Well I've come to a point in my life to start clearing out the old and bring in the new.  Starting with my personal room, I have a giant collection of stuff.  I  guess the whole thing was brought on by watching Hoarders: Buried Alive.... This is something I sort have been putting off.  I'm down to a little pile (which I need to kick myself in the butt to just hurry up and finish it)  but I did donate a big bag of clothes, and a bag of shoes that were not in use any longer.  Yea I sort of kick myself for ditching my shoes from my first formal... but I don't know when I'd ever wear them again.

Going through all of this, I've come to realize that I reward myself for the littlest of advances.  I worked on my smallest of projects this week.... and I was like ok I earned some play time.  Really?  I didn't really do much.  Nothing worth giving myself a reward.

Any who... obviously my hopes for getting this year together and doing something right hasn't exactly gone off well.  (Let's be honest... it's non existent)  But I am realizing that I need to start pushing myself to do more.  Not that I need to spend my every free moment on making something... but to start detracting from personal life time...

In between my last post and now, I did happen to catch a few kindred moments from my cats... (not as many as I had hoped... but its a start right?)  Introducing Inky; my sister's giant fluffy black cat.

SO... I'm trying this new thing of getting a photo of P-cake once a week at least, mainly to encourage my photography skills... but we'll see how this all works out...

Here's my baby cakes....

Apparently she's in love with the  bathtub.  She'll hop in it and sit and look at the left over water.  Occasionally she'll be entranced by the toilet when its open and poke in it.... sometimes ending up swimming in it.  Oh cakes... your fascination with bathrooms is disturbing sometimes...

SO... lets be honest, I don't even know what I want in my life anymore... I can tell you by looking at my desk I have a sewing machine, cook book, filofax folder of designs waiting to be worked on,  paper cuts, an unglazed teapot, and a ton of other unfinished projects sitting there waiting to be finished.    I can't help but ask myself what I'm doing.  Really I wish somedays that I had found my niche.  I want everything... and I want to do everything.  Save me.  But somehow I know theres something in all of this that's supposed to pave the way for myself eventually.  Emphasis on eventually.

SO... needless to say I am trying to get myself to wake up from this nightmare.  I know I may be a bit overdramatic about it... but I'm so unhappy, that this can't really be a dream.  I'm going to try to finish this year and leave all of its crap behind and start fresh for next year to make a point of finishing.  Hopefully I can get my new site launched, and get this blog completely formated in the next week or so.  Here's a sneak peak of the changes... the front page isn't finished yet... but I want to save it as a surprise when launching it.

Going from this...

to this...

SO... among the other things I have planned for next year is:  quilting, paper cutting, ceramics, wed designing, cooking and much more.

Ambitious?  Yes.  Inspiring?  Hopefully.

So... all in all I have been processing through and bracing for a new year.  2012.  I've started to make little mental lists of things I would like to accomplish this year, and if I had the cash what would I buy lists...  all relatively forgettable...  but I think I may be onto something.  I love lists.  I love lists, details, organization... office supplies?  Yea random, but still something's there.  So I figure that if I can make myself a nice printed "bucket list" as you may call it, for 2012, I may actually get something done... and record doing it.  I mean I'm sure I'll make my list WAY too ambitious... but at the same time, I should challenge myself so I don't spend one too many nights watching TV when I could be making something amazing.  I think at the same time I will try to make a nice pretty calendar... it will be amazing! (hopefully) So I'm trying to collect my wishes/wants for next year and get that all together.

So... with that I think I'm going to start reading "The Artist's Way" again.  I need to rebuy a book I lent out and never got back.  I miss my "Creative Habit."  Word to the wise... don't lend out books to college students... you'll NEVER get them back... I promise!

So... I go camping with my best friend and her husband (who is also a very good friend)  and it's always fun and interesting.  I always have a good time and its a freeing experience.  Below I have a few photos I collected from my friends camera that I took.  We went to Malibu this time and it was so beautiful.  It had just rained, and it was the Monday of Thanksgiving week.  The air was crisp and fresh and the beach was beautiful.  I collected some drift wood for an art project I'm working on, and I collected a few huge leaves.  I forgot to press them.  But my best friend and I found a monarch butterfly colony.  This photo doesn't give justice to the massive amounts of them.

So... here's my little update from Malibu camping.

SO... second frustration, my skin.  Since my senior year in high school I have been getting progressively worse eczema breakouts on my hands and now on my feet.  It's such a frustration, especially for my job.  I am a server at a restaurant and it breaks my heart because I want to (and need to) work, but sometimes my skin gets in the way.  I guess this also applies to my studio practice in clay.  With the recent outbreak of my skin, the sores of eczema have appeared on more sensitives parts of my hands, and the tips of my fingers are now compromised.  Even with gloves on, I can barely pull on the wheel.  At this point in my life I feel God calling me to take my artist expression to other areas of my life.

SO... for now, I am giving clay a break, and focusing on my web design.  I just finished a huge project/milestone in my life and am relieved, and as soon as this wedding is over, I am going to be fully focused on my new passion of paper.  I have a couple other things to work on as well, and I think I'm going to make a lot of hand made christmas gifts this year.

SO... here's my first blog post, of frustration and hope.