Every Girl Should Own a Dress!

About 30 yards of cotton prints destined for Dress a Girl.

In my quest to simplify and declutter, I just sent this box of floral fabrics to the Northern California Dress a Girl Around the World ambassador for use by her group at their regular sewing events. I found out about Dress a Girl from my mom in OR, who found out from my aunt in CO, who is sewing dresses now that she's newly retired. Sewing dresses isn't something I can devote time to right now but I figured I could still help the cause.

When choosing which fabrics to send, I held my hand and arm between the layers in front of a window and rejected any that were too see through. Although I wanted to send some beautiful pastels, I found they were just too sheer. I tried not to go too dark beings most of the girls likely live in hot, sunny places but did try to choose fabrics that wouldn't show dirt between washings. By the time I finished, I'd rounded up about 30 yards total, which weighed close to 12 pounds. I'm just so happy to release all this beautiful fabric to a new home and a good cause!

According to the website, "Dress a Girl Around the World is a Campaign under Hope 4 Women International (a 501 (c) 3 organization) bringing dignity to women around the world since 2006. Hope 4 Women International is a nondenominational independent Christian organization." If you'd like to get involved, just check the website for a local group - or start your own! Yes, every girl should own at least one dress.

What Will YOU Achieve in the Coming Year?

"If we write our dreams and goals down, we dramatically increase our odds of realization. If we share them with others, they become potent and alive."

~ Kristin Armstrong 

What are your plans for 2014? What do you hope to accomplish? Does writing it down and sharing with others really help you achieve your goals?

Last year at this time, I wrote down and shared three things:

• I started Project DO to help me declutter and organize
• I committed to being prepared for Christmas (and birthdays) well ahead of time
• I jumped onto the Cake-a-Week bandwagon

 

Should have all been doable, right? I mean, really...won't I be decluttering and organizing during my regular cleaning? And wouldn't it be pretty easy to be prepared for Christmas way ahead of time if I just focused a little? And making a cake each week would be fun!

 

Well...

After a full year of Project DO and my formalized Christmas Prep, I've realized a few things. Firstly, I'm no good at documentation. I'm good at doing but fall down on the job when it comes to taking photos and posting about my progress. At first it's fun, as evidenced by the early posts. But then the novelty of talking about it wears off and I just quietly go about my business.

So did I accomplish my goals? Pretty much! I was mostly prepared for Christmas by Halloween and this is the lowest stress year I can remember. I also made some good progress on getting rid of stuff and neatening up what's left. But both these are ongoing projects. Christmas comes every year so I'll be prepping throughout the year every year. And there will never be an end to decluttering and organizing! But I'm not going to press myself to write about the minutiae. Who wants to read all the nitty gritty details anyway? I will try to do periodic updates, however, and will be sure to share if I find something especially cool.

As for making a cake a week - what insanity was that? We're a bunch of middle-aged folk who don't need the extra calories! But it was sure fun while it lasted.

As for the coming year, I'm giving myself until the end of January to come up with my 2014 goals.

Just Get Rid of It!

"If something's not working in your life – no matter how attractive it seemed when you took it on – get rid of it."

~ Stacey Curnow

Project DO got derailed early on and I haven't posted about it since. Oops. And now we're 58% done with the year! How did that happen? Ok - so it's the end of July. Ok - so I haven't accomplished all that I wanted and don't seem to be headed in the right direction to do so. What should I do? Give up? I think not!

So...what happened, anyway? Well, we spent a couple of months away from home half the time, during which and after I finished five memorial quilts in record time (aren't deadlines great?). Then we went north for a couple weeks. And then I've been working on the book that was supposed to be published in draft and to the beta readers in June. Hmm. I'm not impressing myself here...

So did I accomplish any Project DO tasks? Actually, yes. I've filled and sent several boxes to the thrift store and gotten rid of three (yes, 3) huge garbage bags of 'trash' - I may be the queen of re-purpose most of the time but there are some things even I can't find another use for! Which brings me to the above quote...

Many things I hang on to no longer work in my life and I need to just get rid of them. I think I'll post Stacy's quote in each room so I can keep it firmly in mind. How about you? What isn't working that you can get rid of?

See? I did get something done...

Project DO Derailed

Between being gone from home for a good portion of Feb and being busy on a memorial quilt (the first of five) since I got home, Project DO has been somewhat derailed. There are two ways I could look at this:

• I can just give up figuring it's obviously unsustainable, or
• I can realize that life happens and continue chipping away at my Project DO list as I have time.

Hmm. What to do...

I think I'll go with option B.

The problem is life will keep happening no matter what I plan. And now that I think about it, that sure beats life NOT happening!

Project DO lessons to date

So what have I learned during the first two months of Project DO?

• Decluttering/organizing is an ongoing, never-ending project. It may get easier over time but requires regular (ok - nearly constant) maintenance to avoid slipping back into old habits.
• It's best to finish a specific area all at one time (not natural for me) because it's easy to forget where you are in the process and what you were even doing and why.

NOTE: If this post looks unfinished, that's because it is! I obviously scheduled it and then forgot to come back and finish it up before it went live. Oh well. Maybe I’ll notice and fix it. But then again…

Are You Preparing for Christmas Yet?

I know, I know - it's mid-February and Christmas is still over 10 months away. But I'm dedicated to being ready by the end of October so...

Now remember, when I say Christmas, what I really mean is all the birthdays throughout the year and Mother's Day and Father's Day, as well. To that end, I've been ordering stuff since mid-December - mostly small stuff that will make nice but inexpensive gifts. Like last time I posted about this, I still haven't seen what I've ordered but I plan to make a trip to town this week so can take an inventory (and maybe even get it all home!).

Potholder sets = future gifts!

What I do know is that this will be the year of the kitchen spruce-up for many on my list. I've noticed how awful the dishtowels and potholders are most everywhere I visit so I'm going to do something about it. I started by ordering a bunch of nice on-sale dishtowels from Kohl's. Then I got into practicing free motion quilting, which quickly morphed into potholders. Of course, I can't stand to waste anything so I even made potholders from the potholder scraps.

This whole potholder project has really helped me with Project DO, as well. I finally found a use for all the batting scraps I've been saving. Most are in narrow strips but I basted those together (more free motion practice - yay!) and I even used up several binding and thread remnants left from previous quilt projects. Cleaning/decluttering AND making gifts - can't get much better than that!

So... Are YOU preparing for Christmas yet?

Combining Projects for a Quadruple Win!



I'm upgrading my kitchen with new potholders, too.


Do you realize the year is almost one-tenth over? That’s right – one-tenth. Beings there’s 365 days this year and January had 31 of them, by the time noon rolls around on February 5^th, we will officially be one-tenth through the year. 

So, what have I accomplished? Am I making progress on any goals at all? YES!!! And I’ll tell you how…

Combining projects takes multi-tasking to a whole new level

Two of my three main goals for 2013 are decluttering/organizing throughout the year and being completely ready for Christmas by the end of October. Also, for February, I joined a challenge to commit to quilt 20 minutes each day.

Coincidentally, I had also just signed up for two free motion quilting classes through Craftsy so I decided to spend my quilting time practicing free motion. Well, it seemed a waste to stitch such pretty designs and then throw them away so... I started making potholders.

Beings I already had denim rounds (recycled from jeans) cut years ago in anticipation of a potholder project, all I had to do was layer those with batting (I have plenty of scrap pieces) and backing (again, plenty of scrap pieces) and quilt away! Then I realized they’d make great gifts, so I’m making progress on 2013 Christmas Prep, too! And to top it off, I already had several remnants of bias binding left over from past quilts so I’m really decluttering my sewing room!



Made completely from leftovers from other projects!



That’s what I call a quadruple win! With this one enjoyable activity, I am:

• Meeting my 20 minute per day quilting challenge (ok – I’m way exceeding 20 minutes but it sure is fun!)
•     Vastly improving my free-motion quilting skill (and thanks to Leah Day's Craftsy class, I may even become a free-motion rock star!)
• Decluttering my sewing room (we're talking leftover fabric, batting, thread and bindings!)
• Making nice gifts that are useful, too (seriously, who couldn’t use new potholders?)

I'm going to be on the lookout for more way to combine projects. Whether I'll hit upon any more quadruple wins remains to be seen but I think it'll be pretty easy to hit on some double and triple wins. And now that I think about it, this one might actually be a quintuple win beings it was also fun...

So, how can you combine projects to meet your 2013 goals?

Am I Creating a Bigger Mess with Project DO?

I’ve been ‘DOing’ for about a month now and have to ask – am I just creating a bigger mess? Strictly from a DO standpoint, am I better off than I was four weeks ago? First, let's see what I did this past week.

Project DO Progress - Week 4

Downloaded Real Player so I can keep videos straight. The problem being that I didn’t even have any videos when I started the month – and now I have dozens! Due to limited bandwidth, it’s only been recently that we can watch videos online, but to do so I have to get up really early (that’s another story). So to watch all these great videos at my convenience, I’m downloading. Hmm. How does this help me declutter my hard drive?

On the organizing side, however, I’ve created playlists and changed clip info so that I can sort and store the videos and easily find whatever I want whenever I want it. I guess I’m doing great on O but not so well on D…

Join me for Leah Day's free motion class!

On the other hand, you know how we’re supposed to learn new things to keep our minds active? Well, I’m excelling on that front! I’m telling you, watching a demo to learn some things is so much better than just reading a description. Through my new love, Craftsy, my brain is awhirr! I’m finally getting some proficiency with free motion quilting (many thanks to Leah Day for the great demos) and even signed up for a free Online Food Craft Class, Perfect Pizza at Home. Who knew that would ever happen? (affiliate links, fyi)

I’ve also discovered YouTube. Am I late to the party, or what?

Unsubscribed to 22 email newsletters, which really cut down on the amount of email I receive each day. I also set my message rules to delete known spam from server. If your email program allows you to do this, BE CAREFUL! You may miss important emails and never know it. I found this out the hard way several months ago when I kept expecting a file by email and it never showed up. I contacted the sender and she resent…again…and again…and again…

Finally, I turned off my message rules and guess what? Yep, it came through just fine. I examined the sender and subject lines and never did figure out the problem. There was nothing in either of those or the content that should have triggered the deletion. But it happened – true story – so be forewarned.

After this problem, why did I turn my delete from server back on? Because when I get several dozen spam emails with the same sender info, I get annoyed. Also, there are some subjects I just don’t want in my inbox. Period. So when I see a trend, I just quickly add the offending word(s) to my delete rule and am done with it.

As usual, I got distracted and dropped the ball on some Project DO tasks. For instance, although I’ve been adding my new Kindle for PC content to Calibre regularly and immediately categorizing by location and DRM status, I haven’t kept up on tags. So now I have quite a few ebooks that are not categorized by subject. Oops. Beings I’m up to 468 Kindle ebooks (at the end of week one, I had 261 - how is this decluttering?), it’s kind of important to be able to search by subject, don’t you think?

I did manage to make good progress on updating some of my computer files, which was actually my first Project DO focus. For instance, all my computer files for a couple of blogs now match the post/page titles. I also moved all my blog/site folders to a main folder rather than having them buried deeper on my hard drive. And I’ve started creating subfolders to better organize the content on each blog/site. Am I done? Not by a long shot. And if I keep adding instead of taking away, well…it could be never ending.

But am I better off?

Now, back to the original question: Am I creating a bigger mess with Project DO? I don’t think so. I would have discovered online video learning anyway but now I’m keeping it all organized as I go. No more going back and playing catch-up like I’m doing with the rest of my computer files.  So yes, I am better off!

What will I DO in February? I haven’t decided yet. I’ll continue with the good habits developed in January but may start focusing on another area and come back to my computer files later in the year. That’s the beauty of Project DO – I make the rules!

So...what are you DOing in February?

Cleaning Up My Online Real Estate

For Project DO this past week, I did a major cleanup of my online real estate. For this blog and two others, I went through every post and checked every link. Finding and fixing broken links was only part of the game plan, however. I also revised many posts and deleted several, too. The deleted posts were mostly sponsored posts (which I don’t do anymore) from back in 2010. Many posts needed revision due to obsolete links and content – those mentioning and linking to my Suite 101 or eHow articles which no longer exist, for instance.

Going forward, I plan to be so much more careful about linking. While including links to relevant content on other sites and blogs is a great idea, my big cleanup has shown me that doing so may not pan out so well. So from now on, unless a site looks completely rock solid to me, I’ll likely not link to it – I really don’t want to deal with all the broken links again due to whole websites or specific content vanishing from cyberspace.

And I'm cleaning up my hard drive, too!

A related area I tackled is my filing system for posts – boy, have I ever created a mess! From here on out, I’m filing all posts by subcategory within each blog or site folder rather than having all posts jumbled up in one folder per blog or site. For instance, all my Project DO posts will be in the Project DO folder, which is filed under this blog. Now, why didn’t I think of this before? Well, partly because way back when I started blogging, I didn’t think far enough ahead to consider what it would be like when I had hundreds of posts.

I also plan to rename all my post documents to match the actual post title. Huh? Why on earth would they not be that way already? Well, because I often come up with a different title when publishing and just didn’t think to go back and change the doc names to match. And not only am I going to update all my doc names slowly over time, but I’m going to be meticulous about further organizing future post docs by adding an identifier when appropriate. For instance, my doc for this post will have W3 as the beginning of the doc name so that I can easily find a specific week’s post on my hard drive if I want. And beings all the Project DO posts will be in the Project DO folder, they’ll all also be in order.

And last but not least, I’m now separating out drafts and ideas from published posts, which I’ll move to a designated ‘published’ folder when they go live. And I’m including a blog identifier in the folder names so I can easily differentiate between blogs. This way, I avoid having subfolders with the same name inside multiple files – after all, I’d hate to have too many folders all named ‘published’ scattered across my hard drive.

Project DO Progress – Week 3

·         Ran a link checker on all blogs and sites (no broken links on 4 sites – yippee!)

·         Found/fixed broken links on 3 blogs (well, maybe not all fixed but I know about them and am working on it!)

·         Deleted obsolete posts (35 from 2010 and 3 from 2009)

·         Developed a way better filing system for my posts

In addition to all of the above, I got a decent start on reorganizing the rest of my computer files, too. But that’s another post!

So...

Do you have online real estate and/or computer files in need of a major cleanup? If so, set aside 10 or 15 minutes each day and tackle one task at a time. And before you know it, you’ll be done!

Project DO - Continuing to Organize with Calibre

Over the past week, I uploaded all the Kindle books from my Cruz Reader. Then in the Kindle-specific library, also created a couple of custom columns and tweaked the tags for even better organization.

Custom columns

·         DRM – it’s more convenient to read on the Calibre viewer so now I know which books I can and can’t

·         Location – so I always know whether the book in on my Cruz or Kindle for PC (or both)

Tags

I removed all preset tags and created my own so that I can easily find books based on a categorizing system that makes sense to me. For the most part, I don’t want too many tags – just broad categories. If (when?) this system quits working for me, I can add more tags for subcategories.

Now, copying the books from my Cruz Reader to Calibre was easy but it doesn’t appear to be so simple going the other direction. But this is a non-issue as I probably won’t ever anyway. The reason for Calibre is to know what I have and where it is. And if a book is DRM free, I can read it with my Calibre viewer, if I choose. Otherwise, I’ll just open Kindle for PC or fire up my Cruz.

Project DO Progress – Week 2

After uploading the Kindle books on my Cruz Reader, moving over most of the rest of the ebooks hidden on my hard drive, and combining the quilt/sew/craft ebooks and digital patterns and magazines libraries, my second week Project DO organizing totals are:

·         437 Kindle ebooks (yeah, I admit it – I downloaded a few more, too)

·         229 other ebooks

·         396 quilt/sew/craft ebooks and digital patterns/magazines

·         154 hardcopy quilting/sewing/craft books

·         39 other hardcopy books

As you can see, I’ve made great progress on my digital file organization but not so much on hardcopy books.  But that’s ok – while it’s great to have the hardcopy books so beautifully organized on Calibre, they were actually an afterthought. My goal was to get my digital book and pattern files organized and I’m nearly done with that!

Shiny Object Syndrome Strikes Again!

Well, I have to fess up – I could have easily been done with everything I need on Calibre and finished up with this phase of Project DO but I allowed myself to get distracted. But I got distracted doing other Project DO tasks, so it’s ok, right? Of course it is! And Calibre will need ongoing maintenance to keep it current. After all, if it’s not current, what good is it? So, the fact is, Calibre will never actually be done.

So what else did I DO? I got a good start on cleaning up my blogs (full report next week) and finally went through and organized most of the scattered notes and patterns-in-progress in my sewing room. So see? I haven’t been slacking!

So...what Project DO tasks did you accomplish this past week?

Project DO Progress - I LOVE Calibre!

Calibre screenshot - isn't it cool?

Now that I’ve used this oh-so-cool ebook database management system for nearly a week, I have to say that I’m in love - Calibre has truly changed my life! After my initial failure and reinstall, I’ve been proceeding cautiously and performing small-scale tests instead of racing ahead all willy-nilly. And it’s worked – I haven’t had a single catastrophe!

As I said in a previous post, my first Project DO area of focus is my computer files. With over a thousand PDF documents on my hard drive, I was never able to find anything I wanted IF I even remembered a specific file was there. For the most part, all the ebooks and digital patterns I’ve downloaded over the past several years were lost to me.  And it’s not because I didn’t try – on several occasions, I tried to implement an organizational structure but nothing worked for long.

With Calibre, knowing what I have and finding it is no longer a problem. And I figured out the program doesn’t know or care if what I add is an ebook. It’s a database, after all – all it wants is data. So I made some separate libraries for my hardcopy books, as well. How clever is that? Of course, I can’t read the hardcopy books on Calibre but I can browse through them cover by cover and decide which one I want without taking them all off the shelves.  (And I can also make a note right in the database if I loan them out and to whom.)

Project DO Progress - Week 1

Well, without boring everyone by further singing Calibre’s praises (I’ve already alienated all my peeps here at home), I’ll get right to my progress. During this first week of Project DO, I have successfully organized:

·         261 Kindle ebooks

·         211 other ebooks

·         206 quilt/sew/craft ebooks and digital patterns (lots more to do)

·         48 digital magazines

·         147 hardcopy quilting/sewing/craft books

·         29 other hardcopy books (I’m just getting started)

Rather than having everything in one library, I figured it would be best to have the books separated by type (digital vs. hardcopy) and broad category (quilt/sew/craft vs. all else) so I made several libraries. So far, this has worked splendidly – I couldn’t be more thrilled! If I change my mind, however, it’s easy-peasy to copy or move them to another library.

Although I’ve made great progress, I still have much to do so it’s a good thing I’m closer to the beginning of the month than to the end. Although I’ve got most of my hardcopy quilt/sew/craft books entered, I’ve barely scratched the surface on all other types of hardcopy books. My Kindle for PC book list is up to date and I think I’ve got most of my other ebooks found and moved to Calibre, but I’m probably only halfway through the digital quilt/sew/craft books and patterns. And now that I have Calibre, there’s no reason not to download more! This could be never ending…

Calibre - Project DO Secret Weapon

I found out about Calibre (pronounced caliber, btw) just before the New Year. Beings I’ve been particularly frustrated with the ebook mess I’ve created on my Kindle for PC, Cruz Reader and hard drive, Calibre sounded like a godsend. Designed specifically to manage your ebook library regardless of format type, I figured I’d be able to have every ebook in one place, all organized and searchable. Well, hold on a minute – not so fast! You know how things often don’t work out exactly as you'd planned?

So… what went wrong?

I might look and sound like I know what I’m doing computer-wise much of the time but the truth is I often know just enough to get me into really big trouble! And my initial experience with Calibre was no exception.  After downloading Calibre, there I was, enthusiastically moving forward without a clear understanding of…well…anything. This led me to creating a bigger mess rather than cleaning one up, I might add.

So what did I do first? I moved my WHOLE Kindle for PC library onto Calibre. It sounded like a good idea at the time but trust me, it was not! Most likely my method was at fault but there’s no way I can relate how I got to the point of completely eliminating Calibre from my computer but that’s what I ultimately did that first day. (Ok – truth time – it was actually my techie BIL that saved me from myself after several hours of me messing around where I had no business!)

Calibre - back in business

After much thought, I realized that Calibre might still be the answer to my ebook organization problems. I just need to be smart about how I try to use it and what I put in my Calibre Library. Most importantly, I need to become familiar with how it functions before I dump in several hundred books. So, I re-downloaded it and am starting over WITHOUT including any Kindle for PC ebooks. At this point, I’m simply going to use it as a Project DO secret weapon to declutter and organize the countless ebooks littering my hard drive.

If you’d like to give Calibre a try, you can download it from the Calibre site. If you don’t have the Quick Start Guide after it’s all installed on your computer (I did the first time, then I didn’t the second time – still don’t know why) you can download that from the Denver Public Schools website.

Project DO Introduction

Welcome 2013! It’s a brand new year and you’ve got a clean slate on which to write your future. What do you want to accomplish in the coming 12 months?

One of my goals is to declutter and get more organized. But wait – don’t I say this every year? Yep, most years over the past couple of decades, anyway. But this year I got all cutesy. You know how some folks name their cars? (Been there, done that, btw.) Well, I named my goal.

Introducing… (drumroll, please)

Project DO

In case you need an explanation of my cleverness, the D stands for declutter and the O stands for organize – Declutter and Organize – Project DO. See? Isn’t that cute? And catchy and memorable, too. At least I hope so because otherwise I’ll probably forget about it altogether in a few weeks.

My plan is to identify an area each month and then focus on a specific subarea each week. (We’ll see how that goes!) My first area of focus is My Documents on my PC. It’s a mess! I usually have to search for files despite (or maybe because of?) having created folders and subfolders and subfolders and… Well, you can see the problem.

So this first week of Project DO I’m going to focus on my hundreds of PDF format ebooks that are scattered all about in 4-5 main folders and dozens (if not hundreds) of subfolders. And how am I going to conquer this beast? Well, I have a secret weapon. (Ok, so maybe it’s not really a “secret” but beings I just found out about it and I’m not telling you yet, I guess that’s secret enough, right?)

Will I finish this monumental task in one week? NO. Will I finish by the end of the month? Maybe not. But beings Project DO is my baby, I can make up the rules as I go along. And if I need to roll a focus into a second month, or maybe leave it partly done and come back to it later, that’s ok! I’m after progress here, not perfection. If I go for perfection, I’ll likely overwhelm myself into paralysis – not a good state for getting anything done.

Care to join me?

If you’d like to join me, please feel free. Just leave a comment here or on the Project DO page and I’ll include a link to your blog. We can DO this!