine.com.
– Get professional photos taken of my earrings – My talented friend Meghan McNeer took amazing photos of our beautiful friends Ally, Amy and Leuwam modeling my creations. I love these photos so much!
– Add more stores to my list – I ended the year with my creations in seven shops. I’ve talked to a few more and will expand the list even more in 2010!
– Do three out of town shows – As always, I participated in Renegade Chicago and returned to Crafty Bastards in DC (which I missed so much last year!). I didn’t make it to the west coast and I didn’t participate in a third big out of town market, but I was a vendor at the Summit of Awesome party and did so well in just a couple of hours at this event that I’m going to count it!

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New Goals for 2010:
* Buy a House – We’ve been house hunting since June with many, many ups and downs, twists and turns. It’s been emotionally draining and I’ve felt like my life has been on hold because of it. So ready to be done with this goal!
* Debt – Again, we paid off a lot of debt this past year and I plan to keep on keepin’ on with this long term goal. With the exception of the above mentioned future mortgage, I think within the next few years we’ll be debt free…fingers crossed.
* Loose Weight – I really do want to eat more healthy, exercise and loose some weight. I failed at this last year. Let’s hope I can get on board this year. I’d like to do some biking (but I’ve GOT to get my bike fixed first!) and a lot of cooking at home (this will be fun!).
* A Better abardis.com – I like the blog I’ve created but I want to turn it into a much more spectacular website. I have pretty limited knowledge in this arena, but also enjoy experimenting and trial n’ error. With my limited knowledge, I think getting my blog hosted is the first step to making it better so on New Years Eve I paid for a year of hosting. I just don’t know what to do next! So I’ve got some research to do.
* New a bardis Designs – My head is swarming with new designs for earrings as well as a new eco-line made from the scraps left over from my regular earrings. Can’t wait for time to get this happening!
* a bardis – I’ve been working away at making my jewelry and accessory line something for some time, but I’ve never really had the freedom to devote as much time to it as I’d like to. I want to take it to the next level and really make it something this year.
* Write More – I’m excited to continue the progress I made in 2009. I hope to become even more structured and to finish some or at least one amazing project!
* An Orderly Home – I want to really get everything in excellent order and keep it that way!
* Freelance Public Relations – Pondering offering PR services for crafters and artists…maybe an a la carte set up of some sort.
* Make Me a Bigger Priority – I tend to bite off more than I can chew and I’m working on some major restructuring of my life so that I can make all of these other goals actually happen. I’m a little sad but also relieved to announce that the Indie Craft Experience is going to be a once-a-year event moving forward. We are no longer going to produce our summer show. This feels like a major, major decision. I hope it doesn’t have a negative effect on anyone or their business. I’m just tired after five years and ten shows. We’ve also decided to no longer produce Kraftwork at Young Blood Gallery. This monthly market just never took off like we’d hoped despite our best efforts. I’m clearing my plate for other ventures, but I am sorry if this is bad news for anyone.

I hope that 2010 really is the Best. Year. Ever. for you. Take some time to figure out what you want to accomplish this year and I wish you the very best of luck!
xoxo

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