Organizing

Getting to the Heart of the Matter

~ Patty Radish ~ 13 Comments

The past year has definitely taken me places I didn’t foresee. It was around this time last year that I decided I needed to step back from my shoppe and reevaluate why I was doing it. With a lot of prayer and introspection, I find myself not only happy with that decision, but I’m stepping back even more! I’m not closing up shoppe yet, it just isn’t my main focus any more.

So, with the extra time on my hands, I’ve been diving in and taking care of my home, myself, and letting go of pipe dreams.

Pipe Dream: noun; an unattainable or fanciful hope or scheme

Case in point…

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Isn’t that a lovely scene?

This is the top of my dresser o’ yarn. I had been working on this blanket for a few weeks. I needed to use up some yarn from other projects, and thought I had found the perfect scheme.

The other day, I laid down all the squares I had finished to come up with a plan, and to my horror it was the ugliest blanket I had ever scene! What to do? I had already spent countless hours working on this, looking for inspiration online, plotting, planning, crocheting. I decided to cut my losses and hope that there may be someone else out there that could use a partially finished afghan. Anyway, off to the thrift store it went, along with a few bags of trim, knick knacks, and old books.

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Redemption!

The next day, I decided that the granny stripe afghan I had high hopes for was a bust also, so I took it apart, gave away the yarn I didn’t like, and started on something new. So far, I’m in love!

I’ll spare telling you how many schemes and projects I have let go of over the past few months. All I know is, I feel tons better. There are so many things I actually need to be doing, and my projects were holding me back!

From things like this…

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Dog walkies.

This has been calling to me for a long time! Fresh air and exercise. Of course I pick a time of year when the weather is getting rough, but oh well.

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A photo of my son in Myanmar last month. I stole it from his IG. I just love it!

The most important thing I need to focus on right now are my relationships! I am lucky to say that I have a lot of wonderful people in my life, and I need to put them at the top of my priority list, not just make room for them in my schedule!

I well and truly wish I could do it all, but I’m just not built that way. I will continue to scale down until I can do all that I need to be doing!

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Art journaling is still on the top of my “must do” list, but I’m spending more time ‘journaling’ than ‘arting’ as you can see. Lately, I have been finding that I really need to organize my thoughts through journaling. This is also a great way to use up old stickers. The washi tape helps keep my writing straight, such a struggle.

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So, I hope you’ll join me on my journey of scaling down, letting go, and simplifying my life. I can’t wait to share on this blog many of the things I did on my old one like gardening, cooking, makings, and what ever else I’m up to at the time. I will still share my art journals of course, I just think it’s time to share more of my life with you. Hope that sounds good!

Have a beautiful day!

Thanks for stopping in,

~Patty

Collage Gratitude Journal Video and Life Updates

~ Patty Radish ~ 4 Comments

I hope this doesn’t seem redundant, but yes I have made another video.

IMG_4960It’s a process video of this Collage Gratitude journal, you can see the video here.

Announcing videos seems to be only activity on this blog of late, but I hope to change that up a bit some time soon with some shoppe news along with the occasional life updates.

I’m changing directions slightly on ‘this here blog’ because I share so many photos of my work on other social media, it felt as though I was repeating myself all the time, and I want the content here to be a little different.

Most of what I have been spending my time on lately is catching up on housework and decorating.

IMG_4947This set of drawers and shelf had been sitting naked for almost 20 years, I painted them over the weekend. It feels fantastic to finally get this done!

I’ve been spending the past few weeks going from room to room, making notes of what needs to be cleaned up, finished up, or gotten rid of. So, art making and my shoppe have been knocked down the priority list somewhat.  My house is really starting to look good, and it feels great! Having a laundry list of To Do’s in the back of my mind all the time was cluttering up my brain, and stifling my creativity.

There are still a few more pieces of furniture to paint, a few sewing and crochet projects to finish up, and some decluttering to do, but the more I do the less daunting it all seems.

I hope you don’t mind my switching things up around here. This is where I hope to post pix of my sewing and crochet projects, decorating, and shoppe updates, and keep most the art journaling photos on IG, YouTube, and Facebook. Just give me a follow if you want to see them.

Let me know what you think.

Thanks again for the visit,

Have a great day,

~Patty

Just Checkin’ In

~ Patty Radish ~ Leave a comment

Well, it has been little over a month since I last blogged, it seems like longer! I didn’t announce a break because I didn’t plan one, it just happened.

 I thought I would pop in quickly and let you know I haven’t fallen off the face of the earth, or less dramatically, stopped blogging.

With all the whirlwind visits and obligations since the beginning of the year, I just kept falling farther and farther behind on just about everything in my life. So, I decided to drop a few obligations and play catch up…

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I’m slowly getting my house in order.

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The “Great Weeding Project” is well under way.

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I’m in the process of reworking another “List Journal”, a summer theme for this one.

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I have managed to fill my shoppe up a little.

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And, I try to start my day with some faith journaling.

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I have even managed to get a long awaited project off the launching pad, Project Life. This is a digital version, but I have also taken 35 years of photos out of very old photo albums, organized them chronologically, and started putting them into Project Life albums, Yay! I’ll be sharing more on this soon.

This is my life in a nut shell. It has been a mad scramble trying to get everything done, but well worth it!

I’ve decided that writing on this blog once a week will work for me much better than three times a week, at least for a while just to free up some much needed time.

Thank you for stopping by,

See you in about a week,

Patty

Thrifty Thursday…with Wilhold Love!

~ Patty Radish ~ 4 Comments

Okey Dokey, it looks like the Wilhold angels smiled upon me again! Cue angels singing!

…and once again there was some poor soul standing between me and my treasure. Heart pounding, I squeezed passed her and tried to look casual. She smiled sweetly at me knowing we were both in our “Happy Place”, while she contentedly perused the fabric selection. My tribe!

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A root beer colored Wilhold! I hear music…do you hear music!?

She’s smaller than average, but that makes her even more precious. A few cracks and some wear and tear, but I’ll take good care of her!

When I showed her to my husband, he actually had the nerve to ask me how many Wilholds I have. I started to count…he lost interest. Do I ask him how many fishing poles he has? He wishes I was that interested! Now if these were tackle boxes…but I digress.

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I decided that this would be perfect for organizing my Stitched Journal makings. I had been keeping all this in a vintage suitcase for years, I’m really not sure why this didn’t occur to me sooner.

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A perfect fit! A lot of the embellishments are in neutrals for this journal, I went a little haywire on the fabric color choices, and felt it needed some toning down.

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How fun is that!  This has worked out so well, I was inspired to get a couple of pages done.

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A blinged up window box…with one flower…don’t judge…it was fun.

IMG_2870Very much like my art journals, I like to rummage around to see what inspires me. Having things organized, and being able to see what I have to work with, really makes things flow a lot better!

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These little stitched journals are great to have on hand in the evening when you just want to be creative, but don’t want to get out a bunch of supplies and create a mess. You can put your own stitched journal kit together with an inexpensive sewing box, a plastic crafting container, or even a tool box.

Having your embellishments an tools organized is the best way to go, I highly recommend it!

Once again,

Thank you for the visit,

Have a great rest of your week,

~Patty

My “Self Care” Planner

~ Patty Radish ~ 4 Comments

I thought I would share something that I have been working on for the past couple of months, my “Self Care Planner”. A place where I list, dream, plan and track my personal progress.

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I’ve written about this KikkiK planner before. You may recognize it as my business planner. Since my decision to take a step back from my shoppe to spend more time working on my personal, family and home life, I realized I didn’t need two business binders, go figure.

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When I first started working on this, I wondered what I was going to do with all those dividers, it didn’t take long to figure that out!  There are few more tabs labeled “Favorite Recipes”, “Health Care”, and “Lists” behind these.

I’m going to try and tackle those “Wish Lists” and “Fitness” sections asap!

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I wish it was more exciting looking, but the main point of writing this post was to share something that I had a heck of a time finding info on, planners that are all about taking better care of yourself!

I’m happy to say that since I have made taking better care of myself my #1 priority, I have a lot more energy to take care of all the other aspects of my life!

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I thought I would show you my weekly inserts before I write in all my lists and such. I start with decorating with washi, then add the dates.

FYI: these inserts are from Plan2Create on Etsy and that sweet page marker is from TheKiwiRose shop if your interested.

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Monday through Friday is  bit redundant, but that’s the point. This only takes about 20 minutes to write out, but very much worth it! Once the week is set up, ticking things off the lists, either throughout the day or in the evening, takes just a couple of minutes.

My self-care tasks are as follows:

Morning Routine, Breakfast, Reading, Planning

Stretch, Water log

Evening Routine, Gratitude Journal, Planners

The “Routines” consist of medications, vitamins, teeth care, that sort of thing. I’m sure most people do these things automatically, but if I don’t check it off a list, I’ll procrastinate until my next life, and I’m afraid my teeth won’t follow! I’m not exactly falling apart at the seams, but I am starting to feel life’s wear and tear! So, these things need to be a priority!

On the weekends, I’m a little more flexible about my tasks. Sundays have become my “Spa” days as of late. I soak in the tub, take care of my nails, all kinds of “me” stuff, it’s a great way to start the new week!

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My awesome little planner pocket care of TheKiwiRose shop, I adore it! I’m  stepping up the decorating in this planner because that seems the best way to get familiar with it. It’s still a work in progress, like I said, I haven’t found very much info on self care planners.

I hope to go into a bit more detail on the various dividers when I’m able to put more work into them, I’ll keep you posted. I hope you found this post helpful. If you have any suggestions or info you’d like to share, I would really appreciate your input!

Thank you once again for the visit,

Have a wonderful day,

~Patty