Making Changes

Anyone who knows me personally, knows that I tend to wear the same thing every day. I have a wardrobe that consists of black yoga pants and various solid t-shirts, mostly v-neck t shirts. Its really pretty sad and pathetic, honestly. I used to dress up on occasion and at the very least mixed it up with jeans and fun shoes, but something has happened to me...I turned 30 last May. I think the change probably came about around 29 honestly, but it was probably only because I knew what was coming around the corner. I have also been churning out jewelry like crazy, which means a lot of sitting in my house. Not a lot of calorie burning. That is why I've gained about 40 pounds in the last 1.5 years or so. I also quit smoking about 1.5 years ago...go figure. Anyway, I am officially the heaviest I've ever been sans being 9 months preggo, so I've reached the point where I absolutely cannot allow this to continue. So the last 3 days in a row, I have tried to maintain a reasonable diet, nothing strict or really that different, I just didn't gorge out on sweets...I did still have dessert. But I also worked out with the Dance Central 2 game on the kinect for over an hour each day, and I was delighted to see this morning that I had lost 5 pounds! That gave me a boost of motivation, since summer arrived in February, I definitely need to get a move on in being in control of my weight and my body and my eating habits. No more allowing jewelry to overtake every aspect of my life. I still have to make time for me.  I will keep you posted on my progress, but consider this my official pledge to make it happen! 

The design dream

I've been making a lot of custom jewelry lately, and I always spend a long time during my design process, but its even worse for custom orders, because I'm so anxiety ridden over everything being perfect. I'm not sure what is normal as far as time goes, because I've never watched anyone else in the design process before. I know mine can be frustrating at times, but it can also be inspired design, and sometimes I even exceed my own expectations, which probably aren't as high as they should be, because for some reason my brain seems to be programmed with a cap on what success I can achieve or what goals are even appropriate. I suppose this is because of the fact that there are many artists in my family who have struggled, so it was as if growing up, to want to be an artist or anything in the arts industry would be a huge gamble and a waste of money, an unattainable pipe dream, and therefore I just wrote myself off as not quite talented enough. Which is really sad. Because now I look at some of the things that I created, on my own, designs born 100% (or at least 90%)  from my own imagination, and I practiced everyday in being creative, to think outside the box, to do something different, and I think maybe that worked pretty well for me so far. I haven't had the opportunity to get any training at all yet. I have design ideas coming out of the wazoo, but I don't have the tools in my toolbox yet that are needed to execute them...when I do have them...watch out cause I'm going to be taking the jewerly world by storm!  In the meantime, I'm going to just keep plugging away and doing custom orders, and maybe one day my higher aspirations will be realized and maybe they won't be, but this design dream is mine to own now, and I'm not going to be hanging it on the shelf anytime soon.  : )

My Bead Mess

I desperately need to clean up my bead mess...I would say bead table, but if you have been to my house you know I am referring to my coffee table, which has become my extremely messy bead table. Every time I sit down to start cleaning things up, I start designing instead, and end up getting even more things out...it doesn't help that the boys like to play "tornado" and basically bring their wrath to the table. I still have a box of wooden beads that Jaidon dumped over the other day, and a 7 year old's version of picking up isn't quite on the same level as mine...  : )    I expect to receive several bpo orders on Monday...this being my day job and some much needed work, so I will probably take the next 2-3 days at least off from making jewelry...I will make it my goal to spend my free time cleaning during those days, and hopefully the next time you see my "bead table" it won't resemble complete and total chaos!