Love, Lydia - Notes from a geeky, plus sized artist.: celebrations
Showing posts with label celebrations. Show all posts
Showing posts with label celebrations. Show all posts

Monday, January 4, 2016

New Years Resolutions or All The Lists

Hi friends!


It's a brand new year and I'm excited to hit the ground running now that the last Christmas celebrations are completed (The first weekend of January we had an extended family shindig).  In past years I haven't done much in the way of making resolutions, I've never believed in diets or going cold turkey to change your life.  But this year I'm going to try at a couple that I know will make my life better in healthy incremental ways that I wait to keep up for the rest of my life.

New Years Resolutions


  1. Make smaller attainable goals for my life each month, to improve my motivation levels.
  2. Not be discouraged by my failures, but learn from them.  Mostly the not be discouraged part though, 'cause seriously...I fail at my goals so often because life and mental health issues just happen.
  3. Celebrate the good stuff no matter how small, to cultivate gratitude and boost my positive thinking.
  4. Exercise daily, which is a habit I will build gradually.  But eventually I want to have at least 5 minutes and ideally 30 minutes spent doing something that's not sitting on my butt.
  5. Do some of the things I've had my list forever, and by this I mean fun things like that book I've meant to read, tackling Steam games I've had for over a year without trying, and new foods or travel experiences.
To get things started off I'm going to go over some of my January goals here, because writing about them makes me feel more motivated to take them on.

January Goals

  1. Write or post videos here 3 times a week.
  2. Get in exercise 2-3 times a week consistently this month.  Learn to love it along the way.
  3. Play 2 new Steam games, read 5 new books, listen to new music every week.
  4. Do one of those new things every day, because they're fun!
  5. Try cleaning my house for 15 minutes each day.

January Blog Related Goals

I almost didn't share this with you guys, but I feel like it's a really important part of what I'm doing that needs to be seen.  Bloggers work hard too, especially when we're making it our job.  And that's my main goal these days, which is hard sometimes, but all my successes get me excited.  I really want to share that with you all!

  1. Meet my new monthly goal of over 5,000 visitors here.  Last month I was down a bit at 2134, but in November I had 3630.  I can do this!
  2. Post to social media daily and increase followers to the specified numbers - Facebook page 125, Twitter 350, Tsu, empowr, and Instagram 500), and post to YouTube weekly to work my way to 50 subscribers.
  3. Blog about the cool new things I'm trying out.  Seriously, this is the fun part that I get to share with you guys!  Also I want stick with my planned post schedule at least 60% this month.
  4. Contact some companies that I love or want to try out and review them here in partnership posts.
  5. Give my blog a beautiful facelift with the help of some great branding advisors.
Here's a peek at some of the font tests, a bit of which I'm already starting to implement!


This Week's "Menu"

  1. Start the cleaning and exercise routines mentioned above.
  2. Start the post routines on social media.
  3. Plan time for fun new things daily and make it happen.
  4. Write a book review post Wednesday.  (Let's see how I did on my 2015 reading challenge!)
  5. Finish creating my Winter 2016 Capsule Wardrobe. (So excited about this one!)
  6. Prep for and then talk to my branding advisors.
As you can see things are looking good, and I'm hoping for a fantastic year of growth in many areas of my life.  And to top things off, this past week Bryan and I had our third anniversary.  We have yet to really sit down and celebrate it, but we're going to try to do something special soon.  This week we're opting for a normal date night, which I don't mind since we're just getting back into the swing of things after all the busyness of the holidays.

I hope all you readers had a great holiday season, let me know what your resolutions are in comments.  Or better yet tell me how you've been able to keep up with the resolutions you've made in the past!  Tips are always welcome when you're just starting out in any new endeavor.


Happy New Year,


Friday, July 17, 2015

Summer Fun and Fashion

Hey everyone,

This week we welcomed Bryan's brother Michael home from a year in Jerusalem with a party celebrating all the holidays we'd missed.  (You all should check out his blog, he's a fantastic writer!) We started with Michael giving kids Halloween candy, then had a thanksgiving dinner together (with most of the people who come for thanksgiving!), then had Christmas presents, counted down to the new year, celebrated Michael's birthday, and finally finished off the night with 4th of July fireworks. (Easter was skipped since his parents visited him then)  We're really glad to have him back, and were excited to hear all his stories.  Here are some shots from the festivities.

Lots of fun with family and friends!


Now for the fashion part of the post.  Here are a couple of the outfits I put together from the Sunday of the party, running errands Wednesday, and Thursday's date night.

Sunday - Top Catos, Skirt Torrid, Sandals Modcloth

Wednesday - Top Anthropologie, Necklace Forever 21, Shorts Lane Bryant, Sandals Modcloth

Thursday - Top Anthropologie, Necklace Charming Charlie, Skirt Catos, Sandals Modcloth

And what happens when my camera falls off its precarious perch on the windowsill.


I'm hoping to get a nice mini tripod that will help with this for or after my birthday in a few weeks though, so hopefully we won't have too many more blurred action shots.

Finally I'm doing a free trial month with Gwynnie Bee, a clothing rental service for sizes 10-32 that lets you try new brands and styles you might not otherwise try.  I've tried them in the past when I was job hunting, but it's been a while and I wanted to see what new things they might have.  My first 3 pieces all fit wrong, the top hand length issues in the arms, the solid dress fit like a sack, and the printed dress just hung wrong on my frame.  I didn't even like them well enough to photograph them, and sent them back immediately.  I should get another 3 pieces to try tomorrow, and I'm hoping I have better luck with them.
Details: Nic + Zoe Misty Striped Top size 1x, Lucie Lu Collared Shirtdress in Navy in 4x(Gwynnie Bee Exclusive), and Jete Floral Remix Tank Dress in 2x.  They all fit about right in size, it's just the cuts that were wrong.  It's crazy how sizing can be so different from brand to brand too.  In general I wear a 22/2x for dresses and bottoms, and a 20/1x for tops on a pear shaped frame..

That's all for now, but I've got plenty of posts in the works and lots of great book reviews, travel fun, and more to share with you soon.  Have a great weekend!

Love,
Lydia

Wednesday, November 12, 2014

National Park Adventures Part 2

Hey everyone,

So as a bit of introduction I thought I'd share a bit about why I'm writing about National Parks.  I've always loved National Parks and Historic Sites; as a kid my mom dragged my brother and I out to all the ones she could since we were homeschooled.  And I'm pretty sure I loved every minute of it then as much as I would now.  I'm going to be creating a page on here with a list of all the ones I've been to because I have a goal to visit them all one day.  This is more ambitious a goal than some of you may realize because there are over 300 of these treasures in the US and its territories.  So I think I'd settle for all in the states if I had to, though I'd love to get to the more exotic parks as well.  I'm even geeky enough to have a National Parks Passport to record it all since they have rubber stamps to ad cancellations at each park, sometimes more than one stamp for larger parks!



Anyway, Bryan and I took a trip up into North Carolina's mountains back in September for a family weekend.  On the way there we took the Blue Ridge Parkway from about milepost 277 at Deep Gap to 316 at Linville Falls, and on the way back from our weekend we went from around milepost 332 at the Museum of NC Minerals down to 383 and the Blue Ridge Parkways Headquarters in Asheville.  The two stretches were very different thanks to the weather.  Here are some of the highlights.


On Friday's leg of the trip we were able to see Moses H. Cone Memorial Park.  It's a mansion that used to be owned by Mr. Cone, which was willed to the park service with the condition that the land be preserved and open to the public.  Housed inside the building is the Blue Ridge Parkway's craft center.  Bryan and I bought a lovely pair of prints by artist Debbie Littledeer and really enjoyed all the work from the members of the Southern Highland Craft Guild. When we'd left Raleigh it was bright and sunny, but as you can see in the pictures above the weather was changing as we traveled.  In fact I don't even have pictures from our second stop at Linn Cove Viaduct.  The mountaintops were covered in clouds and visibility was low.  We sadly missed out on the iconic view of the engineering marvel that is the Viaduct area.  Here's what it looks like in good weather:

Image from DigitalHeritage.org blog

I'm originally from Roanoke, Virginia, so I grew up with the parkway being a fixture in our Sunday drives and family picnics.  However, what struck me most on this weekend trip was how different the North Carolina sections of the parkway are from the portions I'm familiar with.  For starters all of the 16 tunnels on the parkway are in the NC section.  Additionally the NC section is much higher in elevation overall.  Here's a chart that compares using the height of the viaduct as the example -

Image from BlueRidgeParkwayDaily.com

Over the weekend we spent time with family celebrating birthdays and anniversaries at the Nu Wray Inn in Burnsville.  It's a fantastic little town that's close to Mt Mitchell, the highest point in the US east of the Mississippi River.  We walked the downtown area shopping, visited the Saturday morning farmer's market, and enjoyed to garden and front porch at the inn.  The weather was just starting to feel like fall, which made it lovely for hiking and being outdoors.  Some of us decided to go the underground route however, and visited Linville Caverns as well.


On the trip Monday we started with the Museum of NC Minerals and went south from there.  However, this entry is getting a bit long, so I'll write more about the second part of the trip very soon!  Take care and I'll be back soon with a post about various ways to make crafts and DIY projects with yarn that don't involve any knitting or crochet!

Love,
Lydia

Saturday, May 31, 2014

Days 153-154

Hi everyone,

Today's update is all about art!  So What have I been doing?  Well, In April I participated in Live & Local Raleigh, where I had a booth showing my art as part of the street festival.  It was a fun day, there was live music, and plenty of friendly folks stopped by my booth too.  I look forward to being part of the event next year as well!  Here's a shot of my booth thanks to Groucho's Deli via Facebook.

Additionally April 8th was Draw a Bird day, so while I drew my bird that day I'm just now getting around to posting it!  I looked some of my older reference photos and selected one of a Brown-Headed Nuthatch at the feeders from our old apartment.  I drew it on watercolor paper with various colored pencils and it ended up having a nice soft look to it.



I think I'll try to find a nice sketchbook next time.  Speaking of which I'm thinking I really should start to keep a regular one and hopefully share some bits of things in future entries.  I poked around my studio a bit and found a tiny sketchbook that isn't made of watercolor paper...I think I might need to go shopping though.  Hehe  If so I think I will get something similar to a Moleskin style book since I will soon be getting an Imbue creative tool thanks to my friend Stephen Hughett and his collaborative partner Igor Zemskov's fantastic Kickstarter!  The tool will be very useful for my Irish inspired pieces or really any pattern based art I work on.

In other news I finally have a new camera!  A friend of mine was looking to sell hers and the timing was just right for things to work out.  I'm so incredibly thankful too!  I now have a Canon T3i DSLR, which I have been having a great time getting used to over the past two weeks.  So, here are a few bits of what I've been up to with it.  First there were test shots, of which the following two were lovely.



Then we went to one of our relative's 1st birthday party.  They had the nicest spread of ice cream sundaes and toppings set out, and of course the birthday princess was adorable!



I've also been keeping an eye on the creatures in our yard, birds and bunnies, there are squirrels too, but they're just annoying buggers.  The feeder is just outside our kitchen window, but the rabbits are used to us enough that I could walk just off the porch to take this picture, the Tufted Titmouse didn't mind either.  Then while I was writing the beginning of this post I kept hearing at least one fledgling Carolina Wren, and soon after had one come and investigate what I was doing on the porch!


I also took a few shots during our Memorial Day board games.  We were playing Tzolk'in, The Mayan Calendar game, which is why there are little crystal skulls involved.  A young relative was arranging the extra pieces while her dad played with us.  The lighting made it irresistible, and I went to grab my camera partway through the game.
                           

                           

                           

                           

Lastly, today I was working on my first Pinterest style project.  It's inspired by this pin of a chalkboard cheese plate!  I had given one of my brothers-in-law a beer sampling paddle, and during the party I realized it would be perfect to add a chalkboard paint finish to, so I'm doing that, plus painting some lettering on the back for him too.  I'll be going through the steps of how I make it as part of my next post.  Here's a teaser shot of all the items I'll be using to put it together.


Enjoy your last day of May and I will see you all in June.  Thanks!

Love, Lydia